by Rie Warren
I walked closer, ducking my head to make sure I kept a lock on her unfathomable eyes.
Her hands rose to ward me off. “Nick, I . . .” her voice was rough and lusty, and those hands meant to drive me away surrendered to settle on my shoulders.
I closed my eyes. The feel of her hands on my skin skittered down my chest to my groin and made me wonder what her grasp would feel like on my cock. When Cat’s fingertips skimmed over the muscles of my upper arms, I didn’t move. I hardly breathed. I wanted to groan. I was afraid she’d run if I so much as inhaled. Again. Or slap me. Again.
When I opened my eyes, she licked her lips, leaving them parted and moist, perfect for the taking. Her voice followed, “Nick, I think you’re an absolute asshole.”
Laughter chugged from my belly and what do you know? Her hands skimmed across sweat-slick skin, back up my arms, across my shoulders . . . and all the damn way down my chest.
“I think you rule the roost in the badass barnyard, Wildcat.” I groaned through the words as her hands dipped to my hips where her fingertips dug into muscled indents.
“Are you suggesting we’re even, hon?” Her smile made me think of long, slow lovemaking as it teased out the dimple in her cheek.
My cheek ghosted across hers, brown stubble rasping soft skin. I heard her quick jerk of breath and felt it shudder back out of her. With her crisp white shirt gripped in my hands, I tugged her forward until she was pressed against me from her breasts to hips to thighs. My lips landed right beside her luscious mouth.
“Now we’re even.”
From glacial to volcanic, she melted against me the next second. She moaned, and my body reacted to the needy sounds she made.
“I really want to kiss you right now, Cat.” My lips moved across her skin, so close, so damn close it hurt. “But I’m not sure you want it badly enough. Yet.”
I was all set for fireworks. When her head reared back and her glare flicked up, I figured I better brace myself for the all-out flare-up to come.
The door busted open. Josh stomped inside before he looked up and stopped dead in his tracks. “Am I interrupting something?”
Cat sprang from my arms. I took a more leisurely step away.
She turned toward the desk and then pivoted around again, pulling at the cuffs of her sleeves. “Not at all, I was just checking . . .”
Oh, she was flustered. I decided right then I liked that look on her, almost as much as the one before, when her hands were on my body and she moved against me like hot silk and pure sin.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “She was just checkin’ out the merchandise.”
Cat’s glare swung to me and remained. That’s right, darlin’. Keep your attention right here.
Gerald bulldozed into Josh’s back before forcibly moving his boss aside. He took a deep whiff while grinning at Cat and me. “Pheromones.”
“Hormones, si.” Javier winked, his head popping up behind Gerald’s beefy shoulder.
Aaaand in trooped Leelee. “I swear y’all put somethin’ in the water around here to make women horny and comin’ back for—”
“Tire changes.” Josh smirked.
“Lube jobs.” Gerald piston-stroked his large hand.
“Don’t forget the valve covers.” Javier pushed further into the office, giving Leelee room to sashay up to Josh.
She approached him with a tsk and a smile.
I lounged against the desk, which made Cat huff and skirt to the opposite side. “What’s the occasion?” I nodded at the stack of magazines in Josh’s hands.
“‘Romancing the Stone’ came out in the LitLuv magazine today. Jules just dropped these off.” Josh cranked the bundle of magazines against his chest, blushing up to his short, sandy blond hair.
“Give, give!” Leelee tried to yank them from his arms, but he bulked up with muscle, not giving an inch.
“So y’all followed him in here before he could burn them?” I asked, watching Cat send smiles to all the crew before returning to me with another fuck-off glare.
That got my back up until I remembered playground rules: you always act pissy with the one you really want. Besides, her frigid stare from icy blue eyes was a thousand times hotter than any come-on I’d been given in the past.
“Hounded him in here.” Gerald pulled the red bandana from his big bald head and shined his dome with it.
“It’s only a matter of time before we get our hands on them, muchacho.” Javier took to cleaning the deep-seated grease from his short nails with a toothpick.
“Josh, sug, please?” Leelee begged with a helping of batted eyelashes.
He remained, well, immoveable as a stone. Of course he did. But panic settled into his eyes, which made me all the more curious to find out what Jules had written about our trip to the LitLuv romance writers convention as gay partners.
I decided to try for a little distraction. “Dude, your drawer full of dildos is about to fall open.” I referred to the file drawer of dongs in Josh’s office, fall-out from the boys’ welcome-back-backdoor-lover gag that had included splashing this room with wall-to-wall sex-shop cocks.
“Fuck!” Josh shouted, dropping the mags and spinning to the cabinets, which were in no way compromised.
Before he could turn back around, I leaped on the booty. I passed the contraband copies around.
“Fuck you,” he growled as I accepted a high five from Leelee and knuckle-raps from the guys.
“Oh yeah, check out the cover.” I performed a little show and tell, holding the front of the magazine up for everyone to inspect.
Josh gripped his hair in two fists, his face flaming red.
The cover shot was Playgirl centerfold-worthy—a professional woman’s blue-collar wet dreams come true. I glanced at Cat, making sure she didn’t pay too much attention to the spread of Josh leaning back against the hood of his ’69 Camaro. His chest was on display, he was covered in grease, and his coveralls were open down to his lower groin.
Leelee’s mouth parted. She picked up her own copy and practically plastered it to her face. Josh appeared somewhat mollified by her show of appreciation.
He waved his hand around and muttered, “Fuckin’ A. Just read the damn thing already.”
As if he would’ve been able to stop us anyway.
We camped out in his office, digesting the article about the leading man/ladies man while Josh grumbled and mumbled and paced a new path in the old blue carpet. Cat appeared uninterested at first, but she peeked over my shoulder to read when I started chuckling.
“Love is only a stone’s throw away.” Leelee smiled at her man from where she sat in his chair behind the desk. He strolled to her side, taking her hand in his and stroking her fingers as they curled around his.
Gerald snickered. “Dark horse of the convention? I’ll show that Miss Gem a dark horse.” He pumped his hips.
“I like this one: Josh is hard as stone but with a heart of pure gold,” Javier read the caption under the photo open in front of him.
“Damn, that Tate of yours sure is making you a romantic, huh?” I flipped to the next page of the article without looking up.
Javier swatted my chest with his rolled up magazine. “Chingate, Nicky Love.”
I pointed at Leelee, the other guilty romance party in our midst. “Hey, don’t forget about her.” I might’ve been the veteran writer at the ripe old age of thirty and dirty, but her second book was almost done and bound to be a smashing success.
Leelee rolled her eyes at me and smiled at Javier. Diving back into the article, I read it all, hearing Jules’s over-the-top inflection in every word. The fact she lived just down the road still made me chuckle.
The three-pager wasn’t exactly terrible. Jules had written a very nice article about “Stone’s” and my friendship. She’d focused on the garage instead of concentrating on the farce of our made-up relationship. She’d gone a bit overboard with the Love is only a Stone’s Throw Away idea, mentioning a true-life romance begun at LitLuv but generously
leaving Leelee’s name out of it. Not that Leelee and Josh’s affair wasn’t already common knowledge.
“This is gonna blow your gay cover story sky high though, Nicky.” Gerald tapped the magazine against his thigh.
“Consider it already blown,” I said.
“At least Nicky didn’t blow me.” Josh made a funny.
I was so not laughing. The thought alone gave me nightmares.
Catarina sniffed. “Oh yeah, you’re the romance writer.”
Now that almost made me laugh. I wanted to bust her so bad. Per her big bro Brodie, she knew exactly who I was and owned all my novels. I wasn’t going to call her out right now though. I wanted to savor the moment when I finally turned the tables on her. Or took her on a table. Or maybe from behind, with her waist in one hand, her ass in the other, in the middle of my bed.
The grin on my lips was nothing short of wicked when I said, “Don’t you worry, Wildcat. I know how to get my hands dirty, too.”
She stiffened all over. I was willing to bet her nipples did too. Jesus. Something about being back in the garage made my primal male urges rev up and my southern boy manners take a back seat.
“I told you not to call me that,” she snapped.
It probably wasn’t a smart idea to tell her I called her Wildcat when I came all over my hand, muscles tensing, cock flexing. Or that my palm wanted to be permanently attached to my dick whenever I thought about her. Or that I had Cat Scratch Fever, or that I wanted to see Cat’s tats. And it probably wouldn’t be considered polite to admit I’d come up with a variety of other filthy ways to spin her name. I shrugged instead.
“I want the full spread.” Leelee said.
Josh reached down and grasped her neck. “Babe, you got it in your bed every night.”
“I want to see the rest of the photos and I want copies of them all.” The reddish-gold corkscrews of her hair covered his arm when she leaned back. “I don’t have all the pictures of you almost naked, dirty, in the garage, with . . . tools in your hand.”
“You talk to me like this in front of company?”
Leelee gave a delicate snort. Her fingertips walked up the front of his coveralls. “They’re not company. They’re family.”
“Woman,” he snarled before taking her lips in his.
I glanced away. Gerald clapped. Javier grinned. I dared to look at Cat when Josh and Leelee broke their kiss. Lo and behold: cheeks hot, breath fast, and her gaze fled from mine the second I captured it. Maybe she thought about Nicky lovin’ on her, late at night.
“I should get going.” Cat made for the door.
I clamped a hand around her wrist, pinning her to my side. “There are more porn-grade photographs?” I asked Josh and Leelee while Cat fumed beside me.
Gerald stared at my hand locked on Cat’s wrist with raised eyebrows. Javier openly guffawed.
“For the 2014 LitLuv calendar, Nicky. Josh will be on the cover.” Leelee filled me in.
“How come I didn’t know about this either?”
Josh pulled Leelee up from his chair, sat down, and guided her onto his lap. “It was back in July. You were probably too busy with that chick. What was her name? Fandora?”
“Fangdora?” Gerald added his two cents.
I groaned. Cat finally wrestled free, but she didn’t make another move for the door. The other bystanders were all ears. Giving my best buddy the dude-to-dude distress signal—wide open eyes, gulping guppy mouth—I hoped to keep the con-chick-shit under wraps.
He ignored my SOS, watching me expectantly. Cocksucker.
“Pandora,” I bleated.
Oh yeah. The hucksters yucked it up about that, because Pandora’s . . . Box. Uh huh. So funny, as always.
“Is she still giving you free rides to crazy town?” Josh asked.
Javier sidled over to slap my back “She in loco-land?”
“That’s one way of putting it,” I muttered.
And there was no way I was looking at Cat. Would she be amused, disgusted or . . . Fuck. I looked at her. Her lips were set in a thin line, her shoulders raised up almost to her ears, and I got absolutely no eye contact. Great.
In the expectant silence that followed—and those jokers could expect all they wanted, I wasn’t dishing dirt about Pandora’s box in front of Cat—Leelee slipped out to make a call to Jules Gem for the rest of Josh’s photos. She crossed paths with Ray who hurried inside, kicking the door closed. He had a squalling, squirming, pissed-off bundle of baby girl in his arms and a diaper bag slung over his shoulder.
“Bev’s in the ladies and Emma-J just dropped a monster load. Phones are ringin’ off the hook and customers are three deep.” He pinched his nose with one hand before continuing to speak in a telephone operator voice. “Someone take this?”
This was the crying baby with the crappy diaper.
Josh backed away. “Hell no. I done my time.”
Javier and Gerald were already plugging their noses and wincing. Pathetic.
“For fuck’s sake. Give her here.” I opened my arms for the pass off, diaper bag and all.
Ray did a runner. There probably weren’t even customer demands he needed to see to. Whatever, I had this down by rote. Juggling Emma Jane in one arm while I softly shushed her, I laid the changing pad, wipes, new diaper and toss-away bag out on Josh’s desk, laughing at his strangled oath. Maybe I’d let the little lady smear some shit around for good measure.
Lowering her to the pad, I maintained eye contact. I hummed in a deep tone that got through her screeching. She settled into deeper breathing and hiccups while I swabbed a cool wipe over her red, snotty face.
“There ya go, gorgeous. No need to give Uncle Nicky a hard time, is there?” I smoothed the pad of one finger down her delicate nose. She wrinkled it up and blinked at me with focused eyes. “’Sides, that lady over there—we call her Wildcat, remember that—already has the wrong idea about me. Let’s not add more female hysterics to the mix.”
I heard something between a curse, growl, and giggle from Cat behind me.
With Emma’s onesie unsnapped, the wipes at the ready, and the plastic bag open for imminent waste, I unclasped the sides of her diaper and waited a sec for my eyes to stop tearing up from the fumes.
Gerald waved a hand in front of his face. “Whoa. Ray wasn’t kiddin’ about Emma Jane’s bombs.”
“I’m outta here.” Josh beat a hasty retreat, followed by the two other men.
Wusses.
I breathed in through my mouth and out through my nose, as experience with the dude-man had taught me. Cat seemed unfazed, but then again nothing much rattled her cage, except me.
Quietly soothing Emma-J when she started wailing again, I cleaned the mess from top to bottom quickly and efficiently. I had her snapped up in her pretty outfit with the shit, literally, tidied away within a couple minutes.
“There ya go, little muffin. Damn, you’re a sweet thing when you stop hollerin’.” I grinned at her and she gurgled back. “See? I told you I know how to get my hands dirty,” I said to Cat, who was the only one brave enough to remain in the office with me.
When I turned around, Cat watched the baby, who reached out to press pudgy fingers against my face. Cat looked enchanted by the tiny cooing thing. “You want to hold her?”
She adopted her usual cool mask. “No. I’m no good with kids. And I’m not good for anyone.”
Cat reached for the door and strode out before I could apologize for . . . for what? Offering to let her hold a perfectly harmless baby?
“Well, that went down about as well as your soiled diaper,” I murmured to Emma-J, who gave me a toothless smile in response.
And just because I was annoyed at Cat’s brusque departure, I dumped the smelly bag in Josh’s trashcan then pushed it under his desk. At least that made me laugh. Locating Bev in the reception, I passed her the baby, assuring her Emma had been no trouble at all.
I hit the gents to wash my hands before strolling out back for some fresh air. Lying on
top of one of the picnic tables, I rested with the hot sun on my chest, the warm wood against my back, and visuals of Cat filling my head.
Walking into bay three a half-hour later, I found Javier and Josh inspecting the metal mess of my Chief. I strutted up to them. “What?”
“I might have to charge you rent for keepin’ this eyesore in the garage.” Josh stood with his arms crossed, fighting to maintain a straight face.
“In that case, I might have to start making you pay for my books and you can forget about the autographs, aaand that goes for your crew and their girls—and boys—too.”
Javier rocked back on his heels, laughing.
Josh deflated. “Dickhead.”
“Asswipe.” I cracked my knuckles and got ready to go back to working with my hands in an entirely different way than pecking out words on my laptop to the tune of thousands a day.
Tweedle Dipshit and Tweedle Dumbass didn’t move.
“I ask again: What?” I said.
“Well?” Josh was implacable. His arms flexed, the muscles setting off the new, colorful half-sleeve on his left shoulder and bicep.
That tat on a lesser man might’ve looked girly, what with the multicolored ribbons and the tiny songbirds, but it was a recent addition to the chrome pipes and heart across his left pec. It signified the addition of Leelee to his family—and his heart. Besides, he’d pummel anyone into gravel if they dared call him a girl.
“Huh?” I asked as he continued to look at me with his eyebrows drawn together.
“No te hagas la zángana. What happened with Cat?” Javier looked as skinny as his ever-present toothpick when he stood next to Josh.
“Y’all are seriously waiting around to find out if anything went down between Cat and me?” I hunkered down in exactly the same position as earlier, absolutely fucking determined to get that stubborn lug nut loose. “It wasn’t exactly flowers and candles and seduction. It was me, cleaning up a shitty diaper.”