by Lex Martin
I wash her off and wrap her in a fluffy white towel. I think I’ve been a decent boyfriend to the girls I’ve dated in the past, but I’ve never felt a primal urge to protect a woman the way I do with Evie. So even though what we have is new, I realize she’s special. And I want this to work.
Before we leave the bathroom, it’s been long enough to pull the silicone out of the last mold we made, so I do. I’m holding a perfect clone of my dick, which is really fucking odd to experience. I mean, I hold my dick plenty, but when it’s attached to my body.
“The last one totally worked,” she says.
It did.
Actually, we totally worked.
19
Josh
“You have so much plaster on yourself in that photo.”
My loft is neat and austere all around us, but my sheets are tangled and rumpled, and somehow I don’t mind the mess. Evie and I are curled up in our underwear, looking at my laptop at the foot of my bed. After running back to her house to feed Chauncey, she packed an overnight bag, and we returned to my condo.
“Maybe I should Photoshop marble statues around me.”
Evie rests her chin on the palm of her hand. “For a Michelangelo-themed post.”
Laughing, I shake my head. “Don’t know that I’d make the cut.” It seems sacrilegious to compare my body to world-renowned sculptures.
“Actually, you might be a tad too big for a Michelangelo. His models must’ve been growers,” she jokes, wiggling her pinky at me.
You’d think after posting so many shots of my junk that I’d never get embarrassed, but for some reason, my face heats. It’s one thing for chicks online to praise your dick, it’s another thing entirely for the woman you’ve been thinking about since you met her to do it.
She tilts her head up and kisses me. “Your fans are gonna love these shots. They’re fantastic.”
Funny. I’m starting to care less and less what my fans think.
We scroll through the images, her legs tangled with mine.
I made such a mess of myself while making the Clone-A-Cock. I looked like I was made out of the dust of the ages.
Wrapping my arm around her waist, I nuzzle her ear. “You know what that picture reminds me of? That smell when you walk past a building being renovated in Europe. Like the cold air of centuries past.” I’d always thought that there was almost an inhalation of the building—like it sucked you in during the demolition, with white dust and plaster everywhere.
Evie looks wistful. “I’ve never been overseas.”
“Then I’ll have to take you. We can recreate all of my architectural posts on my blog.”
She bursts out laughing. “I especially want to do the Leaning Tower of Peen-sa.”
“Deal.”
Flipping around so that she is facing me, she surveys me with her gray eyes. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Why a dick blog?” She looks genuinely curious. And she deserves the truth, even if it is stupid.
“Drew dared me. He said I was moping too much after my last relationship, and he wasn’t gonna let me off the hook until some woman saw my junk. He bet me that I couldn’t get someone to see it, and he gave me a week. I wasn’t in any mood for a random bar pick-up, so I figured I’d just put it online. Then some woman would see it, and I’d win the bet.”
Her face is blank. “That was the bet. Some woman had to see it?”
I nod.
“Wow. You guys are sophisticated.”
I snort-laugh. “I know. Not at all.”
“The design is so elegant, though.”
“Thank you. I like things to look nice.”
“And why put your dick in with buildings?”
“I don’t really know. I guess I wanted to do my own take on a dick pic. I mean, I assume that most dick pictures are nasty. I wanted to do something entertaining but beautiful. I wanted it to be art.”
She gives me a half smile. “You’re a little meticulous, Mister I-make-five-dildos-but-you-come-first.”
“You complaining?”
“Not in the slightest.”
I trail my fingers down her arm. She gets goosebumps, and I reach down to take her hand. Looking at it, she says quietly, “I’m not sure we should hold hands when we go out. Not if we want to see where this goes.”
I stiffen as a knot forms in my gut. “What are you talking about?” This can’t be good. Here I am, wondering how much time I can spend with her, and she’s worried about holding hands.
“When we went to my place to feed Chauncey and get clothes. You held my hand in the park. Anyone could’ve seen us. I know I’m probably being ridiculous, but I need a little time to process everything so I can figure out how to talk to my boss. I can’t exactly waltz into his office Monday morning and tell him I have a huge crush on my new client, and we’ve been banging like bunnies since the night he probably learned you were engaged to the daughter of a family friend.”
Well, hell. When she says it like that.
“I guess you’re right.” Goddamn it. Why does every road always lead back to Tiffany?
I don’t want to do anything to jeopardize Evie’s career. I just want to have a normal relationship without other people interfering for once.
Sighing, I nod. “I’ll do it for you.”
She stares at me a moment, and I see relief in her eyes, but also concern. “You need to know what this means. Because when we do disclose our relationship, we’ll need to reassign your case to someone else at the firm. Are you ready to take that step? Are you ready to divulge the connection to your blog to someone else at WGA?”
Rubbing my forehead, I sigh. “Fuck. I don’t want to think about that right now.” I really fucking don’t. “Let’s enjoy this. Figure us out. Worry about all that shit later.” Wrapping her in my arms, I smile when she melts against me.
“Thank you for understanding. I want… I want this to work.” She presses a delicate kiss to my lips that erases my irritation for how complicated this got so fast. I need that reminder. It’s just us. Our relationship might be new, but I’m old enough to know what I want, and I’m going to do whatever I can to show Evie I’m serious about her. Even if it means keeping this quiet for a little longer.
Wanting to forget about this conversation for a while, I reach for the memory card docked in my laptop. Slipping it back into the camera, I sit at the edge of the bed and gaze at this captivating woman. I want to remember how she looks, dark hair mussed, boobs filling out a thin tank top, curves of her hips on display. My heart grows as I study her, and before she can object, I snap a picture of her.
“No! Let me have that!” she shrieks.
Holding the camera out of her reach, I laugh, “Not on your life. You’re so goddamn sexy. If you’re not gonna be here every night, I need something to help.”
Embarrassment clouds her eyes. “I don’t look good naked,” she mutters, crossing her arms over her chest.
What the hell is she talking about? “You look amazing naked.” Indecision and disbelief mars her gorgeous face. “Let me prove it to you.”
I pull her to me, but when she sees the photo on the screen of the camera, she groans. “God, erase that.”
“You’re gorgeous. Those curves. Fucking love your body.” I’m at half-staff looking at a damn photo of her.
She doesn’t look convinced.
I set the camera on top of the laptop and climb over her thighs, straddling her. She looks embarrassed and interested and turned on at the same time. “You are real.”
“That’s another word for heavy.”
Again, what the fuck? “Not at all. I mean it. You’re real. No implants. No starvation. No desperate look because you’re hungry all the time.” My eyes travel over her body. “Evie, I swear your curves are fucking hot. No man wants to curl up with a twig. Everything about you is genuine, and that is so refreshing. Swear to God, I can’t get enough of you.”
She glances down, a blush tinting
her fair skin. “I’ve never thought of myself that way,” she admits. “When I was growing up, it was just me and my dad. And, well, he wasn’t great at teaching me how to use mascara. Our talk about periods? I still cringe. So I’ve never really felt good in my skin. I’ve always felt like I didn’t measure up to the stylish girls.”
“Those stylish girls? They don’t have what you have.”
She still looks skeptical.
But I continue, and I decide to go there.
I reposition myself, lying on top of her, holding myself up with my elbows, my legs between hers. “You asked me before about Tiffany.” She nods, our faces inches apart. “It was practically an arranged marriage. Her family and mine are like neighboring feudal lords. So it was expected that I, the youngest, would marry her to join the families. Thing is, I wanted to. I didn’t see her bleached hair and the designer clothes—I saw a shared history and, I don’t know, I guess my destiny. Now I know I was just brainwashed by my family to believe this was what I should do. But the wakeup call was finding out she cheated on me.”
Evie’s brow furrows. “That sucks. I remember you told me about that the night of the gala.”
I shrug. “It’s in the past. I’m over it. My family doesn’t know why we broke up. They just want us to get back together.” I pause to brush a strand of hair off her cheek. “But I’m over the fake. I’m over what’s expected of me. I am totally and utterly into a stunning brunette with bombshell curves and a brain that’s off the charts. She makes me crazy. See?” I press my growing erection onto her.
A smile tugs at the corner of her mouth, and she says, “If you don’t watch it, you really are gonna make me feel sexy.” And then in a quieter voice. “No one ever has before.”
How is that even possible?
I crawl to the side of her, then roll her over, spooning. I start to open my mouth to ask a question, then hide it with an open-mouth kiss on her neck. Do I really want to know about why no man has ever made her feel good?
As if she reads my thoughts, she continues. “My ex, Elliot.” She says his name like he still exasperates her. “He told me I was boring and predictable.”
Part of me wants to throat punch the idiot. “What a shithead. Babe, it’s his loss.”
Nodding, she snuggles into me further. “It wasn’t… I couldn’t…” She trails off.
“Bad sex?”
She gives a quick nod. “He wasn’t into it, and he made me feel like I was the problem.” I open my mouth to object, but she keeps going. “I didn’t have what the other girls had. Without a mom, I didn’t have lessons in how to be feminine. My dad taught me how to change a tire and reset the circuit breakers.” She rolls over to face me, but looks away. “When I was in high school, because of these”—she points to her chest—“every guy assumed I was easy. I wasn’t, but I got this reputation.”
“Babe.” I go to kiss her, but she pulls back.
“Boys told rumors about me. This one guy Clay bragged to everyone that I gave him a blow job in the janitor’s closet. Of course I didn’t, but it was my word against his. He was more popular, so people believed him. I had the fucking scarlet letter on me, only it was S for slut. So I dressed in baggy clothes to hide my body. I studied hard and got good grades and focused on going to law school and building my career. I didn’t care about my looks. Feeling sexy meant getting attention, attention I didn’t want.”
Maybe it’s caveman of me to want to beat this guy’s ass for making her feel bad, but it pains me that this dickhead shamed her.
I don’t say anything, but I reach down and thread my fingers through hers.
She watches me join our hands and then looks into my eyes, a solemn expression on her face. “So I’ve always hidden under baggy clothes, not wanting anyone to look at my body. Thing is, I have a body. And I do get turned on by things. Like your blog.”
“I love that.”
All of the warmth in my body races south at the thought of Evie getting off to pics of me, but I edge my hips back, not wanting us to just be about sex.
She sighs. “When I’m with you, it’s okay to be a woman. One who likes to have sex and isn’t shamed for it.”
“Hell, yes,” I say. “Of course it is.”
“I feel good when I’m with you.”
“Me too,” I say, and kiss her gently.
She whispers, “I keep trying to tell myself that this is wrong. That this is a bad move. That this could be career-ending for me and humiliating for you and your family if anyone found out.” I still, hoping she’s feeling as invested in this relationship as I am, at least enough to push past her fears. “But this feels too good for it to be wrong, you know?”
Relieved, I pull her closer. “I know.”
Her big, gray eyes turn up to me. “Even if I wanted, I’m not sure I could just be friends with you.”
“We’re not just friends. We’re so much more.”
She needs to see how great we’ll be together.
I plan to prove it to her.
20
Evie
A contented sigh leaves me as I stare at the countryside whizzing by. The sun is unusually bright in the sky, the wind is blowing through Josh’s Audi while classic rock blares from the speakers, and his hand sits possessively on my jean-clad thigh as he drives.
Josh looks so relaxed in dark jeans, a soft baby blue T-shirt and hoodie. He hasn’t shaved today, and the dark stubble on his chin makes me want to rub up against him like a cat.
When he pushes up his glasses and glances over, I smile. “You’re really not going to tell me where we’re going?” We’ve been driving south for almost an hour.
“Where’s the fun in that?” His lips tilt in a mischievous grin when he returns his attention to the road.
This morning, he told me to get my ass out of bed, that we were going out. That he was tired of living like a vampire, and we needed to do something together outdoors that consisted of more than taking Chauncey out to take a crap.
I smile, thinking about how serious he looked, bed head and all.
Over the last month, we’ve spent a lot of time together, even if it’s over pizza while we worked on his couch or at my kitchen table. We’ve both been slammed with our jobs, and when we haven’t been preoccupied with those responsibilities, he’s been helping me renovate my bathroom. I’ve spent so much time at his condo, he even bought Chauncey a little bed of his own and personalized dog dishes.
As though Chauncey senses I’m thinking about him, a wet snout pops up between the seats, and I face my little ragamuffin and scratch him behind his ears.
Yes, Josh said I should bring my dog with us.
“Hey, buddy,” Josh says as he reaches up to pet Chauncey, his eyes never leaving the road.
Ten minutes later, he pulls off the highway, and we bounce along on the country road for about a mile before we reach a farm.
When he parks the car, he turns to me and asks, “How does cherry picking and lunch sound? I packed a picnic and some wine.”
My heart does this little pitter-patter thing in my chest. “Really? That sounds so romantic.”
“Yeah?” His fingers tangle into mine, and he gives me a crooked grin.
I lean over and grab his scruffy jaw and kiss him before I bury my nose in his neck and breathe him in. “Yeah.”
An hour later, I have a basket of cherries tucked under one arm and an ear-to-ear smile plastered on my face. I don’t remember the last time I had this much fun.
A small group of people meander around the endless rows of trees that are leafy and vibrant and overflowing with fruit. I check my watch because I don’t want to leave Chauncey for too long. Even though my dog couldn’t go into the fields, Josh had already spoken to the owners, who agreed to let him play in their enclosed back yard while we checked out the farm.
The click of a phone camera draws my attention, and I peek through the foliage to see Josh taking a photo of me between the leaves. I feign indignation. “Another one?�
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He ignores me and takes one more shot before he stalks closer to show me the photos he’s taken today. I place the basket of fruit under a tree before I press my chest to his back and wrap my arms around his neck. Snuggling close, I study the pics on his camera over his shoulder.
I’m usually one to shy away from taking photos, but Josh loves taking them so much that I’ve gotten over it. For the most part.
He scrolls through a few photos of me picking cherries until he gets to shots of me renovating the built-in shelves in my master bathroom, covered in dust and God knows what else.
Laughing, I release him from my koala hold.
“It looks fantastic,” he says as he reaches for me again and rubs my back.
Tilting my head up, I smile at him. “It does, doesn’t it? I’m pretty proud of how it turned out. Thank you for helping me find that mirror for the master bath. I’m excited to put it up.”
He found the perfect mirror online for half the price of the one I was considering.
“You should blog about it. You’d have an audience.”
I laugh and lean up to kiss him. “One blogger in this little duet of ours is enough. Besides, I’m assuming I’d need to take photos, which I can’t, never mind needing to be somewhat photogenic.”
“Nonsense.” He flips to an image of me in grubby-looking overalls, paint on my face and in my hair, sporting a huge, goofy grin. “Fucking adorable and sexy as hell, this girl.” I roll my eyes. “Seriously, sweetheart. Start here. Share your process. The successes and failures and what you’re learning.”
“No one wants to see me do this when they can watch Bob Villa or some other professional. I’d be like the poor man’s version.”
“You’re the do-it-yourself version. You showed me yourself how everyone is obsessed with those DIY boards. Make a Tumblr and market it on Pinterest.” He pulls me to him and brushes his nose against my neck. “And who told you that you can’t take photos? People went crazy over that pic you took of me last week.”
