The Girl Next Door

by Emma Hart

  I rode it out, bucking against his face, and his fingers dug into my thighs tightly. The orgasm was long and intense and completely overwhelming, and by the time my muscles relaxed from the knots they’d worked themselves into it in the middle of it, Kai was already pulling my limp body from the countertop and holding me against him.

  “Can’t walk,” I muttered.

  Laughing, he pulled me over to the sofa and dropped me down to sit on it. He straightened up and stripped naked, stepping out of his jeans and kicking them to the side. After he sat next to me, I climbed on top of him, almost sending the vase on my coffee table flying to the floor with my lack of coordination.

  I straddled him, nestling my knees either side of his hips. It was easy to kiss him, and from here, I was in control. I rested my hands either side of his neck and lowered my lips onto his. He reached between us and wrapped his hand around his cock, using his other to guide my hips until he could push inside me.

  I moaned as the sensation of him filling me rolled through my body. A shiver ran down my spine, and Kai placed his hand on my back with his fingers splayed. I rocked my hips as I moved on him, still kissing him, reveling in every single touch we shared.

  It was good.

  So good.

  Every inch of me came alive as I fucked him. His groans were like music to my ears, and I bounced on him, rocking my hips every time I came down and took him fully inside me.

  Kai’s grip got tighter. His fingers dug into me, branding me with his touch, and my pleasure rose to the point I could no longer kiss him while I fucked him. I could barely breathe, and every single exhale seemed to come out with a moan attached to him.

  Round and round and round my pleasure went, swirling through my body, driving me utterly insane.

  He moved his grip to my ass. He held me in place and shifted us so we were flatter, then thrust into me. He took over completely, fucking me so hard I was barely a decibel from a scream by the time my orgasm hit.

  Not that it stopped him. He fucked me through it, never relenting, even when my body went rigid as a second one spread through me. My muscles ached with the endless clenching, and I sagged against Kai as he came inside me with a guttural grunt against the side of my neck.

  The vibrations danced across my skin, and a sigh escaped my lips as I came down from the ultimate high.

  He slid his arms around me and held me tight. I moved so my boobs weren’t pressed flat against his chest and making me wince, and he whispered a, “Sorry,” into my ear, complete with a kiss to the lobe.

  After a minute or so, I moved up and off him and onto the sofa. “I guess I’m cleaning the sofa tomorrow.”

  He rolled in my direction and kissed my cheek. “I’ll take off the cushion covers and wash them.”

  “Aw, how domestic of you.”

  Chuckling, he got up with a groan that was a whole lot less sexy than a few minutes before.

  I held my boobs and forced myself to get up. There was no way I was going to sit here on the sofa and get it all messy, even if Kai had offered to launder the cushions for me.

  And by launder, I was sure he meant put them in with his boxers.

  I got up and followed him into the bathroom. He was standing somewhat forlornly in front of the sink, staring at the little cup that held my toothbrush.

  All right, it was a mug that said, ‘Fuck Off, I’m Reading.’

  We’re not all perfect, okay?

  “That’s an interesting toothbrush holder.”

  I grabbed a towel and shoved it between my legs before I sat on top of the toilet seat. “It was all I had in here at the time. And I never got around to buying a proper toothbrush holder. Is that really why you’re staring at it?”

  “No. I’m thinking I need to bring a toothbrush over here.”

  I pointed to the cabinet under the sink. “There are some spares in there.”

  Kai bent down and pulled out a small tub containing eight brand new toothbrushes. He tilted the box my way with a raised eyebrow.

  “They were on sale,” I said breezily, standing up with the towel still wedged between my legs. I hobbled over to the shower and turned it on to heat up.

  “Do you know you still have mascara on one eye?”

  I yanked the towel out from between my legs and shoved him over from the mirror to look.

  Shit. He was right. I’d only managed to remove half my makeup before I’d heard him letting himself into the apartment.

  “That’s your fault,” I said, reaching under the sink for a new packet of wipes. “You’re the one who let yourself into my apartment on your alpha male tirade when I was cleaning my face. And you could have mentioned this before.”

  “Why would I do that?” he said around an orange toothbrush that I assumed was now his.

  There was nothing like having your ninety-nine cent toothbrushes stolen.

  I finished removing my makeup and threw the wipe in the trashcan that desperately needed emptying and huffed on my way into the shower. Kai’s muffled chuckle followed me in, but I closed the door and that blocked him out completely.

  Thank God.

  I let the hot water run over me, soaking me from head to toe. It was a pain in the ass to keep the spray from beating my nipples, so I covered my boobs with my arm and reached for my shampoo as soon as I was soaked through.

  Cold air slammed into my back, and I squealed.

  “Sorry.” Kai pressed his front against my back and shuffled me over.

  “What the hell? First you steal a toothbrush, now you steal my shower?”

  “I borrowed your toothbrush, and now I’m sharing your shower,” he said. “Semantics.”

  “Semantics my ass.”

  “Shh. I need a shower. You came all over me.”

  “You’re the one who barged in here like Fred Flintstone. That’s your fault, not mine.” I lathered shampoo into my hair. “If you think sharing a shower is going to be a regular thing, you’re deluded.”

  “Here I was, planning our future of endless showers with some shower sex thrown in.”

  I snorted and rinsed off my hands. “Still deluded.”

  He grabbed my left hand and took my ring finger between his finger and thumb. “Still wearing a fake wedding ring, I see.”

  I pursed my lips. I’d forgotten I was wearing that. I had gotten into a habit of removing it when I got home from work, but I hadn’t done it today because of Kai’s birthday.

  “I forgot to take it off,” I said, muscling in under the water to rinse my hair.

  He stepped back and grabbed my soap, using it to wash both his body and his hair. “Don’t bother. I bought it because it suited you.”

  “You bought it? You said it was a family ring.”

  He shoved his head under the water, unperturbed that I was put out. “Yeah, well, I couldn’t tell you I’d bought it, could I?”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I knew you’d freak out about it.”

  “Yeah, you can’t take it back now!” I rinsed the last of the shampoo from my hair and nearly took his eye out with my elbow. “Damn it, Kai.”

  “I don’t want to take it back.” He opened the shower door and stepped out, apparently done with his shower in less than three minutes, and trapped me and the steam back inside.

  What did he mean, he didn’t want to take it back?

  Why had he bought it?

  Why the hell was this day such a rollercoaster? Was it Friday the fucking thirteenth or something?

  I still had to finish my shower so I raced through conditioning my hair and washing my body in record time. I apologized to the stubble under my arms that really needed a trim and told myself shaving could wait until tomorrow.

  I’d been telling my legs that for a week, mind you.

  I turned off the shower and froze.

  I didn’t have clean towels.

  I’d jumped straight in without thinking.

  Ah, shit.

  I braced myself for the rush of fr
eezing air that would come at me when I stepped out of the shower cubicle. A shudder wracked my body when it came, and I twisted my hair around my finger so it didn’t drip all over my body, but I didn’t need to worry.

  There were two towels sitting on top of the closed toilet seat.

  A smile crept over my face despite my best efforts, and I gratefully wrapped myself in the fluffy towels before I left the bathroom.

  Noises came from the direction of the kitchen, and I padded across the floor while adjusting my towel, careful not to slip on the wet floor.

  “I know what you did with the towels. We’re still talking about the ring.”

  “Nothing to talk about,” he said, scooping ice cream into two bowls at the island. “Yes, I cleaned it before you ask.”

  I bit back a giggle. “Of course there’s something to talk about.”

  “There really isn’t, Ivy. It’s quite simple.”

  “Explain it, then.”

  “If we don’t make this fake marriage real—which, for the record, I am wholeheartedly against—then it’s a gift to you for the baby. If it’s a girl, she can keep it. If it’s a boy, he can use it to propose to his future wife if he wants.” He shrugged as he put the ice cream back in the freezer. “Like I said. Simple.”

  That… was hard to argue with.

  Ugh.

  Rational points.

  I hated it when people made those.

  I approached the island. “Damn it. Stop making rational arguments,” I said. “I can’t yell at you when you do that.”

  “Would you like to yell at me?”

  I dropped my gaze when he slid the ice cream across the counter at me. “I can’t shout at you now, can I? You just gave me ice cream. That would be a cardinal sin.”

  “A cardinal sin? Do you swear like that in front of your grandmother?”

  I froze. “Shit, my grandmother.”

  “What?”

  “She wants us to go to bingo with her tomorrow.”

  “Bingo? With your grandmother?”

  Grimacing, I nodded. “And there’s absolutely no way to get out of it. She knows you’re working at the school this week building the new special education resource building so if you don’t come, she’s going to show up there.”

  Kai sighed. “Okay, fine. Do I need to bring my own bingo markers, or…?”

  “Seriously? Just like that? You agree?”

  “What else do you want me to say? No?” He dug his spoon into his ice cream. “I’ve decided that you obviously have feelings for me, so now we’re dating, which means I have to entertain your eccentric grandma. Now, are you going to eat your ice cream, or are you going to leave it to melt? I don’t want you waking me up at three a.m. bleating about being hungry because you didn’t get a midnight snack.”

  I opened my mouth to argue, but I could see it was futile.

  Well, it wasn’t. I knew if I opened my mouth right now and told Kai I didn’t want to officially date under the guise of our fake marriage, he’d accept that. That was the kind of person he was… even if he had had a Fred Flintstone moment tonight.

  But what would I be fighting? The inevitable? The obvious? The thing I really wanted?

  “Stop looking at me like you’re trying to decide whether or not to fight with me,” he said, turning and searching through my fridge. “Ooh, chocolate sauce.”

  I took that right out of his hand and lathered my ice cream in it before handing it back. “You can’t have sex with me and demand I be your girlfriend.”

  “Ivy, I had sex with you and made you the mother of my child. A girlfriend seems like a relatively low commitment compared to that.”

  “Ugh!” I grabbed my bowl and spun around, losing my towel in the process. I ignored it completely and sat on the sofa totally naked, with my bowl of chocolate sauce covered ice cream and my hair twisted in a striped towel.

  “Are you just going to eat that ice cream naked?”

  “Yes. Yes, I am, Kai, and I’m going to enjoy every minute.”

  “Does that mean I win?”

  “It means you need to sleep with one eye open, motherfucker.”

  He grinned.

  Jerk.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN – IVY

  “Bingo!” Grandma Rosie jumped out of her seat with far too much energy for her age. “I call bingo!”

  Unfortunately for her, Agatha Cates also called bingo at the same time.

  “No!” Grams yelled. “That’s mine!”

  “Rosie! I yelled it first!”

  Mumbles erupted across the bingo hall.

  Well, I said mumbles. Elderly people weren’t so great at the whole quiet thing.

  “Susanna!” Grams yelled in the direction of the regular bingo caller, waving her card in the air. “It was me!”

  “It was me!” Agatha shouted, doing the same with her card. “Susanna!”

  “Shut it, Hagatha!” Grams spat, grabbing her cane so she could get to the front quicker than her longtime rival.

  Kai leaned over and whispered, “Did she just call her Hagatha?”

  I nodded.

  “Genius,” he murmured.

  “No,” I replied. “Agatha is Tori’s grandmother. It’s a point of contention that both our moms and us are best friends.”

  “Do they really hate each other?”

  I pointed in the direction of poor Susanna who’d never quite gotten used to their ruckus at the weekly bingo sessions. They were currently jostling for position in front of her which, for two women of their age, was really quite concerning.

  They’d break a hip if they fell over.

  Naturally, nobody helped.

  Apparently old people liked a cat fight as much as everyone else.

  They were only human.

  “Shouldn’t someone stop them?” Kai asked, eying the way they were jostling each other.

  I shook my head. “They’ll call the orderlies soon.”

  “The orderlies?”

  “Well, I think they’re technically the nurses, but there’s two of them who always keep the peace. They work every bingo night for this reason right here.”

  “They both live in the old people’s home?”

  “Grandma splits her time,” I said slowly. “But officially, yes. Tori is all Agatha’s got in town since her parents moved to Florida, but she’s allergic to cats and Tori won’t give up Genevieve.”

  “That feels somewhat strategic.”

  “Totally strategic,” I agreed, reaching for my glass of water. “Also, Gen is the sweetest cat, and I’d take her over Agatha, too.”

  “Cats are better than people.”

  “Can we get a cat?”

  “This morning you cried over a dog rescue commercial and tearfully swore to rescue all the dogs and let them live in my spare room. Now you want a cat?” Kai raised an eyebrow.

  “I can’t be held responsible for what my hormones make me say.” I snorted. “Besides, if you hadn’t burned my toast, I wouldn’t have wanted to cry in the first place.”

  “Oh dear, are they at it again?” Randy, Kinsley’s grandfather, rejoined our table.

  I pursed my lips and nodded. “Simultaneous bingo.”

  “Are the order keepers here yet?”

  “I think they feel the ripples in the cosmos,” Mabel, Saylor’s grandma, interjected. “Then go on their break.”

  “I don’t blame them.” Kai was watching the fight with a little too much interest.

  Mabel elbowed Randy. “Well? Go and sort it out, Randy. One of them will put their hip our, and it’s not like Agatha has any hips left!”

  Well, that was up for debate. She was still telling her doctor she needed her hips replaced but since he kept refusing, that told me Agatha had a little more hip than she’d let off.

  The weekly bingo fights didn’t help her cause much, either.

  “Go,” I said to Kai, waving my hand in their direction. “Go and help him! He’s eighty!”

  Kai did as I said, following Randy up
to the front where Susanna was desperately speaking into a radio. I swore I heard her call mayday at one point, but Randy and Kai each grabbed a grandma and wrestled them away from each other.

  They didn’t stand a chance with Kai, to be honest.

  He probably could have hauled both grandmas over his shoulder and ran with them without breaking a sweat, but Randy was inordinately fit for his age.

  Then again, I think he’d been a weightlifter.

  Mabel shivered from across the table. “Isn’t it sexy, Ivy? Seeing two strapping young men being all strong?”

  I pouted and tilted my head to the side. Strapping… that could apply to them both. Young? Eh… not so much. “Sure,” I replied anyway, not wanting to offend her.

  I knew Mabel was touchy about her age.

  “How are you, dear?” she asked, touching my hand without looking at me. Her gaze was firmly fixed on Randy and how he was wrestling Agatha away from poor Susanna.

  “I’m fine, thank you. How are you?”

  “No, I mean how’s the baby?”

  “Making me throw up on a semi-regular basis and giving me a valid excuse to eat my body weight in ice cream.” I smiled tightly and looked down at my bingo card.

  I had no idea why I came. I never won.

  “You should be careful with that, you know. My Olivia gained forty pounds when she was pregnant with her Saylor,” Mabel said. “Took her three years to lose the weight, and even then, I think she adopted another ten back. Hasn’t been able to get rid of it since.”

  Olivia had gained more than ten pounds—and happily, I would add—but I didn’t say that out loud. “I will keep that in mind, Mabel, thanks.”

  “You should. You’re very pretty and far too young to lose your figure.”

  Again. Why did I come here?

  “Did you use protection?”

  “Oookay,” Kai said, slipping into his chair next to me. “A very nice nurse named Cordelia is taking your grandmother back to her room, and Randy is taking Agatha to hers. Your grandma said we should leave now before anyone gossips about her.”

  Thank God for small mercies.

  “It was lovely seeing you, Mabel,” I lied. “I’ll keep your advice in mind.”