Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
B oon
Have you ever had a plastic tag in an article of clothing that keeps rubbing against your skin but can’t find it?
That’s how I felt the rest of Thursday and all day at school on Friday.
I was irritable, temper on a short leash.
But I was also restless. I knew exactly why.
I could pretend that Shae Fletcher hadn’t gotten under my skin and started rubbing, an irritation that wouldn’t go away, but that would require a level of lying to myself I didn’t want to stoop to.
I tried ignoring her earlier in the week.
That hadn’t worked. I’d lost sleep thinking about her and staring out at her house out my bedroom window.
I tried sliding my tongue up her neck and complimenting her and that still didn’t work.
I’d had to take matters into my own hands and rub one out while thinking about the way she tasted.
My flesh was raw by the time I realized I needed to fuck her senseless to get her out of my head once and for all.
Except she was going on a date tonight.
With someone else.
“If you’re gonna keep pacing, get a mop and be useful,” Mom drawled from the living room.
I spun in her direction, seeing her head above the granite countertops Warrick had Emmerleigh install when he moved back to Blueball.
Mom had one of those smirky smiles on her face that said she was two steps ahead of me already.
I didn’t dare turn my head and give Shae’s house another glance.
Instead, I left the kitchen and had a seat across from my mother.
“Just working out some stuff in my head for the team,” I said nonchalantly, leaning back in the chair and doing that breathing technique I used when heading for the plate at the end of the ninth inning and me at bat would determine if we won or lost the game.
Mom snorted haughtily, which was rich, coming from a woman with a pair of readers on top of her head, another perched on the end of her nose, and yet a third pair hanging from a beaded thing around her neck.
“Why don’t you just go over there and tell her what you need to say?”
The great thing about my mother was that she didn’t beat around the bush. She said what she meant and meant what she said. It was also the thing I liked least about her. Subtlety was not in her vocabulary.
“She’s on a date,” I groused. I meant it to sound like I didn’t care, but it came out more like a petulant eight-year-old boy who didn’t get a popsicle.
Mom looked over her glasses at me, eyes shrewd, yet warm. “Then go over there and be the friend she needs as she gets ready. Vet the guy when he comes to pick her up. Be there for her, Boon. You’ve done it all your life. Why are you hesitating now?”
Well, fuck.
I sprang to my feet. “If I’m not back in an hour, say good night to Kinsley for me.”
Mom smiled and waved me off. Damn, I loved that woman.
She was right. Why couldn’t I be over there, showing Shae that her date choice sucked?
Someone should be watching out for her, and I declared myself that someone.
The geese chased me as I navigated between our properties.
I ended up in a flat-out run to escape their honking and flapping.
I swear, they had it out for me from day one.
I knocked on her door, irritated when she didn’t answer right away. Shit! Did I miss her date in the short few minutes I was talking to Mom?
“Shae?” I called through the door. “It’s Boon.”
She still didn’t answer.
I leaped off the porch, over the railing, and into her side yard, circumventing the house and peering into each window.
Few lights were on, which made me think she’d left for the night.
Panic spurred me on. What if she was on a date with a psychopath right now and I’d missed the small window of time to stop this tragedy from happening?
I made it around back where she had a screened-in porch that had seen better days.
And that’s when I heard it.
A frustrated, growly scream.
I yanked open the screen door—unlocked—and raced to the back door of the house.
I threw open that door—also unlocked. Christ on a cracker, did this woman have no sense of security living alone?
I didn’t have time to get mad about it. I was too intent on finding Shae, which I did the second I flung open the door.
She was standing in front of the washing machine in the royal-blue one-piece lingerie I’d picked out for her.
She froze.
I froze.
Well, all but one part of me.
“What the fudge sticks?” Shae screamed, her arms coming up to try to hide the prettiest body I’d ever seen in my life.
Her breasts were pressed together and upward by the wireless cups, a veritable flesh pillow on display just for my head, I was sure of it.
The lace barely covered her tight waist, but it was the high-cut leg openings that made my mouth run dry.
Shit. I was right. Her legs looked long and so smooth they could have been the finest silk.
“Fucking hell,” I muttered, finally moving. I scrubbed a hand over my mouth, but not my eyes. I needed those fuckers to take in every inch of Shae that I’d dreamed about but never saw in real life.
“Get out!” she screamed, now dancing around the laundry room on pretty toes painted bright red.
Maybe I should have said something. Told her how beautiful she was. Or what a douchebag her date was for being late. Or how much I wanted to fuck her right there on the floor. But words were impossible. Blood flow in my body had gone entirely south.
I just stepped into the laundry room, shut the door behind me—and locked it—and backed her into the washing machine with my body.
It smelled like lavender and fruit in here, a delightful combination of Shae and fresh laundry.
Her eyes went comically wide and that’s when I noticed she wasn’t wearing her glasses.
Her hair was down and curled, her makeup applied meticulously.
She was a fucking bombshell all tied up in a pretty package.
My dick spoke before I could, pressing into her belly as I laid my hands on the machine behind her, pinning her in. She swallowed hard, but didn’t break my gaze. My girl was so damn courageous, and it was more of a turn-on than I could have expected.
“What…what are you doing?” she said breathlessly, her head tilted back as I pressed harder.
“You…you look fucking gorgeous. I knew it. Your date doesn’t deserve you, Shae.”
She licked her lips while I took in every swipe of her little pink tongue. “He…he cancelled.”
I smiled then. Wolfish and hungry. “He’s a fucking idiot.”
Shae had the audacity to shrug. “Probably for the best.”
I narrowed my eyes. Shae could say a lot of things right to my face and I’d take the verbal lashing. What I wouldn’t take is Shae saying mean things about herself.
“The best for you, definitely. He, however, is an idiot to turn down this.” My gaze moved down to the breasts pressed between us. Goddamn. I could just lean down and suckle her flesh into my mouth. So easily. She was right there.
“Yeah, I don’t know about that…” Shae trailed off.
My gaze snapped back up to hers. I tilted my hips ever so slightly, letting her feel the steel pipe I now smuggled in my pants.
I knew she felt it. Her cheeks were already pink, but now her eyes had gone glassy.
Her lids slid halfway down like when I’d kissed her neck yesterday.
Her hands, that had been stiffly held next to her sides, came up between us, hovering there like she didn’t know where to put them.
Touch me , I begged inside my head.
“Does that feel like a man who doesn’t find you attractive as hell?” I practically growled, just inches from her lips.
“Boon,” she purred back, voice shaky and breathless.
“Yeah, lovebug?”
Her hands finally landed on my hips, and I rejoiced. My hands gripped the washing machine for dear life. If I let go, I was afraid of what I’d do to Shae. How I’d pull her into me, how hard I’d grip her, how I’d do all the dirty things I’d dreamed of doing to her.
Her eyelids lifted, her gaze clear as she stared up at me. “I’m coming to you.”
Her meaning hung between us like the still millisecond before a bomb explodes.
I’d told her to come to me when she wanted that one thing.
And here she was, finally offering herself to me.
I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment just to let that feeling of ultimate triumph wash over me.
My eyes flew back open in the next second, fully focused.
I had a job to do. A job I’d been wanting to do since I knew what sex even was.
A job I’d been too afraid to attempt when I was a teenager.
I pushed off the washing machine, my knuckles aching with how hard I’d been gripping the steel.
I lifted them, letting my fingers comb through her pretty hair.
And then I cupped her jaw, my thumbs sweeping across her cheeks.
She was like silk beneath my fingertips.
White, unmarked silk I wanted to get dirty.
I watched her eyes go hazy again as I dipped my head.
Her eyelids slid shut and I hovered for just a second, a marauder about to enjoy his spoils.
And then I unleashed, letting my mouth crash into hers, my tongue demanding immediate entrance.
Shae whimpered, but let me in. Her hands fisted my shirt, tugging me into her when we were already pressed together as close as two people could be without sharing body parts.
She tasted like toothpaste and wine, a reminder her evening had not been built around me, yet here I was.
The lucky man to rip this lingerie right off of her.