‘Hey, I tow the lines and repair and all that. I don’t control the budget.’
‘Oh.’
One more rush of rich dark liquid and then he was pouring us mugs of coffee from the measuring cup. ‘Just takes some patience,’ he said.
He clinked his mug to mine and I watched him study me. It was such an intimate gaze that I felt my cheeks colour again. The man was a mind fuck to say the least.
I took a sip, realising that he had MacGyvered a better cup of coffee than I normally made with use of electricity.
‘Let me just … I’m going to …’ I took one more sip to steady my nerves.
‘Go get dressed, Farrell,’ Coop said, his gaze sliding along my cleavage, over my shoulders, down to my hips.
When his eyes hit me at hip level a heat bloomed in my pelvis that was disturbing in its intensity. I ran from the room as if a serial killer was drinking coffee with me instead of one of the most handsome and eerily self-assured men I’d ever met.
I scurried off like my ass was on fire. Even as I was pulling on black leggings and a checked purple shirt, I was imagining Coop peeling them off.
‘Get a hold of yourself,’ I hissed. And then I shoved my feet into black flats and hurried back downstairs – only to hear a hellacious, repetitive and maddening beep coming from my basement.
Chapter Nine
‘What now?’ I sighed. I grabbed my mug and watched him appraise me with that sharp stare. Why did I still feel naked?
‘That is your sump pump, Farrell.’
‘Oh.’ To be honest, I had no idea I had a sump pump.
‘It’s on a battery backup in case of …’ Coop waved his hands around. ‘This.’
‘Ah,’ I said.
Brilliant. One word answers, dingbat.
I listened to the infernal beeping for another moment and tried not to squirm as he studied me, that mysterious twist of a smile on his sensual lips. Coop crossed his arms and there was a Celtic cross, a feather that might or might not be a raven or a crow, a swatch of blue and … he crossed them the other way and there was the hint of a scaled tail. A mermaid?
When I took a shuddery breath and simply could not stand the beep-beep-beeeeeeep anymore I blurted, ‘My God, how do I make it stop?’
He chuckled, gave me a decisive nod and took my hand. ‘Let’s start by going in your basement where the sump pump lives.’
‘Yes, let’s,’ I echoed, rattled by his strong hand on my wrist. When he held my arm, though, I saw more of that tail and yes, it had to be a mermaid. Or a very curvy fish.
‘It’s a mermaid,’ he said, following my gaze.
‘Oh, I didn’t – I wasn’t –’ I shook my head and we took my very steep, wooden, horror-movie-esque basement steps slowly.
‘Have you been down here yet?’
‘No,’ I admitted. ‘I have a basement phobia.’
‘Spiders?’
‘Nope. Just basements.’
Another smoky laugh and then he was tugging me into the corner by the washbasin and the laundry area.
He squatted down and I tried very hard not to study the firm line of his ass and thighs in his dark blue work pants. Or the way his work boots made my body flash all hot like and needy. Or how the small swatch of skin I could see and the slice of boxer short waistband was visible, or how any of that made my breasts feel tender and my mind sizzle like I’d been electrocuted.
I was learning about my sump pump. Sump. Pump. And that was all.
‘This red light,’ he said, pointing.
I nodded. Thankful, suddenly, for the flood of sunlight from the small window high over the washbasin. I realised without it we’d be down here in the darkness – okay, murky daytime ‘darkness’ but darkness nonetheless.
‘Yes?’
‘If it goes off on a glitch, you push it for one second. Once it stops beeping you move your finger.’
‘Got it. But this isn’t a glitch. This is an actual outage so …’
‘So you do this,’ he said. ‘You push the button down and count to five.’ He pushed his finger to the button near the red light and looked up at me. ‘One … Two …’ On two I blanked out because I was watching the plump invitation of his lips and yes, my eyes had darted back to that lovely strip of exposed skin and his ass. Oh, man, the man had an ass.
‘Are you counting?’
‘Yes,’ I whispered.
‘What number are we on?’
I blinked, took a step back, right into a clothesline strung from the rafters and I promptly freaked the hell out and started waving my arms, dancing in place, screeching – convinced I’d backed up into the world’s largest spider web.
Then I tangled myself in the slack line and screamed in earnest. It wasn’t until Coop, who I could tell was mightily trying not to laugh, grabbed my arms and whispered, ‘Settle down,’ that I stilled.
I’d looped one arm up and one under and had effectively twisted myself up. He reached overhead. ‘Let me just find where it’s hooked and I can …’ he stopped talking, feeling around in the rafters.
‘Spiders,’ I wheezed, reminding him that they were waiting to eat his hand.
‘I think I’ll be fine.’ He looked me in the eye and smiled and that was that. My cunt flexed wetly, my stomach bottomed out and I licked my lips without thinking.
I moved my arm and managed to get my wrist unwound. ‘I think I’ve got it –’
‘Here.’ He gave up trying to find where it was tied and untwisted my other arm as I worked on the right one. I had caught a flash of tattoo at waist level when he’d raised his arms.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘What is what?’
I gave up. I’d gone from scared of him, to panicked lunatic twisted up in ropes, to tentatively bold. ‘This?’
I lifted the tail of his shirt and touched the small swatch of colour visible above his waistband. But the blue work pants shielded the rest of the picture from me. When my finger brushed his skin, electricity – real or imagined – hummed along my own skin.
‘Be careful doing that, Farrell,’ he said, catching my hand in his. ‘I’m just a man. And you’re just a new, very beautiful, very intriguing neighbour.’
‘What is it?’ I whispered, moving my fingers so they brushed his skin again. Even with his hand over mine, I could spread my fingertips to feather over his skin.
Moisture flooded my panties and my body grew tight and needy just from feeling my fingers on his flesh.
I felt the muscles ripple from my touch and knew I was affecting him despite his stoic appearance.
‘Careful.’
I cocked my head, trying to breathe deep enough to stop seeing the spots in my vision that I was currently witnessing. ‘Careful?’
He grabbed my wrist a bit tighter but didn’t pry my hand away. ‘Yes, careful.’
‘What is it?’ I took a step toward him. The dusty dim basement making me a bit braver than I felt.
‘It’s a key.’
‘A key?’
‘Yeah, a key.’ He tugged me in, his eyes pinned to my mouth when I spoke. I felt his gaze tingling on my lips.
‘Like a key for a door?’ I was having a lot of trouble thinking this close to him. I stepped in again, and pressed my fingers firmly to that warm swatch of skin, feeling the hardness of his hipbone beneath.
‘No. Like a roller skate key,’ he said straight-faced.
But he was fucking with me. So I waggled my fingers, feeling a surge of self-satisfaction when his breath grew shaky.
‘You’ve done it now,’ he said and leaned in to kiss me.
His mouth was demanding. There wasn’t any question in that kiss. He wanted to kiss me so he would. Coop released my hand and hauled me in against him. My body crushing to his leanly muscled frame. His cock pressed, hard and long from the feel of things, to the front of me and I tilted my hips just a bit to feel it riding the split of my nether lips.
This is only your second day here …
‘
Shut up,’ I murmured, twisting and stroking my tongue against his.
‘I wasn’t talking.’ His hands slid up the flat of my belly to cup my breasts, evoking a shiver.
‘I was talking to the voice in my head.’
‘Ah,’ he said, plucking at a button. Then a second; by the third my bra was peeking out and he was pushing his warm lips to my cleavage. I realised I was holding my breath and slowly blew out a wavering rush of air.
‘You still have time to change your mind, Farrell,’ he said, pulling my black bra cup back and licking the very tip of my hard nipple. I jumped, the sensation more like he was fucking me than just licking the tip of a single nipple.
‘About what?’
‘Me.’
Both bra cups were peeled away and he pinched my nipples until they throbbed in time with my heart which was currently residing in my pussy. At least it felt that way.
‘I can’t. My mind likes this.’
Coop laughed again. I amused him. His mouth was tender and then rough, lazy and then intense, all along the slope of my neck, my shoulders, my collarbone. His hand found its way down the front of my leggings and when he found my bare pussy he groaned.
‘You don’t have panties on.’
‘I didn’t have time.’ I tilted my hips, wanting him to touch me. Willing him to touch me.
‘No time for panties?’
‘No, you scrambled my brain.’
‘So now you’re scrambling mine?’
‘Not on purpose,’ I managed to say, even as his fingers slid – slow and almost sinister-like – over the plump aroused nub of my clit. When he plunged a finger into me, I was the one to groan.
‘Ah, but you are.’ His fingers, thick and strong, pushed into me again, slower this time, dragging time out so I could almost see it stretch like taffy. I watched the curl of the mermaid’s tail as he fucked me with his fingers. He added another finger.
I moved in when he bent to kiss me, kissing him desperately as if the kiss could somehow save me from the runaway train effect of the orgasm I knew was swiftly approaching. One way or another.
Coop added a third finger, curling them just so, extracting a noise from me that was half joy, half frustration. His thumb came down on my steadily thumping clitoris and I sighed into his mouth even as the wet velvet of his tongue stroked over mine.
‘You feel really wet, Farrell. Have you been thinking bad things?’ He moved a step and I moved a step. He moved another and I followed suit. We did a weird yet perfectly logical dance toward the washing machine, his hand still buried deep in my wet and willing sex.
‘Yes. I have been pretty much been thinking bad things since I got here.’
‘I like that,’ he whispered, lips pressed to my ear so that a cold tingle raced along my skin from ear to hip.
‘You do?’
‘I do.’ He broke away to nip my throat, my collarbone, the side of my breast. His tongue danced along my skin and woke up all the tiny nerve endings. My pussy grasped – tight and greedy – around his fingers and he smiled down at me. ‘I do,’ he said again.
Coop kissed me one more time and dropped to his knees right there on the dirty cement floor, dragging my leggings down on the way. I had a babbling lunatic moment where I wondered if he’d get his pants dirty and if they’d come clean before remembering they were work pants, meant to get dirty.
But then his mouth touched my nether lips and followed them to the prize of my engorged clit. He took it gently between his teeth so that I held my breath. I held his shoulders and tried not to let my eyes slam shut, because I really wanted to see that pretty, pretty face eating me.
Coop pulled back and studied me, parting my nether lips, inspecting me so that I shifted nervously. He looked up at me and my mouth went dry. ‘Stand still for me.’
My hands had migrated to my belly when he’d pulled away and I swore I could feel the twirling horde of butterflies currently living in there.
‘I will,’ I said.
He smiled like he didn’t believe me and then he deliberately – moving in slow motion, I was positive – moved back to lick me. He was doing it on purpose, I knew it. He had to be. But even as I assured myself that that was the case, I had to stifle the urge to thrust my hips forward to get my pussy to his mouth in the fastest way possible.
But I managed not to.
His hands slid along my inner thighs making them literally quake thanks to his almost ghostly touch. He barely came in contact with my skin and yet I felt like my knees might buckle. And all the while, his tongue – oh, his tongue – danced over the tender swollen flesh of my pout. He drove the rigid tip from my soaked split up to my clit and back and when I hovered right there on the edge of begging, he went back up to suck me.
‘You smell good,’ he said against my inner thigh before nibbling right back up to my clit again.
His fingers drove back into me and then lazily thrust. Coop would almost – but not quite – pull his fingers free of me before surging back into me with his warm thick digits.
When I started to pant like a dog, I realised I was going to come. I had been so mesmerised by watching him that I’d forgotten to pay attention to my approaching orgasm. But now it was making quite the ruckus in my pelvis.
He kept just the tip of his tongue to me and waggled his fingers inside my pulsing cunt. ‘You seem to be getting tight, Farrell. Tighter.’
I tensed my entire body to try and stay still and growled, ‘Yes, I am.’
‘Like you’re going to come for me,’ he said before pressing a warm wet kiss to my pussy – covering so much of my needy flesh with his mouth it made me light-headed. His tongue found me, worked me and I started to come, feeling the quiver and shake of my body, gripping up around him snugly. Coop curled his fingers to the knot of my G-spot and that small pressure was simply too much.
I let my head fall forward, my dark hair creating a curtain, and came with a sob. Coop didn’t stop until I had sighed out every last bit of pleasure, until every single spasm had stopped.
When he stood, I finally got to move, pushing my fingers into that dark blond hair and tugging him in so I could taste him. Licking the flavour of myself off his lips. Coop cupped the back of my head, securing me. His other hand meandered up my breast and tweaked my nipple so I gasped into his open mouth.
His tongue was so warm and I could still taste the undertones of strong coffee below the taste of my own juices.
I found his pants’ button with shaking hands and tried to undo it but he grasped my hands and held them tight. I slid my hand lower to find the hard edge of his cock pressed to his pants. Squeezing his length with my fingertips I kissed him harder, licking his lips and muttering. Even I didn’t know what I was saying, that orgasm had shut my mind down. The feel of his mouth on my sex had reduced me to a babbling idiot.
‘Hush,’ he said, laughing softly. He buried his face in my hair and brushed it back to kiss my throat.
‘Undo your pants.’
‘No,’ he said.
It took me a moment. I didn’t immediately process his words. ‘What?’
‘No.’
‘Aren’t we going to –’
‘No. Not this time.’
I moved to try and drop to my knees like he had but he caught my elbows and kept me up, grinning. ‘Don’t do that.’
‘But I … I want to …’
‘I’m good.’
‘No,’ I said, getting angry. ‘I want stuff just like you want stuff. Just let me … you know,’ I said, getting suddenly shy for some asinine reason.
‘I’m good,’ he said again.
I touched him. At least he let me do that. I ran a finger along the curved line of his cock, trying to figure how I could possibly change this. ‘Can’t I at least see it?’
He started to say no, but I saw him reconsider. His face somehow crafty and innocent at the same time. ‘Why?’
I stroked him through his pants, feeling the jump and twitch of his hard on. He wanted
me, I knew he did, this was just some … stupidity.
‘Because I think it’s big,’ I said, my voice a husky whisper that I played up as much as possible. ‘And I think you’re hot. And I want to see it. Why did you want to see me?’
‘Because you’ve been stuck in my head since yesterday and I tend to do better if I just see the object of my desire and assess the situation.’
‘But I’m not allowed to do that?’ I breathed, leaning in to kiss the slope of his neck. I could smell his aftershave, something woodsy.
I watched his big tan hands undo the button and then rip down the zipper. I found myself literally chewing my lip and holding my breath. He tugged down the front of a pair of plaid boxers and his cock sprang free – stunning and hard and flushed.
‘Am I allowed to …’ I reached for him even as I said it.
And he let me. He let me circle my loose fist around his long cock and stroke him. Coop’s jaw worked as I gripped him, like he was barely maintaining control. His eyes were unreadable in the low light but I swore I could feel his gaze on me.
I stroked him a bit faster, pushing down so that I hit the base, the side of my hand brushing his balls. He took his hand, placed it over mine, stilling my movement.
‘What?’
‘That’s enough.’
‘Please,’ I said, finally begging. I just wanted to … get him off. To see him come.
‘Why?’
I pushed the words in my head out of my mouth. ‘I want to get you off. I want to see you. I want you to come,’ I said, the last in nothing more than a desperate whisper.
‘Why?’
I stared at him, seeing the stubbornness I already knew was there.
‘Why? Because … I’m attracted to you? And you just got me off? And I’m not stingy. And for some reason I don’t think you’ll fuck me … which I don’t understand.’
Now I was confused and embarrassed and those two emotions were mingling together and turning to anger. Fast.
‘Because as weird as you are –’
He chuckled and I squeezed my hands, now at my sides into fists.
Boys Next Door Page 6