She furrows her eyebrows. “How’d you get here?”
“I walked.”
“Then maybe you should walk back.” Her tone is flat and dry.
“Well, I figured I wouldn’t need to walk back since my next door neighbor would be here tonight.” I take a step towards her.
She takes a step back. “So you admit it? You’re here because of me? To continue taunting me?” I can’t stop watching the way her red lips pout. I can’t stop imagining them around my cock.
“Me? Taunt you?” I say innocently. “I’m just here to volunteer my time and my talent to the fine seniors of Reyfield.”
She grunts. “Whatever.” She slips her bag onto her shoulder and slinks past me, out the door.
That little prank I pulled in front of the window is starting to backfire on me, because since I stripped bare for her, Sammie is the only woman I’ve imagined being naked with.
“So, how about that ride home?” I ask.
She glances over her shoulder at me. She bites her lip and I can tell she’s looking for an excuse. “I’ve got to go to the grocery store before I head home. That’ll take a while.”
“Ah — that’s perfect. I need to go to the gro—”
“Y’know what?” she interrupts me, walking over and sliding her arm around Delores’ shoulders just as she and Nancy come ambling out of my classroom. “These lovely ladies would be delighted to drive you home, Keeland.”
I open my mouth to protest but the old wench grins and lands a heavy, open palm on my ass. She grabs me by the elbow, dragging me towards the exit. “It would be my pleasure to take you home.” She gives Sammie a wink before turning back to me. “Come on, cowboy!”
Chapter 12
The rays from the street lamp shine into the kitchen as I slip out of my sweater. I prop my hip up against the kitchen counter and sort through the mail.
Mine.
Mine.
Not mine.
Mine.
Not mine.
Not mine.
Not mine.
I used to think that our mailman is blind, but now, I think that he either can’t read or he just doesn’t give a fuck whose house he delivers which mail to. Regardless, he has a serious problem because half of the mail that pops up in my mailbox doesn’t belong to me. I constantly find myself running around Thornbush Lane delivering letters to their rightful addressees.
Not tonight, though. I’ll deal with the mail in the morning.
I drop the envelopes that don’t belong to me into a pile on the kitchen table, grab a frozen pizza out of the freezer and shove it into the microwave. While my dinner warms up, I turn on my computer, hoping hoping hoping that someone somewhere has invited me for a job interview. I know the economy is bad but I’m desperate now. I’ve gone four months without a job and I’m not eating freezer-burned pizza by choice. I’m quickly blowing through the severance pay I received when I lost my job.
Next resort? Max out my credit cards. Not a good look.
The microwave dings, informing me that my pizza is now scalding hot and soggy. I pout as I take it, along with the newspaper sitting next to the mail and head over to the kitchen table.
I open my email. Nope — no job leads here.
Sigh.
Meanwhile, my hard-earned certified internal auditor designation sits and wastes away in a drawer.
I browse the major job search websites again and leave a few applications but it really doesn’t look promising. Just as I’m about to send in a final resume, my phone dings on the table next to me.
It’s Keeland.
I’m still so annoyed that he showed up at the community center today. He deliberately scheduled his art workshop to coincide with my math tutoring. It’s bad enough that he’s in the house next door every single day. I’ve even started doing my meditation in the basement just to avoid him. Now, do I have to avoid the community center, too?
This whole Keeland’s-back-in-town thing is starting to be too much.
I want nothing to do with him but the fact that he caught me ogling him through my bedroom blinds like a damn idiot the other day did nothing to convince him of that.
I grumble under my breath as I grab for my phone and check his message.
Keeland: Sammie…
I can almost hear him saying my name in that teasing, sing-song way of his.
Sammie: WHAT?
I’m not sure that response conveys the level of annoyance I feel. So when it takes him a few minutes to respond, I send him a couple of question marks and some exclamation points to speed things along.
His next message makes me tingle all over.
Keeland: I want to come over. To play…
A sharp reaction pulses at my core. My cheeks blaze. My pulse hammers. I am all hot and bothered.
Dammit!
I’m done being taunted by him.
He thinks he's so irresistible, flaunting his hotness all around, teasing me facetiously, making me lose my damn mind. But I’ll show him.
I’m not just his best friend's innocent kid sister, a little girl he can just toy around with for shits and giggles. I'm all grown-up now. I'm gonna make him want me. I’m gonna make his balls turn cobalt blue. And one thing’s for sure – he will never have the privilege of getting his hands on my body.
I pick up my phone and tap across the screen.
Sammie: Meet me at the bedroom window.
I grin to myself as I hit ‘send’.
I’ll teach him a lesson.
I'll show him. I’ll SHOW him.
Chapter 13
I glance down at the phone in my hand.
Keeland: I want to come over. To play…
I hope she knows that I’m not talking hopscotch.
My cock was already rock hard when I sent Sammie that text message, but when she told me to meet her at the window…Fuck! My poor dick is tenting the fabric of my sweatpants now.
I’m standing at the window and I have no idea what she has planned for me. For all I know, she could be scheming to pelt my window with eggs. But damn, it might be worth it, just to see that sexy pout on her lips.
The blinds rise slowly in the second floor window next door and Sammie comes into view. She’s wearing that same fluttery, white sundress with spaghetti-thin straps that reveals her graceful neck and pale arms. I imagine sliding my tongue down that neck and hearing her moan as I do it.
She gives me a wicked look that says it’s her turn to taunt me. She takes slow steps backwards, eyes fixed on mine and she sits in the large wicker chair directly across from the window.
The sensual way she’s moving causes a chill to run down my arms. I feel my heart pick up speed as she lifts one foot onto the seat of the chair and slowly trails her fingers from her ankle to her knee, her eyes on me the whole time.
Shit — this is her payback. She’s punishing me for the way I embarrassed her when I caught her peeking at me the other night. And she’s going to make me suffer.
Her fingers run from her knee to her pelvis before she slides her hand under the skirt of her flimsy dress. I swallow hard and move closer to the pane, hardly able to believe my eyes. Sammie’s tongue darts out and swipes her bottom lip, her eyes fluttering for a fraction of a second. I can barely see her hand moving under the fabric, but I can see her face quickly morphing from wicked and mean to soft and vulnerable. Her facade is melting away with each tiny stroke of her fingers.
The movement of her hand accelerates and her lips part. My breath fogs the window when I lean in, pressing my hands to the glass like an eager child. I can only imagine the sounds that she’s making. I wish I were right there to hear her, to smell her musk filling the room, to put my hand on hers and guide it in small, slow circles around her clit. Her head falls to the side and one strap slips off of her shoulder, revealing a small, perfectly round breast. She’s so lost in her movements now, it’s almost as if she’s forgotten that she has a spectator.
She fondles each breast in turn as s
he continues to stroke herself becoming looser and freer by the second. Her brown hair falls into her eyes as she bows her head. Her hand moves erratically now. Her legs spread wider and she groans so loud that the sound carries out the closed window. Then, her hand moves in fast deep pumps, in and out of her. Faster and faster and faster. I don’t think it’s physically possible for my dick to get any harder than it is right now.
She shudders all over, her whole body tightening visibly. I watch her ride ride ride the wave, clinging to it desperately, trying not to let go.
And then she slackens against the chair, a contented smile touching her lips. My cock is a sledgehammer in my pants. I desperately want to be inside of her, beating at her walls. I’m about ready to spontaneously combust.
I watch her recuperate. Slowly, she comes back to herself, sitting upright in the chair and brushing her damp hair away from her face. She looks at me and grins wide and sinister. Then, she slips her fingers into her mouth one by one, licking them clean.
This girl is trying to kill me.
She bends forward, reaching for her phone on the bed in front of her. She taps quickly at the screen and a second later, I hear my phone ding.
Sammie: I’m not so ‘proper’ now huh, Keeland?
When I glance back at the window, she smirks at me right before she yanks the blinds shut. The self-satisfied expression on her face is burned into my memory as I sink onto my mattress, still drowning in shock and lust. I shove my hand into the waistband of my pants to calm my raging boner.
Sammie Trotten looks like an angel in that girlish white dress, with her big doe eyes and full red lips, but only a minx would tease me the way she just did. And when I get my hands on her, I plan to sin all over that tight little body.
Chapter 14
I slept like a baby last night!
Seeing the hunger on Keeland’s face as I taunted him from the window felt even better than the orgasm itself.
Let me just say that what I did was completely out-of-character for me. I’m not very forward with my sexuality. I’m not overly flirtatious or provocative. I don’t flaunt my cleavage in guys’ faces. Hell — I never even initiated sex when I was with my ex-boyfriend of two years.
I’m not a ‘ho.
But Keeland Masters needed to be taught a lesson. He’s been mocking me since we were kids, dangling his body in front of me only to snatch back right as I’m getting close. Well, those days are over. I’m not a kid anymore and I won’t let him get under my skin.
Last night, I taught him not to mess with me…This morning, I feel great about it.
And it looks like today might turn out pretty awesome, too. I have a job interview!
I got the email late last night from a small auditing firm in the city. So, I’m up early and dressed in my best with a little hop in my step, ready to go impress their socks off.
I even put on the pearl earrings my aunt Shirley gave me for my 21st birthday and my thick-framed reading glasses. It makes me look like I’ve got my shit together. I feel confident and my mood is ah-mazing…
…Until I notice the foot of snow sitting in my driveway.
Where did that come from?
It definitely wasn’t there when I went to bed last night. Shit, I should have checked the forecast.
So now, my zen, tranquil morning has just morphed into a mad dash to shove cold, leftover pizza into my mouth while shoveling the driveway with one eye on the clock.
But getting my little Prius to start? Not happening.
I smack my forehead into the steering wheel over and over again. Toyotas don’t break down. Isn’t that what they say? But it’s just my luck that my trusty little hybrid seems to have bitten the dust on the morning that I need her most. I turn the key again, but all I get is a spu-ta-ta-ta in reply.
“No, no, no,” I groan under my breath, unable to wrap my head around my bad fortune. I pop the driver’s side door open and just sit there, staring blankly at my dashboard with no idea what to do. Chilly air fills the cabin.
Keeland steps out onto the porch next door in a fluffy, black robe open wide over his black boxers. Barefoot. Bed head. He wipes sleep from his crystalline blue eyes as he approaches the driveway. He props an elbow on the roof of the car and leans into the open door. “I guess this morning’s your turn to wake up the whole neighborhood, huh?”
He gives me a one-sided smile, cool and collected, seemingly unfazed by what happened last night. Meanwhile, all I can think is, he’s seen me have an orgasm…he’s seen me have an orgasm!
It seemed like a good idea last night. Now? Not so much.
“Stop. Please. I finally have a job interview and I’m late and I don’t need your snark right now.”
He backs away, lifting his hands in surrender. “Sorry to interrupt your joyless pursuit of entry level grunt work in corporate America. Won't bother you again." He walks back up the pathway and disappears into the house, slamming the door behind him.
After a few minutes of fruitless tinkering with the ignition, I’m frustrated enough to cry. I drag ass out of the car and circle to the front. I pull and pull, trying to pry the hood up. I can’t even figure out how to open the thing, so chances are good that I won’t have any idea what I’m doing once I finally get the hood to pop up.
I sigh, discouraged, weighing my options. I would order an Uber, but…Reyfield? Ha!
My chances of getting a taxi up here within the next twenty minutes are equally slim. Nancy’s car isn’t in her driveway, so begging her for a lift is out of the question. Daniel is probably already at work so I can’t call him, either.
I have only one option left. Walk — make that, run — all the way to Pomello Street in my heels, in the snow to catch an express bus to downtown Chicago.
I slog back to the driver’s side door to grab my purse out of the front seat. That’s when Keeland’s front door swings open again. He appears in the doorway wearing a thick, gray hoodie, dark jeans and black construction boots. “Come on. Let’s go,” he says to me as he clomps by me at high speed.
My eyes follow him down to the sidewalk. “Excuse me?”
“Come on, Sammie. Time is money.” He doesn’t bother to look at me. He just keeps walking.
“What are you doing?” I ask. I find myself following him gingerly in my too-high interview shoes.
“I’m taking you to your interview.” He keeps walking.
I scoff at him. “You must be crazy. Do I look like I’d just hop onto your motorcycle and zoom down to Chicago? That thing is a death-trap on two wheels, especially in weather like this.”
He doesn’t answer. Instead, he aims a remote starter at a shiny black pick-up truck parked across the street. I’ve never noticed the vehicle on Thornbush Lane before. “We’re taking my truck, Sammie.” He eyes me over his shoulder. “Is that good enough for you?”
Ugh – he’s such an asshole!
I weigh my options again.
Fuck it — these heels weren’t made for trudging in the snow.
I hang my head in shame and climb into the passenger’s seat of Keeland’s new truck.
Chapter 15
She steps off of the elevator, her burgundy tweed coat cinched tight at her waist and her slim-fitting gray skirt hugging her hips. Her hair is straight and shiny and neatly combed.
She looks so professional now. An auditor, for sure. But, I can’t help but think about the way she looked last night as the strap of her white dress had slowly slipped down her creamy skin and she’d pleasured herself till she exploded into bliss. Each time I close my eyes, I see the vulnerable look she’d worn on her face. I feel blood rushing to my cock as the image replays in my head.
She’s frowning now, disappointment tinting her eyes. Despite her facial expression, she’s still the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen. When she spots me sitting on a squeaky, faux-leather couch in the lobby, her frown deepens, transforming quickly from disappointment to suspicion. "You waited?"
I smirk at her. "Of course I
waited. How were you supposed to get home?"
She doesn't answer. She just sort of stands there, silently glowering at me. I don't let her get to me, though. I rise to my feet and walk ahead of her, holding the door open. "After you," I say gallantly. Instead of thanking me, she rolls her eyes as she moves past me, leaving a whiff of her sweet fragrance behind.
Damn - her walls are up so high when it comes to me and I can't even blame her. I'm the asshole who broke her tender teenaged heart. She doesn’t trust my intentions. She doesn’t want my friendship.
Dirty Neighbor (The Dirty Suburbs) Page 6