Men in Shorts

by Lori Perkins

  He slid one finger deep inside her as he stared into her eyes. She trembled and chewed on her bottom lip. She felt like velvet, liquid heat and so wet she dripped down his hand. Joe pulled his finger back, touched the tight nub of her clit and she came apart in his arms, her legs giving way. If he hadn’t been holding her, she’d have fallen. He adored that he’d done that, adored her. He wanted her on a bed, wanted to sink himself deep inside her and fuck her again and again.

  His cock was nudging between her legs when he came back to his senses. No condom. Damn his fucking shorts. Condom in his wallet but his wallet was in his pants hanging a few inaccessible feet above his head. He could pull out at the last minute, but it only needed one little breaststroker to make it through and turn him into a daddy. Joe knew the odds. Calculating odds was his life.

  “I’m on the pill.”

  Pop. The sound of his willpower evaporating.

  “I’m clean. I…I’ve never not…” Joe gave up. The words weren’t coming out right.

  Kate grabbed the wire shelf behind her head and hoisted her legs around his hips. Joe hoped the shelves were firmly fixed, then caught sight of her pussy and stopped worrying. He slipped one hand under her backside and used the other to guide his cock into place. He looked so big and she looked so small. Christ. His cockhead nudged against her wet folds and he dipped in and out.

  “Joe,” she pleaded.

  With one push he watched his cock slide deep inside her, her blonde hair snug against his black and his lungs locked.

  “That’s so good,” he gasped.

  He put his other hand under her backside to support her and she wrapped her legs around his hips and dragged him deeper. She was tight and hot and Joe wanted to keep pushing, wanted more than his cock inside her. He wanted his entire body to be inside her. He dropped his head to her breast and licked her nipple. A lick turned to a suck and as he began to canter his hips into her, he pulled on her nipple in time to the thrust of his cock.

  A little cry fluttered from her mouth as he let her breast go, but he needed to move in firm, swift strokes now, his orgasm building.

  “Hold tight, sweet thing.” He watched her hands clutch harder at the shelf, knuckles whitening under the strain.

  Joe pounded into her, the friction around his cock winding him towards oblivion. It was the flush across her breasts that tipped him over the brink. Her muscles clenched around his cock as he came. Ah God, how could he be this lucky? The ache in his balls vanished in a wild rush of pleasure as come boiled out of him and spurted into her pussy. He wrenched her away from the rail and she flung her arms around his neck for the last moments of the ride. Joe wished he could stay inside her forever.

  He pulled her into his arms as her legs slid down his body, then rained kisses all over her face, her forehead, down her nose, along her chin.

  “Sweetheart, you’re straight out of my dreams,” he whispered.

  “Will you come again?”

  He laughed. “Give me a moment.”

  Kate frowned. “I mean, if I put the doll in the closet.”

  “Ah, yeah, sure.”

  “It isn’t just magic for one night?”

  His heart began to thump. “Not if you don’t want it to be.”

  She smiled and pulled away. “See you tomorrow night, Joe.”

  The closet door closed and Joe exhaled. He grabbed his shorts and pulled them on. The doll lay where he’d thrown it and he put it on top of her black bra before he hoisted himself up back through the ceiling. He lay on the floor of his closet to replace the panel and the square of wood he’d cut out for the safe. Then he sat with his back to the closet door and ran his fingers through his hair. What the hell had that been about? Did she really think he was a doll come to life? Was she crazy?

  With sex like that, did he care?

  Joe couldn’t keep it bottled up any longer. He stood in the pub having a drink with his friend Ken and told him everything. Ken’s jaw dropped to his shoes.

  “Fuck a duck,” he gasped. “So she thinks you’re a action figure come to life.”

  Joe nodded.

  “You lucky bastard.”

  Joe nodded harder.

  Ken smiled. “Think I should buy a Barbie and throw her in my closet?”

  Joe glared. “I’m serious. The problem is she doesn’t think I exist outside the closet.”

  “You sure that’s what she thinks? She hasn’t seen you in the building, knows you live above her and is pulling your leg?”

  “I’ve never seen her before. She really believes I’m GI Joe. I’ve got the denim shorts, hair, same little scar under my eye. Only while his was no doubt inflicted in a fight with some enemy soldier, I got mine when I took a nose dive on a building site I was inspecting. God, she’s gorgeous. Breasts I could drown in, a pussy I have drowned in, eyes I don’t want to stop looking into.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  The problem is I’m not GI Joe. I’m Joe Jarvis, risk assessor from Boulder, Colorado. I didn’t step off a shelf in a toy store. I’ve got a past and I’d like a future with her.”

  “Go knock on her door.”

  Joe felt all the blood drain from his head. “But what if she only wants the dream?”

  Ken rolled his eyes. “Take a risk, Joe.”

  Kate had opened and closed the door of her closet so many times the following day she made the hinges creak. The action figure remained where she’d left it with shorts unbuttoned and posed next to one of her stilettos. She closed the door and sighed. So he wasn’t going to come. Kate had gone through so many theories as to how he’d got inside her apartment and dismissed all but one. He was a burglar.

  Of course that left her with the difficulty of explaining his lack of clothes apart from the shorts, but what other explanation could there be? Unless he really was GI Joe and this was magic. Ha! Was Jennifer that weird? But Joe had the same scar, the same muscular body, the same shorts as the doll. Kate slammed the heel of her hand against her head. Maybe she’d imagined the whole thing including today’s aching muscles.

  Only one way to find out.

  One flight of stairs away, she’d find the answer.

  Kate stood outside the door of the apartment immediately above hers with a hand poised to knock. In her other hand, she clutched GI Joe. Before thinking too hard sent her back downstairs, she banged on the door.

  A woman answered. Small, petite, long dark hair. Wedding ring on her finger. Kate turned to ice.

  “Yes?” the woman asked.

  “Sorry. Wrong apartment.”

  Kate turned and returned to the stairs. She went down and kept walking.

  Joe stood outside Kate’s apartment, his heart pounding. Before he could knock, the door opened and a harassed looking guy came out. “What?” he snapped.

  “Do…do you live here?”

  “Yes.”

  Joe took in the Are you a moron? glare and backed off. “Sorry. Wrong apartment.”

  He paused at the stairs and instead of going up to his apartment, he walked down in a daze. Outside on the street, he took a deep breath. His hands were shaking. Joe didn’t know what he was thinking. Anger that she’d tricked him? Or regret? He jolted as the guy he’d seen upstairs emerged behind him with a woman and a little boy. The woman wasn’t Kate. Had she moved out? Joe started to follow them and stopped. He didn’t need a fist in his face. He needed Kate.

  Almost as though thinking her name had brought her into his line of sight, Joe saw her. She stood outside the door of the building across the street, holding GI Joe by the arm. Joe forgot to look both ways. Forgot to check again just in case. Forgot he wasn’t supposed to be a real man. He rushed across the street and then froze in front of her.

  “I went to your apartment.” They spoke at the same time and then laughed.

  “You live over there?” she whispered.

  “And you live over here?”

  Kate gulped. “Once I’d convinced myself you weren’t a burglar holdi
ng a spare set of keys, I decided you’d come through the ceiling of my closet from the floor of yours.”

  “I did. This is impossible.”

  He reached up to rake his fingers through his hair and Kate caught hold of his hand.

  “Does it matter?” she asked, anxiety written all over her lovely face.

  Joe smiled. He pulled her into his arms and kissed her, the doll pressed between them. His erection grew larger by the second.

  “Come upstairs to my place,” Kate whispered. “Do you think we can get to yours through mine?”

  She tugged him by the hand, up the stairs, into her apartment and over to her closet. Somehow Joe wasn’t surprised to find the ceiling panel firmly fixed in place and the beams above untouched.

  “Not going to work anymore, hot lips,” he said.

  Kate pouted. “Damn, and I was going to see what happened if I put two action figures in here.”

  Joe laughed. “Does this mean the magic’s gone out of our relationship?”

  She smiled. “Take off those shorts and let’s see.”

  Why’d It Have To Be Shorts?

  By Dawn Jackson

  “If you show up this weekend, you pass.” Professor Garner continued writing on the chalkboard, his back turned. “Don’t, and you’ll have wasted your time as much as you’ve wasted mine.”

  His hands are huge. Cecilia blinked, watching him stroke the chalk up and down the board. If only he could lose the suit, she could see if the rest of him measured up to the wet dreams she’d been having for the last month and a half, involving those hands.

  “This isn’t a social gathering, folks. We’re going there to work and work hard. You’re going to get your hands dirty.”

  Did he just read my mind? She snapped her pencil in two and gave her roommate a nasty look. Six weeks. She’d sat through every lecture. Radiocarbon dating, the fascinating world of fire pits and yes, identifying food sources by analyzing scat. Shit. Whatever. Okay, so it pointed toward what they consumed. Who cared? He didn’t even know she existed.

  She huffed and blew her bangs off her forehead. An outing. If she’d been paying attention, she just might know where. Wherever it was, it was screwing up her life for the next two weeks. She had to take vacation from her full-time job. This class was supposed to be a nighttime commitment only. An easy grade, easy credits she needed to wrap up her degree and a little time for fantasizing about the teacher. Even if it was the only sex she’d had in the last nine months, fictional was better than nothing. Now she’d be around him night and day for two weeks. Her libido would go haywire. Damn.

  Megan said she wouldn’t regret taking this class. Anthropology 101. Yeah, okay. The teacher proved to be a major distraction, regardless that she couldn’t see much of him in what he wore.

  It was a wonder he didn’t drop dead from the heat. Cecilia shifted in her seat and yawned. Just looking at him in the tweed made her itch. She wanted to rip it off in the worst way.

  “Are we keeping you up, Ms. Thompson?”

  “No, professor.”

  “This is an extremely exciting discovery. The caves were only recently uncovered by an earthquake. We’ve received a green light that it’s safe to proceed. You’ll be one of the first people to set foot inside in ten thousand years.” His eyes practically sparkled with excitement. “The paintings on the walls are so fresh they look like they were created yesterday. We’ll have a better understanding of these people and where they came from, how they evolved socially. I’m told some of the pictures hint at a land-bridge crossing. A team of archeologists has been on site for the last two months.”

  “Thrilling,” Cecilia mumbled.

  It is.”

  Damn, he has great hearing.

  “The team has representatives from several major museums and universities throughout the world to excavate and document. Some of the top archeologists and anthropologists in the country will be there. You’ll get to rub elbows, eat and camp with them. This is the opportunity of a lifetime. I’ve paired each of you up with one of them. Your job will be to observe them and help them with whatever they need.”

  Cecilia could picture the wrinkly old geezers they’d be assisting. Oh yeah, just who she wanted to crawl into a cave with. Her love life sucked. She hated camping and hated dark, cramped places. There was little that could happen to change her view on that.

  She shivered when she thought of the other things that might be crawling around in the cave with her, namely spiders and snakes.

  If he noticed her lack of interest, it didn’t show. He continued on, the excitement in his voice building. “I’m passing out a list. Make sure you bring warm-weather clothing, sunscreen and a jacket. It’s hot and dry on the surface, but down in the caves, it can get a bit nippy. When they’re done, the caves are being sealed up to preserve them. We could very well be the last eyes to view these fantastic works of art.”

  Okay, so a caveman slapped bloody handprints all over the walls and she was supposed to get excited about it? Cecilia sighed. She had to pass this class. If she failed, she could kiss the easy credits goodbye and spend more time and money to finish what she’d started. That would be the last time she took advice from a twenty-two-year-old who thought it was a good idea to “let her hair down” and take a class for reasons other than to learn.

  “Every year, I choose a personal assistant. This year for our dig, Ms. Thompson will accompany me.”

  Cecilia sat up straight. He what? Did he just say what she thought he said? Now the torture would be right next to her, a constant reminder of her serious lack of nookie. Why the hell did he want her help? He hadn’t so much as looked her in the eye before today. Two weeks paired up with a man who didn’t even see her, not at the top of her list of things to do. No matter if she had a thing for him. “Professor, I’m not sure I’m the right person for this—honor.”

  “I picked the right person.”

  “Yeah.” She fiddled with her pencil on the desk. Get out of it, you’ll go into meltdown. “I have claustrophobia.”

  “Then that won’t be a problem. The cave is massive. There’s an entire village inside the main chamber, separate adobe rooms. All like they just moved out. It surrounds a dried lake bed. The mineral deposits, suggest it was geo-thermal at one time. An indoor heated city. You won’t feel the least bit crowded and your art expertise will be invaluable in the section we’re working.” The professor strolled down the aisle toward her.

  Expertise? Who told him she could draw?

  He snatched the doodle off the desk, glanced down at a caricature of himself and back into her eyes. The corner of his mouth twitched. “Invaluable.”

  I can’t believe I listened to you.” Cecilia dropped her bags on the hot asphalt and lifted her hair off her neck. They hadn’t even entered the desert yet and she was already melting. And to make matters worse, Megan kept going on about how hot her partner was. The last thing Cecilia wanted to think about was anything hot. Staying focused on passing was her goal.

  “I’m telling you, he’s hot. Omigod! We’re both lucky.” Megan shoved her elbow into Cecilia’s ribs. “Look at teacher. Who’d have thunk?”

  Cecilia followed Megan’s gaze across the parking lot where Professor Garner was tossing equipment into the back of a vehicle. Hiking boots, T-shirt. Rugged. Unexpected. Hot. Khaki shorts exposed a great set of calves and an ass normally covered by his stuffy, politically correct professorial attire. The temperature outside rose another twenty degrees and Cecile broke into a sweat. “Sweet mother. When did teachers start looking like that?”

  “Brooke told me he rock climbs on the weekends. Look at those legs. I think I just creamed myself.”

  Brooke? What would Brooke know? The little rumormonger. Cecilia shot Megan a crusty look. “Keep it down, he’ll hear you.”

  “At his age, he’s lucky to hear anything.”

  “He’s not that old. Forty, forty-five. And he’s got fantastic hearing.”

  “For someone of yo
ur advanced age, no.”

  “I’m not that old. God, you’d think I was a spinster the way you and Brooke go on about me.” Cecilia cocked her head to the side, studying her suddenly more provocative teacher. “What’s the chance the rest of him looks that good? He’s got great legs, I’ll give him that, but look what he does for a living. You know he can’t have the total package. He’s a teacher. Probably flabby under that shirt,” Cecilia mumbled, hoping she was right. Pretending he was old and unattractive was the only way she’d kept focus in class to date. His hands were distracting enough. Now she had to add his ass and legs to the list. If the rest of him looked like what she had her gaze glued to, she was in trouble. She’d bomb the class for sure.

  Then to prove her wrong, Professor Garner turned around and lifted his T-shirt to wipe the sweat from his face, exposing a well muscled set of abs and washboard stomach. Cecilia blinked. “Christ.”

  “No, but I’d say he’s definitely blessed. You have to get him naked and report back to me.”

  “What?” Cecilia turned back to Megan. “What in the hell are you talking about?”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t want to get him naked. Even a young woman could appreciate that. I appreciate that. Half the class is appreciating that. Besides, it’s not like there’s that much difference in your age.”

  “I’m not an old lady.” She was thirty-two. Not a kid, but that hardly qualified her for AARP. She could appreciate a hot teacher as much as the next young student. He lifted his head and looked straight at her. Her heart jumped into her throat. He started toward them. “I… Oh shit, here he comes.”

  Megan started laughing. “Come on, take one for the team.”

  “Take what for the team?” Professor Garner walked up, pulling off his sunglasses. Lapis eyes. Cecilia shut her mouth hoping her tongue hadn’t been hanging out. His gaze was so much more intense without his thick frames. Sexier. Cecilia’s body reacted to him. Thighs tightened, stomach constricted and she squeezed her cell phone tight, almost cracking the case. Dear God. That wasn’t the man in the tweed suit from the classroom. That was a walking orgasm waiting to happen. Cecilia swallowed and forced a smile to her face, glancing down at her phone. An excuse. Thank god.