I thrust my hand out, palm up. “Give,” I said.
“What?” He sounded hella confused.
A smile crooked my lips. “Your house keys. Hand them over, mate.”
He laughed, shoving a hand through his hair. “Shit’s about to get real. And don’t you worry, you’ll get a key to my place soon. Right now.” He took my hand in his and we started down a well-worn path. “Let’s go get Gouda, pack up the rest of your stuff, and haul them over here.”
“Let’s go!” I said gleefully.
As we walked hand in hand, the sun was peeking behind the clouds and our shadows were lengthening. “You know what a key symbolizes, right?” I remarked casually as our linked hands swung between us.
He cast me a darting glance. “That I’m willing to let you into my house?”
“And your heart,” I added sappily. “That you’re willing to let me into your house and your heart.”
“Lucy?”
“Yes?”
“I know a delusion can be very comforting.” There was a twinkle of amusement in his eyes before his expression turned serious. “But it’s still a delusion.”
“Pfft!” I blew out an exaggerated breath. “You’ll see. Pretty soon I’ll be breaking down those walls around your heart.”
“Hah!” He gave a dismissive laugh. “My walls are sixty feet high and six inches thick. They’re unbreakable.”
“Hah!” I fired back. “I’ll just rig them with C4 explosives and remote detonators.” I sent him a smug-ass grin. “Problem solved.”
Chapter Eight
Lucy
LATER THAT EVENING, I breezed into the bedroom to find Edric unpacking a large, brown box. “What’d you order from Amazon?” I asked airily.
He plucked a book out of the box and said, “Just some spy novels.”
“Wait a hot second! You read?” I couldn’t keep the surprise from my voice. “You actually read books?”
“Why, yes, I do. Contrary to popular belief, hot and sexy athletes are not uncultured swine.”
“No way!” I cried. “You’re like my best bud with nuts.”
He merely smiled at me, plopped himself down on the couch, and opened the book to the first page.
“Hey!” I delivered a swift kick to his shin.
“Mmmph,” he grunted like an oaf.
“Move over. You’re manspreading all over the couch. Nobody wants that. Put those nuts away, please.”
“Woman, why are you so obsessed with my nuts?” He shifted over to make room for me on the couch. “Don’t you know it’s No-Nut November?”
“What’s No-Nut November?” I parked my backside beside him.
“What’s manspreading?” he asked.
I went first. “Manspreading is sitting with your legs open wide when you’re in a subway or train... like how you’re sitting right now.”
In response, he simply crossed one leg over the other and said, “No-Nut November just means I’m taking a month off to cool my jets.”
“So you’re abstaining from sex?”
“I’ve vowed not to bust my nuts for thirty days. No wanking.”
“So no sex or masturbating for the whole month of November,” I stated. “Is this some sort of a challenge?”
“You mean like the ice bucket challenge?” he said mildly. “No, this is not some honorable challenge to raise awareness and funds to fight ALS.”
“So what is this, then? A movement? Does it help you to clear your mind and allow you to focus and do things you never thought possible?”
His gaze turned inward. “You mean like levitate?”
“Precisely.”
Shrugging with purposed nonchalance, he said, “Nah, I’m just saving up for Debauchery December.” He flipped over to the next page. “Also known as Destroy-Dick December.”
I stared at him with a mixture of shock and disbelief. “Did you never leave high school?”
Without bothering to look up from the page, he said, “In high school, we had Whack-a-Weiner Wednesday. One time, it got so bad that Principal Moody had to announce over the intercom, ‘Boys! Stop whacking each others’ testicles.”
I laughed, my shoulders shaking. “What sort of high school did you go to?”
A muscle flexed in his jaw and the next thing I knew, his book was snapped shut. “Lucy.” He held my gaze and adopted a more serious tone. “I’m just trying to be respectful here. You’re a guest in my house and in my bed, and I want you to feel comfortable around me. I want you to feel safe.” His words seemed earnest. Heartfelt. And I was touched.
“How very noble and chivalrous of you.”
His eyes were shining and I was treated to a sexy little curl of his lip. “I try.”
God, why did he have to be so damn fine, so devastatingly handsome?
I sucked in a tight breath. His presence seemed to fill the room. Dwarfed it.
After a charged pause, I cleared my throat and said, “Can women take part in Whack-a-Weiner Wednesday?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“You don’t have a weiner.”
“Obviously,” I deadpanned. “What about No-Nut November?”
“I don’t see why not.” He shrugged. “It just means no sex and no masturbating for you. It is, without a doubt, a true test of willpower.”
All right. I decided to test him. “Hey, Edric.” I let my laugh go high. I toyed with my hair, twirling it around a finger as I seduced him with my sexy body.
He inhaled sharply as I adjusted my boobs. “Yes?” His voice was a hiss.
“Do you...” I made my voice breathless and sent him a dark, sultry look, turning ferocious bedroom eyes upon him. “Do you wanna fuck?”
Exhaling a long, slow breath, he stared at the safe point on my forehead. “I’m afraid I must respectfully decline. It’s No-Nut November, so no fucking for me.”
“Nice job.” I delivered a solid punch to his arm. “You passed.”
“I’m telling you, baby,” he said coolly. “I’ve got the willpower and the self-discipline of a Tibetan monk. And you’re a bad mamajamma Mata Hari for trying to tempt me. Now, would sex with me be mind-blowing? Abso-fuckin’-lutely. But would it ruin this good thing we’ve got going on here? You bet.”
I cut him a death stare. “You know I wasn’t serious, right?”
“Right, right.” He scrunched his forehead and nodded so hard I feared he’d black out. “Of course. Of course I knew.”
I wasn’t so sure.
It was getting increasingly hard to ignore the undercurrents of sexual tension between us. As it was, I could barely contain the thrill of it, the desire and lust coiling within me like a living, breathing thing.
Dammit. I pulled in an unsettled breath. Must find a way to defuse it. “So.” I nodded toward his book. “What’s it about?”
“International espionage,” he said. “This one’s a sequel and the lead’s a CIA operative in Russia. Toward the end of the first book, she turned.” A pause. “Natasha became a double agent.”
“Hmm.” I thought about this briefly, then said, “What turned her into an informer against her own country? What was her motive?”
“MICE.”
“Rodents turned her into a double agent?”
“Money, Ideology, Compromise and Ego,” he explained. “MICE—it’s the mnemonic for leverage points used in the intelligence community to turn someone into an informer.”
“Fascinating.”
“We all have weaknesses. Everyone does and most of us have thought about it, and we know what they are. In Natasha’s case, it came down to the big M.”
“Money,” I stated flatly.
“And then later, it was ego. Her handler kept her in line by flattering her, playing to her ego. It was all done very subtly. He told her she was better than all the other spies, that she had all these men wrapped around her finger.”
“So Natasha used her feminine wiles to entrap men?”
He nodded his answer
. “The old trick of the KGB and the Stasi from the Cold War. They had special schools to teach women to do that.”
“You know what? Your book actually sounds very Red Sparrow-ish”
“You’re not wrong. If you ask me, these classic honey-traps are stupid tropes that should die and be banished from every spy thriller.”
I smiled in spite of myself. Edric sure took his spy novels very seriously. “So spy thrillers and international espionage—that’s your jam, huh?”
“Not really. I also enjoy Orwell, Thackeray, Thoreau, but I’m no snob,” he said in a highly superior voice. “Yeah, I read highbrow fiction and I love thrillers, but I don’t like to limit myself to any one particular genre.”
“Oh, yewww don’t?” I taunted him. “Do you read lowbrow literature like us commoners do?”
“I do.” He gave a scholarly nod. “And sometimes I enjoy middlebrow fiction, too.”
“What kind?”
“Mostly fantasy, dystopian, anything to do with female assassins.”
“Ohmigaaaahd!” I shrieked. “Are you a Sarah J. Maas fan? Are you? Are you?”
“Only her biggest and truest.”
“Which one’s your fave? Throne of Glass or A Court of Thorns and Roses?”
“Excuse me?” He stared at me like I was some sort of uncultured swine. “A true fan would’ve said, ‘TOG or ACOTAR?’”
“Which one has your heart?” I demanded. “TOG or ACOTAR?”
“ACOTAR. Devoured the entire series in three days. I lived off Pop-Tarts and cereal until I could finish it.”
“Same!” I shrieked even louder, if that were even possible.
“Stop copying me.” He chuckled before turning the tables back on me. “And what about you? What are you reading right at the moment?”
“You wouldn’t know,” I said mildly as I reached for my Kindle device. “It’s a New Adult novel.”
“Oh.” Edric nodded once. “You mean NA?”
“Isn’t that dumb?” I frowned. “I mean, doesn’t NA make you think of ‘No Answer’ and ‘Not Applicable’?”
Now he was frowning, too. “And ‘Not Available’ and ‘Noctem Aeternus’ and the chemical symbol for sodium.” His frown deepened. “Now I have to lump ‘New Adult’ into that mix.”
“Annoying, right?”
“Very. The Picasso of gripes.”
“And what does New Adult even mean?”
He shrugged. “The opposite of Old Adult?”
“Maybe it’s when you want adult characters, but you don’t want them too adult?”
“I guess,” he said. “But if it’s supposed to bridge the gap between Young Adult and Adult fiction, shouldn’t they have called it Middle Adult?”
“You’re right,” I said reflectively. “That would’ve made more sense.”
“And abbreviated, it’s MA which also stands for—”
“Mature Audiences,” I supplied.
“Now that makes a lot more sense. Damn, those books are filthy. Fil-thy. The characters are so goddamn horny all the damn time.”
“Humph.” I powered up my Kindle. “And you would know that—how?”
“I’ve read my share of NA fiction.”
“Oh, yeeeewww have?” I asked, my voice dripping with skepticism.
“Yes, Lucy. I have,” he said with wounded pride. “I’ve probably read the book you’re reading on your Kindle right now.”
“Is that so?”
“That is so.”
“You’ve read this book by Haleigh Lovell?”
“I have.”
“Then tell me,” I said slowly. “What’s your favorite bit in the book?”
“The middle bit.” His words were perfunctory.
“Annnnndd,” I pressed. “What did you like about it?”
“That... err, that it’s between the beginning and the end.” He coughed lightly. “Right in the middle.”
I burst out laughing. “You haven’t read it, have you?”
“No,” he stated, the left half of his lips pulling into a lopsided grin. “I haven’t.”
“Oh, Edric.” My sides were splitting. “That made my belly laugh. It was great.”
“Seriously, though.” His tone was matter-of-fact. “I have read my share of NA books.”
“Lies.” I guffawed. “Don’t believe you.”
“I’ll prove it.”
“All right.” I crossed my arms. “I’m listening.”
“Common tropes in NA fiction—dead parents, divorced parents, sick parents, absent- slash-neglectful parents, abusive parents. Shall I continue?”
I smiled. Like it or not, there was a ring of truth to what he was saying. “Go on.”
“As for the heroes, they’re usually alpha-male assholes. They’re either stepbrothers or CEOs, or firefighters, or Navy Seals and Marines, or rock stars, MMA fighters, hockey players, football players—”
“Tennis players,” I cut in.
“Why, yes, tennis players.” He winked at me. “They’re the best kind of heroes. The very best in my humble opinion.”
“Erm...” I wrinkled my nose. “Did you just wink at me?”
“Nah, it was probably my eye twitching. Involuntary, of course.”
“Do you ever wink at people?”
“Occasionally. If strangers make eye contact with me, I might wink at them just to fuck with their head. Make them uneasy, you know?”
“I know. I do that, too. It makes them very uncomfortable.”
“It does,” he agreed. “Anyway, what was I saying before I so rudely interrupted myself?”
“I interrupted you.”
“What was I saying before you so politely interrupted me?”
“The heroes.”
“Ah yes, the alpha-male dickwads. Just once, couldn’t they make the hero an Instagram whore who attended Fyre Festival? Or some pale and ordinary dude who looks like he works at the bank?”
“Like a bank teller? Or Jake from State Farm?”
“Yeah! Some guy who’s proud of his dad bod. Or someone’s annoying brother who’s always trying to hang out with you and you’re like—”
“‘Go away, Dennis! Or I’m telling Mom.””
“Yes!” He smirked. “Or they could even change things up and make him a brutal dictator who silences dissidents. You know, someone you love to hate. Someone who should be strung up by his nuts.”
“Those traits are usually reserved for the ex-boyfriends.”
“Ah, don’t even get me started on the exes.” He raised his eyes to the ceiling. “More terrible tropes coming your way: the emotionally abusive ex, the physically abusive ex, the toxic ex, the evil ex, the unfaithful ex, the jealous ex, the stalker ex. And why is it always the girl’s ex who’s the villain? Why not the guy’s ex?”
“Interesting,” I said quietly.
“What?”
“I’m inclined to think you’re speaking from your own personal experiences.”
“If you’re implying that my ex-girlfriend is an evil villain, I’m here to tell you that she’s not. We’re simply not meant to be together. Just because things didn’t work out with us, it doesn’t make her a bad person.”
I fell silent for a moment. “Did you go through a rough breakup?”
“Aren’t all breakups rough?” There was a hint of sadness in his eyes, and his vulnerability took me by surprise. “But I approached that breakup differently. I guess I tried to see it as a positive thing.”
“A positive.” I twisted my lips. “How?”
“Well, it’s a good thing I didn’t end up with the wrong person.” He slipped a hair-tie off his wrist and tied his luscious dark locks away from his face, David Beckham-style. “Sometimes you just gotta put your hair in a power ponytail, channel Ariana Grande and say, ‘Thank you, next!’”
Giggling, I slipped my scrunchie over my wrist and tied my hair back in a super-tight, super-high ponytail. Then I batted my lashes at him and declared, “That’s how you do an Ariana Grande
power ponytail.”
A wry smile curved his lips. “You look cute like that.”
“Thanks! I tried wearing my hair like this all through my junior year in high school and Ibuprofen became my best friend.”
“Because of the headaches?”
“Migraines mostly, and I lost all feeling in my scalp.” I loosened my ponytail so I no longer looked like I’d had a recent facelift. “Anyway.” I tapped my Kindle and started a new book. “Thank you, next.”
“Do you know that every time someone says, ‘Thank you, next!’ a drunk girl finds her phone?”
“Oh, Edric.” I choked on a laugh. “You surprise me sometimes.”
Saying nothing, he resumed reading his novel and I took a moment to openly observe him. Even with his hair in a ponytail, there was this masculine aura about him that just radiated. He was so secure in his own masculinity that it almost made him seem—manlier? And it wasn’t just that. There was so much more to him than his sex appeal.
He had this lopsided grin that made me feel like I was in on the joke.
And he was so perceptive, so thoughtful, and just so... normal.
Yeah, he was ripped, but he wasn’t pounding protein shakes and bench-pressing Volkswagens from dawn to dusk, doing ten thousand reps per session. Quite the contrary, actually. His strong and solid physique came from playing sports and having fun and being outside. And he was simply a relatable, decent, salt-of-the-earth guy, and I appreciated that.
“How’s your book?” he said, interrupting my thoughts.
“I’ve only just started this one.” I adjusted my Kindle so it sat high on my lap. “It’s another New Adult novel, so I’ll probably like it.” After a quiet beat, I asked. “So why do you read New Adult romances?”
“What better way to understand women?”
“Hmm,” I mused aloud. “Those women don’t reflect actual women, you know that, right? For one, my parents are alive and well, thank you. And they were not neglectful nor were they abusive in any way. I had a normal upbringing. I was raised in a middle-class family and my parents were always very loving and supportive. There were no toxic ex-boyfriends in my life. They were just...” I made a face. “Meh.”
“Just meh?”
“Just meh. They were neither here nor there. Always shreddin’ dirt, turf, or gnar.”
The Good Mistake (Hemsworth Brothers #3) Page 10
