Worth It

by S. M. Shade

  His lips land on mine in a ferocious kiss. “You do?”

  “I never stopped. You grabbed my heart when we were kids and never let go.” He pulls me close to him and kisses me until I can barely breathe. “But I’m not fucking you here, with an old man playing the butt trumpet a few feet away.”

  The door opens before he can respond and a doctor walks in without a hazmat suit on. “The tests are back. It wasn’t anthrax or any other harmful toxin. You can return home.”

  “Thank fuck,” Davis says, stuffing his feet in the slippers the hospital provided. “Do you know what it was?”

  “Baby powder.”

  “I’m going to kill that asshole.”

  “Get in line, son,” Mr. Hatten speaks up, climbing out of his bed and bending over to retrieve his slippers.

  Davis groans as I giggle. “See? Baby bird.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Kasha

  Since being home, things just keep getting weirder. Then again, that’s pretty much my normal.

  The only time I’ve really gotten out is when Henley got quarantined. That’s how pathetic I’ve become.

  Dad has been a flurry of motion, and his two part-time interns have been here daily since my return. Apparently, they were here before my return too.

  Emitt is propped against the wall downstairs, guzzling down a bottle of water when I walk into the main kitchen. My tiny studio apartment doesn’t have a fridge just yet.

  Emitt is the sexy intern I used to enjoy watching during his trips here. It was awesome to subtly drop things so he’d bend over and pick them up. Now I barely even notice he’s a man. He could wave his penis and ask me to ride it like a drunk cowgirl, and I’d politely decline so I could go sulk over another guy, who… Don’t even get me started. Roman sends things, but won’t respond to any of my messages.

  Stupid turd nugget.

  “Your dad was just bitching about you signing him up on a dating website,” Emitt tells me, his smile forming to flash a set of perfectly straight, white teeth.

  “He can get over it. I want a stepmom with a pulse.”

  His eyebrows go up in confusion.

  “Never mind,” I say, waving my robo hand in a dismissive gesture before he can ask questions.

  “Your arm and hand still working good? Your dad said it messed up and he had to leave to fix it.”

  “She hasn’t tried to molest me again, so I’m not complaining right now.”

  Again, his eyebrows hit his hairline. He used to act terrified of speaking to me, as though he was worried I was some psycho chick whose sanity was bled out when she lost her arm. Now he’s gotten used to me, and other than the occasional eyebrow raises, he shrugs off most of my crazy. Since his field of expertise is prosthetics, he’s never been weird about amputees either, so bonus.

  “I guess he didn’t tell me everything,” he says, grinning as he props up on the dining room table. “Fill me in.”

  I snort, then shake my head. “I’ll let your imagination work out the details. But never again will I say ‘fuck me’ in my head.”

  My eyes dart down, watching Jill twitch. But she doesn’t go after me. Good girl.

  He bursts out laughing, and I force a smile while turning back to my task of fixing a sandwich. I thought once I was out of the intense atmosphere the intimate wedding week provided, my brain would start firing on logical neurons again. It’d point out how stupid it is to be that attached to a guy I’ve only been messing around with for a week.

  No such luck. If anything, it’s getting harder and harder to think of anything but him, even though he went and got incredibly weird since I left. The weird factor just intrigues me all the more, because I like weird. But it’s also annoying to be ignored while he continues to be weird.

  “You okay?” Emitt asks, reminding me he’s still in the room.

  “Hmm? I mean… yeah, fine. Why do you ask?”

  I take a long sip of my water, still distracted, as he answers.

  “Well, you’ve been back for almost a week and haven’t once dropped anything for me to pick up so you could check out my ass,” he says, causing me to choke, sputter, and spit out half my water, while the other half sprays from my nose.

  Awesome.

  Fuck my day.

  Emitt is laughing as I wipe away my mess from the counter. I’m still coughing while my nose burns, and I’m fairly sure there’s a spit string attached to my chin. Using my arm, I wipe it away, then rub my arm on my shirt. Yeah, I’m sexy like that.

  I guess I’m not the queen of subtle like I thought I was.

  Clearing my throat, I start to try and recover from that, when my phone dings with a text. I’m scared to look at it. I’m almost positive I know who it’s from.

  After that first picture, Roman sent another one the very next day. It was a picture of my hand holding a chocolate dove. Then there was a picture of my pretty hand holding a vibrator on a bed—whose bed? The sheets were white, and that was all I could see beyond the vibrator and hand. And whose vibrator?! One of my vibrators, that’s whose. How he’d get my vibrator?

  The next time it was palming the back of an ass—I hope it was his ass. Then it was beside a bouquet of roses, holding a card that I couldn’t read, thanks to the blurry pixilation that occurred when I tried to zoom.

  Sure enough, the new message is from him, and again it’s a random picture. He hasn’t explained any of this. He won’t respond to any of the questions I keep asking.

  This time my prosthetic hand is groping the boob of a mannequin in a lingerie store.

  Not sure how I feel about that. Well, I feel violated, though I’m sure it pales in comparison to how that mannequin must feel. For all I know, that mannequin may be related to my dad’s blowup, soon-to-be ex-girlfriend.

  “That would be an awkward family reunion,” I mutter to myself while shuddering.

  “What?” Emitt asks.

  My eyes come up, meeting his as my lips purse.

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  He shrugs. “Sure.”

  “What does it mean when a guy steals your prosthetic, and has it touching random things like truck nuts, chocolate doves, roses, an ass, and mannequin boobs?”

  His eyebrows try to jump off his face this time.

  “I’d say that’s really fucked up.”

  “On the weird-o-meter scale from one to ten, ten being the highest, where would—”

  “Twenty,” he says, shuddering.

  “I said one to ten.”

  “I know. I still say it’s a solid twenty.”

  Hmm. On my scale I was saying at most a four, but he seems firm on his number.

  Before I can say more, someone is ringing the doorbell, and Emitt jogs over to answer it. Our house is set up oddly. The actual house bleeds into my dad’s office, then his huge shop that used to be a garage. He expanded it to make it more like a ten-car garage, but it’s just machines and tech stuff. Above it is my small apartment, but I spend almost as much time down here as I do up there, since my jewelry room is in the back in my old bedroom.

  “Kasha, I think it’s for you,” Emitt calls out.

  I head for the door, confused. When I reach it, Emitt is grinning, perched up against the door as a delivery man thrusts two vases full of roses at me.

  Emitt helps me take them, and I sign the pad. “Who are these—”

  The man walks off before I can finish my question, acting like he has more important things to do than deliver roses from the rose delivery van like he’s paid to do.

  “Rude much?” I grumble, trying to look for a card.

  “No card on this one,” Emitt says, apparently snooping in an effort to help me.

  The only card simply reads, “KASHA.”

  For a fleeting moment I consider Roman, but then remember my mother loves roses. Now that we’ve mended fences and have started talking regularly, I’m sure this is her sending me the rest of the olive branch… or maybe the whole tree or whatever.


  Emitt and I both set down the roses, and I shrug it off.

  “You coming back to work with us today?” he asks as I follow him through the labyrinth we call a home, taking my sandwich with me.

  “Just letting Dad download all the info from Jill,” I say absently, before taking a bite.

  Dad has on his weird little spectacles that seem to grow longer with each passing year. They have that whole pointy-eyed thing going on. He lifts one layer of the magnifying glasses, swiveling it out of the way. Then another, and another, and… Sheesh. How many does he have now?

  Finally, he makes it to a set that don’t make his eyes look like alien fish eyes.

  “Kasha! Make those damn messages stop!” he snaps, and I grin like a mischievous little brat.

  “What? Don’t know how to correspond with breathing women?” I muse.

  Emitt chokes, and Jenny—Dad’s second, young, and very sweet intern—drops her tools on the floor before stumbling. In hindsight, that does sound more like necrophilia than… what’s the fetish called for humping plastic shit?

  Dad is a wonky shade of red right now.

  Too far, Kasha.

  “It was just an experiment!” Dad hisses, only making that necrophilia rumor grow bigger.

  Obviously a good daughter would clarify so that his interns didn’t go around telling everyone that he’s screwing the dead.

  “Was the experiment to see how deep your dick could go inside an over-embellished balloon? Or were you testing your speed? Maybe your endurance?”

  I stop there, because now I’m gagging. I also toss the rest of my sandwich into the trash, because my appetite is gone.

  Dad’s eyes almost bug out of his head, and Emitt turns around, his body shaking with silent laughter. Jenny’s eyes are wide and horrified as she looks to Dad for confirmation. Poor girl. She’s barely twenty and being ever-so-slowly corrupted by the madness that is the Jensen household.

  “I think I’ll just go stand way over there,” Jenny says, walking toward the machine that has more bells and whistles than anything else in here.

  Emitt follows her, raising his hands in a what-the-fuck gesture while grinning at me. I just shrug in response. A small grin graces my lips when Jenny fake-stumbles and drops one of the screwdrivers. As soon as Emitt bends over to pick it up for her, she eyes his ass. Sigh. She’s definitely been corrupted. I hope that I’ll enjoy that ass again one day.

  “We’re not discussing my love life anymore,” Dad hisses.

  “Says you,” I quip, moving my eyes back to my infuriated father.

  “How about your love life?” Dad asks, arching an eyebrow. “Your mother called and told me I’d better make sure you felt like it was okay to leave me if things worked out with Roland.”

  “Roman,” I correct flatly. “But things didn’t work out, so no worries.”

  I don’t mention the cryptic messages, because I’m not sure I understand them.

  “Is he the guy…” He lets his words trail off as his brow furrows.

  “The guy who saw you balls-deep in rub-a-dub Susie? You betcha.”

  He groans. “You’re never going to let that go, are you?”

  The doorbell rings overhead, alerting us we have yet another guest waiting at the front door of the main house this morning. Emitt jogs across the warehouse to go answer it, while Jenny’s eyes chase his firm butt cheeks the whole way.

  “I was irrevocably scarred for life because of that. So no, I won’t let you forget it any time soon.”

  I shudder dramatically, just to emphasize how truly traumatized I am, but he just rolls his eyes and starts turning his glasses back down, clicking the lenses into place one at a time. When he’s finished, his eyes are nothing more than two giant pupils, and he faces his tiny work once again.

  As he uses some buzzing thingy to make smoke on some wire thingy, I prop a hip against the table. “I thought you wanted to check on Jill.”

  “I do, but first I need to find the short in this—”

  “More deliveries for you,” Emitt says as he walks back in. “They said they’d put it wherever, so where do you want this stuff?” he adds.

  “Me?”

  He nods.

  Sheesh. How many roses will Mom send? Dad will be sneezing his head off when he goes in there.

  “Just send them to my room with it.”

  The doorbell rings again, and Emitt jogs back into action. Dad’s phone pings with a new hit from his profile, and I respond to the woman.

  “You have a date with a tantric sex trainer,” I tell my father, then make a mental note to bleach my brain from the fallout of those words later.

  “I’m not dating anyone.”

  My phone chimes, and I look down as I answer, flipping open the newest picture from Roman.

  “You’re going out with her. She’s not your type since her lips are real instead of painted on, but she’ll do.”

  He mutters something as I cock my head, trying to figure out what purpose it serves for Roman to send me a picture of my hand stuffed inside some orange peels.

  ME: Are you ever going to explain this? I tried calling you. Why do you have my arm?

  Unsurprisingly, he ignores my text, just as he’s done all week.

  “Everything upstairs?” Emitt calls from the doorway.

  “Yes, please,” I call back, then focus my attention on my stubborn father. “You’re going out this weekend. Public place. No drinking anything without watching it mixed. And give me an exact time to expect you back.”

  He picks up a screwdriver and holds it out, pointing it at me like it’s a weapon. “I’m the father,” he says, looking utterly ridiculous since all I can see are those magnified pupils when he tries to glare.

  “The father was found molesting a blowup doll. I’m tired of finding quirky ways to put it.”

  He heaves out a breath, and Emitt comes back in, shaking his head. “I left the door open,” he says, walking on back.

  “Why?” I ask as he passes.

  “They’re gonna be a while.”

  I fully mean to ask about that, but I get distracted. Jenny drops her pencil, Emitt bends to pick it up, and Jenny leans back to check out his ass again. My phone chimes during the show, and I look at it, frowning. This time the picture is of my hand on top of a box. That’s all I can see too.

  ME: Why won’t you answer me????? What is your fucking defect?????

  The infuriating asshole still refuses to answer my questions.

  Putting my phone away, I glare at my father as he continues doing whatever geek stuff he likes doing. “You’re going on a date. I think it’s long overdue. You’re going to get to know her, and if you’re really lucky, she’ll be worth a second date.”

  I pat him on the shoulder, then curse when my phone goes off with another text. What’s his deal today? Why so many pictures?

  This time my hand is stuck in between towels… Why does that look so familiar?

  “If I go on this date,” my dad says, drawing me out of my confusion as I tuck my phone away again, “you’re going to take me off that website?”

  He doesn’t look over at me. “I’ll take you off that site when you put a ring on someone’s finger.”

  He opens his mouth, and I add, “Someone with blood in her veins instead of air. I mean, you can get an airhead if you want, just not literally.”

  He mutters a few curses, and I grin. This has gotten boring, and it’s obvious he’s knee-deep in his work. Deciding to come back later for him to do his thing with Jill, I head upstairs to my apartment.

  As soon as I walk inside, I’m yelping, and falling, and yelping some damn more. What the hell?

  A grunt slips through my lips when I pound the ground. Cursing, I look around at the insanity in my room. “What the actual hell?” I groan, shocked as I survey all the boxes in my room. There’s barely a trail from my bedroom to my bathroom, and my living room is essentially buried. My bed is like the only thing without flowers or boxes on it. />
  Just as I’m about to call my mother, my eyes catch sight of a note on my bed. It’s typed, and there’s only one sentence written on it: All the fucking woo.

  What the hell does that mean?

  I start to open the box I tripped over, when the very distinct sound of a running shower registers, and my veins chill like ice. Stumbling to my feet and tripping over boxes, I grab the broom from the corner and start creeping into the bathroom.

  Did one of those delivery fuckers decide to shower in my freaking bathroom?

  I will so break a broom on his boundary-pushing ass.

  Quietly, I walk toward the bathroom, then glare at Jill when she crushes part of the flimsy broom handle. Calming my breaths, I charge into the bathroom, my banshee war cry echoing off the walls as I swing the broom at the shower curtain.

  The curtain is jerked open, and a gasp leaves my lips as a hand darts out and catches the broom before it can connect with a very wet, slippery, incredibly sexy, naked man.

  “You always so violent?” he drawls.

  “Roman,” I hiss, shaking for some weird reason.

  He rakes his wet, inky black hair out of his eyes with one hand, while his other hand tugs the broom free from my grip and tosses it aside. He arches an eyebrow, his face expressionless other than that.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I ask, finding my small bathroom a lot smaller than it was a few seconds ago.

  “I walked into my bathroom, and suddenly ended up here. Obviously it was a vortex or something,” he says dryly, amusement flickering in his eyes as he mocks my words from the day I stumbled into his room.

  That feels like so long ago.

  “Obviously,” I say quietly, cocking my head. “Or, you drove five and a half hours to take a shower in my bathroom. It’s not as likely as your vortex theory, but it’s best to consider all options.”

  I’m talking on autopilot, mostly. My brain is still trying to process whether or not I’m awake or just having a seriously good dream where Roman is naked in my shower. He looks just like he did that first day—all brooding, cocky, and arrogant.

  And sexy. Of course sexy.

  And wet.

  And all lean muscly.

  And wet.