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WHEN THE CARPENTER knocked on the door, I was expecting someone else. I mean, I knew a carpenter was coming, I just didn’t expect someone like him. I figured someone older. But Brody Maines isn’t old. He’s older than my nineteen years, but probably only by five or so.
I’m holding my ginormous science textbook in front of me like a shield. Not that it could help much—neither the book itself or the knowledge inside can help me now.
I’m over my head.
Brody is a big man—he has to be over six-feet-tall by three or four inches, and his muscles look like they are currently trying to tear out of his t-shirt. From a scientific perspective, which is usually my only perspective, he’s an excellent specimen of the male species. His waist-to-chest ratio affirms the correct V shape to indicate a higher level of testosterone and correlating dominance. His square jaw and ridged brow also indicate that he is likely in high demand as a mating partner.
While my knowledge of biology is strong, it is not helping me communicate at this moment. I am better with books than people. But the books are right when it comes to sexual selection. I want to have this man’s babies just by looking at him.
We stand in the doorway, me on one side, him on the other, an awkward silence filling the space between. Instead of forming actual words, all I can do is blink up at him.
Way, way up.
He is all man in a way an inexperienced girl like me, even with my lack of people skills, knows is trouble. He radiates power and a kind of dominance that makes me weak in the knees. I feel overpowered by his presence, but I want to be overpowered. It is quite disconcerting.
His eyes are gray, no that’s not right. They’re too dark to be called gray. Maybe charcoal is a better description. And they are focused on me.
I really should be saying something. Like “hello” or “come in.”
But I get sidetracked by his hair. It’s thick and a color that’s not blond, but not brown either. It appears to be silky soft. It occurs to me that I’ve never touched another person’s hair. In all the years I’ve been alive—that can’t be right can it?
Yes, I suppose it is.
My father is not affectionate with me. Or perhaps I am not affectionate with my father. I love him. But we’re not close that way. And I have never been the slumber party kind of girl, so no hair braiding with my friends. And well, my lack of hair touching opportunities with boys in high school was not a surprise to me or the boys I went to school with.
College has turned out no differently at this point.
I’m just an odd girl. I always have been. I’m too serious. Too studious. And too introverted to break out of that mold now.
So if Brody’s hair looks silky soft to me, I don’t have prior experience to base that on. It’s just a hypothesis.
I have a lot of those. Unanswered suppositions.
His eyebrows are drawing together like he’s confused. Which is my fault because I’m handling answering the door in a very weird way. Trust that I can take any situation and turn it into something awkward. It’s a gift.
His cheek bones are sharp, his nose a little crooked, but his lips make my insides flutter. The bottom one is plumper than the top, and it makes me want to bite it. Since I’ve never bitten anyone before, nor had the urge to, I don’t know why it feels like instinct.
Bringing my gaze down, it lands on his hands. They are massive. They look so strong. Like he could crush things with them, but I know, instead, he uses them to create things. Beautiful things. My dad, who is by nature a collector of beautiful things, hired Brody to put a built-in desk in his office like the one he saw at his friend’s home office. My dad didn’t care how much it cost. He didn’t even try to negotiate. That is unusual. Not his competition to one up his friend—that’s normal for my dad. It’s the not negotiating a price down part that is off his normal baseline behavior. He must really want that desk. I saw pictures of some of Brody’s pieces, and he is an artist with a good reputation for his work.
I bet he has a bad reputation though, too. I can’t stop thinking about how his rough fingers would feel on my untouched skin. I’m getting wet and it’s embarrassing. This getting wet thing is a bit new to me as I’ve only started recently. Delayed onset of sexuality has hindered my ability to fit in with my peers for years. And now that it’s here, I don’t have anyone to talk to about it. People my age have been dealing with this for a long time. It would be strange for me to approach someone about it anyway.
Brody looks at me like I’m a wild animal he’s trying to coax out of a trap. He puts his hands in front of him so I can see them. He inclines his head to look less aggressive. “You’re Megan, right? Did your dad forget to tell you I was coming? I can wait out here while you call him.”
“Uh.” Speak, Megan. Speak. I’m just dumbstruck. Which is ironic considering my brains are really my only asset.
“You okay?” His jaw squares like he’s clenching it, and he looks beyond my shoulder into the house. “Are you afraid of me or is something else scaring you? Is someone in your house?”
Before I can tell him nothing is wrong but my inability to act like a normal person in the presence of a male of my species, he pushes past me, blocking me between the doorway and his ridiculously large body. He smells like sawdust and evergreen.
Nobody has ever offered to stand between me and trouble before. I’ve never felt so safe or protected. I file the feeling away to investigate again later. When my heart slows and I resume measured breathing and can think straight. Likely not until Brody leaves.
“I’m fine,” I answer, closing the door and leaning against it. “There’s nothing going on in here. I’m just a dork.”
He turns, his gaze taking me in from head to toe. His eyes seem to push into me, pulling out secrets. I can’t catch my breath.
Wow. He is just wow. So intense, so ruggedly handsome. And burly. He takes up so much room as he dominates the space around him.
“Why do you think you’re a dork?” he asks finally.
I shrug. Perhaps he knows nothing about fashion, because one look at my outfit could probably answer that for him. But that’s not all. “I don’t have a lot of social skills.”
He shrugs back. “I don’t like people much either.”
“It’s not that I don’t like people. I just don’t know how to act around them. I say stupid things.” Like now. “It’s worse with boys.”
“Good thing I’m not a boy then.”
That sounds like flirting. Is he flirting with me? I can’t be sure. It is the closest I’ve ever come to flirting though.
Who am I kidding? No guy with biceps that thick would flirt with me. My stupid hormones. I don’t know what to do with all these new feelings he’s churned up inside me. Because suddenly, I can picture what it would be like to be under him. To have all his attention on me. To be completely filled by him.
Heat pulses between my legs in time with my heart. I am achy and wet and this has never, ever happened to me so strongly before.
The room is so hot. Or maybe it’s just me. I’m burning up. I feel needy and want things I don’t know how to name.
Maybe after he leaves, I’ll visit that porn site again. I’ve been trying to understand sex. Textbooks only go so far. It’s not like I’m getting much help from guys my own age. They’re like this whole other alien species to me. I can observe them, make what I think are reasonable deductions about their behavior, but the interacting part never seems to go the way I think it will.
I hear girls talking about sex like it’s this great thing, but until Brody knocked on my door, I never felt the sexual attraction they would discuss. Perhaps now that my body has responded this way to an actual person, the porn clips will make more sense. I want to learn how to be aroused and cause arousal in someone else. This will probably require that I spend time outside of class doing things other than studying.
So tonight, after Brody leaves, instead of spending my evening reading the new book I bought about world history, I will try to masturbate while thinking of Brody. My hypothesis is that the way he makes me feel standing here while he is fully clothed will still stimulate me later when I allow myself to imagine him naked. If that is true, then I will once again get wet, and this time when I stimulate my clitoris, I will be able to achieve an orgasm.
It will be my first.
It occurs to me that I am applying the scientific method to making myself come and that perhaps this is why nobody has shown any interest in me as of yet. I am not able to just let go, stop thinking. I don’t think it’s an attractive trait to young men. Or maybe any men.
Masturbating while thinking of Brody and watching pornographic images is probably as close as this girl will ever get to sexual satisfaction.