Page 36 of Defiant
I clicked on her number as I brought my phone back to my ear, listening to the ringing. It rang only once before she picked up. “Hello?” Her voice sounded different on the phone than it did in real life; in real life, it was so much better. Smoother, like honey and velvet all rolled into one.
“Jaz,” I spoke, feeling my heart do something weird in my chest. “Is everything okay?” As I spoke, I heard a weird sound on the other line. Water? It sounded like splashing water. What… “Where are you?” I was ready to leap up, grab a jacket, and hightail it out of here if I had to.
How the hell did this girl have me wrapped around her finger so easily? It was wrong.
“Cool your jets,” she said, speaking softly, almost murmuring into the phone. “I’m in the bath. I’m not in trouble or anything—”
In…the bath? She was in the bath and emailing me her number without any further explanation? What the hell…oh, if she was here, I’d yell at her. I’d…well, I’d do something.
“What the fuck is wrong with you? I thought you got yourself into something else,” I growled out, but my vehemence wavered when it fully hit me: she was in the bath. Jaz was in the bath, which meant she was naked.
That was definitely something I shouldn’t be thinking about right now. Or ever.
Fuck.
“No,” she said, and I could tell, just by how she said it, she was smiling.
“Why did you email me your number?” There was no use in dancing around the subject. This girl needed to tell me what this was about, now, or else…or else I’d be stuck on the phone with her longer, imagining her in the bath.
Jaz was quiet for a while, and I heard the water splash a bit. An image of her, naked and submerged in the water, rose in my head in spite of how badly I tried to push it down. “I wanted to talk to someone.”
That was her answer? That was why she sent me her number? I just…how the hell was I supposed to respond to that?
Was she sad, in search of comfort? I was not a comforting sort, and she knew it. She also knew how to bug me and get under my skin like no one else ever did, but surely that wasn’t what this was about. Surely she wasn’t using her superpowers against me for evil, knowing that if I knew she was in the bath, my mind would start to wander…
The hand that wasn’t holding onto the phone clenched into a fist, and I leaned back, resting my head on the cushion behind me, staring at the ceiling above me as I fought the heat rising in my body. Thinking of her in the bath—how was my body not supposed to react to that? She was a beautiful girl, far too gorgeous for her own good, her body without a flaw. The mere image of her, naked and in the bath, sent everything in my body haywire.
“Well,” I spoke with a bit of difficulty, “I’m sure you have friends you could talk to—” The more I thought about her in the bath, the more my body responded accordingly. Something in my pants twitched that most definitely should remain still.
I had to get off the phone now.
“I don’t,” Jaz whispered, the water sloshing. “I don’t have friends.” She sounded absolutely depressed about admitting it to me…until she added, “That’s why I thought of you. You don’t have friends, either.”
I was instantly insulted. “What the fuck are you talking about? I have…” I was going to declare that I had friends, but before I could, I stopped myself.
Did I? Did I do anything other than work, work out, and sleep?
My silence caused her to say, “You don’t. It’s okay. I guess not everyone is cut out to have friends. I used to have a few, back at my old school, but my mom basically forced me to cut off all contact with them. It sucks. I…I miss them.”
The sound of water splashing yet again entered my ear, and I closed my eyes, trying to will the image of Jaz in the bath out of my mind. I couldn’t, though. It was too tempting an image; my dick refused to listen to reason, near rock-hard now, and if I could’ve told it to simmer the fuck down and relax, I would’ve.
Dicks did not listen to common sense, apparently.
“Maybe you should be having this conversation with your mother,” I said, hoping to snap some sense into her. She shouldn’t come to me when she was feeling down. She shouldn’t make me ten different kinds of confused. And, of course, she definitely shouldn’t be making my balls ache right now.
This was literally a recipe for disaster, and it was like…I knew I should hang up, look away from the train wreck, but I couldn’t. I wordlessly begged Jaz to hang up first, because I was too weak to.
How things had changed, huh? So quickly, too. It was almost pathetic.
“But I don’t want to talk to her,” Jaz whispered. “I want to talk to you.”
I could feel the blood pumping throughout my body, some of it going where it most certainly should not. I lifted my head off the cushion, my eyes flicking to my groin, seeing the boner pressing against my pants, thanks to Jaz and her damned bath. “Why?” It pained me to get the word out, to speak the lone word.
Why did she want to talk to me? Why couldn’t she discuss this with her mother? Why, if that failed, couldn’t she have called me when she was fully clothed? Hearing that water splash around really sent my body on a trip.
Jaz took her good old time in answering, “I don’t know. I just…I wanted to hear your voice, I guess. Get yelled at a little.” She chuckled softly. “Pretty stupid, huh?”
Not as stupid as what I wanted right now. Not as irresponsible and wrong as the thoughts racing through my head as I listened to her. She wanted to talk to me? She wanted me to yell at her? I wanted more than that, so much more it hurt.
