by Amy Andrews
So damn…big?
Maybe it was just the navy cargo pants that had enough pockets and zips to satisfy the most hard core Prepper? They emphasized the length of his legs and gave him a kind of he-man quality. Or maybe it was the bright red tubing of his stethoscope peeking out of his unzipped thigh pocket that gave him an extra dollop of sexy.
Doctor Prepper.
One thing was for certain. If the zombie apocalypse ever hit, she knew who she’d be hitching her wagon to.
Josie mentally erased the thought and yanked her mind back into the conversation. “Oh, really?” she said irritably. “According to Sal, someone in this room needs a screaming orgasm, and considering I’ve been in a relationship for five years, up until six days ago, it’s sure as hell not me. I think you need it more than I do.”
He snorted. “I doubt it.”
Josie glared. Was he implying that even after being celibate for six months his sex life trumped hers?
Unfortunately, she wasn’t on firm enough ground on that topic to banter with him about it. Instead, she drew herself up to her full five feet eight inches and said, “The only thing I need to get on as soon as possible is a shower, so, if you’ll excuse me…”
Josie marched down to the bathroom on legs that felt about as substantial as dental floss. That was possibly the most embarrassing conversation she’d had in her life. And if she hadn’t known Mack since she was ten years old, she’d have just about died on the spot as he’d perused the list. Thankfully, despite time and distance, they’d always had an easy familiarity.
Still, she’d rather Mack didn’t know what he knew now.
She entered the bathroom and gaped at the woman who stared back at her. She groaned at the state of herself. Her hair was a mess, her eye make-up was all smudged and clumped, and her freckles stuck out amongst a complexion that looked even paler than usual, which was hardly surprising given the recent subject matter.
It was enough to turn anyone fifty shades of white.
Jeez, why didn’t Mack tell her she looked like she’d spent the night in a gutter instead of carrying on a conversation about a pseudo sex list? She’d been talking to him all this time, and she looked like she’d been pulled through a hedge backward!
She stuck her tongue out at her reflection, annoyed that she even cared what she looked like. It was just Mack after all.
She took a deep breath. “I am a healthy, young woman with a normal sexual appetite, and I deserve sexual fulfillment.”
There was no response. No sudden divine agreement. Just the same scary reflection staring back at her. Couch hair and freckles that looked like they’d been drawn on with a Sharpie.
“Yeah, right.”
She turned away and reached for the faucets.
Chapter Two
Mack waited until he could hear the shower running before he crossed to the kitchen and removed the scrunched up list from the bin. Whether Josie actually went through with any of the items or not, she may regret having thrown it out at some stage.
Even if it was just for posterity’s sake, to look back one day and have a good laugh.
He unraveled it and smoothed it with his palm against the kitchen bench, trying to flatten out some of the wrinkles. The words leaped out at him again, despite their now less than pristine state. There was something remarkably innocent about it, considering the subject matter.
Nothing that startling or smutty. In fact, at least five of the items were fairly standard relationship fodder.
Screaming orgasms should be every woman’s right.
He shook his head. Sal had probably done Josie a huge favor getting her drunk and making her write the list because, clearly, Josie needed some passion and excitement in her life. It was a just a pity she felt she had to go all the way to London to find it. There’d no doubt be dozens of men right here in good old Brisbane who would more than happily put their hands up for any or all of the things on her list.
Looking at her objectively, without the filter of having known her for fifteen years, Mack had to admit Josie Butler was a very attractive woman. Hell, he’d be up for it if she wasn’t off-limits in that little-sister’s-best-friend way, and he wasn’t currently sworn off women.
A flash of milky skin and a faint coffee-induced groan echoed inside his head along with two words. Rebound sex.
Mack frowned as Sal’s recent catchphrase whispered unexpectedly through his brain. What the fuck?
Rebound sex.
Oh, no.
Sal did not mean he should have rebound sex with Josie. Her best friend, Josie, who had just split with her long-term partner.
Who was obviously a dud.
Rebound sex.
Forget it.
Rebound sex was quick and down and dirty. It was brief. Its purpose was catharsis and liberation and a whole lot of fuck-you directed toward the person who had taken your heart and stomped it into a million tiny pieces.
It was anonymous for crying out loud. It wasn’t about forming attachments, and he already had a deep emotional attachment to Josie that meant more to him than some quick tumble.
So, get it together, man.
And Sal would most definitely murder him if she found out he’d ever fucked with—literally and figuratively—her best friend when she was at a sexual crossroad.
When all she needed was a few dozen harmless, screaming orgasms and long nights of oral sex.
Alarmed at where his thoughts were heading, he picked up the list, shoved it in his front pocket, and crossed back to the lounge to sit and drink his coffee, which was a mistake given that a book full of multiple ways to achieve screaming orgasms, including, apparently, “The Standing Wheelbarrow” sat open in front of him. He reached for it.
Then stopped.
He didn’t need a bunch of helpful pictures in his head when he was trying to expel that very traitorous whisper from his mind. But his fingers tingled, and before he knew it, he’d picked it up.
Ten minutes later, he’d flipped through a couple hundred graphic photos in a kind of detached clinical way that was mildly disturbing.
Shouldn’t he at least be turned on?
So much for rebound sex. If looking at what a lot of people would deem pornographic images didn’t do anything for him, then any kind of sex at the moment was bound to be an abject failure.
Cynthia had knocked his libido flat, and it was, obviously, still on the mat.
Something moved in his peripheral vision, and he glanced up to see Charlie creeping closer in his cage. The fluffy, gray rabbit looked up at him and twitched his nose. Mack stood and opened the flap in the top of the cage and reached in, grateful for the distraction.
He pulled the rabbit out and held him up until they were face-to face. “Don’t look at me like that, Charlie. I was only looking at those hot pictures from a purely anatomical perspective.”
Given that there was nothing on Earth more addicted to sex than a male rabbit in his prime, Mack was fairly sure Charlie’s look of judgment was just a figment of his imagination. He tucked the rabbit against his chest and absently stroked his hands along its back as he wondered how his brain could even be considering Sal’s crazy rebound sex notion—with the world’s most inappropriate woman—when his body couldn’t even get interested in the acrobatic position known as “The Peg.”
He looked down at Charlie. “Whaddyareckon, mate? Am I crazy?”
Charlie blinked up at him like some huge, furry, big-eared Jiminy Cricket.
“Yep. You’re right. Crazy. Stupid idea. Forgetting it right now. Putting it behind me.”
Josephine Butler was totally, utterly, completely off limits.
Footsteps sounded in the hallway, and Mack looked up to see her walking toward him, drying her wet hair with a towel. Her hips were swinging. Her jeans were clinging. She was wearing a T-shirt with a deep V that showed off a lot of cleavage.
She looked fresh. She looked vital.
She looked sexy.
And his body f
lared to life in one instantaneous, primal, breathtaking flush. He almost cried out as a whoosh of painful pins and needles heralded a rapid, rampant erection.
His dick was hard as stone in an instant.
His belly clenched tight, his heart thundered in his chest, and he could hear Barry White playing in his head.
Barry goddamn White.
He was turned on. Maybe more turned on than he’d ever been in his life.
For six months, he’d felt dead and frozen inside; Cynthia’s infidelity had buried his libido as surely as if she’d castrated him. But in one moment, everything had kicked back into life.
Sal’s words echoed around inside his head. You need to get back on the bike, Mack.
And Barry said, Oh yeah, baby.
Josie looked at him then and smiled. “Talking to yourself is the first sign of insanity, you know?”
In his heightened state of arousal, it took a moment for Mack to realize she was referring to his conversation with the rabbit and not that he’d maybe been singing Barry White lyrics aloud.
“I was talking to Charlie. Animals respond much better to you if you talk to them,” he said sounding like the biggest dork on the planet, feeling like he was fifteen and standing in front of the prettiest girl in the class.
She halted on the opposite side of the couch to him. “Very Doctor Doolittle,” she murmured.
Then she took some kind of elastic from around her wrist and put her hair up in a hasty ponytail. The fabric of her T-shirt pulled across her breasts and rode up a little —why hadn’t he noticed how nice her breasts were before?—allowing him a glimpse of a milky abdomen and hip bone.
His dick got even harder— he had no idea how that was even possible.
“What are your plans for the day?” he asked, desperate for something to say.
“I’m not sure yet. I have a list of—”
“Whoa,” he interrupted, suddenly alarmed. Earlier, he’d been amused at the thought of straight-laced Josie even attempting the list, but it didn’t seem so funny anymore. “I thought you said the list wasn’t real?”
Josie frowned. “I meant a shopping list. You know…for clothes and stuff.”
“Oh.” Mack petted the rabbit, feeling like an idiot for jumping to conclusions. “Just as well,” he joked to cover the awkward moment. “I don’t think you’ve got it in you, anyway.”
…
Josie blinked. Got what in her? The…gumption to tackle the list? “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Mack winked at her. “Oh come on, Josie. Making a list when you’re drunk on Sal’s cocktails is one thing. Hell, I once agreed to let her give me a Mohawk under the influence. But actually going through with it?”
She stared at Mack, her pulse suddenly roaring in her head at his incredulity.
He gave an emphatic shake of his head. “Not the play-it-safe Josephine Butler I know. I mean, you’re obviously not sexually adventurous if you have to put screaming orgasm on your list, right?”
And that was the moment for Josie. His emphatic little shake, dismissing her as asexual, like she was some starfish in a tank he was diagnosing with a severe case of frigidity. That was the turning point. The moment the list stopped being a drunken joke and became an absolute imperative.
She didn’t care how unlikely it was or how long it took, Josie was going to complete the list—come hell or high water.
Or dislocated hip.
She didn’t want to be the play-it-safe girl anymore. And she sure as shit didn’t want to be dismissed as the play-it-safe girl.
Josie folded her arms. “Not sexually adventurous enough?”
He held up his hand, and she could practically see the cogs of his brain spinning as he sought to qualify his statement. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“With being boring in bed?” she demanded. “No…goodness…that sounds like something we all should aspire to.”
“I didn’t say you were boring in bed.”
But he might as well have. “No. But that’s what you meant.” And that’s what being with Curtis had turned her into.
For a crazy moment, she wondered what he’d do if she whipped off her shirt, leaped over the couch, and threw herself at him. Dragged him down to the floor. Straddled him.
A little pulse fluttered in her belly at the pure scandalous notion of it. But then other thoughts, like his being mortified and rejecting her, and possibly flattening an innocent rabbit, threw a bucket of cold water over anything that fluttered.
Both would be excruciating.
And she shouldn’t be thinking about Mack like that.
He shook his head. “No, I didn’t mean that,” Mack bristled. “Don’t put words in my mouth.”
“I’m not. Actually, I should thank you. You’ve really helped me focus. I had absolutely no intention of paying any heed to a stupid sex list made while I was drunk. But I’ve changed my mind. Effective immediately.”
Josie was gratified to see Mack looking like he could bite his tongue off. “Going out and getting yourself laid because you’re pissed at me isn’t very mature.”
“Good. Because I am so over being mature.”
She had spent her entire childhood being the mature one while her mother acted like the teenager, lurching from inappropriate man to inappropriate man, desperately after someone to love her. And the last five years she’d been holed up in a small outback town counseling school students while shacked up with the world’s most beige lover.
Sure, that had been her choice. She’d settled for a nice, safe guy because the opposite kind of man had made her mother’s life continually chaotic. Hell, after living through that she’d craved nice like the worse kind of drug.
But, at twenty-five, after the most unexciting marriage proposal in the entire history of unexciting proposals, she’d suddenly realized her life was dull and predictable, and she wanted more. Deserved more. And do did Curtis. He deserved a woman who was totally into him. Not someone who was only there because he was the safe option.
“Maturity suits you.”
Josie gasped. Was that supposed to make her feel better? Dear God. So, she was boring in and out of bed?
She felt absurdly like bursting into tears.
Without a doubt, she needed to start that list ASAP.
A series of intermittent electronic beeps broke the awkward silence. Mack swore under his breath and tore a pager off his belt. “It’s Sal. I’m late. I have to go.”
Josie scowled. “Oh really? Just when we were having so much fun.”
Mack bounded down the stairs to the clinic to find the waiting room full of pets and their owners. He smiled in their general direction, but his brain was stuck back upstairs with Josie and her sex list. Something he was sure was going to be with him for a long time.
Something he could never now un-know.
He hadn’t handled their discussion too well. Between having exceedingly inappropriate thoughts involving Josie and rebound sex, and implying she wasn’t up for it, he’d managed to make a real hash of it.
Being out of a relationship had made him rusty.
But honestly? Josie and a sex list?
Sal walked out of consulting room two and spotted him. “Mack!” she hissed. “Where have you been? It’s like a freaking zoo out there.”
He looked at his sister. She was a petite blonde with freakishly blue eyes that were currently spitting icy-blue chips at him. Great—she was cranky with him as well. He was on a real roll with the ladies today.
Regardless, he grabbed her by the arm and marched her toward their shared office. “I need to talk to you.”
“We really don’t have time for a chat.”
“It’s important,” he said as he dragged her the last few feet and shut the door after them. He fished the list out of his pocket. “What the hell is the meaning of this?”
Sal took the crumbled paper out of his hand and inspected it. “It’s a sex list,” she said as she handed it back.
He took it, amazed at how matter-of-fact his sister was about it. Like people made sex lists every day. “Yes, I can see that.”
She frowned. “Josie showed you this?”
“No. I found it. Then we had a rather…embarrassing conversation, which ended in her being a little…upset with me.”
“Seems like that’s a pattern for you this morning.”
Mack ignored his sister’s jibe. “What the hell are you doing encouraging Josie like that?”
“Are you kidding? Have you seen what’s on this list?” She pointed at it. “If anyone needs this kind of list, it’s her.”
“Yes, but it’s not like she’s the type to go through with any of it, is she?”
Sal narrowed her eyes at him. “Oh God. Is that what you said to her? Is that why she’s pissed at you?”
He couldn’t quite maintain eye contact as he admitted to the transgression. “I may have implied it wasn’t exactly in her character to—”
Sal whacked his arm. “You bloody great idiot! What the hell did you do that for?”
“Because it’s not?” he said tersely, rubbing his bicep.
“Hey, just because your love life is in the toilet, doesn’t mean hers has to be, too.”
“It’s not in the toilet,” he growled. “It’s just…on a hiatus.” Although given his startling arousal to Josie earlier, it appeared to be well and truly back.
Sal snorted. “Well, whatever you want to call it, it’s no good for you. And Josie’s love life isn’t any good for her, either, and I won’t have you quashing her spirit. So, you’d better apologize to her and let her know you support her and the list fully.”
Mack would rather stick a hot poker in his eye than have another conversation with Josie about the list. The less he had to think about her and sex the better. But Sal’s eyes were glittering at him, and he knew from experience to pick his battles with his sister. He may have had to push, bully, harass, drag, and cajole her back from the edge of oblivion five years ago, but she’d come back with a vengeance that few ever messed with.
“Fine,” he huffed. “I’ll apologize. But don’t blame me when this ends in disaster.”
Sal laughed and shook her head at him. “Jesus, you sound a hundred years old. You so need to get lucky.”
