Looking down at the dog in question, I saw that he’d decided Tabby was his, and was now lying on her lap, more than likely crushing her legs under his weight. I was about to call him to get off, when the pain in my ass walked out of the door at that moment, meaning I started going through my options of escape instead. I could run past her, I could walk around the side and jump over the fence, I could dig a hole where I stood – but then I’d be ruining a second Beauregard garden in the space of a week, and that was just unnecessary. Or, I could just stand here and hope she didn’t see me.
The last option seemed the most reasonable, so I turned my back to her, knowing I was safe when there were other people around and she was carrying her niece. Fortunately, my friend - and boss - Dave was standing behind me when I turned, apparently about to talk to me, so I pasted a smile on my face and acted like I’d known he was there.
“Hey, man.”
“Just coming to see if the fireworks had started yet,” he replied, looking around where we were standing. “Is she here yet?”
This was what happened every time I left my house, and it was getting old. “Who?” His sharp eyes came back to me and he looked like he wanted to say something, but was doing his best not to. “Not like you to stop yourself doing something, DB.”
Shrugging, he lifted his bottle to his mouth and then lowered it again without taking anything from it, unable to stop himself from saying what he was in his head now. “Just thinking, you know the old saying about boys pulling a girl's hair because they have a crush on them? Would that mean that the two of you just want to bang each other’s brains out? I mean, you fight and argue like an old married couple, but I swear…”
I held my hand up, hoping it stopped him from saying anything else. Raising an eyebrow, he looked over my shoulder at something, and then grinned as he looked back at me. “You ok? I mean, just so you know, she’s shorter than my wife, so I’m pretty sure you’ll survive.”
Snorting, I took a mouthful of my beer so that I’d have a second longer to think up the perfect response. Unfortunately, all I was left with was the same one I had before I started. “I’m not afraid of her. I’m a couple of inches taller than you, and she’s all of…what, five feet tall?”
During this, I’d noticed him looking behind me, but it wasn’t unusual for him to perve on his wife, so I didn’t think anything of it. Well, that was until I went to take another mouthful from my bottle, and the voice that haunted me said sweetly behind me, “Five-foot-two, actually. And it’s a shame the old myth about a man’s height and his size being relative is a lie. Or maybe it’s just that way with you?”
Turning around slowly, I paused when I came face-to-face with Rose, and saw that Liv was watching me, too. It wasn’t that she was holding the little girl that made me pause, but the beaming smile Rose was shooting in my direction. Call me stupid, especially given the shit that was flying between us, but seeing that smile made two things tighten in me – my balls and the dread in my gut.
Rose was a beautiful woman, and the God’s honest truth was that she didn’t have a clue just how beautiful she was. She’d inherited her dad’s hazel eyes, and with her long lashes those babies were powerful. Add onto it her face, her body, her hair, fuck it even her eyebrows did it for me – she was the type of woman that men made fools of themselves over. And her smile, Christ don’t even get me started on what that did to me when I saw it aimed at someone else, but when it was aimed at me, the effect was even worse. That’s why my balls were tightening, which incidentally meant my pants were, too.
The dread, though, that was with good reason. She had a way of getting even with me, even if it was an accident. A while back, we’d been at the diner and Ellis’s ex had started shit with him, and then aimed it at Jose. To stop Rose attacking her and being charged with assault, I’d arrested her to keep the peace, and ended up throwing her over my shoulder as we’d made our way outside the building.
Just as I’d started to walk across the parking lot to my car, she’d slipped slightly and her foot and had clipped me right in the body part which was currently reacting to her smile. In the end - while I was on my knees trying to breathe in a way that was conducive to survival - she’d somehow cuffed her hands together, and when I’d finally looked up, she’d been sitting in the back of my cruiser waiting for me. Yes, she’d apologized, and it had been an accident, but it was proof that she was dangerous even without meaning to be.
Both of my body’s reactions warred with my irritation over what she’d just thrown at me, though. “You can keep picturing how big it is in your head, baby, but that’s the closest you’ll ever get to it.”
Lowering Liv to the ground and making sure she was steady before letting go – giving me a great shot of her cleavage – she slowly stood back up again and then moved close enough to me that our chests were just brushing each other. Well, I say chests – her tits were rubbing against my sternum given our height difference, but still. Leaning in so that her hand went behind me, at the same time as raising up onto her toes slightly, she whispered, “Is that so, handsome?”
With her face this close to mine, I could see all the striations in her eyes, the dark green and light browns mixing together, all framed by thick, long lashes. That teamed with the soft scent of her perfume had me holding in a groan. Instead, I tried to hold on to my resolve, and replied, “That’s so, baby.”
Giving me another smile and rubbing her chest across mine, she started to lower back down again, and I wanted to shout out a protest and tell her to come back. Thankfully, I held off, and it was just as well because she lifted a bottle up to her lips, took a sip from it, and winked at me. “If you say so, but I kind of live across the road from you and sometimes you forget to close your curtains.” That wouldn’t have been all that bad if she hadn’t lifted up her baby pinky at the same time and wiggled at me.
Not giving me a chance to reply, she turned around and walked away, leaving me standing there watching her in a trance until someone smacked me on the shoulder. “Holy shit,” DB burst out laughing, the force of it shaking me slightly and making me grit my teeth. “That was even better up close.”
“Shut it!”
My response just made him laugh harder, getting everyone’s attention. “It’s totally going to happen, my man, and the sooner you give in, the more sanity you’ll have left.”
And on those wise words, he left me still standing watching her as she spoke to Tabby. I’d be lying if I said she didn’t star in every single one of my fantasies, but we couldn’t even be neighbors, so how the hell would that even work?
Rose
It took everything I had to say that to Raoul and walk away, but I’d done it… and now I was hiding.
“Is he still standing there?” I whispered to Tabby, not needing to say who I was talking about, just like she didn’t even need to look to see if he still was.
“Yup, and he looks like he’s either thinking about screwing your brains out, or burying your body. What the hell did you say to him?”
Wincing, I thought about lying, but I wasn’t a liar so that was out. “I think I went too far,” I told her truthfully, and then did a mental replay of what Raoul had said about my height, and what I’d said back.
“My husband said something to me last week about y’all, know what that was?” I figured it was a rhetorical question, but when she didn’t say anything else I gave in and shook my head. “He said he thinks its sexual frustration between the two of you.”
Frowning, I tried to figure that one out. “Sexual frustration?”
“You know, where the two of you secretly want to bang the other one’s brains out, but…”
“I know what sexual frustration is,” I hissed, interrupting her and looking around to make sure no one was close enough to hear us. “What I meant was – why would we be sexually frustrated? He hates me.”
“But does he?”
Trying to act like I was just innocently looking around the place, I casually l
ooked behind me in his direction, seeing him talking to my brother with my niece in his arms. Almost like he could feel I was watching him, he turned and glared in my direction, and then looked back at my brother.
“Yup, not buying it,” I replied quickly to Tabby who was laughing silently having seen the whole thing.
“Oh, he totally wants to,” she snickered. “And seeing as how your cheeks match the color of my hair, you do, too.”
* * *
Three hours later…
As soon as I got one of these donuts, I was going home and I was living with my lights out so he didn’t know I was there. Ever! I’d successfully avoided him all day, and it had been exhausting. I’d even hidden in Liv’s room with her for a while, playing with her and enjoying the peace and quiet. When I’d come back out again, everyone had looked at me with smiles on their faces and I realized they’d heard us over the freaking baby monitor. I would have made my excuses right then and there, but then I saw a box that came from the bakery I loved, and knew I’d end up staying until they opened it up and I could get my fix.
Which brought me to now. The bakery in town was called Nice Buns, and it made literally the best buns you’ve ever seen. Sure, it made actual ‘buns’, penises, boobies, and vaginas if you asked for them for a party, but that stuff wasn’t on display. Their bun-buns were, though, as were their cakes, donuts, pastries, brownies, cookies, muffins, cupcakes, tarts… it was every woman’s biggest fantasy and worst nightmare all at once. I’d been there so many times that I could identify what was in front of me right now by scent alone – no word of a lie – which was why I was still here, because I knew Jose had picked up three of my favorite things. Glazed cinnamon donuts, salted caramel chocolate brownies, and the tiny little cupcakes with almonds, raspberries, and white chocolate in them. I could also smell the gross oatmeal and raisin cookies they made for weird people who ate healthily even when it came to sweet things, but I was tuning those out.
I’d been hanging around, waiting for her to put them out while I fought the pressure in my bladder and had finally given in and run to the bathroom a minute ago. Of course that had been when she’d put them out. By the time I got back, I could see one of each left on the plate, along with a stack of the gross cookies, and I almost twisted my ankle getting them. It would take more than that to stop me, though, so I limped through the pain and got there without even breaking a sweat.
Rubbing my hands together, I reached out to scoop the three yummies up, already imagining how amazing they were going to taste…
“Rose,” a deep voice belonging to the man I’d been avoiding rasped in my ear, just as large hands spanned my waist. “Have you got a second?”
If he’d said my name like he normally did, I would have continued with my quest and replied over my shoulder. But the way his hands stroked slowly up and down my ribs, the tone he’d spoken in, and his penis’s proximity to my ass, eh, it would have been rude to do that. Instead, I turned around and tipped my head back so that I could look up into his dark blue eyes. “Yeah?”
His mom was Mexican, so he had olive skin and dark hair, and I knew that his dad was British, and the contrast of the Hispanic coloring with his dark blue denim colored eyes was fabulous. I was so caught up in looking at them, that I didn’t realize he was moving his face down toward mine until his mouth was roughly half an inch away from my own, and then my focus shifted to his lips instead. I also wasn’t aware that I was leaning backward over the table until the edge pressed against the L1 region of my spine, and I realized I couldn’t bend any further without lying flat out on the damn piece of furniture. Not that it was tempting – it really fucking was – but at my brother’s house, with everyone watching? Think of the children, and the therapy bills for everyone else, Rose.
My predicament gave him the advantage to get even closer until our fronts were pressed tightly against each other, and his lips were only just touching my own. And that’s when he flicked my bottom lip with the tip of his tongue and rubbed his nose down the side of mine.
“We need to talk,” he whispered, giving my bottom lip a flick again, and then moving so that his lips teased lightly down my neck. “I was wondering…” he paused, leaving me trying to get oxygen into my lungs as he moved his mouth up and down the area my anterior jugular was in, while I waited for him to finish.
When he didn’t say anything else, I figured he was enjoying himself too much to finish, and I lifted a hand to grab his waist, moaning when I felt how hard the side of his stomach was.
Over where his kidney was, protecting the organ that we really only needed one of to survive, was a rock hard mass of muscle. I’d seen many muscles in my career, a lot of them impressive seeing as how I didn’t work out so I didn’t have that tone and definition, but the way I pictured this one beat them all hands down. It also didn’t hurt that I’d seen the area in question on many occasions, and each time I’d wondered what it felt like, which had led to me picturing touching it… and licking it… a bit like he was doing right now to my neck.
Just as my head fell backward, and I started to think that paying for a lifetime of therapy bills for everyone was money well spent, he lifted back up again and shoved something in his mouth.
“Good talk,” he mumbled around the mouthful of food, giving me a wink, and then sauntered away again, leaving me wondering what the hell had just happened.
And that’s when I caught a whiff of something that made it all click into place, something which was confirmed when I turned around to look at where the three items I’d been reaching for had once been.
The asshole had distracted me to steal the baked goods I’d been reaching for. He’d played me!
He’d ruined two things I loved today, two things that took more time and effort to fix than I had today. This was war.
Chapter Three
Raoul
I was laughing last night when I’d stolen the food literally from under her, but as I’d popped the last stolen item in my mouth on the drive home, I’d started to feel bad. That guilt had woken me up numerous times through the night and then I’d remembered who I was dealing with, so I’d gotten up to check my locks and windows, gone back to sleep, until I’d woken up feeling guilty again this morning.
I knew how much she loved that bakery, and I also knew which items she liked the most… and I’d taken the last three of them. What made it worse was that she hadn’t retaliated at all. Normally I’d have woken up to some flowers planted in my front garden, or a couple of bright pink fairy houses at least, sometimes some cat shit from the litter box - litter still attached - but not today.
Along with the guilt was a sense of panic, worry that I’d finally pushed her too far and she’d given up on me. See, what DB had said the day before wasn’t far from the truth. We were opposites in everything, and she took great pleasure in tormenting the hell out of me, but she made every day better for me. Even if it was a glare, my day went from shit to awesome, and the fantasies I’d had of the two of us had gotten me through the last year living opposite her and not being able to touch her.
Yeah, I wanted my classy princess of a neighbor badly, and had done from the day I’d met her. I wasn’t a native to Piersville, I’d moved here a couple of years ago from Oregon to become one of the deputies in Piersville Police Department. Six months later, Rose had moved home and had started working at the hospital as a nurse, moving in with her brother until she found the house opposite me and bought it.
I was good friends with her brother, thanks to my boss who’d introduced us, but like I’ve already mentioned – I had big issues with needles, so initially I’d been wary of the guy. It just didn’t seem normal to me to work with needles in a non-medical way. I mean, it was normal, but I couldn’t fathom working with needles in a non-medical way every day. All it had taken, though, was some shots and the story of what happened when I’d gotten my tattoo, and we became close friends. Yes, I had a tattoo, a necessary one, but I rarely told people the real story o
f how I got it.
My needle phobia had quickly made its way back to Rose after she’d moved here, and when the war began she started using it to her advantage. I’d lost count of the amount of times she’d dropped packages of the damn things on the floor in front of me, in my car, leaving them on my desk, and I’d even found some under my pillow. When I’d retaliated, she’d put up large signs about blood donation drives on her lawn – the ones with the syringe, needle, and bags of blood on them – and it had just gotten worse from there.
Throughout every second of that torment, though, she’d been the first thought I’d had every morning, the last one at night, and every second of her attention fed the burn inside me. Which was why waking up to nothing had everything inside of me turning to stone at that moment, scared that I’d finally pushed her too far.
Looking at the clock, I smiled when I noticed she’d be leaving for work in two minutes, and ran to get the garbage out of my kitchen to take it down to the trash can. She was too polite to ignore me completely, so all I’d have to do would be to get her attention for a second, smile at her, offer some mea culpas, and then I’d ask her out.
In the middle of the night, while I’d been mulling it all over, I’d kicked myself for being such a dick and not just doing what I really wanted to do. After enough tossing and turning, I’d decided that now was the time, and that I was done pussy footing around her. Things were going to change between us.
That’s why I was whistling as I walked down my drive to where the trash can was, dangling a bag with ten items at most in it, with my eyes fixed on her house the whole way. I didn’t even look down as I opened the lid… until the smell hit me that was, and then I looked into the garbage can and almost gagged.
On top of the two bags already in there were four shitty diapers, open and sunny side up. They could only have come from one baby, which was a shock in itself. How could something that smelled so bad, that looked so vile, have come from that precious baby girl? I wasn’t sure what unicorn shit looked like, probably like a rainbow with glitter coming out of it, but that’s what hers should have looked like. This? This was… I couldn’t even begin to describe it. And the smell, Jesus Christ, it was like a rotting body – a thought which made me gag again, and then throw the bag in my hand on top of it to hide the sight and try to minimize the stench. All it did was poof some more of it up into the air, and I only just slammed the lid on top of it before I turned and puked in my lovely old neighbor called Mrs. Potterson’s bright purple flowers that bordered my drive.
Classy AF: Cheap Thrills Series Book 3 Page 2