Andrea’s face turns red in either anger or desire or some combination of both. Her hands land on her hips in outrage, but only for a moment, because the towel begins unraveling and she has to quickly grab it before I’m treated to an encore performance of her glistening skin. Bummer.
She secures the towel and says, “Yes, because my body exists solely to be put on a show for the men around me.”
I throw my hands in the air. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Um, yeah, I’m pretty sure it is.”
“What I meant was, it seems like you have a confidence problem about your body, or something, and I don’t get it, because you look—uh, I mean, you just shouldn’t feel that way.”
Her face softens slightly and she heaves a sigh. I wait, watching her glance from my chest to my folded arms, then down, down, down to another, harder, part of me. Her eyes widen as she bites down softly on her bottom lip, but I don’t hide my arousal. This is my fucking house, she’s naked, and I’m a red-blooded male. I’d be more concerned if I didn’t have a raging boner right now.
Finally, she works her gaze back to mine. “It’s deliberate.”
I blink at her. “What?”
“Axel,” she says slowly, as if trying to describe something even a child should understand, “I’m the only female employee at this farm.”
“So?”
“So maybe I don’t want the lot of them leering at me all the time?”
“Who says they would?”
“Only common sense!”
“Common sense is not so common,” I quip. She rolls her eyes. My own take another long perusal of her nearly naked body. There’s another thing that’s not so common.
“Your men literally have a list ranking all of the female bartenders at Abernathy’s as who they’d fuck, marry, or kill. And I’m supposed to just waltz around here in my sexiest outfits? Are you nuts?”
Something hideous occurs to me. I take a slow, deliberate step toward her. Andrea takes a step back as well, but I close the distance.
“Are you implying one of my men has done something to you?”
“N-no! Of course not!”
I relax slightly, glad I don’t have to beat a man to death and then fire his ass. “Okay, then next question. Do you like men?”
She stares at me blankly. “What?”
“Men. Do you like to fuck them, or are you into women?”
“Oh. Uh, men.”
“Okay, so explain this to me. If you like men, and you want to fuck them, and I assume eventually you want to marry one, how will you ever be successful when you automatically assume the worst about them?”
“I don’t—”
“Yeah, you do, if you think just by existing near them, they’re going to, I don’t know, eye-fuck you, or something.”
“You literally just did it yourself.”
“You’re naked! I have eyes. And I see you looking at me, by the way. We men might look, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we’re going to do anything about the looking.”
“Axel. For the love of God. Men take sexually dressed women as an invitation. I’d be treated very, very differently if I wore suggestive clothing at work.”
“You’ll die alone if you think that way.”
“Care to bet on that?”
“W-what?”
That sly look reappears. “Care to make a bet on what your men will do if I show up to work tomorrow dressed like an actual woman?”
“No.”
She smirks. “Of course not.”
“What the hell do you mean ‘of course not’?”
Andrea shrugs as if she couldn’t care less about the outcome of this conversation. “Of course you don’t want to make the bet. You’re afraid you’ll lose.”
“I’ll take that bet,” I say before I can stop myself.
Her brows rise slightly, her only visible sign of surprise. “Okay, so if even one of your employees treats me differently, you lose.”
“He has to deliberately hit on you,” I clarify. “If it’s not explicit, it’s too easy.”
“Fine.”
“And when none of my men do anything of the sort,” I say, “you lose.”
“Yep.”
“And the terms?”
“Loser has to plan the party on Saturday.”
“You already said you’d do it!”
“And would you look at that? I just changed my mind. Isn’t that crazy? I’d much rather see you struggle setting up something nice for your degenerate employees.”
“Feeling confident, aren’t we?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Fine, I accept.” I hold a hand out to make it official. Andrea’s gaze snaps from my hand to my face before she reaches out to shake it.
And I don’t know when it changed, but when she touches me, I feel it through every inch of my cock. Fucking hell. I don’t want to be attracted to her. Go away, lust. This is Andrea. I need her for financial calculations.
“Perfect. Looking forward to witnessing your party-planning skills on Saturday. Now, can you please get the hell out so I can change?” Andrea snaps.
And I did, in fact, get the hell out.
But now, collapsing back in bed after fantasizing about her sassy mouth wrapped around my cock, I’m beginning to wonder if this bet is a bad idea. The last thing I need right now is to do anything to foster this sudden and definitely unwanted attraction to Andrea. For some reason, this bet feels dangerously like foreplay.
I do not want foreplay with Andrea. I don’t. Maybe if I say it enough, it might become true.
Chapter Six
She arrives when we’re back in the northeast quadrant, trying to harvest the peaches that didn’t get picked yesterday.
At first, I don’t even recognize her. But realistically, what man is going assume this creature wrapped in a bright red dress, hair curled loosely around her shoulders, feet strapped into fuck-me red stilettos, is the same woman who barely washes her hair and walks around in clothes three sizes too large?
I’m not even the first to notice her. No, that’s Morris, naturally, who actually drops his bag of peaches in shock.
“Is that—”
“Holy shit, that’s—”
“Am I hallucinating? I’m definitely hallucinating. She can’t be real.”
“What’s going on here? Why have you all stopped?” I snap, coming around from the other side of the trees. My words die and I grind to a halt.
It sure is Andrea. My eyes trail down the dress, clinging tightly to that perfect chest, tiny waist, and mouthwatering hips.
Her hair isn’t in a bun now. It’s curled softly around her shoulders. Is it naturally that curly, or did she work some sort of voodoo to get it to curl like that?
And the shoes. Christ, the shoes. She’s still tiny, but the heels make her legs look even longer. I don’t know what’s hotter, the blood-red lips, or the fire-engine crimson stilettos.
I actually have to do a double-take, because logic dictates that this feminine creature can’t possibly be my accountant. Accountants are boring and unattractive. As vanilla as they come.
This woman looks like she would ride me like a pony and put me away hard and wet. My cock actually twitches at the thought.
Perfect. She’s bewitched the men, my cock right along with them. Well, that might all be fine and dandy, but I’ll be damned if she gets even the slightest reaction out of me. In fact, I can’t, if I want her to plan the party.
Finally, after what feels like a lifetime, Andrea stops before us. Before me, really. Her brow is raised ever so slightly. It’s practically impossible to notice. And that’s no doubt on purpose; the expression is only for me.
That eyebrow, raised the tiniest bit, is silently asking if it’s enough. If she’s changed herself enough to attract the kind of male attention she’s certain will win the bet for her. A silent challenge to make me comment on her stunningly different appearance.
No way am I going to ever tell her
that the mere sight of her in that fucking wet dream of a dress has already blown the actual dream I had of her last night right out of the water.
“You look—” I cut off, because if I say what I’m thinking, which is that she’s gorgeous, that would indeed be treating her differently than all the other days in the last nine years she’s worked here. I’m not going to win the bet for her.
“I look how, exactly?” Now her brow is definitely cocked.
“Different.” Andrea rolls her eyes at my muttered word—more of a growl, really—then turns to the rest of the men.
“Good morning, gentlemen.”
Silence. It would be funny, the absolute silence with which the men stare at her, if they weren’t proving her point to me. Such as it is, with them gaping at her in astonishment, it only succeeds in fouling my mood even further.
Andrea, just to drive the point home further, sidles up closer to Morris. My eyes narrow. A better word for it would be that she strolls up to Morris like she’s a cat rubbing itself against someone’s leg for attention. “Did you have a good evening last night, Morris?”
Morris stares at her, mouth agape, his eyes flicking from her violently red lips, down her body, then back again. Words, apparently, fail him.
“Must have been quiet,” she purrs softly. “Don’t tell me none of you had anything interesting you did last night?”
The whole miserable lot of them shift on their feet and stammer.
“Um …”
“I didn’t …”
“I mean—”
“Why are you dressed like that?”
Apparently, Morris didn’t entirely lose his balls, because he stutters the question they’re all clearly dying to ask.
Andrea smiles, a seemingly innocent one that somehow strangely still evokes the mental picture of a cat staring at a caged bird. “Dress like what? Surely there’s nothing different about me?”
Morris waves his hand jerkily at her, the gesture failing to truly encompass the vision before him. “Like … all of that. You don’t … I’ve never seen you dressed like that before.”
Andrea glances down at herself lazily. “Oh, like this? There’s nothing particularly special about it, is there?”
Morris makes a strangled sound, halfway between a snort and a groan. “I wouldn’t say that.”
“Why Morris, I do believe you just paid me a compliment.”
“No, he didn’t,” I snap, glaring at all of them. These men never compliment Andrea; she just exists. They respect her and listen to her. That’s not going to change now, not with them actually cluing in to the fact that she’s a woman. I’m not planning a party for these morons.
Morris, the dipshit, either doesn’t hear me or fails to recognize my warning tone. “But why are you wearing that dress?”
Andrea practically bats her eyelashes at him. “Oh, I just have a date this evening and won’t have time to change after work.”
Her words have the desired effect. The wave of disgruntlement ripples through the men, grumbling and frowning among themselves.
Fuck this shit.
I step forward, blocking Andrea from their view as I take her arm gently despite my desire to jerk her away from their leering eyes. “Can I have a word with you for a moment?”
Before she can respond, I begin hauling her away from them. They make various noises of protest, but I merely snarl “get back to work” without even looking at them.
Andrea allows me to lead her out of view before she quite literally digs her heels into the ground and jerks out of my grasp. “Quit towing me like a child. I can’t walk that fast in these heels.”
I whirl on her. “What the fuck was that back there?”
She straightens as tall as she can in those fuck-me shoes. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t be coy with me. What do you think you’re doing, toying with them like that?”
“Are you even hearing yourself right now? I wasn’t toying with them; I’m simply wearing a dress for once.”
If a dress like that is simple, then I’m a four-foot-tall leprechaun. “You knew very well the kind of reaction you would receive if you wore that dress.”
“Axel, that’s kind of the point. I’m trying to win a bet, remember? When I said I’d wear something feminine, did you think I was simply going to throw on a skirt?”
“This getup is overkill, and you know it.”
“I don’t see how it’s any of your business what I wear.”
“It is when it distracts my other employees.”
Andrea folds her arms over her chest, an air of triumph in her eyes. I try to ignore the fact that the gesture pushes her breasts up practically under my nose. “So you do admit that men will comment on a woman’s outfit? Treat her differently?”
I grind my teeth in frustration, because she’s right. They did treat her differently. But instead of admitting I’ve lost, I latch onto something else. “And what’s this bullshit about a date? What did you think you were going to do, make them jealous enough to say something?”
Her eyes narrow. She trails a long look down my body in distaste. “Oh, because I couldn’t actually have a date, right?”
The Red Devil rears his head before I can even begin to rein him in. “Obviously. You never mention any men to me or anyone else on this farm; you dress atrociously; you never talk about your personal life. Why the hell would I assume you have an actual date? Before today, none of the men probably even considered you a sexual being. Although it appears that you’ve successfully disabused them of that notion today.”
Andrea gasps, and only then do I realize what I just said. “Wait, I didn’t—”
Andrea stalks toward me, jabbing a finger in my chest, her face twisted with fury. “Let me make something clear to you because apparently you’re too fucking stupid to make the connection yourself. The reason I’ve never been appealing, the reason I’ve never spoken about men—indeed, the reason I’ve never appeared to be that much of a sexual being—is because I never wanted any of you to notice me like that.
“This might come as a complete shock, but some women, when working with a bunch of men, would actually prefer to fly under the radar, particularly when just one interaction like the one I just endured with you is enough to last a fucking lifetime.
“I assure you, not that you deserve to know, that this date of mine is very, very real. I go on frequent dates, actually; you’ve just never had the pleasure of seeing me prepare for one. Don’t worry, that’ll never happen again. For you or any of your employees. None of you has earned that honor, especially not you, when the only thing out of your mouth since the first moment you saw me today has been complete nastiness.
“Oh, and I do believe I just won the bet. You’ve never once asked me before about my love life, but now that I look like this, you sure are interested, aren’t you?” Andrea turns on her heel and stalks toward the house.
I stare at her retreating back. I can’t muster even a single word of a righteous reply—because she’s right.
Chapter Seven
My men work hard the rest of the day, trying to make up for the smaller harvest yesterday, but I drive myself even harder. Just when I think that I’m going to forget the horrible things I said to Andrea, another phrase, another sentence pops right back into my mind, and I’m brutally reminded of the fact that I’m an utter asshole.
I shouldn’t have said those things to her. It was beyond a shitty thing to do. But something about that fucking dress, or my dream the night before, or some combination of both so completely distracted me that I couldn’t think of anything other than the fact that I wanted—no, needed—to fuck her. Vulgarity ensued.
I do not want to be attracted to Andrea. I do not want to constantly be thinking about how her naked body is everything I’ve ever wanted in a woman. I need her for the financial work at this farm. Her work isn’t just something I can pick up if she leaves. If I fuck her and then she quits because she can no longer stand to be around me
, I actually don’t know what I’ll do. I’ll never find another accountant who can simultaneously be so competent and understanding about my limitations.
So I work until I’m absolutely fucking exhausted, in the hope that if I exhaust myself until I can’t move another inch, I might just forget the sight of her in that red dress. I might no longer remember how deep Andrea’s mouth took me inside her in that dream.
I fail, obviously.
The men learn quickly to leave me the hell alone. There is no disobeying orders for once in my damn life. How unfortunate that it only happens now, when I can’t even appreciate it because I’m too busy trying to erase the inconvenient little fact that Andrea’s ass would most likely fit perfectly in my hands.
By the time I finally release them for the day, I’m psychologically destroyed, physically exhausted, and sexually frustrated. I actually let the men leave an entire hour early. I don’t even care, I’m so glad to be alone.
I make my way back to my house in dread. I might have released the men early, but there’s no way Andrea telepathically received the same message. Either I can avoid her and let her work the extra hour when I’ve already let everyone else off—a truly dick move on top of the absolute shit I’ve already said to her today—or I have to go into her office so that I can tell her to leave.
My brain screams at me that the first option, while dickish, is safer, but my cock whispers that my sanity needs just one more look at that red dress.
Guess which side wins?
Andrea’s car is indeed still there when I return to the house. I head over to the barn, trying to convince myself that I’m putting myself out of my misery, but I know better. I might be able to do many things, but I’ve never been able to delude myself. Some sick part of me is actually looking forward to the imminent confrontation.
This blows. I’ve never hesitated to talk to Andrea in my life. We’ve never been anything but professional. Well, kinda. She gives me shit when I need to hear it, but it’s only ever about the farm, so it’s professional.
Devil (King Brothers #2) Page 4
