Muffin Top

by Avery Flynn

  This week just might kill him, but what a way to go.

  Chapter Ten

  Charbroiled was an Antioch institution. Thick, juicy cheeseburgers on toasted sesame seed buns slathered with a tangy sauce only three people in town knew the recipe for—and they weren’t talking. Then there were the shakes made from homemade ice cream and topped with whipped cream so fluffy and light it was like tasting a cloud. Needless to say, everyone in town—including Lucy—was a fan.

  “Who in their right mind wouldn’t be?” Frankie asked as he demolished the last of his double cheeseburger. “That was so damn good.”

  The sound he made then was enough to make her reach for her half-finished cherry limeade because it had suddenly gotten a few degrees hotter in the restaurant. “I want to hear what happened next.”

  Frankie grinned at her, and she gulped down the rest of her tart drink as an act of desperate self-preservation to cool herself off because after spending the day with him—and gawking at him as he held up the birdbath bowl for close to forever in the park—she was in serious need of a reminder that he was off-limits. Not interested. Out of my league.

  Lucky for her, there were lots of reminders. First, he was a first-round draft pick of a player when it came to women, and that way lay nothing but heartache and disaster. Second, he’d declared himself a no-sex zone, so pushing him into something he was trying hard to resist—the act, not her—was very much not a cool thing to do. Third, even if he wasn’t into temporary celibacy, he was a six-foot-six-inch, sexy-as-hell, work-of-art level, ginger firefighter with large hands so perfectly sized, she couldn’t help but wonder if the rest of him was as well. Oh and fourth, totally not into her.

  “Oh, this is when it gets good,” he said, totally oblivious to the path her thoughts had gone down.

  Before their food had been delivered, he’d been telling her about his run-in with a pompous asshole who parked his Jaguar in front of a fire hydrant. Frankie and his crew had to break the passenger’s and driver’s windows so they could thread the hose through the car and fight a warehouse fire. The car’s owner was totally irate and had taken his complaint to the top brass at the Waterbury Fire Department. When the food had arrived, though, all conversation had ceased as they both dug in. The only sounds they’d made had been groans of appreciation.

  “Well, he came marching out of the strip club covered in enough glitter to make it look like he was glowing and started screaming at the probie, as if the kid was in charge of a damn thing.”

  “A misperception you disabused him of.” Because—she was realizing—that’s what Frankie did. Just like with her and the asshole telling her she should have ordered a salad, he stepped in and did his knight-on-a-white-horse thing.

  “I told him I’d be happy to bring any complaint he had directly to the captain.”

  Her bullshit detector went into overdrive. “In those words?”

  “Not even close.” He gave her a cocky grin.

  She shook her head. The man would be a nightmare as a crisis communication client. Hell, he’d give Zach Blackburn a run for his money on the pain in the ass scale.

  “And that’s how you ended up on a forced vacation?”

  “That was my assumption when the captain called me into his office, but no, it was just a simple human resources requirement to not let so much vacation time build up.” He swiped a crinkle fry through the pool of ketchup on his plate and popped it in his mouth. “It’s such a stupid regulation.”

  For someone like him, she could see that. What better job for a guy with a rescue complex than a firefighter who rushes into burning buildings to save people and rescues cats stuck in trees? Other than his job, his family, and a few close friends, he didn’t seem to have a lot of activities going on—beyond the one he was currently shunning.

  He was a workaholic with a rescue complex.

  Guess who was the kitten out on a limb this time? That realization—along with her dad’s advice earlier to open herself up to the fact that she could, possibly, maybe be (on occasion) wrong about people—made her prickle.

  “And you thought what a better way to spend a vacation than in Antioch, Missouri, with me as your safety date?”

  One of his eyebrows shot up. “Safety date?”

  “Yeah, the one you don’t have to worry about making you fall off the no-sex wagon.” Okay, that came out a little harsher than she meant it to, but she was salty. No one wanted to be the pity date, especially not the woman who some men thought should be eating a salad with no dressing or shredded cheese or anything that tasted remotely like it had touched an unsaturated fat at any point in its existence.

  He stiffened and looked at her with annoyance. “That was the initial plan, but it hasn’t worked out that way.”

  She sat up straighter in her chair and gave him the icy look that froze her badly behaving clients in their tracks.

  “Look, I know you’re not into me, and I’m okay with that. I’m not fishing for compliments. I know I don’t turn most men on,” she said.

  “You are the most frustrating woman…” He groaned and stared at her long and hard. Like he was wrestling with something. He finally nodded, making some decision, and continued, “Good, because I’m not giving them out,” he said in a low voice with enough gravel in his tone to put her on alert. “Consider this a list of complaints.” He began counting off with his fingers as he went through each point. “You’ve made it so a good night’s sleep is an unobtainable goal, because I can’t close my eyes without seeing your ass and wondering how it would move when I buried myself balls deep in you.”

  Her cheeks flamed. That was not what she was expecting. Not at all.

  “When I almost ran Scarlett off the road in Illinois?” he went on, holding up a second finger. “That was because I was imagining the sound you’d make when I grazed my teeth over the tip of your nipple and then sucked on it hard enough to make you beg for more.”

  And there went her panties. Call the fire department. Oh wait, she had someone with a hose right across the table.

  His words were so unexpected, she was having trouble breathing. She couldn’t tell if it was embarrassment that he felt the need to lie to make her feel better or imagining him doing all those things to her. It was a toss-up at the moment.

  He stared at her with a look she’d never seen him have before. Oh, she’d seen flirty Frankie. This wasn’t him. This was something different altogether. Hotter. More intense. The air around them sparked and sizzled.

  He lifted a third finger. “I have had more inconvenient and unplanned hard-ons in the past five days than a grown man should admit to. And after I woke up in that B and B and saw you sleeping in the bed next to me, with your tank top not even having a hope in hell of containing your boobs? That’s when I started revising my definition of what sex is, because thinking about how good you must taste is all I can think about when I’ve got my hand wrapped around my dick. There is nothing more that I want to do right now than find out just how much my imagination sucks, because I bet you taste better when you come than anything else in the world. And there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.”

  It was probably just because they were together twenty-four seven. It was a vacation-from-reality reaction on his part, that was why he couldn’t do anything about it. Besides, he was an admitted man-whore, and she was basically the only single woman he’d met all week.

  Still…it was hot in here.

  Check that.

  It was scorching. Her whole body had that oh-my-God-yes tingly thing going on. Just from his words. Was that possible? She hadn’t thought so until that moment.

  It was so disconcerting that her next question flew out before she had a chance to consider it. “You saw my boobs?”

  One ginger eyebrow went up. “After everything I just said, me seeing your fan-fucking-tastic rack is what you’re caught on?”

  “Yes,” she said as she shook her head no.

  He shoved his fingers through his ha
ir. “Thank God I didn’t tell you the rest of it.”

  She gulped, her heart beating so fast it had to be approaching light speed. “There’s more?”

  This was how he flirted? She resisted the urge to fan herself and pull at her collar like some kind of cartoon. No wonder the women of Waterbury couldn’t resist him. The man was lethal to the better-decision-making process.

  “Would you like to hear all about it?” he asked, his voice low and rough as if he was trying not to sound so damn sexy and failing miserably.

  Of course, that’s when the waitress stopped by their table and asked if there was anything else she could get them and—judging by the fact that the waitress stood so her back was to Lucy—by “them” she meant only Frankie and by “anything” she meant a blow job.

  The dismissal of even the idea that Lucy could be with someone like Frankie by the waitress was enough to take an ice pick of reality to her hot air balloon of sexually frustrated anticipation. This was reality.

  “Just the check,” Lucy said to the waitress’s back.

  The waitress glanced back over her shoulder with a shocked expression as if she’d genuinely forgotten Lucy was there. It wasn’t the first time Lucy had gotten this reaction after speaking. It was as if being fat put a target on her and gave her an invisibility cloak at the same time. If she wasn’t so used to it, it would have pissed her off. As it was, it just made her tired.

  “Don’t even think you’re paying for this,” Frankie said, ignoring the waitress. “I asked you out, I get the check.”

  Nope. That took this whole thing too far into the pity date territory she was determined to avoid at all costs, and she was still too flustered from Frankie’s outburst to agree to that. “You know why that’s not gonna happen.”

  “There’s a lot that’s not gonna happen.”

  And double ouch. Sure, she knew it was just an attraction-by-proximity thing with him, but the swiftness of his declaration made her wince anyway. “With the number one being you paying for lunch.”

  The waitress let out a huff and smacked the bill down on the table. “Once y’all figure it out, you can pay up front.” Then she sashayed away from their table without a single look back.

  “I think you pissed her off,” Lucy said, stating the obvious because her brain was too fried and her body’s reaction to the man across from her too strong to think of anything witty.

  And the constant belly-tightening awareness of him made no sense. She knew she and Frankie couldn’t be a thing. Taking a deep breath, she went over the list. One, she wasn’t his type. Two, he wasn’t hers. Three, he was on the sex bench. Four, he was only flirting with her because that’s what he did, not because he meant it. Five, they’d have to go back home eventually, and being one more on the long list of Frankie Hartigan’s women did absolutely nothing for her.

  Okay, it did something for her, but only in a late-night-fantasy way, definitely not in a real-world, light-of-day way. No way did she want to turn this pity date week into a pity fuck, too.

  Flustered and annoyed with herself, she grabbed the bill before he could and hustled over to the cashier by the door. Chicken? Her? Totally.

  Frankie didn’t press her on her fast getaway from Charbroiled. He changed the subject and kept her laughing and made her heart beat faster with a little touch here or a look there all the way back to her dad’s house. They’d no more than walked in the door—Frankie having to pivot to avoid a flying ballistic missile otherwise known as Gussie, who seemed to be as interested in what Frankie had behind his zipper as she was—when she spotted the note. It was three sentences on a yellow Post-it stuck to the mirror next to the coatrack.

  Muffin,

  Leading group session and then meeting Alvarez for drinks. Don’t wait up. Be good.

  Dad

  Be good? Like she needed to be told that. She was a grown woman. Her gaze drifted over to Frankie, who was holding Gussie in his arms but at a distance, sort of like a non-kid person held a toddler with a stinky diaper. Her pulse ticked up. Shit. Maybe she did need a reminder if watching him avoid getting a Gussie tongue bath as the French Bulldog whined in frustration was getting her worked up.

  “What are we going to do with ourselves?” he asked, putting down Gussie, who immediately began running in excited circles around him.

  She had ideas. She had lots of ideas. None of which would be put into action.

  “Up for a movie?” he asked.

  “Sure.” She could totally sit next to Frankie Hartigan in the dark and pretend to pay attention to a movie plot instead of how sexy he looked with a few days beard scruff, or how even the idea of his thick fingers touching her made her need to squeeze her thighs together to relieve the ache that had been building since they’d left Waterbury.

  She was a grown-ass woman.

  Of course she could do that.

  Really.

  Maybe.

  Okay, this was going to be hell.

  …

  It took about ten minutes into the movie before Frankie realized he was the world’s biggest dumbass.

  They’d sat down on the couch, Gussie collapsed in his doggie bed across the room, and he flipped on the first movie on Netflix that didn’t sound like complete crap and turned the lights out to better get the movie experience—that’s when things went south.

  The choice of movie didn’t help. It was supposed to be a comedy. What he hadn’t realized was that it was a sex comedy about two friends who decided to add benefits to the mix. There was nothing like being alone in the dark watching two people decide whether or not they could fuck without making things complicated to pretty much guarantee that he wasn’t going to be able to stop imagining how a similar conversation would go with Lucy.

  In his mind, it always ended the same—both of them naked—but the where and the what they were doing changed. Sometimes she was bent over the back of the couch, her ass high up in the air. Sometimes she was straddling him as he sat on the couch, his hands gripping her round hips. Sometimes she was on her back with her legs resting against his chest and her ankles on his shoulders as he pistoned his hips forward and back, going as deep as possible into her hot, wet warmth.

  Fuck.

  He’d lost his damn mind.

  Leave your dick out of it, Hartigan. You are on a break!

  At the other end of the love seat, Lucy let out a snort of disbelief. “This never works out.”

  It took Frankie a second to realize she was talking about the action that was happening on the screen, not in his head. “What do you mean?”

  She turned to face him. “Sex always changes everything.”

  “That’s not true. I have had lots of no-strings-attached sex, and it never changed anything.” It was not having sex that impacted his relationships with women.

  Oh sure, they remained friendly, but later when their clothes were on the women always treated him differently, as if he’d served his purpose.

  The light from the television may have been the only light in the room, but reading Lucy’s no-shit expression didn’t take any effort.

  “And that’s why you’re now in a no-orgasm zone,” she said.

  Okay, he was trying to figure things out, he wasn’t punishing himself with a fate worse than getting stuck working a desk job downtown at the Waterbury Fire Department HQ. “I am not banished from orgasms.”

  She chuckled. “As long as it’s…” She cleared her throat and gave him a teasing look. “Hands-on, huh?”

  “Very funny.” He scooted a few inches closer, letting his arm fall across the back of the couch so that his fingertips almost brushed the curve of her shoulder. He shouldn’t have. He should have stayed where he was, but he was an idiot. A very turned-on idiot who had to shift to make sure he kept that information to himself. “There are a lot of activities in between holding hands and fucking.”

  “Suppose it depends on what your definition of sex is.”

  “It’s P in the V.” Okay not really, but he li
ked it when she got worked up. Her cheeks got all flushed, and she got a fiery spark in her eyes. Okay, and she always took in a deep breath before she let loose on him that lifted her tremendous tits so he was gifted with a spectacular view of her cleavage.

  She rolled her eyes. “Could there be any more of a straight male definition of sex than that?”

  No deep breath. Damn. He needed to work harder at it.

  “Fine.” He leaned closer. “Sex equals penetration from a penis either to the vagina or the anus.”

  There was a beat of silence—even the people on the movie stopped yammering about whether fucking a friend was a good idea or not—and then she took a deep breath. Her breasts strained against the cotton of her V-neck tank top.

  Score!

  “That is totally wrong,” she said, looking at him like he was the last firefighter to get on the truck. “A man’s dick might be fun, but it isn’t necessary for sex.”

  Was he an immature asshole for arguing such a dumb position just to get a peek down her shirt? Yes. But he could live with that. What sucked was having to keep arguing such a dumb position so she wouldn’t see right through him.

  She arched an eyebrow and gave him a you-are-so-full-of-shit look. “So, hand jobs don’t count as sex?”

  “No.” And now the image of her fingers wrapped around his cock had him adjusting himself as discreetly as possible, because talk was all and good but they weren’t going to get naked. Did thoughts get any more depressing?

  “And oral?” she asked, shifting her position and causing her skirt to raise a few inches on her thighs. The space where her creamy flesh pressed together drew his gaze, hypnotizing him.

  It took everything he had not to close his eyes and revel in the mental picture of diving between her legs. “No.”

  She cocked her head to one side and considered him. He wasn’t going to like what was going to come out of her mouth next. Correction. He was going to like it. A lot. And he shouldn’t. Not at all.