Chapter 20
HARLEY
I always shower after I get home from Titan Fitness.
Yes, there are showers at the gym. But seriously, they’re gross. If the members knew how seldom they were cleaned, they wouldn’t shower there either. Showers are not self-cleaning, believe me.
Besides, I love long, luxurious, hot showers.
I love standing under the burning hot water until my skin turns beet red.
I keep turning the heat higher and higher until I’m certain that I’m going to be boiled alive like a lobster in a pot.
I stand there until all the hot water is gone, and only then do I come out and wrap myself in a warm, fluffy towel.
Like I said, I love showers.
I have a little basement apartment on a dead-end street, where there’s only one other house that appears to be abandoned, possibly condemned from the looks of it.
The couple that lives in the main part of the house are super old and deaf, and they keep to themselves, so it feels a bit like I’m living here by myself.
One of these days, I’m probably going to come upstairs to give them my rent check and find one or both unresponsive in the living room.
But until then, it’s a nice quiet place to live.
Just as I’m wrapping a towel around myself, my phone pings with a text message. I find it lying on the nightstand in the bedroom and smile when I see the message waiting for me.
Can I come over?
I type out my response:
Absolutely. ETA?
Fifteen minutes.
Oh, yay. That will give me just enough time to blow-dry my hair and apply some makeup for the perfect no-makeup look. I’ll get dressed, but there’s no need to bother with too many clothes, considering they’ll be coming off again shortly, if you know what I mean.
When I’m done dolling myself up, I look myself over in the full-length mirror in my bedroom. Just enough makeup? Check. Hair sexily tousled? Check. Tank top showing just a little too much cleavage? Check.
I look hot. Much hotter than her. I mean, it isn’t even close.
While I’m in the middle of practicing smoldering looks in the mirror, there’s a knock on my door. My heart speeds up in my chest the way it always does when he knocks, and I race across my apartment, practically tripping over an ottoman.
That’s how you know you really like somebody. When you nearly suffer bodily harm in your eagerness to answer the door for them.
I throw it open, and he’s standing there, looking a bit guilty like he always does, but at the same time really sexy.
Maybe it’s sexy that he’s guilty. He says he’s never done anything like this before, and I believe it.
But there’s no doubt he wants to be here—badly. His gaze is flooded with desire.
“Hey, Harley,” he says.
I smile at him, that flutter in my chest that I always get when he shows up at my door. God, he’s sexy.
“Hey, Cooper,” I say.
He pauses one more beat, and then he steps inside the apartment. He doesn’t waste another second before kissing me. His wife will be expecting him home soon, so there isn’t a ton of time for foreplay. I might be his first affair, but he’s not my first married man. Not even close. I know the score.
“When is Debbie expecting you back?” I ask him as he kisses my neck. I hate to talk about her when we’re having sexy time, but I need to be practical. I want to know how long we’ve got.
“I’ve got about an hour.”
Long enough.
Cooper doesn’t waste any time. He picks me up easily, because he’s been working out. Good thing he has, because that’s where we met. At the gym. When I saw him doing laps on that treadmill, I couldn’t help myself.
As he carries me to the bedroom, I can’t help but think to myself that one of these days, at the end of the hour, he’s going to decide that this time, he’s not going back to her.