by Krista Wolf
“No fucking clue,” I sighed dreamily. Boldly I slid one hand up along the inside of his thigh. “But the early bird?”
I closed my hand over his crotch. There was already a significant bulge there, as I squeezed gently.
“Definitely gets the worm.”
Yeah, I was a little forward. And randy. And forward. But the way I saw things, our encounter had been a long time in coming. The obvious breaking point for all our building sexual tension. The culmination of a long, silent courtship.
That, plus you’re horny as hell.
I sure couldn’t argue there. My last serious boyfriend had been almost a year ago. And I hadn’t hooked up with Roger or Dante — my two favorite friends with benefits — in way, way too long.
“So are you going to show me which room is yours?” I purred, pulling him toward the elaborate tiled hallway.
Chase followed only semi-reluctantly, with just enough hesitation to give the illusion of resistance. His grin still betrayed him though. “You know which room is mine.”
“Yeah, but I’ve never seen it from the inside.”
His perfect jaw flexed, but I could see the excitement building. Our eyes were also doing the same thing: drifting freely over each other’s bodies. It was almost as if a wall had come down, like some sort of license had finally been granted to us. Five minutes ago, this kind of gawking would’ve been borderline inappropriate. But now…
“You’re in for it,” Chase growled, sweeping me into him again. His grip was strong and commanding and, let’s face it, made me more than a little bit wet. “You know that?”
“I sure as hell hope so.”
He pushed me against the wall and kissed me harder now, pinning my hands over my head. Our tongues danced. My breath became his breath as I cooed into his mouth and kissed him back.
You sure you know what you’re doing?
Yeah, I was sure. I was about to fuck my boss. Probably.
Probably?
As quickly as everything was progressing, this really wasn’t much of a snap decision for me. I’d decided weeks ago that I’d jump Chase whenever I was given the chance. Yes, it was risking a client. Three good clients, actually. Even so…
The truth of the matter was, I just really didn’t care.
“We’ll have to be quick,” Chase said, glancing over his shoulder.
I sighed dramatically. “Just the words every girl wants to hear.”
“No,” he laughed, “I mean — they’ll be back soon. Nathan and Burke. Nathan for sure, and—”
“Chase?”
“Yes?”
“Shut up and take me to bed?”
He laughed again, and this time he blushed. “Well when you put it that way, I—”
We froze as the front door suddenly banged open and closed. There was the resounding KLACK of the heavy iron lock latching itself, and then Nathan strode straight into the kitchen.
SHIT!
“Hey!” he called out cheerily. “What’s for dinner?”
He sniffed around a bit before finally spotting us, standing not-so-innocuously in the hallway. His face broke into a handsome smile.
“Do I smell onions?”
Two
KAYLEEN
“Let me cook for you then,” I pleaded. “Whatever you want. Whatever you like, I’m sure I can—”
But my landlord was already shaking his head. He had his hairy arms folded across his big, barrel chest.
“Clean for you?”
Ugh. I hated cleaning. I could barely keep my own apartment clean, much less someone else’s.
“I don’t need cooking,” said Jerry. “I don’t need cleaning. What I need is the rent.”
It was a timeless tale; girl gets apartment, girl works her fingers to the bone, girl still can’t make rent. It had happened a million times to a million other women. Only now it was happening to me.
“Look, I can get you three-hundred by tomorrow,” I said.
“Rent is eight-hundred.”
“And another two—”
“Eight-hundred,” Jerry grunted. He looked past me, into my little rat-trap of an apartment. I swung the door shut just a little bit more.
“Fine, five tomorrow,” I said. “The other three… on Wednesday?”
Behind me, Beast was pulling hard on my pants leg. His little teeth were scraping my skin, but I tried not cry out.
After all, dogs were forbidden by my lease.
“Tuesday,” Jerry countered finally. “Take the weekend. Forget paying tomorrow, just have the whole thing for me on Tuesday.”
I sighed with relief… until my pants ripped. Beast went tumbling sideways, landing in plain sight.
Jerry frowned. I smiled awkwardly and shrugged.
“You know dogs aren’t—”
“He’s very little,” I offered meekly.
“Still…”
“Tiny. And quiet. So, so quiet. Right beast?”
On cue of course, Beast wagged his tail and barked.
Jerry’s frown softened, but only a bit. He stared at my little corgi for another moment or two, then took his foot out of the doorway.
“Eight-hundred dollars, miss Decker. Cash. Tuesday morning.” He raised an eyebrow. “We on the same page with all that?”
I nodded eagerly. “Same page, same paragraph.” He was still staring me down. “Same sentence.”
Jerry finally smirked and nodded back before spinning away. “Have a good weekend then.”
The door closed, and I leaned back against it. My face was soon covered in corgi kisses as I sank to the floor.
I didn’t have eight-hundred dollars. Hell, I didn’t have half that amount. Not yet, anyway.
That’s all your own fault, you know.
Beast continued licking my face, improving my sour mood. In truth it was my fault. I’d been splurging on ingredients. Buying the best when I could’ve made more economical substitutions. Still, it was hard for me not to. When I cooked, I cooked with the best. The best knives, the best cookware, the best spices. I bought the freshest proteins, too. Grass-fed beef. Free range chickens. Cage-free eggs…
Think any one of your clients care where their eggs come from?
It was stupid, I knew, because it was costing me my business. I was barely making enough to eke out a profit, much less pay my rent and make bills. Originally I’d figured I could save money as well. Finish out culinary school. Get a job somewhere prestigious, work my way up the ranks..
Maybe one day even open my own restaurant.
Your own restaurant? Yeah, okay.
It wasn’t that I couldn’t do it, it was just that everything still seemed so far away. Right now I was still trying to scrape together rent for my meager little apartment…
…while fighting off an overly-affectionate corgi.
I held Beast out at arm’s length. “Do you have eight-hundred dollars?”
He stared back at me with his curious brown eyes and cocked his head.
“Yeah,” I chuckled. “Didn’t think so.”
Three
KAYLEEN
It was a long, strange, and exhausting weekend. I’d worked just about every available hour, always on my feet. My fingers still smelled like garlic no matter how many times I washed them, every time I passed out into the bed.
And all I could think about was Chase.
Chase, whose kisses had practically melted me into a puddle right there in that beautiful kitchen. Chase, who’d had me halfway to his bedroom by the time one of his roommates burst through the front door.
Chase… who hadn’t called or even texted me, all damned week.
My thoughts were conflicted. I really liked him! I wanted him, totally desired him. And he wanted me, I was pretty sure of that. I could see it in his eyes. Feel it in his embrace, and in the way his taut body responded beneath my touch. And yet…
Monday finally arrived, and I strode straight through the kitchen and down that hall. I burst into his room without knocking, partially because the do
or was ajar, partially because I’d gone six grueling days without answers.
“Alright,” I spat, folding my arms across my chef’s whites. “Out with it.”
Chase was sitting at the other end of his room, typing away on his keyboard. The squared off, U-shaped desk he was at looked like an aircraft cockpit.
“W—What?” He pulled a wireless earbud away from his left ear. “Kayleen?”
“Yes, Kayleen,” I said crisply. “You know, your personal chef? The girl who comes here every Monday to prep meals for you?”
“Oh.” He squinted up at me. “It’s Monday?”
“The girl you kissed last week,” I went on. “A lot. I mean like, a real lot.” I felt my frustration slipping. “And really well, too, I don’t mind saying.”
Dammit, Kayleen.
I was supposed to stay strong. Supposed to get answers. And here was Chase, staring back at me like a deer in headlights. Rubbing absently at about two day’s growth of dark, stubbly beard.
God, even that made him look sexy.
“You sure it’s Monday?”
He was writing — that much I knew. I could tell by the far-away look in his eyes that I’d caught him in ‘the zone’.
Shit, Kayleen. I cursed myself silently. Now you look like a needy asshole!
The zone was something with which I was already familiar. Chase, Nathan, Burke — all three men in the house got into the zone at one time or another. They were all young authors, as well as lifelong friends. All of them working on a novel together, or rather, a series of novels.
A shared trilogy. That’s what they called it.
Ah, now I could remember. Chase had explained it to me in the kitchen once, while keeping me company as I peeled carrots.
“I’m sorry,” I sighed, backing out of the room. All at once I was terribly embarrassed. “Forget I even did this.”
Embarrassment wasn’t usually my thing. But here, I was pretty sure I’d overextended. I’d ventured quickly into you-look-like-an-asshole territory, and I really hated that territory.
“Kayleen, wait…”
Chase backed out of the cockpit by rolling his chair away from the desk. As he approached me, I scanned around his room.
“Not bad,” I said, checking out the decor. “A little more contemporary than I expected, but—”
“Kayleen listen,” he went on. “I—I’m so sorry about last week.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I’m not.”
He blushed again, his face turning that same adorable red. “Well I’m not either if we’re being honest,” he mumbled, “but it was something I felt I had to say. You know. In light of what happened.”
“What happened is you didn’t call me,” I insinuated. “You didn’t text. Nothing like ‘hey Kayleen, sorry my roommate has disastrously bad timing. Why don’t we meet up during the week for coffee, or drinks, or—’”
“I’m sorry,” he said again. By the way his eyes turned up at the corners I could tell he actually meant it. “I— I really wanted to do that.” He was wringing his hands now. “Believe me I wanted to. But I… I couldn’t…"
“Make a phone call?”
“No. I mean…”
“I get it,” I said. “You were writing. You were in the zone.” I grabbed for the doorknob. “No need to apologize, you’re obviously—”
“I mean I can’t.”
I turned back to him for a moment. A new realization dawned on me.
“Ohh…” I sighed. “Girlfriend.” I nodded, feeling just slightly better. “Got it.”
“No, no,” said Chase. “No girlfriend.”
My brows came together for a moment. “Boyfriend?” I asked hesitantly.
“No,” he said with a little chuckle. “Definitely not.”
“The way you kissed me I didn’t think so,” I chuckled back. “But okay. Whatever it is, no hard feelings. I’ll just get back to the kitchen and—”
“Kayleen…”
I stopped talking for once and just stood there, staring back at him expectantly. Chase’s emerald eyes had a pained look to them.
What’s his deal?
Whatever it was, he was struggling with it on some deep, internal level. Like he had something he definitely wanted to say… but for some reason, he just couldn’t.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, slowly lowering his gaze.
I nodded politely. “You said that one already.”
Half a minute later I was back in the hall, trying to put the whole weird thing out of my head. There was plenty of work to be done in the kitchen. And the sooner I got started, the bett--
“Hey…”
The voice came from a room on the other side of the hall. Nathan stood in his doorway, his long arms stretched overhead. He was wearing cargo shorts, and a threadbare white T-shirt that had seen at least a decade’s worth of service.
“Talk to you for a second?”
I froze in my tracks. His shirt rode up high on his lithe, muscular body, revealing a set of ridiculously sculpted abs. Washboard abs. No, really — the type of abs you could actually do your wash on.
My heart skipped two beats, maybe three.
“Sure,” I said.
Four
NATHAN
She was beautiful more than drop-dead gorgeous. Sexy and sensual, especially around her pouty little mouth.
It was that mouth that attracted me the most. Slightly downturned, with full, luscious lips. The kind of lips you really don’t need to paint, but when you do paint them they look absolutely stunning.
“What’s up?” she asked again.
God, that mouth. It made me a little frightened of her, really. Even so, I found my mind wandering. It would be insane to kiss her…
“Walk with me,” I said, leading our cute little chef down the hallway.
Kayleen followed, and I could tell she was confused. The way Chase had spoken to her, it was easy to understand why. I’d been listening in the whole time, trying to guess how he’d explain things to her. Just as I expected, he hadn’t.
Should you, though?
It was a dilemma, really. I could leave her in the dark, but eventually she’d find out. Especially if we happened to be successful. At that point she’d be more pissed than anything, and I didn’t want to lose Kayleen. She was a good person as well as a great chef.
Yet if I told her, that could scare her away as well. The whole thing was a catch-22. A big, unorthodox, clusterfuck of a problem — all because Chase had kissed her.
“Look, the kitchen’s that way,” she said, a little exasperated. “I have a shit-ton of prep-work, so maybe we could talk in there?”
I stopped at the end of the hall. Our shared computer was set up there in a little alcove, networked to the other three in our bedrooms.
“So he kissed you.”
Kayleen’s pouty mouth got a little more pouty. It was cute.
“How do you know I didn’t kiss him?”
“Well you did,” I smiled. “But that’s beside the point. The issue here is what happened afterward. Chase acted like a complete idiot, and left you in the dark about something. I’m about to enlighten you.”
She stopped right in the middle of folding her arms. I saw her expression soften. “Go on.”
“So yeah,” I said. “He likes you. Don’t get that part wrong. He’d snatch you up in a heartbeat if he could snatch you up, only it would be a distraction, and we’re trying to work on eliminating all distractions from our lives.”
One corner of the chef’s mouth curled into a smirk. “Ah yes,” she said. “Your little trilogy.”
“Our big trilogy,” I corrected her. “But yeah. We’re all working hard on it. Trying to meet specific deadlines. Trying to get three giant novels out in the next few months, all written in tandem.” I scratched at my chin. “Or rather, we’re tag-teaming the books chapter by chapter.”
“So like a boxer in training,” Kayleen smirked. “No sex before a big fight.”
“Not
at all,” I corrected her. “Actually, just the opposite.”
I paused here, for the sheer joy of watching her wheels turn. Kayleen’s eyes grew even more narrow as she tried figuring out what I meant.
“Sex is an amazing outlet,” I said, “especially for creativity. So while we’re trying to eliminate all distractions, we’re also not crazy. We know we’ll need female companionship. The intimacy of…”
“Sex,” she said, matter-of-factly.
I shrugged. “Three guys, all in our mid-twenties? What do you think?”
“I think you need a couple of hookers,” she laughed.
I frowned and shook my head. “I said companionship. Intimacy. The kind of stuff that a girlfriend brings to the table. And yes, of course sex too.”
“So then what’s Chase’s problem?” she jumped in. “Not that I’m putting the cart before the horse or anything, but I happen to make a kickass girlfriend.” Now she did fold her arms. “And hey — newsflash — sex was definitely on the menu.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Oh, he told us.”
“So I still don’t get—”
I turned away mid-sentence, cutting her short. A few short clicks of the mouse later, I pulled up the ad and expanded it to fit the screen.
“Read this,” I said, stepping back.
Kayleen leaned in, her sparkling blue irises shifting back and forth as she scanned line after line. Her lips moved silently as she read, as if mouthing the words to herself.
Shit, maybe I was wrong. Maybe she was drop-dead gorgeous.
Maybe?
I watched her mouth slowly open. Saw her eyes go wide and wider.
For a long, silent moment, it was like time had stopped.
“You can’t be serious,” she finally said.
Five
KAYLEEN
I read the whole thing twice, then one more time, just in case I’d misinterpreted it. But there was no really mistaking the ad on the computer screen:
WANTED: