CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO LOUDER LUNA
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
LOUDER
LUNA
My God, that couch looks glorious.
To be fair, everything I could see from my vantage point in Rhys’s entryway was glorious. The loaner I’d been in was nice and spacious, but his was even better. It was cool and masculine and shockingly tidy.
Not that I thought he would be messy just because he was a man. But I knew firsthand how hard it was to keep on top of things with a crazy work schedule.
Also, I was a bit messy, but that was neither here nor there.
After two weeks on the God-awful torture device someone mistakenly called a mattress, his lush couch would be like heaven to sleep on.
And if that also included a little late-night gaming on his giant TV, that was an added bonus.
I scanned around where said TV was mounted, but other than some photos on the brick wall and books and knick-knacks on the shelves, there was nothing.
“No video games?” I asked when he came in behind me, holding the first of my minimal belongings that he’d refused to let me help with.
“Never got into them. Don’t have the time even if I had.”
“Not even time-suck games on your phone?”
He shook his head.
“You’ve never crushed some candy? Angered some birds? Tetted some Tetris?”
“Tetted?”
“I don’t know. It sounded right.”
“Is that what you do on your phone?”
“Of course. Doesn’t everyone?”
“Not me. Not a nerd.”
Damn. I was hoping he’d have some different…
Wait.
I blamed the long night—long nights, actually—for it taking me half a minute to realize two things.
One, he was carrying my stuff down a hall.
And two, he’d insinuated I was a nerd.
I followed after him to deal with both, starting with the last one. “Did you just insinuate I’m a nerd?”
“Didn’t insinuate. Saying it outright.”
Whatever snark died on my tongue when I looked around the room we’d walked into.
His room.
It smelled like him in the best possible way, and I wanted to bottle the mix of man, cologne, and body wash.
“Why’re you putting my stuff in here?” I asked.
“Figured you’d want it where you’re sleeping. I cleared out space in the closet.
My aching back silently pleaded with me to shut up since his bed looked even more plush than his couch—which was saying something—but I forced the words out. “I can sleep in the living room.”
“Got two bedrooms.”
“Okay, then put me in the other one.”
“No.”
That was it.
No.
And I was too tired to argue.
I’ll make him swap rooms in the morning when we’re not dead on our feet.
After all, there’s no TV in the bedroom, and I have aliens to kill.
I did not, in fact, make him swap rooms with me when I woke up the next morning.
My back wouldn’t allow it.
And the fact it smelled so much like him was beside the point and not a factor.
Just like how that scent was not currently doing things to my body that I couldn’t act on.
Shouldn’t act on.
I blamed Rhys.
We’d spent the day at Rye because Mondays were when he got deliveries.
After checking that the peni-graffiti was still gone and there’d been no other incidents, I’d helped restock—as much as he would let me, at least. Then we’d grabbed dinner to eat while we watched a movie on a couch that was even more comfortable than it looked.
That had already been a good time. A great time. But then he’d made it even better by offering to hook up my console so we could play a few rounds of wiping out aliens together.
Well, I wiped out aliens.
He mostly got killed.
Or killed himself.
Or killed me—though I wasn’t convinced it was accidental like he’d claimed.
It was easy confirmation that he’d been telling the truth about his lack of gaming.
But he’d tried, and I appreciated that.
It’d been fun. More than that, it’d felt… normal. Like we were just spending a day together that wasn’t about acting or protection. He’d still been bossy, of course. I’d still snarked and rolled my eyes.
Yet in the privacy of not-my-own-bedroom, it was those orders he gave like second nature that teamed up with his smell to do inappropriate things to me.
Because in my imagination, it wasn’t just him telling me not to lift heavy things or to drink water or to sit.
It was him telling me to kneel.
And open wide.
And take him.
I’m not going to fall asleep until I handle this. And if I don’t sleep, I can’t do either of my jobs.
So, really, this is the practical thing to do.
It doesn’t make me a perv.
I wasn’t buying my justifications, but that didn’t matter.
Getting out of bed, I used my phone’s flashlight to dig into my stuff. Dig far in because I’d buried my silicone lover at the bottom because I hadn’t intended to use it while I was staying with Rhys.
And I’d made it all of one day.
Rhys
Knees to the mattress.
Ear literally to the damn wall.
And spent dick in hand.
Pathetic.
So fuckin’ pathetic.
When I’d heard the low thrum of music, I’d assumed Lo couldn’t sleep. I’d wondered if she was tossing and turning. If she was thinking of me like I’d been doing with her. Or maybe she was playing a game on her phone.
She was playing something, all right.
Her noises were soft. Muffled like she was holding a pillow over her face. But the walls in the historic strip of townhouses were thin. It was why I’d jacked off in the shower instead of in bed.
Lotta damn good that did me. It didn’t even take the edge off.
As soon as I realized what she was doing, I’d practically put my head through the wall to hear better while I stroked my dick to the soundtrack of her muffled moans.
I climbed out of bed to grab something to clean up with before pulling my shorts into place. I was about to flop back down when I heard a door creak open.
I braced, but there was no knock.
Without turning on the light, I eased my own door open and leaned my back against the jamb so I was partially in the hall.
Lo startled when she saw me, but she was quick to mask it behind a sip of the water she held.
I wasn’t masking a damn thing.
Because in the low light from her phone, I saw she was in my flannel. Her legs were bare, and even sexier than I imagined.
And I’d imagined them more times than was sane.
It was a problem that was about to become a full-on addiction now that I’d seen all of them. Especially since I was willing to bet Rye that there was little—if anything—underneath.
Luna
I’d thought I’d been quiet—both with my trip to the kitchen for water and the activity I’d been doing before.
One look at the man lurking in the shadows confirmed neither was true.
Even in the dim lighting, I could see the fire in his eyes.
Sinister fire that flickered and sparked, threatening to consume everything in its wake.
I wished it would.
I wished he would.
But he didn’t move. Not an inch. He just stared me down with his arms crossed over his naked chest.
God, he was hot. It made no sense that he was so in his head about being too old for me.
Not when he looked like that. All the time on his feet, lifting heavy deliveries, and whatever other manual labor he did hadn’t given him gym muscles.
He had work muscles. Cut and defined and hot.
I wanted to run my fingers through the light hair that coated that tattooed chest and trailed down the cut muscles of his abs.
And then I wanted to tease my tongue along the deep indents at his hips.
It might not even be a want at that point.
I was fairly certain it was growing into a need.
Staring at his body wasn’t helping.
Him staring right back at mine wasn’t, either.
It rebuilt the restless ache I’d just soothed. If he was any closer, I would worry he could see the arousal that coated my thighs and threatened to drip down my legs.
I wasn’t sure he didn’t know because when he tore his focus away from my bare legs, his jaw was clenched.
Maybe I should’ve been embarrassed at being caught by the star of my fantasy. And maybe I would be in the clear light of day. But I’d learned long ago to never show weakness.
So I kept my chin held high and met the intense eye contact without flinching. “Should I moan your name louder next time, barman?”
And then I walked into the room and closed the door behind me.