“Yeah, until she wants to suck someone else. I hear everything about her, man.”
Byron released me, and I didn’t like it. Not at all. Not when I saw his so clear blue eyes darkening with an anger I saw once when he was a breath away from strangling one of his friends.
Byron’s white t-shirt stretched as his muscles flexed more than before. He closed the space between him and Ryan, not caring one bit of the height difference, and at the moment, I couldn’t see it with all the strength Byron was exuding. I hugged myself, not sure what to do now that I unleashed this.
“I hate it when someone makes a move on my girl.”
Ryan swallowed loudly, but bravely kept his ground. “I knew her before you did, and since you’re not married, she’s fair game.”
“Not in my world. I’m a soldier, and in my book, when a girl is taken, she’s fucking taken.”
“I … But … I didn’t know so there’s no harm. Right?” he said, both hands up in surrender. He wasn’t looking at me anymore.
“Stay away from her,” Byron replied very slowly. “I mean it. Got it?’’
Ryan’s eyes widened some more, and he nodded, barely glancing my way before he left like a coward. He even looked back twice to be sure he wasn’t being followed. Scowling at his retreating back, all the tension left my body, making my muscles turn all sluggish.
Without a word, we started walking back to the parking lot.
“I deserve a back rub,” Byron said, breaking the silence, and my wandering thoughts. I had always seen Ryan as a strong guy, but right then, the myth crumbled. I wasn’t sure what to think about it.
I shook my head and frowned. “What? Why?”
He bumped my shoulder with his, all playful. “Weren’t you there just minutes ago? That tool was about to piss his pants.”
I rolled my eyes at his macho talk. He was such a guy. “Oh, please.”
He halted my steps and stopped us in the middle of the parking lot as some cars were driving past us, honking, and people flipped us the middle finger. “Bridge, he turned green when I told him I’m a soldier and that I hate it when a guy made a move on my girl. So fucking fun.” He laughed, his blue eyes sparkling with amusement.
“Glad you enjoyed yourself,” I mumbled, but I was secretly mesmerized by his face. He was always gorgeous but right now, as his eyes were laughing and his plump lips were turned up. His whole face was a light in a way I rarely saw. I could see the guy I was sure he was before he went to Afghanistan.
“Hey, you asked me to help you. What’s going on, now?” His smile was fast disappearing, replaced by some kind of annoyance I could only understand.
I waved him off and started walking again. I weaved between the cars parked and bumped my hip into a side mirror. His car was just at the end of this parking lot. Why did he park so far away? I pushed away my long bangs from my sweaty forehead.
“Bridge,” he called me as he ran to catch up with me, his voice bearing his threat, a threat I was sure he would execute if I didn’t talk.
I sighed and shrugged with a frustration I wasn’t used to. “It’s just weird. I was in love with this guy for years. Years! And not only did he use me, made me believe he cared about me for months when I was in high school, but I now also realize that he’s a real pussy.”
He choked on his laugh. “You didn’t just say that.”
I frowned at him and pursed my lips. “So what?”
“Fuck. Sometimes you do sound like a dude,” he said in some mix between awe and amusement. He fished his keys from his pocket and unlocked his car.
“What did you expect me to say?”
He opened his door and climbed in. I followed suit, not fond of the idea of walking back home in this heat. And I wasn’t much of a walker, which could explain why my legs were not toned.
“Nothing. I never know what will come out of your mouth.”
A little smile crept up. “Good. I hate to be predictable.”
He started the car and began driving toward home with our windows down for the wind to refresh us. “Will you give me a back rub?”
I tried to keep the anger out of my voice, but I wasn’t so sure that I was that successful. “Can’t you ask one of the girls you’re fucking? It’d be a good foreplay.”
He shook his head and chuckled. “I can’t believe you.”
“Does that mean I’m off the hook?” I asked with a fake sweet voice, batting my eyelashes at him, making him laugh again.
“No, not at all. As soon as we’re back home, I’ll get rid of my shirt, and I want your little hands on my back.”
“Careful, Lord, I’m starting to think that you do want me to touch you.”
He gazed at me from the corner of his eyes, not really looking away from the road, and it was sexy. He looked good behind the steering wheel with his bare arms lightened by the sun pouring sideways and enhancing the shadows between his muscles. He looked like a real man, the kind who took charge without even thinking. My eyes ran along his body, hugged perfectly by his clothes, and I couldn’t ignore how much I enjoyed the view. I had yet to find a place where he wouldn’t look hot. Tough task.
“Maybe. But don’t tell me you don’t want to know how it would play out if I touched you.”
I stiffened and ignored the ache between my legs and the warmth in my belly. “Not really.”
“Liar.”
“Shut up.”
*
DAY 20
Byron kicked close the door behind him as I threw my handbag to the floor next to the coffee table. The low clink of the things inside it—like my precious, shiny new toy, which was not a sex toy, but my iPhone 5S—made me cringe at the thought of the damage I caused. Ruffles behind me made me pause. I shook my head, bracing myself for some witty-shitty comeback from the Lord of the apartment, but when I turned around nothing left my mouth. I wasn’t even breathing anymore.
The ruffles I heard seconds ago were from him taking off his teeshirt. Just like that. My eyes didn’t stay long on his face, drawn by the view of his naked torso with his well-defined, almost bulky, muscles. Even the weird circular scar on his left pec did nothing to deter his sinful appearance, and the bastard knew it. His smirk got to me, and I wasn’t sure if it was good or bad at this point.
“What are you doing? If you want to start a career as a stripper, I think you should practice somewhere else,” I said, covering my drooling pathetic moment by using my most condescending tone. Not that it did anything to him.
He chuckled, rolled is shoulders, those massive shoulders that I gripped tightly in my most sex-crazed dreams. The muscles played, and I didn’t know where to look anymore. “Back rub. Remember?” he purred more than said, his rich voice turning me on so much more that it wasn’t even funny. I had a hard time not fidgeting.
“Are you kidding? I already told you I’d do the dishes for the rest of my trial time here!” I crossed my arms over my chest and squared my shoulders, ready to fight him on this, not because I sucked at massaging guys―in all the right, funny and less funny places―but I knew touching his bare skin would be a huge mistake. Even if a back didn’t seem like a dangerous place, when the back was Byron’s, it was something else. It wasn’t everyday that you could say that the guy you gave a back rub to had a back so muscular that you could draw a fucking map of all his muscles. That wouldn’t go well; as I was still rilling from the kiss and annoyed out of proportion by his sex life ruining my beauty sleep, it would sure do a weird kind of mix.
“The back rub is tax.” He crossed his arms over his chest, and I died right there. Though, I hid it by pursing disdainfully my plump lips and brushing my long bangs away from my face. The muscles in his arms bulged as his arms crossed over his torso. The sound of his dog tags did nothing to calm me down. In fact, thinking about them made me want to grab them and pull him into me for a scorching kiss. I was out of my mind, and I blamed it on the lack of sleep due to his loud conquests. It was like a cold shower.
“Fi
nd someone else, Lord.”
“Come on, Lonie,” he taunted me, his clear blue eyes sparkling mischievously.
“Don’t call me that.”
“Why, Lonie?”
The muscles in my jaw tensed, and I looked away. “Because Ryan used to call me that, making me think that he loved me. The first time he called me Lonie was when he confessed his love, and every time that I hear that fucking nickname, I remember the pain I felt when he mocked me at the graduation ceremony. I realized how much of a fool I’d been.”
“Fuck, Bridge. I’m sorry.” His voice was low, almost like a whisper, and it warmed the cold bite in my heart. Bridge as a nickname was ridiculous, but it was something genuine. It was something coming from a real guy, who didn’t give a shit about what others might think about him because he was fine with himself, with his lifestyle, and I respected that.
The weight and heat of his hand on my bare shoulder brought me back, and once again oxygen wasn’t passing through my lips. He was going to kill me by asphyxia without even knowing it. I could feel every one of his strong fingers. I could feel the callouses here and there, and yet he wasn’t even moving his hand. It was firmly placed on my round shoulder, and I didn’t dare move.
“Bridge, I’m sorry. I was being an ass.”
I looked up and meet his blue eyes dotted with silver, and the concern in them mellowed me ― exactly what I didn’t want. I wrinkled up my nose at him and shook his hand away from me before I took a step back and away from his heat and his … sexyness. Security distance. I needed a big ass perimeter.
“You can apologize by letting me off the hook. No back rub.”
“I want your little hands on me, Bridge. Now.”
I glanced around us, praying that someone―even a thief at this point―was hiding behind the sofa to cut me some slack and give me the time to recollect. But no such luck. We weren’t being robbed, and I was still facing a muscular guy expecting a back rub. I was unlucky because I was attracted to him, and he was straight. And I was on a trial here, which meant that I had to be the better person. Maturity wasn’t fun. At least when you’re a teenager and you jumped the bones of a guy, you could blame the new found hormones. Now, not so much even if my hormones were having a world war kind of battle inside my body, he was making my blood boil and causing me to have goosebumps on my skin.
“I can’t.”
Byron rolled his eyes and sighed like I was a real pain in the ass. “Seriously? Don’t play the prude, Bridge. It doesn’t suit you.”
“I’m not!”
“Good! Then, follow me.” He walked past me and down the narrow hall toward … his bedroom. Bedroom! What kind of back rub—or rub—was he waiting for?
“Where are you going?” The panic in my voice was loud and clear, and it halted his steps. He turned around and shrugged.
“It’s easier to do this on my bed.”
I watched his face, trying to find there some kind of devilish scheme, but I found nothing. He was seriously not seeing any problems with having me on his bed after the kiss almost two weeks ago. He wasn’t concerned about the fact that I’d have to give him a back rub on his bed, a back rub being a well-known kind of foreplay. I didn’t know if I should be relieved or offended. But that proved something, he didn’t care one bit about the kiss. Nothing. Nada.
“I’m not getting on your bed.”
“Why’s that?”
“It’s just … I … I’m your roommate, not your replacement-until-your-booty-call-is-here.”
He walked to me in two strides and grabbed my head, delving his hand in my short cut hair. He was intense and I was … wobbling. “If you think for one second that you’re a booty call, you’re mistaken, London.” His eyes traveled down my face and stopped longer on my parted lips. Then, I saw something that made my breath stagger. His eyes darkened, and I knew it wasn’t with anger. Wow. “Another girl would have been in my bed, naked and wet, for a while, and she’d been out of this place for a while, too.”
“How should I take that?”
“That you’re more than a booty call. That you’re … you.” He released me and resumed his walk to his bedroom. He looked back once and just that look, authoritative and hot, made me move without another word. I followed him in his small bedroom.
It was as neat as the only other time I went inside―the night of the kiss. Byron sprawled on his bed and messed with his top sheet. He positioned himself on his stomach, his face on his pillow and his hands under it. His back stretched, and I walked to the bed. The last time I felt so nervous and unsure was when I lost my virginity with Ryan in his father’s SUV.
But I was almost a twenty year-old woman now! I wasn’t a virgin, I wasn’t innocent, and I sure wasn’t the kind of girl who turned her back to a challenge. I knew this thing was another one of Byron’s challenges. I wasn’t sure if it was something to try to drive me away or if he enjoyed toying with me, and I didn’t care. I was known to be challenging in all senses of the word, and that was why I was so difficult. I wasn’t about to back down. It was just a fucking back rub! Nothing major after all. Just my palms and fingers on his skin, molding his muscles into submission.
I took a deep breath and climbed on the bed beside him, my left thigh plastered against his hip as I stretched to put my hands on his back. There wasn’t something like a bolt of electricity coursing through me, or something ridiculous like that. No, what I felt when my soft skin touched his hot skin was something worse. Something real. Something that will bite me in the ass one day. Lust. Complete lust that echoed everywhere through my body and mostly between my legs.
His skin was so smooth and hot. His muscles felt hard and unyielding under my ministrations, and I was trying very hard to not look at his body. Or his ass, still covered by his jeans, but it was on full display for my eyes only. That I could ogle all I wanted without getting caught. Though, it would only add to my weakening resolve.
“That’s how you give a back rub, Bridge?” he mumbled in his pillow, not moving. When he talked, I felt it under my hands, his voice rumbling inside him.
“What now?”
Without looking, he grabbed my left wrist and tugged until I was almost sprawled over him. I shot upward like someone was poking me on my most ticklish spot and straddled his hips while he was still on his stomach. I could feel his ass, very hard and calling for some poking of my own.
“That’s how you can give a proper back rub.”
I looked at his light brown hair with my mouth hanging open. I was flabbergasted. He got me with my thighs open, and I was pretty sure that this fact wasn’t lost on him. This guy was dangerous, but it had nothing to do with his military training.
“You should have told me that you wanted me to be all over you,” I said after a while as I started my back rub from the beginning.
If I was being honest, he was right. Giving a back rub like I was starting to do was not the best option.
“You’re not that kind of girl.” His voice was gruff between sighs. Even when he was sighing, he sounded sexy. I needed to stop playing this game with him. I wasn’t even his type of girl!
“Because I don’t bat my eyelashes like I’ve got some dirt in my eyes while using a voice even a five year-old girl would be ashamed of?”
He chuckled and I gripped his shoulders, afraid to fall face down. He tensed, and I released my grip. His shoulders were a thing to behold. I wondered what it would be like to claw at them while … I can’t believe I was starting to imagine that. What was wrong with me?!
“That, and you’re real. You created your very own category, Bridge, and that’s a fucking good thing.”
My throat was closing, but I needed to finish this back rub and get the hell out of his bedroom. Soon. I knitted his muscles in the middle of his back, my hands gliding softly but with the right amount of pressure to make him sigh again. Goosebumps appeared on his golden skin, and I felt flustered.
“Does that mean that you’re keeping me, and we can forg
et the trial?”
“Dream on.”
“You’re an ass.”
I finished the rest of the back rub and jumped off his bed as he slowly sat up. As soon as his eyes locked on mine, only one thing was on my mind. Get. The. Hell. Outta. Here. Now. Everything in him was screaming hot sex. His eyes were hooded, his body was half-naked, his muscles were playing softly to entice me more than I already was and his lips were turned up in a wicked smile, the kind that was too naughty to be seen by underage girls.
“I have to go to sleep.”
He arched an eyebrow and chuckled. The fucker chuckled at me. I pursed my lips, and his eyes landed on them. “It’s not even five in the afternoon.”
I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t find a come back to save me. I tilted my nose up in the air and shrugged. “Yeah, well, I’m tired.”
“I don’t believe you.” He stood up and walked to me. “I think you can’t take this sexual tension between us. It scares you because you want me. Badly,” he whispered in my ear, his breath brushing my neck. He pulled back just enough to look at me. He was so close that it made me think about the feel of his lips on mine, the way he tasted.
I straightened my back and snickered at him. “Are you trying to lure me to your bed, Lord? Is it because you want me to do the things I did to Jordan?”
“Don’t talk about him.”
“Why? Because—‘’
“Because that son of a bitch doesn’t deserve you, and because I don’t want to think about that,” he retorted, cutting me off before I could even finish my sentence. His eyes blazed with the same anger I saw earlier, the kind that empowered all his features to turn them into hard and sharp lines. Even angry he looked insanely good.
“I’m not a good girl, Byron. Stop this white knight thing.”
“Good girls are no fun.”
I looked away and took a few steps away from him and toward the door, which was still open. I flew away and closed the door to my bedroom. I was breathing so hard and loud in the quiet room that it was painstakingly obvious that I was both turned on by his alpha male behavior and afraid of what could happen. I could lose myself to him. He could crush me; he could break the last part of me still holding together.
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