by Claire Adams
His lips were only mere inches away from mine and I could feel myself subconsciously urging him to keep moving closer.
“What would that one thing be?” My breath was quiet and filled with desire.
I could feel my chest heaving up and down as I tried to calm myself. There was just something about this man that wouldn’t let me stay calm when I was near him. I certainly couldn’t calm down now that his hand was wrapped around my waist.
“To taste you,” he said.
His deep brown eyes peered right into my soul. I wiggled a little in his arms and he adjusted his grip. Then I felt it. Through his running shorts, I could feel the girth of his erection. He wanted me. The way he looked at me, it was like he needed to have me. It was a primal urge that could not be stopped by anything.
I smiled and pushed away firmly. This time he released me.
“I should get going,” I said as I looked down at my camera.
Never in all my life had a man so overtly tried to sleep with me. I didn’t know if I was impressed with his forwardness or if I should have been angry. Maybe I should have slapped him?
“I’ll walk you home,” he said with a sly smile.
I tried to talk him out of walking me home. He looked like he was just heading out for his run, but since it was the middle of the night, I accepted his offer. We walked slowly and I talked while he listened.
I shared stories about Bain and how the small town had survived for so many years. It was a totally boring conversation, especially considering he had just told me he wanted to taste me.
Chapter 5
By the time I settled in for the night, it was more like early morning. I just couldn’t keep my brain off the mysterious neighbor. It killed me that I had, again, forgotten to ask him his name. Surely there was something wrong with me. What normal girl had feelings so strong about a man when she didn’t even know his name?
I figured his name was something exotic. He had dark brown hair with matching deep brown eyes. His olive skin was smooth as perfection. He had to have an exotic name to match his exotic appearance. Perhaps it was Xavier or Maximus, or something even more interesting.
As I drifted off to sleep, I could still feel the pressure of his hard bulge up against me. I closed my eyes and remembered how it felt to have such a gorgeous man desire me.
When morning came, I was determined. I was tired of thinking about my neighbor as “the gorgeous man.” I wanted to know his name.
With my coffee in hand, I walked casually over to his house and knocked on the door. Remembering back to the evening before, I suddenly didn’t want him to answer. I started to back away from the door, but he answered.
“Yes?” he said with a grin.
He was again without his shirt; I thought maybe that was a problem for him, perhaps he just didn’t like to wear shirts. It certainly wasn’t a problem for me! His hands were covered in paint and he wiped them on his pants as he looked at me.
“I need to know your name,” I said without any introduction.
His eyes widened and he took a step out of his house and toward me.
“What do you need this information for?”
His eyes looked deep into mine and I could hardly gather the words I needed to answer him. I desperately wanted to answer him, finally readying myself to speak.
“If we are neighbors, we should know each other’s names. You already know mine.”
“Yes, Katelyn. It is such a beautiful name.”
“My name is Chris,” he said dryly.
“Hello Chris,” I said with my own wicked smile.
I felt better instantly. I knew his name and could actually stop addressing him as the gorgeous man next door.
“Hello Katelyn,” he said my name slowly with his rough voice.
The way he said my name made me want him. Who am I kidding? He didn’t have to say a thing and I wanted him. I wanted to actually talk to him, I still knew nothing about him and as much as my body longed to know him more intimately; my mind told me to beware. There was something about this new resident of Bain, something secretive and suspicious.
“Are you painting? It’s pretty early to be painting,” I said as I looked at his paint-coated hands.
For some reason, this statement made him laugh. Not just a chuckle, but an outright full-on laugh. I didn’t get it. I looked away from him and uncomfortably continued to stand there.
“What time do you think it is?” he asked as his laughter calmed.
“I don’t know eight or so in the morning.”
I didn’t have my phone with me so I didn’t know exactly. But whatever time it was, it certainly wasn’t this funny.
“Sweetheart, it’s almost four o’clock in the afternoon.”
“What!”
The shock of his statement didn’t fully register with me. There was no way it was that late, I would know if it I had slept away my entire Sunday. He stepped into his house and left the door open. Within a moment, he was back with his own cell phone. He handed it to me and the clock on the front read 3:50pm.
My jaw dropped open and I just stared at his phone. How had I slept so late again? What was coming over me? Then I realized he had just let me hold his phone. I don’t think I have ever had a man freely let me hold their phone and my girlfriends and I had just talked about this a few weeks ago.
Men are always trying to hide things: secret flirty text messages, naked photos, there was always something on their phones that they didn’t want women to see. Yet here I was, holding this complete stranger’s phone in my hand. It struck me as odd. He seemed like the kind of guy who had a whole plethora of secrets; I figured they just must not be located in his phone.
“Wow, I can’t believe it is so late. I really have to get some staining done before the end of the day. It was nice meeting you Chris.”
I turned toward my house and only had a few more steps before I was in my house when he hollered after me.
“Hey, do you have any painter’s tape? I seem to be making a mess everywhere.”
I looked at his paint-coated hands.
“I don’t think painter’s tape will help with that,” I said wryly, then smiled and continued toward the door of my house, “but, yes I have some. Come on in. Just don’t touch anything with those hands of yours.”
The last thing I needed was his paint-covered hands touching any of the woodwork I was working so hard to restore.
Chapter 6
As we walked into my house, a slight burst of embarrassment flushed over me. No one ever visited my house, and for good reason; it was a disaster. I had all the woodwork from the entire downstairs pulled off the walls and strewn throughout the house. It was like an obstacle course to make it from one room to the next.
“I apologize for the mess, I’m restoring the house and it’s quite the process.”
He just looked around and took in the old home. The house’s Victorian style was somewhat original in Missouri during the time period. I wanted to restore the home to its original splendor so it could be put on the historical society register.
The home had been built in 1910 by my grandparents and then passed down to my parents. It was a huge part of this town and I didn’t want anyone coming in years from now and trying to tear it down. Plus, I didn’t have anything better to do with my time. There was only so many pictures a person could take before they needed to spend some time on a different hobby.
“Don’t apologize, this house is beautiful.”
Something about the way he said that caught me off guard. It seemed like the first truly sincere words I had heard from him. He was in awe of my old house. I turned back to glace at him, but he didn’t see. He was too busy looking at every detail of the woodworking on the floor as well as the paneling on the walls.
“Thanks, are you an admirer of old homes?”
Then just as quickly as his genuine talk had appeared, his crude language reappeared.
“I’m an admirer of your ass,” he said as h
e walked past me, taking an especially long glance at my backside.
“Seriously?”
“Oh, I’m kidding. Yes, I like old houses. I love the idea of tearing apart an old building and putting it back to better even stronger than it originally was.”
I walked toward the stairs and just as I took my second step up, he grabbed my arm and pulled me back toward him. He was right there, standing on the bottom step as I turned to face him. My body was still not at his height, but much closer than before. There was something in his eyes that I couldn’t have described, but I now know was pure lust.
He moved his lips swiftly to meet mine and it was a good thing he let his hands hold onto my hips. I likely would have fallen over from the wobbly nature of my knees. I hadn’t expected a kiss. Yes, I had wanted one, but it was such odd timing that I wasn’t prepared.
My mouth opened to let him in. His tongue searched me for pleasure. The kiss was gentle at first, but the more I moved against him the harder he pressed against me. He wasn’t about to give up on kissing me. Finally, I gave in.
My arms moved up to his neck and wrapped around him. I had not kissed a man in over a year and this was no ordinary man. His body was that of a sexy god. Yes, a sex god. That was the best way I could describe him. There were chiseled muscles at every corner of his firm body.
His tongue had skills that the rest of my body longed to enjoy. I could feel the rush of wetness as the physical reaction of kissing him shot throughout me.
“I had to kiss you. I’m sorry, but it had to be done,” Chris said as he released me.
I stood there in a daze for a moment, pondering the kiss that had just knocked me out of the park. This man could kiss, that was for damn sure.
“Yeah, well should we get you some painter’s tape?” I said as the flush red of my face burned to cool down.
“Yes. Let’s do that. Is it upstairs?”
He started to take a few steps up the stairs before I grabbed him.
“Oh no, you don’t. You’re not going up to my bedroom.”
“Why not? You don’t trust me near your bed?”
His eyes burned into me and I couldn’t help but lick my lips. They wanted to feel his again, but I resisted.
“No. You stay here.”
I held my hand out to stop him from coming up the stairs while I went to find his tape. I had been painting in my bedroom last so I quickly grabbed it.
“Hey, did you know this chandelier is about to fall?”
I looked at it as I walked down the stairs. It looked fine to me.
“It’s been there for almost one hundred years and sturdy as could be. I’m sure it’s fine.”
“I can fix it for you if you’d like. Maybe take it down so you can clean it before reattaching it?”
“Alright,” I said as I handed him the tape.
“How old is this house? 1900?”
“Close, 1910. It was built by my grandparents. It was one of the first houses in the city.”
“Any you are restoring it? What else do you do with yourself?”
“Oh nothing, I just stalk my neighbors and sand wood.”
I cringed at the words when they came out. Why did my mouth work so poorly? Certainly that sounded really sexy. Yes, I’m your neighbor and I’m going to stalk you now. Ugh!
“You can play with my wood, no stalking necessary,” he winked.
Geeze what was it with this guy? He seriously could turn anything into sexual innuendo. I rolled my eyes and laughed at his joke.
“Well, what do you do for a living?”
At this question, he instantly clammed up. The sparkle of desire in his eyes disappeared and he turned cold. The change was so abrupt that I was completely thrown for a moment. Nothing about him seemed to even like me anymore, let alone desire me.
“I’m going to get back to my painting. Have a good night,” he said and then swiftly left my house.
I watched through the window as he made it back inside his home and I wondered what it was it that I had said. I just asked what he did for a living. How was that so bad?
Chapter 7
He was so hot and cold. It was hard for me to figure him out. One minute he was seductively kissing me and the next moment he turned cold as ice and walked out of my house. I had never met anyone that could change their personality so quickly. I kept my eye out for Chris each day as I did yardwork or left the house for errands. But I never saw him coming or going. I never saw a car outside, but he certainly could have been parking it in his garage. The old houses in Bain all had detached garages that sat behind our homes, which made it very difficult to see exactly what was going on or if someone was home at all.
Day after day passed and again I didn’t see Chris. It was baffling. What on earth could he do for a living that he could be in Bain anyways? Most of the people who lived here were retired, worked for the local school or were independent like myself. We were over an hour from St. Louis and there were plenty of nicer small towns within a closer distance.
I had to stop letting Chris fill my mind. My photography exhibit was getting close and I still needed to go through my pictures and choose the final set of photos. I knew there was one last photo I wanted to get out in the woods, but I had to wait for the moon to be at just the right location.
I made my way to my garage, where I had made my dark room for developing my pictures. As had become a habit, I glanced over at Chris’s house to see if it looked like he was home. No car outside the garage and no lights on in the house. He certainly did not appear to be home.
Developing my pictures was one of my favorite parts of photography. There was just something wonderful about doing the developing yourself: setting the paper into the chemicals, moving the photo paper from one tub of fluid to the next; I loved it. I ached to get my hands dirty and develop some of the prints for my upcoming show.
Of course, it was faster, and even cheaper, to pay someone else to develop my prints. But it was art to me, even the process of developing had become part of my art. I experimented with overexposing and underexposing my photos until they reached the exact look that I wanted. I darkened the room in my garage and started in on the long night of developing. My dark room wasn’t the best, so I was relegated to developing my pictures at night to ensure the least amount of exposure possible.
Slowly and methodically I worked through my pictures. Soon it was after four o’clock in the morning and I hadn’t even realized where all the time had gone. Suddenly there was a bright light from Chris’s house. I quickly blocked the leak of light with a black towel and hoped my pictures would be alright. I closed the black curtain and snuck out the door to my garage quietly.
It was Chris. He had pulled up in front of his garage in a black Jeep. He was unloading some very large duffel bags. Each of them looked to be very heavy and he set them down gently, one at a time. My mind raced with thoughts of what could be in those bags. Each bag was about four feet long and was filled with some obscurely shaped objects. The odd shapes poked and pressed the fabric of the duffle bags in weird places. I pushed my body back as close to the building as I could. The last thing I wanted was him to see me really stalking him.
He left the bags on the ground as he pulled his Jeep into the garage. He quickly came around and grabbed two of the six bags and carried them inside his house. I fought the urge to run over and look inside one of the bags. It was just too risky, so I waited. It took him about a minute to bring the first two bags into his house. So when he grabbed the second two bags, I made my way quickly over to the last two and unzipped one.
It was dark and I couldn’t see a thing inside the bag, so I pressed my hand into it. The cold metal of what I thought to be a gun greeted my hand. I quickly pulled away and ran back to the cover of my garage.
Oh no, I forgot to zip the bag back up!
It was too late now, there was no way I could make it back over to the bag and get it zipped up before he was there to grab them. I watched in anticipation for him
to return. Luckily the dark of night camouflaged my mistake. He grabbed the bags with ease and headed back into his house.
Guns! Why was he hauling bags full of guns into his house? Maybe I had not felt right, maybe they weren’t really guns? I couldn’t be one hundred percent sure, but my stomach was in knots.
This gorgeous guy comes to my small little town and starts making out with me and sure enough he turns out to be some sort of gun dealer or something. He didn’t seem like the type of guy who would be part of such an illegal line of work. Granted, I didn’t really know what type of guy he was, but he seemed more honest than a gun dealer would be.
Chapter 8
My mind swirled with thoughts of Chris. I was confused, but for some reason I wasn’t afraid of him at all. Shouldn’t a person be afraid of a man who had a house full of guns? There was just something about him when he was there next to me; I could feel he was not some evil monster.
I could be wrong though. There was that man in the bar when I was out with my friends. I thought he seemed like a totally nice guy. Then before the night was over, I watched as he punched and choked another man until the police were called and took him away to jail. So maybe I wasn’t that good at telling a good guy from a bad one. My body said he was a good guy for sure…my mind was trying to talk me out of it.
I watched out my bedroom window as the lights in Chris’s house turned on and then off again. He seemed to have moved the bags into the second bedroom and had the light on in there for a good twenty minutes before he turned it off. I then watched as the light in his kitchen came on and his face appeared at the kitchen sink. He was doing dishes. It struck me as odd that a man who just unloaded probably six bags of guns into his house was now domestically washing his dishes.
Laughing to myself, I finally laid down. My sleep schedule had been off for weeks. Really, it had been off since that night out drinking with Rebecca and my other friends. Now I was up until three or four in the morning almost every night and sleeping until noon during the day. I didn’t mind the schedule very much, but it just made me feel a bit lazy.
