Chapter 6
Hadley fought every urge she had to grab her binoculars and look into Cole’s house that night as she was getting ready for bed. After all he’d done for her, spying on him just felt wrong.
Not that it hadn’t been wrong when he was just a hot stranger.
But she’d been able to justify it back then.
Maybe he wanted her to watch him strip off his workout clothes after he finished a grueling run on his treadmill, she’d told herself.
If he hadn’t wanted her attention, he would’ve installed some blinds, right?
Those silly justifications were behind her now. The man could barely say a handful of sentences to her, let alone perform a striptease for her viewing pleasure.
Long-story-short, she was going to give the man some privacy. Especially when her brain was already so cluttered with thoughts of what would’ve happened with Darren if Cole hadn’t intervened.
She was having trouble even thinking the word. It was so ugly. So violent. Totally unlike anything that’d ever happened to her before.
Rape. There it was. If Cole hadn’t stepped in, Darren might have raped her right there in the car. Or he might’ve dragged her into the house and raped her there. And she wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it. Darren was bigger, stronger, and obviously crazier than her.
Hadley rushed through her bedtime routine, hopped into bed, grabbed her phone off the nightstand, and started searching for self-defense classes.
It only took a few moments to find several locations near her that taught everything from basic self-defense techniques to advanced martial arts and boxing.
She’d wanted to take martial arts classes since she saw The Matrix as a kid. But as the daughter of a single dad with aggressively traditional values who was terrified of accidentally raising her like a boy, she’d been forced to take piano lessons instead.
Being able to play Heart and Soul hadn’t done shit for her tonight.
Something told her if Cole had a daughter, he’d teach her how to break a would-be rapist’s wrist.
The thought of Cole training his mini-me daughter to fight off an attacker made her…warm. Hot, really. Phew.
Time to open a window.
But what she saw when she opened the window did absolutely nothing to cool her off. Because right there, in his bedroom, she saw Cole step off his treadmill, pull off his shirt, and toss it into his hamper.
What was that thing she’d promised to give him? It was right there on the tip of her tongue. Oh, yeah, it was privacy! And still, her eyes would not let her look away. Not even when he bent down and stripped off his athletic shorts.
Great leaping horny toads! He wasn’t wearing underwear.
In her time spying on him, she’d seen him shirtless. So, she knew his biceps bulged when he shoved his hair off his forehead. She knew his abs had abs and there were muscles in his back and chest she hadn’t known existed. But she’d never seen him fully naked.
Until now.
He had an ass that could’ve been sculpted out of marble. Absolute perfection. Something told her that if she could grab two fistfuls of that ass, all her problems would disappear. There’d be no more wars in the world if everyone could touch that ass just once.
Then he turned around.
AAOOGA!
If he was that big now, how big was he when hard?
Her mind raced in a million different directions. What would a woman need to do to prep for fucking this man? Lube? Extra Kegels or something? Could the average non-pro even accommodate that monster?
Someone whimpered. It was probably her. It shouldn’t have been loud enough for anyone to hear, though.
Except at that very moment, Cole looked up and she was caught leaning out her window to get a better look at his naked body.
Give him a saucy wave. Or an apologetic shrug. Anything but staring at him with giant cartoon hearts in your eyes and drool on your chin!
But she did none of those things. She just stared back at him, unblinking.
She expected him to get mad at her. She was, after all, visually molesting him.
He must not mind too much, though, because all he did was slowly—oh, so slowly—grab the towel that was slung over the arm of the treadmill while holding eye contact the whole time.
She figured he’d wrap that towel around his waist.
He didn’t.
Instead, he used it to wipe off his sweaty chest and forehead before strolling casually into his bathroom. Still completely naked.
She’d been hoping to have some sweet dreams that night. But pornographic dreams suddenly seemed way more likely.