Chapter 6
“What now?” Danny asked, sighing heavily when he realized that it wasn’t one of his family members stopping by with some bullshit excuse so that they could make sure that he was taking care of himself. It was his pain in the ass neighbor, no doubt coming back to-
“I wanted to thank you for everything that you did for me last night,” Tinkerbelle started, instantly making him frown.
“Last night?” Danny repeated, sure that he’d misheard the small woman standing in the hallway, still wearing the towel that he’d given her a little over an hour ago wrapped around all those surprising curves that she’d somehow hidden from him.
“Yes,” Jodi said, pushing back a strand of hair curled from her recent shower, “I’ve been thinking about this all night and-”
“All night?” he found himself muttering, not entirely sure where she was headed with this.
“I just wanted to stop by on my way to work and thank you for everything,” Jodi said, finishing with a firm nod as she turned around and started to head down the hallway towards the front door when she suddenly stopped and turned right back around.
“I almost forgot,” she said, walking over to him and-
Forced him to blindly reach out and grab hold of the doorway before his knees gave out and dropped him on his ass from the weight of the cotton towel that she’d tossed over his shoulder.
“Thanks again,” Tinkerbelle, now butt-naked, said with a polite smile as she turned around and headed for the front door, leaving him holding onto her towel as his mind raced to figure out what just happened even as his gaze fell to that delectable, softly rounded ass that he’d give anything to-
“I forgot my keys,” Tinkerbelle said with a self-deprecating laugh as she turned around and headed back to her door, where she knocked.
“Is there someone inside?” he asked, praying that there was someone behind that door to come save him.
“No,” Tinkerbelle said with a shrug as she continued to patiently stand in front of her door, waiting for it to magically open.
Danny rubbed his hands down his face, telling himself that this wasn’t happening to him, not tonight.
Tinkerbelle went ahead and knocked on her door again.
Praying that whatever fucked up side-effect the medicine had on her was short-term, he dropped his hands away, grabbed the towel off his shoulder and prepared himself for a wrestling match from hell.
8:45 P.M.
“I don’t want it!”
“Too goddamn bad!” Danny snapped, making quick work of wrapping the towel around the stubborn woman who was driving him out of his fucking mind.
“You’re going to make me late for work!” Tinkerbelle snapped, once again trying to push past him and walk towards the front door, but before she could make her way past him, he had his arm wrapped around her and was carrying her back, unfortunately, to his apartment where he could keep an eye on her.
“Uh-huh, that’s nice, Tinkerbelle,” Danny said absently, wondering if tying her to the baseboard would constitute kidnapping.
“That’s not my name!” Jodi snapped, wiggling in his arms, desperate for freedom so that she could make another run for the front door where she would no doubt give the neighborhood a show that they would never forget.
“Stop squirming,” Danny said through clenched teeth, praying that she would stop rubbing those damn curves against him with every wiggle so that he could focus on figuring out how he was going to get her safely back in her apartment and out of his hair.
He wanted his solitude, needed it desperately and as soon as he figured out what was wrong with her, he would have it.
“What the hell is going on here?” a man suddenly demanded, drawing his attention to two large and familiar-looking police officers who didn’t look happy to find a half-naked Jodi in his arms.
Aw, shit…
“Greg!” his unwanted bundle cried, sounding relieved, really relieved, which probably wasn’t going to help him in the long run.
For a moment, Danny considered placing Tinkerbelle back on her feet to make it easier for the very pissed-off-looking police officers to slam him to the floor and read him his rights, but then he realized that his unwanted load would take advantage of the situation and make her escape.
So, until they ordered him to put her down and raise his hands above his head, he wasn’t releasing her.
“Can you please tell him to put me down so that I can go to work?” Jodi asked, sounding completely rational at the moment, which actually terrified him.
“Work?” the officer that he was assuming was Greg repeated back slowly as he shared a look with his partner that Danny couldn’t read, but one he was more than willing to interpret.
He was about to become big Bubba’s bitch.
He was holding a woman who hated him and happened to be naked, out of it, and most likely this cop’s girlfriend and his only defense was his cousin’s wife’s fucked-up cooking and Benadryl.
Oh, yeah, his ass was going away for a long time for this one, which wouldn’t be so bad once he thought about it.
It meant that he’d get two to five years without his family constantly worrying about him. He just had to be careful with the soap when he was in the shower. Not a bad deal when he thought about it.
“Aspirin or cough medicine?” Greg suddenly demanded, taking a step forward as he gestured towards the woman in Danny’s arms.
“Benadryl,” he answered with a frown, wondering why they-
“Oh, fuck no!” Greg said, shoving his partner out of his way as he tried to make his way back to the front door only to have his partner grab him by the collar, yank him back and run for the door.
“Where the hell are you going?” Danny demanded, shifting his unwanted load in his arms.
“As far away from here as humanly possible!” Greg shouted over his shoulder as he tried to shove his way to freedom.
Danny couldn’t help but shake his head in disgust as he watched the cowards shoving each other, both of them more than willing to leave this woman with a man that she despised.
“One of you needs to stay here and take care of her,” Danny said, rolling his eyes in disgust as Greg’s partner managed to shove Greg back inside and took off. “She should be watched by someone that knows her,” he said, stressing the point that he was a fucking stranger.
“Looks like you’re doing a good job,” Greg said, scrambling to get back to the front door.
“You’re really going to leave your girlfriend with a stranger?” Danny said in disgust, wondering why women like Tinkerbelle settled for losers like-
“We had you checked out before she signed the lease, Sergeant. We know she’s in good hands,” Greg said, taking him by surprise even as the coward backed up, licking his lips nervously.
“I-I just can’t go through this again. Not after the last time,” he said, shaking his head and sounding terrified seconds before he turned around and made a run for it, leaving Danny standing in the middle of the hallway with Tinkerbelle in his arms.
“Fucking cowards,” he spat out in disgust.
“Fucking cowards,” his unwanted load repeated back with a sigh that had him rolling his eyes and wondering just how long it would take for the Benadryl to do its thing and knock Tinkerbelle out.
10:34 P.M.
“Stop squirming,” Danny said, not bothering to open his eyes as he shifted his head so that he was once again resting comfortably on her stomach.
“I need to use the bathroom,” Jodi said with what sounded like a cute little pout, something that normally would have had his lips twitching in amusement, but not tonight. Not after the last two hours of hell that she’d put him through.
“You’re lying,” Danny pointed out, ninety-five percent sure that she was lying and not really caring if he was wrong.
For the past two hours, this small woman had been driving him out of his fucking mind.
She’d made a total of twenty-two escape attempts, three of them successful since she’d managed to get out the door before he could grab her and drag her back inside.
She’d set a fire, unintentionally, flooded his bathroom, started a fist fight between him and two of his cousins, got the police called on them a total of nine times, accidentally kneed him in the balls three times, and now, he was starving, cranky, exhausted, and all he wanted to do was to get a little sleep before he had to get up at the crack of dawn and start a job that he didn’t want.
“I’m hungry,” Jodi said, deciding to try a different tactic.
“Too bad,” Danny said, forcing himself not to care that she might be starving.
It was either that or take the chance of her slamming his balls into his stomach again as she raced for the door, but not for work this time.
Oh, no, Tinkerbelle was no longer worried about being late for work.
Her new mission in life was getting to Dunkin Donuts and buying a double-chocolate donut.
The woman apparently had a craving for a baked treat and was willing to do anything to get it, even turning him into a eunuch.
“Fine,” Jodi said, sighing heavily as she went back to running her fingers through his hair, something that he was not enjoying. He wasn’t, not at all. It sure as hell wasn’t calming something deep inside of him that he couldn’t name and making him doze off. It was-
“Are we having sex?” she suddenly asked, startling the hell out of him enough to make him open his eyes and raise his head so that he could glare down at the woman that was going to drive him to drink.
“Does it feel like we’re having sex?” Danny demanded, even though he’d already learned a couple of hours ago that Tinkerbelle on Benadryl was incapable of having a rational discussion.
She squished up her face in thought before she shrugged and admitted, “I’ve never been able to tell.”
He should just close his eyes, drop his head back on her stomach, and use his weight to keep her pinned to the couch and out of trouble, but instead, he found himself asking, “How could you not know if you’re having sex?”
“Jerry was really small,” Jodi said with a shrug like it was no big deal. “I couldn’t feel anything.”
For a moment, he was too stunned to say anything, but she didn’t seem to have that problem. Nope, not Tinkerbelle.
“I don’t think he knew what he was doing either,” Jodi said, scrunching her face up in thought before she admitted, “Granted, he was the only one that I’d ever been with, but I don’t think sex is supposed to be boring.
I’m also pretty sure that I should have felt something,” she said so matter-of-factly that he knew that she wasn’t being a vindictive ex-girlfriend, eager to trash her ex.
“I…” Danny started to say, but his words trailed off as his mind latched onto all the things that he would love to do to Tinkerbelle and she would damn well feel everything that he did to her.
“I don’t think he knew how to use his fingers or tongue either because-”
“Goodnight, Tinkerbelle,” Danny said, dropping his head back onto her stomach and squeezing his eyes shut as he prayed that she fell asleep because he honestly didn’t think that his imagination could take anymore torture tonight, not with her lying beneath him wearing one of his tee-shirts and his body more than willing to show her just how good sex could be.
2:30 A.M.
“No, I don’t want anymore,” his small, unwanted houseguest mumbled with a cute little whine as she tried to roll over on the couch and-
“Ow!” she muttered with a little whimper as she hit the floor, but she didn’t make any move to get up and climb back on the couch, he noted with a sigh.
“Let’s go,” Danny said to the drugged-out woman trying to curl up into a ball and go back to sleep on his floor even as he counted his blessings that she was sleeping.
“Comfy,” Jodi mumbled with a little pout as he leaned over and scooped her up.
“The couch is more comfortable,” he gently explained as he placed her back on the couch and quickly tucked her in.
Once she was tucked in, he picked up the small cup of medicine that he’d placed on the coffee table and held it to her lips. “I need you to drink this,” Danny said softly, giving her a little shake when she started to drift off again.
“You drink it,” she mumbled irritably, blindly pushing the cup away. “I don’t want it.”
“I don’t need it,” Danny pointed out as he gently pushed a few strands of her beautiful blonde hair out of the way, only to get his hand slapped away in the process.
“Neither do I,” Jodi argued.
He sighed heavily as he crouched down next to the couch. “The hives are starting to come back.”
“No, they’re not,” Jodi argued even as she reached up and scratched the hives spreading across her neck.
Too exhausted to argue, he pinched her nose. When she opened her mouth to gasp for air, Danny poured the medicine in her mouth. When he was done, he released her nose and covered her mouth with his hand until he was sure that she’d swallowed every last drop.
“I hate you,” Jodi muttered the second that he removed his hand as she tried to glare at him, but the medicine was already kicking in, adding to the drowsiness from the last dose.
Knowing that her level of hatred for him had probably been elevated to a murderous rage, Danny chuckled as he tucked her in. “Goodnight, Tinkerbelle,” he said, gently running his knuckles along her chin as he stood up.
“Rot in hell, you rotten bastard,” Jodi mumbled around a loud yawn as she turned over and curled up on her side.
He couldn’t help but chuckle as he said, “I already am, Tink.”
5:55 A.M.
“How are you feeling?” came the abrupt demand a split second after she managed to open her eyes.
“Um, fine?” Jodi answered, frowning in confusion as she looked around the dimly lit apartment that definitely wasn’t hers.
“Good,” Danny said, scooping her up in his arms and heading for the door.
By the time she managed to open her mouth to ask him what the hell he thought he was doing, he carried her inside her apartment and dumped her ass on the couch before he turned around and stormed right back out.
He slammed the door behind him, leaving her sitting on her couch, shaking her head and muttering, “Someone’s not a morning person. ”