2. Charlie
TWO
CHARLIE
My head turned so fast I cranked my neck. Through the haze of pain and shock, I noticed my new companion was a man. A man with a bare chest sprinkled with dark chest hair and a sheet pooled around his hips. A man who was staring at me with an unruffled expression on his face, his brow arched ever so slightly, as if naked, wet women dropped from the sky and into his bed on a regular basis.
With one hand pressing at the pain in my neck, I sucked in a deep breath and tried to make sense of the situation.
I had dropped through the ceiling and was in bed with a man. And someone was trying to destroy my home as well as my town. And my entire body was beginning to ache something fierce, especially the very sharp pains on my legs and butt.
Blinking, I attempted to rally my thoughts and failed. Instead, I stared.
His chest was very interesting, in a manly, muscular kind of way. That little trail of hair that ran from his navel to disappear beneath the white sheet was quite, quite fascinating. The shoulders and arms probably deserved extensive study, but from the quick glance I gave them, they were just as muscular and cut as the rest of him. Hairy but not too hairy. Broad hands with long fingers. A corded neck. A razor-sharp jaw.
That is to say, his body was a work of art.
His face didn’t disappoint either, with straight slashes for brows and pale green eyes with a ring of darker hazel near the iris. Stubble. Full lips. Cheekbones. Dark hair tousled oh-so-effortlessly.
My brain struggled to process the sheer manly perfection of it all.
This man—my neighbor—was not someone I’d ever seen before. As far as I knew, the apartment below my own had been vacant for the past three months.
But he was here. Staring at me.
And when his eyes lingered on my lips for a moment, there was a certain special tightness somewhere in the land below my belly button. Then his gaze went on a journey south, and I remembered he probably hadn’t been admiring my lips, but rather wondering why it looked like I’d gnawed on raw, bloody meat like some kind of savage.
Oh—and I was naked.
I shrieked and grabbed the sheet that covered his legs, hauling it across to shield my bare flesh from his incisive gaze. But as soon as I ripped the sheet over and shrouded myself in it, I realized the man was also naked.
And now, without a sheet to cover the lower half of his body, every bit of his generous apparatus was on full display.
We both stilled and stared at his cock. How could I not? It was right there . Shocked into silence for a beat, I just blinked. His dick was simply enormous.
And then.
And then .
IT. TWITCHED .
The naked man beside me just sat there displaying his assets, not lifting a single finger to cover himself, while his cock stood up and said hello.
By this point, I’d lost the ability to form words. Yet another scream ripped itself out of my throat. I rolled off the edge of the bed while the sheet twisted itself around my body, landing on the floor with a thud.
Huffing, I managed to turn onto my back to glare at him. “Don’t just sit there, you creep! Cover yourself!”
“This is my bedroom,” he pointed out, that infuriating eyebrow twitching into an arch again. “You’re the one who dropped in without warning.”
Was that amusement in his gaze? How dare he!
“The floor gave way,” I gritted out, nodding to the bits of floorboard and timber and plaster littering the bedroom. “I didn’t do it on purpose.”
The man leaned against his headboard and braided his fingers behind his head. Through a superhuman effort, I managed not to look at his rigging, but my peripheral vision told me it was still there and remained semi-hard.
“Do you need help getting back to your apartment?” he asked, his gaze sliding from my face to the hole in the ceiling. “I can give you a boost.”
A boost. He’d give me a boost . What a freaking comedian.
Glaring at him, I yanked the bottom of the sheet off the bed and kicked my legs to free them. But the thing was twisted around my knees, and I had no hope of unwinding myself without standing up and stepping out of it.
Well, if he could sit there shamelessly displaying his block and tackle, I could march out of here in the nude.
I stood and pushed the sheet down to the floor, giving him an unobstructed view of my ass. He sucked in a hard breath, and I felt a little zip of feminine pride, which died a quick death when he said, “Jesus, your ass is a disaster.”
Glaring at him over my shoulder, I bared my teeth. “What did you just say?”
His stare made a slow journey from my ass to my eyes, those full lips of his curling ever so slightly. “I said, your ass is a disaster, sweetheart.”
“Don’t you ‘sweetheart’ me.” My gaze drifted to the danger zone. “Are you some kind of exhibitionist or something?”
“If the situation calls for it.”
“And this one does?”
“I don’t see you looking away.”
I ripped my gaze from the reclining male form on the bed to stare at the towel caught midway through the hole in the ceiling then muttered, “And he’s cocky too.”
“That’s a hard one to miss in the present circumstances.”
I spluttered, then marched to the side of the bed and hopped to grab the towel dangling from the broken floorboard. The man on the bed gave a little grunt when it took me a few jumps to reach it, and by the time I wrapped the towel around myself to glare at him, his hands were cupping his groin and his jaw looked very tight.
“Good night, sir.” I stomped toward his bedroom door, intent on marching right out of there and back up to my apartment. Every stride made the towel rasp against my butt, sending little stinging pains shooting across my skin.
My footsteps faltered near the bedroom door, because I remembered that the key to my front door was hanging on the hook where it belonged, which was inside my apartment. Meaning I was locked out.
Movement behind me made me freeze. Fabric rustled, and I heard the slight squeak of the bed springs as he pushed himself off the mattress. The man stood and stalked to the closet to my left, and I stole a glance at the rear view of him. He had a great ass. Damn him. No disasters in sight, other than the gargantuan ego and evident lack of shame. I watched as he pulled out a pair of gray sweatpants and a white T-shirt, tugged the clothing on, and turned to face me.
His gaze slid over my towel-clad body, down my bare legs, all the way to the toes that were clenching and unclenching in the plush pile of his rug.
“You,” he said in a low voice, “are bleeding all over my floor.”