Chapter 7 Avery
AVERY
I took a long hot shower and engaged in a little self-care while I was at it, hoping to cool the heat that had blossomed between my thighs while Beck had been executing his criminally sexy lean against my doorframe.
I wasn’t a total sexual novice, but the truth was, my sexual experiences had been pretty underwhelming so far. Sex was… fine. I just didn’t see what all the fuss was about, which was why it was weird that my imagination was in overdrive thanks to my three new roommates.
I stepped out of the shower more relaxed, convinced my response to Beck was a product of physical tension rather than any kind of real desire.
That made a lot more sense than the possibility that I’d developed a rabid case of the lusts for three men — make that two; Dane seemed like a real sourpuss — I’d just met.
I combed out my hair and blew it dry so it wouldn’t make my pillow wet while I slept, then slipped into one of my matching PJ sets, silky blue bottoms with pale yellow birds and a matching top with tiny yellow buttons.
I unpacked my clothes, arranging them in the dresser and armoire, and tucked my suitcases into the closet before climbing into bed with a sigh.
Holy wow, it had been a day.
I stretched out, savoring the crisp sheets against my bare feet, turned out the light, and stared up at the ceiling.
I was in Blackwell Hollow. In Aunt Evelyn’s house, a house I only vaguely remembered from when I was a child. The bed was bigger than my bed in the city, the ceilings higher than the ones in my apartment, the windows larger.
Also, some kind of bug was chirping up a racket outside. Were they crickets? I didn’t know, but I thought the country was supposed to be quiet?
I considered closing the windows, but the breeze felt too nice, so I closed my eyes, tried to settle my breathing, to relax my body.
It was kind of weird that the body in the gazebo — Harold Pembroke — had mud on his pants. I mean, sure, there was mud around the property. Presumably.
But he’d been in the gazebo.
I flipped onto my side and fluffed the pillow under my head.
What was a town councilman doing here, at Aunt Evelyn’s house? And where had Beck, Noah, and Dane been in the moments before I’d found poor Harold’s body?
I could be living with a murderer or three.
Then again, they could be thinking the same thing about me.
I sat up with a sigh. This wasn’t working.
I needed something. Specifically, I needed more milk and cookies.
I checked my phone, charging on one of the mirrored nightstands next to the bed.
It was almost midnight. The house was quiet — quieter than the symphony of insects outside my window. The guys were probably asleep. Besides, it was technically my house, which was even weirder to think about now that I was trying to sleep in it than it had been when I’d been in the city.
I pulled a cardigan out of the dresser and slipped it on, then left my room.
One of the table lamps still glowed in the sitting area at the center of the second-floor landing but the doors to the other rooms were closed. I wondered which one belonged to Beck, which ones to Noah and Dane.
I’d never lived with a man before, and while I wasn’t some kind of sheltered virgin, it still felt dangerous to know they were so close.
My pulse quickened and I hurried through the sitting area, past the closed doors, before I could get myself all worked up again.
The wooden banister was cool under my hand, the runner soft under my feet as I descended to the main floor. The antique grandfather clock in the foyer ticked heavily as I walked past it to start down the long hall.
A glow emanated from the kitchen, and I realized when I got there that it came from soft lights running under the upper cabinets. I wondered if they came on automatically or if someone left them on overnight.
I headed for the cookies, piled high under a glass dome on the counter, then just about peed my pants when a voice cut through the dark from the table where we’d eaten our dinner.
“Caught with your hand in the cookie jar.”
“Jiminy cricket!” Adrenaline surged through my body before I realized the voice came from Dane, shirtless at the table in front of a laptop.
I braced myself on the island with both hands, like I’d just run a marathon and needed to catch my breath, although that probably had as much to do with his inked muscles — on full and heart-stopping display — as it did with being surprised in the kitchen in the middle of the night. “You have to stop doing that.”
“I’m just sitting here. You’re the one sneaking cookies.”
I straightened to flash him what I hoped was a withering glare. “I’m not sneaking cookies. I couldn’t sleep, and Beck told me to help myself to anything in the kitchen. My kitchen, if you want to get technical about it.”
His gray eyes flashed in the moment before he returned his gaze to his computer. “You some kind of religious freak?”
“What?” How had we gone from cookies and the kitchen to religion? “Why would you ask me that?”
“The goofy words you use when you’re surprised.” He was typing away, like our conversation was a minor distraction for him when I felt all hot and prickly. The nerve. “I’m guessing it’s because you don’t like to swear.”
I lifted my chin and pulled down a glass. “I don’t. So?”
“So you don’t like to swear but you’re not a religious freak?” He shook his head like he didn’t believe it. “I’m guessing you’re a religious freak.”
“I am not…” I took a deep breath, trying to calm my irritation. “First of all, that’s not a nice thing to say about people who are religious. Second, I don’t even go to church, not that it’s any of your business.”
“Then why don’t you swear?”
I pulled milk from the fridge (surprisingly well stocked) and twisted off the cap. “I just don’t like the way it feels in my mouth.”
It was the only way I could explain it. Everyone around me swore, including my mom, but I’d just never liked the way it felt. Which didn’t mean I didn’t swear in my head. I definitely did, because then I didn’t have to worry about the mouth-feel thing.
What could I say? It was complicated.
He looked up like I’d finally piqued his interest enough to tear him away from whatever he was doing on his computer. “You don’t like the way it feels in your mouth?”
“Exactly.” I returned the milk to the fridge.
“I hope you don’t mind the way it feels coming from other people’s mouths because I’m never saying Jiminy cricket instead of Jesus christ. And wait until you hear how often we all say fuck.”
And okay, I didn’t like the way swearing felt in my mouth, but I’d be a liar if I said hearing Dane say the word “fuck” didn’t do all kinds of crazy things to my body.
Instead of being turned off, my nipples got hard, and my pussy throbbed the way it did when I went too long without a good orgasm. Except I’d given myself an orgasm in the shower a couple of hours before so I should be good for a while at least.
But somehow when Dane said “fuck” it didn’t make me think of foul-mouthed guys who liked to show off — it made me think about rumpled sheets and naked bodies and soft moans.
It made me think of, well, fucking.
Fucking Dane, to be exact.
I busied myself dunking a cookie into the milk. “You can say whatever you want.”
When the cookie was perfect — soft but not so soft that it would fall into the milk — I put it in my mouth. I looked up, expecting Dane to be busy with his computer, but he was staring at me instead, his gaze locked on my mouth as I licked a stray piece of cookie from my lips.
Was it my imagination that I could have cut the sexual tension with a butter knife? I didn’t think so, which was super awkward given the fact that Dane was obviously a major dick.
And see? That made me blush too, because now I was thinking about Dane’s dick.
I was in real trouble here.
“You’re up late too.” It was the most benign thing I could think of to say, better than saying, Actually I’m fine if you say the word fuck as long as you say it while you’re fucking me. “Are you working?”
He nodded, then pulled his gaze from mine to focus on the computer. “I like to do the accounting at night when Beck isn’t yammering in the kitchen and Noah isn’t kicking up a racket outside with the lawn mower or the weed whacker or one of his other obnoxiously loud tools.”
“Sorry I interrupted your work.” And super sorry I’m going to have to get myself off again before I go to sleep.
He typed furiously on his computer. “It’s fine.”
His tone was grudging, and I bit my bottom lip, debating the merit of calling him on it.
Fudge it. I wasn’t a little girl. I had a real job in the real world. And yeah, it wasn’t like I was a CEO or something, but my position as a project coordinator for an urban planning nonprofit meant plenty of confrontation with politicians and bureaucrats.
I could handle Dane whatever-his-last-name-was.
“Do you have a problem with me being here?”
He stopped typing and looked up to meet my gaze, his gray eyes cold.
“I have a problem with the way you abandoned Evelyn. I have a problem with the fact that I’ve been here for three years and, as far as I know, you never once so much as dropped her a call or an email or even a fucking birthday card. ”
I felt like I’d been slapped, and it was at least in part because he wasn’t wrong.
I pressed my lips together and nodded. “You’re right.”
Surprise flashed in his eyes, and he leaned back to fold his arms over his muscular chest. “So why didn’t you? Call? Email? Anything. And don’t give me that shit about being a little girl.”
I thought about trying to explain. How staying busy was the way I coped with my dad’s replacement family, with my mom’s crowded life. With feeling like an afterthought.
With being lonely even though I lived in one of the biggest cities in the world.
Or maybe because of it.
But what was the point? None of it was an excuse. I may have been lonely, but Aunt Evelyn had been right here, wanting to have a relationship with me, and I’d been too selfish and preoccupied to call or visit.
And Dane was a complete stranger, one who’d already made up his mind about me. Why would I spill my guts to him?
“That’s none of your business either.”
His expression hardened. He returned his gaze to the laptop. “Let me know when you want to go over the numbers. I can fill you in or give you access to the spreadsheets or whatever.”
“Thanks.” I covered the cookies with the glass dome and rinsed my glass in the sink. “I’ll leave you to it.”
I left him alone in the dimly lit kitchen and tried to place the heavy feeling in my chest. Some of it was about Aunt Evelyn: worrying that she’d been lonely too, that she’d thought no one cared.
But that wasn’t the only thing. It was Dane, the feeling that he was judging me.
That he was disappointed in me.
That I should care.