by Sara Ney
“Don’t touch it!” Her voice is filled with panic. “Please just leave it.”
I rear my hand back and straighten, my eyes flitting to her glowing screen before she glares at me for gawking, and twists in her chair to close the top with a resounding snap.
She tidies up her workspace then spins to face me.
Well, well, well, someone doesn’t want me learning any of her dirty little secrets. My eyes dart to the discarded paperback lying facedown on the floor, and for now she’s too flustered to pick it up. What’s in that damn book that she doesn’t want me to see?
“Collin Keller.” Tabitha flashes me a fake smile, her lips pulled tight across her white teeth. “What on earth are you doing here?”
“You don’t have to sound so thrilled to see me.”
A blush creeps up her neck, and the hot-pink bill of her ball cap creates an unflattering fuchsia shadow on her skin. She has the decency to look embarrassed by her lack of manners.
“I’m sorry, that was rude. It’s just that you startled me.” Tabitha bites down on her lower lip, takes a steadying breath, and then asks, “So… what are you doing here?”
A laugh explodes out of me. “Just can’t help yourself, can you? I work in the financial district. It’s four blocks up, actually, but I like it in here better than Starbucks. Much warmer and definitely more quiet. I get more work done here.” I motion to the laptop draped across my body, giving the canvas bag a pat. “What about you? What brings you to this neck of the woods?”
“I actually live nearby. I… come here often, usually after work, but I didn’t have a lot going on at the office today, so… here I am. Earlier than usual.” Her shoulders give an apologetic shrug, and she nervously reaches up to adjust the bill of her pink ball cap.
While she’s doing that, my eyes flit to the laptop.
A sly smile curls my lips. “What are you working on?”
Tabitha’s hands stop, still holding her brim as her bright blue eyes narrow suspiciously for a few seconds, assessing, as if trying to gauge my sincerity.
Like she doesn’t quite trust me.
Like she’s looking for any clue that I’ve seen what’s written on her screen.
Why yes, Tabitha. Yes I have.
I’ve seen words like tremble, breathless, stroke, and panting flash across her monitor, burning themselves in my brain—forever. I’ll not likely forget them anytime soon, not only because they were sexy, but because she was writing them.
Those sexy words came out of that sexy girl, and it has me wondering what other thoughts are going through her obviously dirty mind—because I’m a guy and I wonder about shit like that.
And now look how agitated she is.
She suspects I’ve seen something; it’s written all over her beautiful face.
I try not to snicker. “What was it you said you were working on?”
“What am I working on?” she parrots, her brows furrowed in confusion.
“Yeah, it looks like I interrupted something.”
Something smutty.
Tabitha bites her bottom lip and looks away guiltily. “Um. Work stuff, I guess.”
“What kind of work stuff?” This time I do snicker.
She closes the notebook in front of her with a scowl and crosses her arms defensively over her chest. “What’s with all the questions?”
“Just curious, that’s all.” I shoulder the weight of my laptop, laying it on the floor next to her table, and lean my elbow on the back of her chair.
I’m so close now I can smell the sweetness of her hair when she fidgets in her chair, kicking up the air around her.
A nervous giggle escapes her lips—her very nicely shaped, pink, pouty lips. Some people would call them glossy; I’m calling them juicy.
Juicy lips I want to suck on.
“Are you coming?” asks my lazy drawl.
“Excuse me?” Tabitha’s mouth gapes in an O of surprise and I suppress the urge to say, Speaking of coming, weren’t you just writing about that very same thing only moments ago?
But I don’t. Instead, I say, “Are you coming to my housewarming party?”
“I didn’t know you were having one.”
Liar, liar, pants on fire.
“Oh, really? Because I’m pretty sure Greyson told me she invited you. Personally.”
“She did?”
I study her, the large blue eyes lined in black, the clear, smooth skin flushed from frustration and embarrassment, and the full lips. Letting my gaze linger until she gets uncomfortable with my scrutiny, she finally breaks contact and turns her face towards the bank of windows on the far side of the coffee shop.
I give my chin a scratch. “Yeah. I’m pretty sure she said you were coming.”
Tabitha shakes her head in denial, her blonde ponytail swinging back and forth. “I never said that. I said I had to check my calendar.”
Gotcha.
“Ah, so she did invite you to come.”
“Please stop doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“You know what. Using the word...” Tabitha turns back to stare at me, her eyes bright but guarded. “Stop pushing. You’re pushing.”
“I’m not pushing.” I smile. “I just want you to come.”
Yeah. You bet your sweet ass I meant for that to sound dirty, and from the look on her face right now, she knows it.
She hesitates before responding, furrowing her brows and eyeing me from under her flirty cap before sliding her notebook off the table and stuffing it into her bag.
Tabitha lifts her laptop, unplugs the earbuds, winding them up along with the power cord, and rises. “I have to go.”
My eyes flick to the book on the floor, but morbid curiosity keeps me silent.
She grabs at her phone charger, stepping on it and stumbling when she yanks it up, trying to coil it around her hand. As she abandons tidiness, the black cord gets shoved haphazardly into her brown leather tote, and she shoulders it before grabbing an uncovered, steaming coffee off the table top.
It spills, wetting her hand and soaking the hem of her white shirt.
Her cheeks are beet red when she faces me, barely able to look me in the eye. “It was nice seeing you again.”
Tabitha turns, stalks away.
Doesn’t look back.
Doesn’t see me bend and snap the thick paperback novel up, discarded on the floor.
Doesn’t see the expression on my face when I flip it over and crack the cover, or the grin that spreads across my face.
I look up, watching her hurriedly retreating form through the glass, her ass in those ripped up jeans. Tabitha stops at the corner, glancing both ways before crossing to the other side of the street.
Within seconds, she’s out of sight.
Gone.
A few hours later, my solitary dinner plate washed and put away, I step into the kitchen to wipe down the cold granite countertop, pausing at the sink to rest my hip against the cabinet.
“The book,” as I’ve started calling it, rests on the kitchen table, cover-side up, the erotic silhouette of a naked couple in all their bare-assed glory for my viewing pleasure. I stride over, gaping down before gingerly lifting it, intently fixating on the suggestive embrace, the full-on kiss, the sweaty bare skin, and the sexy shot of side boob.
Overturning it to read the blurb on the back—studying it for the third time since jamming it into my laptop bag at Blooming Grounds and bringing it home—my eyebrows still shoot damn near into my hairline as I read:
On the Brink, a debut novel by TE Thomas.
Rachel Neumann is a virgin on the brink… on the brink of want, on the brink of curiosity, on the brink of her twenty-first birthday. Rachel wishes for one thing and one thing only: to be ruined. To lose it all in one night of passion… With seduction in mind, there’s only one person who can cure her aching body: Devon Parker. He’s the only person who has always stood by her, and he’s the one person who stirs all her lust-filled desires. Will fr
iends become lovers, or will Rachel always be a virgin on the brink?
Whoa.
Holy shit.
I flip the book over to the front, and I scan the cover again before flicking it open to look inside. Bold, black handwriting and notations are scrawled across the first few title pages in pen:
Too pixelated. Must be 300 dpi, not 199. Change font.
There’s no doubt this has to be what she was working on at the coffee shop. I flip the book back over to stare at the author name on the cover:
TE Thomas
It’s quite conceivably the least creative pen name I’ve seen. And I’ve seen—okay fine, I’ve seen none.
But TE Thomas isn’t clever at all, especially if she’s trying to be covert about it. I mean, come on, TE Thomas? I might be going out on a wild limb here, but it’s safe to say her middle name is Elizabeth. If I was a betting man, I would win.
So, this is what she’s been hiding.
She’s an author.
I take the book into the living room and flop into an overstuffed leather chair, propping my feet up on the coffee table Greyson made me buy. Settling in for the long haul, I crack the novel open to the first chapter and read: Rachel Neumann was hot, sticky, and panting—and it wasn’t from the heat…
A grin crosses my face as I devour page after page.
Tabitha Thompson, you secretive little sneak.
I can feel Collin Keller surveilling me from across his living room, his scrutiny so penetrating that sweat begins to dampen my spine.
Great. Just what I need.
It’s not like I’ve never had attractive guys notice me before; I’ve dated my fair share of handsome men. In fact, my last boyfriend was a Minor League Baseball player on his way to the pros, and a total babe.
Hilarious. Smart.
Constantly surrounded by groupies…
Jared would have been perfect if it hadn’t been for those damn baseball groupies. No woman wants to listen to their date’s phone blow up the entire time they’re trying to eat dinner, and no woman wants to see their date’s lips tip into a knowing smirk every time he checks a text.
Shady.
But the thing is, Jared never witnessed me on the verge of a public meltdown, never saw me screech like a banshee and react without getting the facts, never saw me stutter out an apology. Never saw me panic and flee from a coffee shop like I had something to hide.
Never caught me writing erotica.
Collin Keller has.
And I’m humiliated.
My gaze swings to him, now that he’s finally turned his back on me, and trails down the corded column of his long neck—the most erotic part of a man’s body, in my opinion—and rests on the silky hair that could use a trim.
Or my fingers running through it.
The solid muscles of his back are outlined by the worn cotton of his clingy tee, and my trajectory aims for his spine. Down. Down to the tapered waist. His ass… Jesus. His ass.
Collin Keller is all hard lines and smooth edges.
My mouth waters a little, not gonna lie.
Momentarily, I forget myself and want to see the rich hazel eyes and lopsided grin that made my insides go melty the second I found out he was Greyson’s brother, and not her new boyfriend.
Melty like warm, liquid chocolate.
I bet he tastes just as good.
God, he’s so effing handsome.
Still, I made a complete and utter fool of myself in front of him two weeks ago, and again last week when we bumped into each other at Blooming Grounds.
When I totally lost my cool... slammed my computer shut… spilled my coffee… dropped my book… tripped over my power cord.
Ran out on him without saying good-bye. Who does that?
I can hardly look the guy in the eye now—and he seems so nice.
Looks so nice.
Nice and yummy.
Guh!
And let us not forget how ridiculously attractive he is.
If only he’d stop looking over here, like he knows a secret. Like I’m… captivating. Like I amuse him. Well, okay, I am captivating and amusing, and not without my charms, but he doesn’t need to keep staring at me like that. It’s making me extremely uncomfortable. Not to mention tingly in all the right places.
Yeah, those tingles.
It’s one thing for me to gawk at someone, completely another for them to gawk at me. I at least do it from a corner when no one’s watching.
Oh. Wait…
I’m going to classify his heated stares as figments of my very vivid imagination, which has gotten increasingly more colorful since I started writing my books. Every guy, young or old, is a potential character or potential muse. I can now turn everyday occurrences into romance, innocent sentences and questions into innuendo.
Take our run-in at Blooming Grounds, for example, when Collin asked if I was going to be at his housewarming party. He said ‘coming,’ and immediately my thoughts went to sex—lots and lots of sex. Sweaty, sticky, loud sex.
How sick and wrong is that? My deliberately tawdry mind went there willingly, and all the poor guy did was ask an innocent question.
I am a horrible person.
Heat rises in my neck, and I can feel my face get bright red. My only option is to turn and face the snack table, staring down the guacamole dip and willing my heart rate to slow down. I’m not hungry, but I busy myself, grabbing a plastic plate from the stack and piling tortilla chips—lots of tortilla chips—then carrots, cucumbers, and celery onto the plate until I run out of room.
I glance down at the bending plate. Shoot, maybe I overdid it a tad. Biting down on my lower lip, I stare at the wall—at the artwork he has hanging above the snack table, shifting my attention to his bookshelf.
Curious, I meander over, balancing my plate with one hand and trailing the other along the shelves. Surprised by the diversity of titles, I finger a vintage copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, which is sandwiched in between a biography on John F. Kennedy and the Maze Runner series. There’s a colorful row of the same children’s Encyclopedias I had growing up, and I crack a nostalgic smile.
I loiter a bit longer and sigh, knowing I should rejoin the group I came here with: Greyson, Cal, and their friend Aaron. The fact that I’m hiding in a corner is absolutely ludicrous; I’m a grown woman.
Nonetheless, I glance over my shoulder.
Yup. Still staring.
Dammit!
Why is he still staring? What is his deal?
Rattled by his attention, I stare at my plate, the hairs on the back of my neck prickle, and a tiny, nervous knot takes root in my stomach. When I inhale a deep breath and count to three, raising my head again to meet Collin’s eyes, that knot turns into a flutter.
A flutter of excitement.
He doesn’t even have the decency to pretend not to be watching me, hoisting his beer glass up in a silent toast, nodding his head towards me in a friendly greeting.
It’s his eyes, however, that give him away.
They’re perceptive. Insightful. Kind but also… shrewd. And he was acting weird at Blooming Grounds. I mean, how many times did the guy say come in a sixty-second period? Five? Six?
He knows something. I can feel it.
I lean against my shiny stainless steel oven, arms crossed as I blatantly stare at Cal’s sister from across the kitchen of my new condo. I’m half listening to something my childhood friend Dex is saying, and my narrowed eyes bore into Tabitha Thompson as she tucks a loose, dark blonde strand of hair behind her ear, then tips her head back to laugh.
Her throat is tan and graceful and smooth.
Just how I remember it.
Damn, I bet she smells good, too.
Casual in jeans and a plain black tee shirt, there is no mistaking the resemblance between Tabitha and her brother now that they’re in the same room together. Both tall with dirty blonde hair, they share the same bright blue eyes and height; but where Cal is hard and rugged—rough around the edges—sport
ing a perpetual black eye and scarred lip from rugby, Tabitha is all feminine curves and delicate features.
When I said she had a bony ass two weeks ago, I was full of shit.
She’s the most fascinating thing I’ve ever seen.
She writes sleazy romance novels and works for a construction company.
She called me ridiculously good looking—ridiculously good looking. What does that even mean?
I continue observing her, waiting for her attraction towards me to manifest itself in some way—a flirty glance in my direction, a coy smile. Shit, I’ll settle for eye contact.
She’s giving me nothing.
If Tabitha Thompson is attracted to me, she sure as shit hides it better than most; she’s been avoiding me like the plague since stepping her high-heeled feet through the front door of my condo.
I have to give her props; she’s stealthy, that one. I’m talking expert-level evasion. My condo isn’t large, but somehow she’s managed to elude me like the fiercest competitor in a game of Mortal Kombat.
Not to brag, but I’m fucking great at that video game. I will Level 300 that shit against any thirteen-year-old and kick their tech-savvy ass. Oh, Mortal Kombat doesn’t have levels, you say? Tough shit. It does when I play—I’m so badass I make levels.
It’s been one week since I bumped into her writing at Blooming Grounds, and two weeks since Grey and I ran into her shopping. But since her arrival at my housewarming party, she’s been dodging me, pretending not to be affected by my presence.
Like right now, for example, Tabitha is bearing down on the snack table, staring at the sandwiches and loading up on nachos like she’s a waitress in a bar, and it’s her job. She’s probably not even going to eat any of it; she just doesn’t want to turn around and acknowledge me.
As if I wouldn’t notice her reluctance to be in the same room. I enter a room, she exits. I move through a room, she crosses to the other side. Cat and mouse.
In my own damn house.
Shit, now she has me rhyming.
This little game of hide and seek is driving me fucking nuts.