12
An Issue of an Adult Nature
Jack had a problem with his erection.
He’d seen the commercials for those pills, sure, but he was having the “other” kind of trouble. Namely that the sumbitch wouldn’t lie down when Mari was nearby. Something about the warmth of her presence and how it settled over him like the soft touch of hands. And his dick, dumb handle that it was, didn’t know the difference between that and actual hands.
Probably because it had been too long since it felt the touch of anything but his own rough palm.
He’d been watching a lot more porn to combat it, but at this point, he wasn’t sure if that was part of the solution, or part of the problem.
He always watched on his laptop with headphones on; everything else felt too exposed. The best were the videos with locker rooms. Something about the idea of walking in on an undressed girl and have her not be disgusted or shrieking for him to get out, but excited and happy to see him. Welcoming. It turned his crank something fierce.
That and cars.
He loved everything about sex in cars. And, lately, trucks.
Me and Mari alone on the worksite, in my foreman’s truck. Laying her across that big bench seat . . .
He tried not to fantasize about her that way. Knew it wasn’t right. It felt invasive. Like he could see right through the wall between his motel room and hers.
When he heard her shower turn on, sometimes he had to leave the whole damn motel to keep from thinking about her undressing so near to him. And once—a shameful, exciting once—he got in his shower at the same time and let his imagination run wild.
He came so hard he hit the shower wall with his response. Afterward, blushing, he’d cleaned it up with his own rags that he then threw out. Driven to the store and found that Comet stuff to make sure he got it all out of the grout. Not because he was really worried the half-hearted cleaning staff at the motel would be able to tell what he’d been doing in there. But more because he didn’t want to be the kind of guy who didn’t know about cleaning products.
Mari had laughed off his lack of knowledge at grout-cleaning methods, but she hadn’t been surprised, either. Jack had an idea that the ex who’d called her a flirt probably had left most of the cleaning to Mari. He didn’t want to be like that.
Hell, he didn’t want to be like this. Horny as holy fuck, just, all the time. His eyes straying to Mari’s ass when they were at work. Her hips, the little inward nip of her waist. The line of her throat and the shining silver threads in her chocolate-dark hair. It was getting so bad that even her small footprints in the dirt could get him excited.
He was disgusting.
She’d visited his room once. Once, and probably only sat on his bed because the chairs were less comfortable than a sidewalk. She’d casually watched a little TV with him and he was returning the favor by imagining her in every steamy locker-room or classic-car fantasy he’d ever had. Mari deserved better than that.
She was so effortlessly elegant. Despite his utter lack of social graces, she might somehow even be willing to be friendly with him, if he could keep the situation in his pants under control for five frigging minutes.
Even then, he knew she’d never be on his bed for anything more than sitting to watch TV.
There were 86,400 seconds in a day, and he was spending about 85,000 of those thinking of her. But Jack was not so stupid as to believe that Mari was spending any of those seconds thinking of him.
Mari had a problem. And the problem was Jack’s arms.
It had gotten very hot that week, topping 105 more often than not. Most of the guys wore long sleeves to protect their skin, but once it hit the triple digits, Jack didn’t seem to be able to stand those and went back to short sleeves. The arms thus revealed were shiny and sweat slicked, the sharp muscles soon slashed with burns from where he brushed against the metal of the tower. And it was probably really twisted of her to find that sexy, but the sheer manliness of it, the way he just didn’t even bother about the pain . . . well, she’d probably stepped on four endangered species just that morning, watching his naked biceps.
She couldn’t stop thinking about how she’d gone to Jack’s room, bold as anything, and he hadn’t thrown her out. She’d had to clench her hands around her beer to hide their trembling, making the silliest small talk about the TV show so she could appear confident and casual. It had been a risk, just a guess, and if she guessed his feelings wrong, she would have been crushed. Instead, she’d dispelled the awkwardness of both of them feeling unwanted.
Brad had not been right about her.
Her instinct for years had been to keep to herself and spare others her company. Brad loved her, and even he could barely put up with her. He was, he’d told her time and again, the only one who would ever want her.
Jack had jarred her out of that mode of thinking because she could see him feeling unwanted in exactly the same way. And he was wrong. She knew it even if he didn’t. Even when he was shouting or in a towering rage, it was because he had integrity and wanted to do the right thing, in his work and for his men. And when they were off the job site, out of his element, he was quiet. Always hesitant to speak or impose himself on anyone, even though she could tell his men idolized him and were bowled over and terribly nervous the one time he’d deigned to have lunch with them. Maybe that lunch had helped, too, because he didn’t seem upset with them as often as when she first started.
She glanced over to where they were all standing around the tower plans, Jack’s shoulders wide under his plaid work shirt. He flipped a hammer absently in his hands while he talked.
He hadn’t thought she was too forward to come to his room. Hell, he hadn’t even thought she was flirting. I know you didn’t mean it that way. The problem was, when he’d brought it up, she felt an odd little pang and she couldn’t have said whether she wanted him to interpret her visit “that way.” She hadn’t thought that far ahead.
Then again, if he wanted her that way, it seems like he automatically would have assumed she was flirting. So many men did, if she so much as smiled at them. Her head began to hurt trying to decode it all, and she winced as she wandered a little farther from the site.
She chewed on the inside of her lip, sneaking glances back toward him. He was moving across the site now, his muscular strides gobbling up ground. His nervousness around her, the way his eyes would catch on her and then flick away . . . she’d thought maybe he was interested in her. Sexually, at least, if not in her personality. But perhaps that was just her libido’s wishful thinking.
She tugged at her sleeves, squaring her shoulders as she resolved not to lose the thread of her good mood. He’d welcomed her into his room, and platonic or not, he hadn’t been aggravated by her company. That was the main thing. A solitary life was the safest choice for her, she knew that.
But it didn’t mean she didn’t wish she could have more sometimes. Didn’t mean that every HGTV show featuring a house with a porch didn’t fill her with longing. Didn’t mean she wasn’t curious to try to determine what those looks meant.
And in the meantime, she’d just have to try to ignore the spark of heat deep in her belly every time her eyes strayed back to his bare, glistening biceps.