She nodded approvingly. “As long as you tase him between the legs, then yes.”
“Where else would you tase somebody?”
She smiled. “The nipple or the asshole, maybe?”
“Damn,” I said. I turned to face her. “I think I might actually like you.”
“Likewise. I’m Claire.” She reached up to shake my hand.
“Lilith.”
I thought I saw something strange flash across her eyes, almost like triumph, but I dismissed the idea. It wouldn’t make sense, and I wasn’t great at reading people, anyway.
William came rushing out of one of the elevators. His hair was a mess and he looked like he had a rapidly forming black eye. Claire ducked a little farther under the counter and pressed a finger to her lips at me.
“I’ve seen that before,” I said, pointing to his eye. “It’s one of those African bugs. The ones that lay eggs under your skin. I think you have like three days before flies start bursting out of your face.”
He groaned and pressed his palm to the spot with a wince. “Unless African bugs have creepy, pedophile mustaches and are built like Russian heavyweight champions, I don’t think so.”
“Wow,” I said dryly. “Somebody punched you? I can’t imagine why anyone would ever think of hitting you, or why they would stop at one punch.”
“Not in the mood for your lame jokes, Lilith.” He leaned over the desk. “Coincidentally, it was the guy I told you to watch out for.”
“So he has a wet noodle neck and a Russian heavyweight champion build? I’m having trouble picturing the combination, sorry.”
“Whatever, maybe he wasn’t that big. He caught me by surprise is all. Sucker punch. It's fine. I put some crab meat in his coat pocket, one of the little ones on the inside no one ever uses. Give it a couple days and he's going to be wondering what the hell smells. Bonus points if he throws it in a closet and forgets a few weeks."
“You were carrying around crab meat because…”
“I wasn’t. I made a comment. He punched me. I grabbed some food from the buffet, found the coat rooms, and bribed the guy to tell me which coat was his. Any more questions?”
“Is this going somewhere?”
“I mean, a normal person would apologize for letting that thug up without warning me. That was kind of the one job I gave you.”
“I’m sorry I let a Russian, wet-noodle necked thug punch you in the face.”
“That’s all I was looking for. Now, are you going to introduce me to the woman hiding under your desk, or do I need to do it myself?”
Claire stood up with surprising grace and brushed off the back of her dress before reaching to shake William’s hand. “I’m Claire.”
“William,” he said. “Do I know you from somewhere?”
“I get that a lot.” She laughed a little nervously. “I should really get going, but hey,” she turned to grab a post-it note and a pen. She scribbled down her phone number and stuck it to my forehead with a grin. “We should grab coffee sometime.”
I peeled the note from my forehead and stuck it on the desk with no intentions of ever calling her again. I had a cat with ridiculous, stubby little legs. What did I need friends for? Besides, I had a best friend. She just wasn't exactly in the country for a couple of years. But I had time.
"Let me help you out," William said to Claire. He grabbed another post-it note and wrote down my number. He handed it to Claire with a wink. "Trust me. This one will never call you. You have to win her over by brute force. Can't say the payoff is really worth the work though. The kid practically loves me now, and sometimes I wonder why I bothered getting her to—”
“You’re a moron.”
He looked at Claire like I’d just professed my love for him. “See what I mean?”
Claire looked at the note and smiled. “Well, thank you. It was nice to meet you. Both of you,” she added before leaving.
William made a face after she left. “I swear I know her from somewhere.”
“Don’t stare too hard or I’ll tell Hailey.”
“Hailey is comfortable enough in our marriage that I can look at other women. Besides, looking at other women just reminds me how much hotter Hailey is. Take you, for example…”
“Careful,” I said. “A few more poorly chosen words out of you and you’ll be hanging in my meat-locker.”
“Why does that sound vaguely sexual? I think I’m going to gag.”
“Maybe because you have the sense of humor of a middle school boy and everything sounds sexual to you?”
“Entirely possible, yeah. Anyway, if you didn’t get pissed off so easily, it wouldn’t be as fun to mess with you. You bring it on yourself.”
“And I only work for you because I eventually plan to overthrow you and build an empire out of your bones.”
He nodded appreciatively. “I like the ambition. You keep that up and you might go somewhere.”
“Speaking of going somewhere. Can I leave now since I already screwed up the dumb job you gave me?”
“Go, little one. I’m sure you have some Black Arts to practice, or maybe a seance to perform.”
I sighed. "Sometimes I wish I really did all these twisted things you think because I'd absolutely put a curse on you. Maybe one that put your dick on your forehead, for starters."
He rolled his eyes. “Har, har. Dickhead. Yeah, that’d be such a knee slapper.”
“No, just so you’d have balls in your eyes all day.”
I spent the rest of the night cramming for a business final I had in a couple of days. Most of my classwork was online work, which was a big plus. I'm sure if I told William what I was doing, he'd give me time off. He'd probably even let me off the hook with a lame joke or two, and then he'd forget about the entire thing in a day. But there was the off chance that he'd get all weird and say he was proud or something. That was enough to keep me from telling him.
Worse, he might have some kind of connection and secretly arrange for a perfect job opportunity to open up for me. I wanted my badass business career to mean I had worked my ass off and earned it. I didn’t want it to be a handout.
I must have dozed off because I stirred awake and found a string of drool connecting my face to my desk. I heard the sound of a doorknob shaking across the hall and muttered cursing. I wiped the sleep from my eyes and stumbled toward my door. I opened it quietly and peeked through the crack to see what was going on.
Bob was standing in front of his door with his hands on his hips, and he looked pissed.
“Having a talk with your door?” I asked.
He turned sharply, and for a second, his eyes looked wild, like he thought he was about to have to defend himself. He relaxed when he saw it was me.
“My key apparently doesn’t work anymore.”
I stepped into the hallway and stuck my hand out. “Give it here. I’ve lived here long enough to know all the tricks with these stupid locks. Miss Lindsey is too cheap to get new keys, so they all eventually grind down to nubs like this. I’ll—”
My stomach sank when I heard my door click shut behind me. Shit. A few months ago, it had decided to become a self-closing door, and I'd had to develop a habit of jamming something in the doorframe so I wouldn't get locked out without my keys. Apparently, Bob Smith had a mild brain-numbing effect on me.
I tried the handle on my door. Of course, it was locked. One of the extra latches inside also had a tendency of swinging into the locked position if the door closed too hard.
“Locked out? That makes two of us,” he said.
I sighed. “You’re not locked out. You just don’t know how to work your key. Give it.”
He looked skeptical but handed me the key. I stole a quick look at him and saw he was wearing a sweat-stained t-shirt and shorts. His body was still a little slick with sweat, too.
“Why are you all gross?” I asked as I slid the key into the lock.
“I was working out.”
“In the middle of the night?”
>
“I like the gym when it’s empty.”
I pushed the key up a little, testing with different amounts of pressure as I carefully tried the doorknob. I found the sweet spot eventually and got the door open.
“Tada,” I said. “Now you can go take the shower you desperately need.”
He looked down at me as he took the keys, and I could practically see his thoughts churning.
I realized how close we were standing as he pinned me in his doorway, and I could smell him. I expected it to be a bad smell, but I should’ve known better. Somehow, he managed to actually smell all good and manly even though he was drenched in sweat. I’d never been a sweaty-guy kind of girl, but I could feel myself being converted every time a drip of perspiration decided to roll down his clavicle and disappear toward that hard, sculpted chest of his.
My mind flashed with images of fingertips scraping paths across sweaty, muscular skin lit only by what little moonlight filtered in through the windows. I imagined being enveloped by that manly scent that was washing over me like a drug.
“I’m supposed to leave you out here by yourself in the middle of the night after you rescue me?” he asked.
“I can go bug Miss Lindsey for the master key.”
"No, you can't. She's out of town until next week. Remember?"
“I can call a locksmith,” I said.
“It’ll be a few hours at this time of night.”
“If you want to invite me inside your apartment so bad, just do it, asshole.”
He crossed his arms and leaned against the doorframe with a grin. “What’s the deal with you, anyway?”
“Right now? You’re the deal with me. If you knew how to work a key, I wouldn’t be trapped in the hallway with my stinky, sweaty neighbor.”
“Stinky?” he asked. He moved a little closer, still wearing that grin. “You must like stinky, then, if the look on your face is any indication.”
I took a step back and shook my head. “If I look happy, it’s just because I was fantasizing about kneeing you in the balls.”
He grinned, and I had no doubt he could see straight through my lie. “So you admit you were fantasizing about my balls?”
“And their destruction, yes.”
“Somehow, I think if you got your hands between my legs, you’d have other ideas.”
“And somehow, I think you must normally get away with talking to people like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re so cocksure and confident, like you can just… assume everybody you meet wants to choke your sausage.”
He chuckled, but his eyes held the fiery smolder as they bore through me. “I don’t assume everybody wants to fuck me. Just the ones who look at me like that.”
I tried to picture my dad’s face on Bob’s body instead of the obnoxiously well-crafted spectacle he called a head.
Bob’s eyebrows shot up and he flashed a crooked smile. “Okay. I give. That’s not the face of somebody who is looking to get lucky, but since I smell so bad, I’d better hop in the shower. I’m not letting you wait out in the hallway in the middle of the night. It’s not safe. Come sit on the couch. You can grab a snack or a beer out of the fridge.”
“Yeah, because if I stay out here some strange, perverted man might try to kidnap me and take me into his apartment. But if I come with you, I can skip the guesswork, right?”
He licked his lips and barely held a smile at bay. “I think I like you.”
“I think you like yourself more.”
He laughed. “Do you ever let that mouth of yours rest? Not that I would,” he said quietly, eyes drifting down my face to my mouth.
I felt my resistance start to crumble. There was only so much open flirtation I could fight before some of it slipped through the cracks and warmed my chest. I knew there was some snarky, sarcastic remark floating around in my brain, but the only thing I could find was a noncommittal grunt. I swallowed hard, then muttered something about being able to handle myself in a hallway for a few hours.
“I’m sure you can, but all the same. Come on.” He gestured for me to step inside.
I didn't plan to obey him but found my feet moving anyway. Before I knew it, I was inside, and it very much felt as though I'd crossed an invisible threshold—one that I’d been fighting the desire to cross since long before I met Bob.
People occasionally tried to get close to me. I pushed back. Sometimes, they tried harder, but I always won. I always managed to scare them off with enough sarcasm or enough snark. Tonight, I’d let Bob win. The worst part was instead of feeling angry about losing, I only felt a little warm and fuzzy.
His apartment was tidy and minimalistic. There were hardly any decorations except a random picture of a rowboat in the hallway that almost looked like a leftover from the previous tenant. Just the bare-bones necessities. "I still think it's more dangerous in here than in the hallway, for the record," I said.
He tilted his head as those grey eyes of his took me in from head to toe. “I’m sure it is, for both of us, but it’s a totally different kind of danger.”
“What do you mean, do you have pet snakes or something? Or worse, a chimpanzee? People think they’re cute until they spend years dressing them like humans. One day your little pseudo-human wakes up, decides he wanted more milk in his cornflakes, and rips your face off. True story.”
He laughed. “No snakes or pseudo-humans.” He looked like he was deciding whether to say something, then decided against it. “Just make yourself comfortable. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
He started peeling his shirt off before he was completely behind the door to the bathroom, and for a split second, I saw every tantalizing inch of his broad, muscular back. I cleared my throat and plopped down on the couch, then immediately got back up to look at myself in a mirror by the entrance.
The shower turned on, and I had to do mental gymnastics to avoid picturing him stripping out of the rest of his clothes as steam billowed around his powerful, sculpted—
I blew out a long, controlled breath. I wasn’t even sure why I was fighting my attraction to him so much. I didn’t like people generally speaking, but I had nothing against penises. Couldn’t I just call it sexual infatuation? I didn’t have to pretend to like him. Maybe I could just imagine he had come in a six-foot-three, silky pink package—the latest model of dildo, complete with a rich bastard attached.
I ran a hand through my hair and leaned back into the couch, sinking deeper. Who was I kidding? I liked the man attached to the penis, too. I liked that he didn’t flinch away from the worst I could give. I liked the way he looked at me. I liked that he seemed like the kind of guy who wouldn’t even give me a second thought, but he looked at me like I was the only person in the world. Yes, he was pretty obviously hiding something. Yes, he’d probably had the world handed to him on a silver platter, and the idea of giving myself to him as easily as everything else irked me, but I liked him.
He had an air of mystery around him. He carried himself with supreme confidence like he'd already conquered the world and didn't have anything left to prove. Then there were conflicting moments of paranoia that didn't mesh with the confidence he wore so well. There was the package, obviously, and the oddness of having your driver's license mailed to you inside an unmarked manila envelope. There was the way he'd chased me down when he caught me watching him and his equally mysterious friends. And there was even the way he'd jumped like he'd been caught doing something wrong when I found him outside his apartment a few minutes ago.
Bob Smith, if that was even his real name, was absolutely hiding something.
I heard a thump from inside the shower and was jolted back to reality. I fumbled for my phone for a few seconds before realizing I didn’t even have it on me.
Awesome. I couldn’t even call the locksmith. I’d need to get back in my apartment before morning, even if it meant battering the door down. Roosevelt was still in there, and he’d stage a one-feline riot if his food wasn’t a few
degrees above room temperature and neatly waiting for him on the table where he could easily knock it all down to the floor and eat it like a barbarian. I’d tried putting it on the floor to begin with once I’d seen his weirdo tendencies, but he liked the power trip of knocking it down. Cats could be assholes.
I hopped up from the couch and tried to gauge my reflection in a framed painting of a rowboat. A rowboat. Was that supposed to be symbolic? If it was, I couldn’t figure the meaning.
I cringed a little at what I could see of my reflection. I always prided myself on not being that girl, the one who has to be perfectly put together for the world to see her, but even I had my limits. My hair was lopsided. My makeup was faded and smeared. I even had a little patch of something that looked like dried drool on my cheek. I grimaced when I thought about how I’d been looking straight into Bob’s eyes like this.
I did a quick once-over, as best as I could with my hands and a little bit of spit shine where it was needed. I wasn’t going to win any beauty pageants, but at least I wasn’t as likely to get mistaken for an escaped mental patient anymore.
The shower water cut off, and I half-jumped my way back to the couch. I rapid-fire cycled through a few positions, trying to find one that made it look like I’d been sitting there, calmly. I sprawled out like I was about to take a nap, decided it was too casual. I sat up, crossed my legs, and templed my fingers. Too serious. I settled for kicking my feet up on his coffee table and resting my hands on the top of the couch. Medium casual.
He stepped out of the bathroom with nothing but a dark gray towel wrapped around his waist. He knew exactly what he was doing, and it pissed me off that it was working too well for me to care.
He had all the muscles. Even the obscure little ones that I was never sure if they were ribs or just extra abs. He wasn’t so built that he was muscle-bound, but he still looked like he could club you, throw you over his shoulder, and carry you back to his cave where he’d show you that fire wasn’t actually man’s greatest miracle.
His Package Page 4
