Finding Mr. Right Next Door

by Sarah Ballance

  She was wrong.

  He didn’t.

  And she couldn’t bear to walk away.

  “Good,” he said. But her agreement didn’t seem to release any of the tension.

  “There’s just too much between us,” she said. “I can’t imagine not being with Elsie.”

  “She’d never trust anyone but you,” he agreed. “And if you stopped coming around, she’d probably run me out of there, smacking me with her purse.”

  Lexi nodded, stepping away, standing near the safety of the fire engine. “And my parents would never forgive me if you vanished.”

  He frowned. “It’s not like it would be your fault.”

  “It takes two. This wouldn’t be all on you, not that I’d stand between you and Elsie’s swinging purse but”—she shrugged—“you know.”

  His eyebrows shot up, and he again closed the distance between them. “So you think this is…a thing between us?”

  She rubbed her arms to deter the goose bumps that had made an unwelcome appearance. “I think we just decided it didn’t matter.”

  He didn’t move.

  She didn’t breathe.

  “I don’t think I said it didn’t matter,” he finally said. “I think, if anything, we decided it mattered too much.”

  In the dimly lit bay with its sheet of concrete flooring and cinderblock walls, his softly spoken words seemed to echo until they found every crack and crevice of her crumbling resolve.

  She swallowed, hard. “Either way, the result is the same.”

  “Right,” he said. He raised his arm, grabbing one of the handles strategically positioned on the truck, and leaned in, bringing with him a heat so intense that she half expected dispatch to blare an incident right there in the garage. “So we ignore this,” he said.

  Was that even a question? Because his attention had dropped to her lips, and she was looking up at him and trying—and failing—to control her breathing. She’d seen Waffles pant less in the blazing sun in the dead of summer.

  She leaned back against the truck, but it bought her only a couple of inches. Which reminded her of the last time she’d been between Matt and a hard surface, and she nearly whimpered out loud.

  Nodding faintly, she said, “Yeah, we ignore it.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The plan to ignore it failed. For the past few days, Lexi hadn’t been able to think of anything else.

  Frustrated, she stabbed at her empty yogurt container, then decided to take out her excess energy on exercise. She got off the sofa, tossed the empty yogurt container in the recycle bin, and grabbed her yoga mat.

  One way or another, she was going to forget she ever had carnal knowledge of Matt Freeman.

  But when she returned to the front room, she saw the universe had something else in mind.

  Matt, shirtless, pushed a lawnmower across the front yard. Did the grass even need to be mowed? As far as she could tell, there wasn’t a blade out of place. And was he flexing? His grip on the mower didn’t usually cause his muscles to bulge quite like that.

  Their eyes met and he had the audacity to hit her with a shit-eating grin.

  Lexi snapped her mouth shut and narrowed her eyes. He wasn’t even pretending not to goad her, but the worst part was that his sex-on-a-stick routine was working. Her entire body heated, melted, drowned. Luckily, her head was above water, though, and there was no way he was going to see her thrashing around in that wave of desire he’d kicked up.

  That big picture window worked both ways. Determined to fight fire with fire, she stripped off her shirt and sweat pants, leaving a sports bra and a tiny pair of shorts, and plopped her yoga mat directly in front of the window. She was probably going to have the cramp to end all cramps from not first warming up, but seeing the smirk fade from Matt’s face would be 100 percent worth it.

  Something that proved true seconds later when he caught sight of her standing split and almost fell over his lawnmower.

  It was all Lexi could do to keep a straight face. Then she thought about how they’d gotten there, how he’d been inside her, and almost hit the ground herself. Seeking equilibrium, she switched legs, centering herself, thinking about the position and not the fact that a very skilled man stood outside the window, gawking.

  Certainly not that she was able to do that to him.

  Definitely not that he was doing it right back.

  …

  Matt didn’t care that he’d cut the grass three days prior. He was almost certain he’d seen a dandelion, and any idiot knew you had to mow those suckers down before they seeded and hauled their fluffed-out asses all over creation. It had nothing to do with Lexi or the likelihood that she’d see him through that giant picture window at the front of the house. It was responsible horticulture.

  It was hell.

  His plan had backfired, big time, when she appeared in the window, nearly naked, body tight and curves dangerous. So much so that Matt walked the mower directly into a sapling…in the neighbor’s yard. The one with all the pretty flowers. He looked down to see the battered, colorful remains of her blooms shooting from under his mower and dread filled the pit of his stomach. Old Mrs. Crump must have been watching him through her window to react as quickly as she did, because he hadn’t managed to back the self-propelled machine before she was on the porch, waving and shouting at him. He glanced down, realizing that in his recovery he’d mowed right over her petunias.

  “I’m sorry,” he called out. “I’ll replace them.”

  “Purple ones,” she shouted in her feeble, angry old lady voice. “I want purple ones, and they need to be the same size. You can’t have them not matching.”

  “Yes ma’am,” he said, glancing back through the window at Lexi. Her back was arched, breasts jutting against a scrap of cloth that barely passed for an undergarment, let alone something she should show off to the public. He backed the mower out of Mrs. Crump’s yard, eyes glued to Lexi, who lifted one leg toward the ceiling and walked her hands back toward the foot that remained on the ground.

  What the hell was she doing?

  He stared for a moment, realizing in the crux of it that she was sending an awful lot of glances in his direction. Son of a…

  She was doing this on purpose.

  He, at least, had a legitimate lawn to mow. She…she was just trying to drive him crazy. And thanks to a phenomenal bit of sex, it was working.

  So much so that he’d just mowed six feet of sidewalk.

  And she wore the slant of a grin when she saw it.

  Undeterred, he killed the mower engine and reached for the hose. It was hot as hell and that had precious little to do with the ambient temperature and everything to do with the goddess on the other side of that plate glass. And she wasn’t the only one who could play that game.

  He kicked on the faucet and doused himself in what turned out to be brutally cold water. His breath punched out of his chest, he gasped, almost certain he’d drown. Until he saw her face.

  Sultry poses clearly forgotten, Lex gaped at him through the glass. He grinned. She scowled, but he barely saw it because she immediately eased into another position that absolutely had to be an intentional goad. If she wore one fewer stitch of clothing, he’d be able to see exactly what had been driving him crazy long before he had her against a wall, but now that he knew…

  The speed at which she sent him to a raging erection, cold water be damned, impressed him. But he didn’t spend much time dwelling on that part, because he caught her watching him again and, with cold water streaming down his chest, he unhitched the button at his fly and let the water slough into dangerous territory. It should have cooled him off, but instead he was almost certain there was actual steam rising from the front of his jeans, and his erection was trying too hard to break through the denim and the glass to care one whit about the chilly water sluicing uselessly dow
n his front.

  Lexi had given up the pretense of doing anything but stare, which he considered an open invitation to barge into the house. Screw forgetting this thing between them. If she shut him down, she shut him down, but there was no way he was passing up the chance to feel that woman’s body envelop his.

  He didn’t want anyone but Lexi.

  He’d figure out later what that meant.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Lexi had lost sight of Matt for only a second when the front door slammed open and there he stood, glistening wet, muscles hard, hair stuck in wild, damp tendrils. He carried with him the faint scent of fresh cut grass.

  The art of yoga forgotten, she fell into a heap.

  Rather than laugh, he reached for her, his work-roughened hand capturing hers as he wordlessly tugged her to her feet. He’d been sweaty, but after that stint with the water hose, he was drenched and dripping water. “Might want to lose the pants,” she said.

  “I hope you know what you’re saying.” His voice, deliciously gruff, shattered the last of any resistance she might have thought she harbored. If he didn’t look so hell-bent on ravaging her, she might have been the one on her knees, begging. Or something.

  Not that she wanted to admit it. “I’m saying you’re getting the floor wet.”

  “That’s not all I’m going to get wet,” he said with a growl, crashing into her with a kiss that obliterated imagination and fantasy in an explosion of white-hot lust. The chill on his skin blasted the heat on hers, and she didn’t think she imagined the steam between them or the fog that enveloped her as he carried her, fully vertical, his chest pressed against hers, to the sofa. Which was in full view of the window. Which she forgot to care about when he cradled her face with his hands and said, “I can’t stop thinking about you.”

  “That’s the opposite of forgetting,” she reminded him, almost hoping he’d take the out, because dear God, this could not be real. She’d seen Matt nearly every day of her life, but never with the intense, searing heat she saw in him now.

  And it was for her.

  She knew exactly what it felt like for him to slide inside of her. She knew how full she felt, how connected they were. How eager her body was to take as much as she could and, God help her, make room for the rest. She knew the way he felt inside, driving deep, hard, making her world splinter and vision fade into the sparkly tendrils of a shattered reality.

  But she didn’t know the weight of him on top of her.

  Not until he stripped her of what little she wore, stepping out of his wet clothes as he followed her down to the sofa. Every part of her trembled, aching to be the piece he touched first, but it was her mouth that won out. Where the kiss before had been demanding, this one teased, deepened, tasted so sweet, and was so gentle that the heat of tears threatened. Never had she felt so treasured, and it was just his mouth, nipping and probing, leaving her boneless and weak.

  And absolutely starving.

  He stopped to smile, to murmur her name, and she remembered what he’d said about her eyes. Lost herself in his. His grin widened. He traced a fingertip in wide circles around one breast, ignoring the pink flesh and the hardened peak that strained for attention. All thoughts of this being any kind of game were lost. Begging, she rocked her hips upward, trying desperately to get him to touch anything, but he ignored her, toying lazily. “You’re driving me nuts,” she murmured.

  “’Bout damn time,” he said, his teeth nipping at her neck.

  “You never stopped.” She grabbed his hair, pulling him back for a hungry kiss. He groaned, ending it, and diverted his attention to her breast, touching his tongue to just the tip until she arched her back, demanding he take the whole thing. When he did, she thought she’d die from the pleasure of it. Desire tore through her, hot and tumultuous, reckless and needy, and no amount of twisting and repositioning put him in the right spot to relieve the pressure. “Matt, I swear to God, if you don’t just do this—”

  “Not much on foreplay, are you?”

  “I’m going to say this only once. I need you. Right now.” She hated to admit those words to him, but if he didn’t relieve this pressure in her, the tension would twist and bend and break and—

  “I need you. I’ve never—”

  Oh no. If he said even one tiny little thing right, if he made this anything but physical, she’d fall a thousand feet to her carnal death. This had to be about sex. They were forgetting this thing, eventually. He could move on from the sex, and she’d be okay. If it was about them, when he lost interest, she’d lose her best friend. She couldn’t handle that. This… This she’d handle as best she could. “Please don’t make it more than it is.”

  A flash of hurt touched his eyes, but she ignored it. She also ignored the twinge the words left in her chest, because it didn’t matter how real this felt. They were blowing off the heat of this attraction, something that was bound to happen after so many years of getting under each other’s skin.

  “Haven’t you realized,” he said softly, “that it’s everything?”

  Well, that did it. There was no coming back from that voice, that body, that touch. Sex before Matt had always been a bit utilitarian. Maybe she just hadn’t done it enough, but at best, she’d have simply referred to it as the sex portion of the evening. Satisfying, maybe. Monumental? Never.

  Matt was monumental. Matt changed things.

  Matt ruined things.

  Matt…had been mowing grass with a condom in his pocket. She watched with a hefty mix of amusement and disbelief as he reached for his discarded jeans and withdrew the packet. He tore into it, never breaking eye contact as he rolled it on. “I’m going to take that as a compliment,” he said, tracing his hands down her inner thighs, parting them, teasing her with his thumbs when he couldn’t go any farther. “For the record, I had other plans.”

  “I’m sure your plans will wait, but I do appreciate your honesty.”

  “Not what I meant.” He positioned himself at her opening and she jerked her hips, wanting more than anything for him to dive in. “Impatient, are we?”

  “Please.”

  She hadn’t managed to breathe the whole word before he filled her. She nearly wept with the sweet torture of the pressure, and that was before he ground exquisitely in just the right spot. Pleasure shot through her, numbing her limbs and setting fire to everything else.

  “Please don’t close your eyes,” he murmured, still grinding in a rhythm that flung her helplessly out of her mind. And she remembered what he said, that he wanted to see her in that moment. But he’d been toying with her then. This was different. This was real.

  Too real.

  She met his gaze and was struck by the intimacy of the moment. Of being joined, being his, when he twisted just enough to knock the pleasure into the stratosphere as he rocked his hips, withdrawing only to plunge slowly, deeply between her thighs. He took her hands, lacing their fingers, using the grip to hold her as he set fire to her G-spot and drove her to the point of madness. If she still had limbs, she couldn’t feel them. Everything was wrapped around Matt, the rolling of his body into hers, the grip of his hands, the sweetness of staring into his eyes and seeing her own pleasure reflected there.

  “I was wrong,” he said, his lips brushing her skin, the words muffled to her ears by her own fight for air.

  “About what?” She was so overwhelmed, so overcome by sensation and emotion that she trembled.

  “Your eyes. I thought they’d be bright,” he said, “but they’re not. There’s this heat, this haze. There’s smoke.”

  “There’s fire,” she whispered.

  “There always has been,” he said, kissing her, grinding his hips, making her see stars that outshone the sun. “Go ahead. I’m right behind you.”

  She didn’t need his permission…she just didn’t want it to be over. And now she was thinking about him being behind
her in a very sexual way and there was no coming back from that. Everything splintered, her body seizing around him with a power that made her grateful she was so deeply ensconced in his arms.

  He held her while she trembled, slowing the rhythm, easing her gently back to earth. But not to anywhere she’d ever been.

  And not sure how she’d find her way to anywhere she’d ever been before.

  She closed her eyes, just feeling, drifting, wanting it not to end. Everything fit, everything was so right, and she knew no one else would ever hold that spot.

  It was a sucky revelation.

  Now was probably the time to make a gracious exit. She could burrow under the covers, cue up something on Netflix. But not a romance. She needed a horror movie to come down from this.

  Then she glanced toward the window and realized she was living one. Her eyes flew wide. “Oh my God, is that Mrs. Crump watching us?”

  Matt glanced toward the window, then back at Lexi. The woman was so close to the window, she had to be in the flowerbed.

  They both lost it, their laughter breaking the fragile seriousness of the moment. They just kept digging deeper into this mess, and the seismic waves of an orgasm seemed only to drive home how insanely big this was between them.

  She hadn’t realized it before, but God, how she’d needed to laugh. She needed to hear him laugh. She tried to grab for her shirt, but Matt was still on top of her and Mrs. Crump still stood there. Matt muttered something decidedly indecent as he climbed off Lexi, but she noticed he didn’t shy away from giving the old woman a show. Lexi sprinted to the bedroom, leaving Matt behind.

  She dove straight for her borrowed dresser to grab a shirt, but she didn’t get the chance. She was still laughing when Matt came up behind her, snatching the shirt from her hands and tossing her playfully to the bed.

  Then he followed her down, and they stopped laughing just as quickly as they’d started.

  It wasn’t funny anymore.