Page 16 of Taurus

Chapter five

Austin

RIIIIING.RIIIIING.RIIIIIIIIING.

I’ve never hated the sound of an alarm more than I do right now. All I want is to bury my head under my pillow and sleep for another four hours.

That’s what I get for staying up far too late, letting my mind take over, instead of using logic to take my fucking ass to bed.

I push myself up and raise my arms in the air, stretching what needs to be stretched and popping what needs to be popped before I swing my legs to the side of the bed and climb out of it for the day.

But when my feet touch the floor, rather than the soft, plush carpet I’m expecting, I find myself standing in ankle-deep water.

“What the fuck?!” I shout, and slosh my way through the apartment, trying to find the culprit. “Goddamnit!” I shout again in pure frustration.

It doesn’t take long for me to find that a pipe burst in the wall just outside of the bathroom. The water must be pooling behind the wall and flooding out into the main apartment area. Shit. Shit. Shit.

“Austin?” Parker shouts from the top of the stairs. “Are you all right? I heard you yelling.”

I come around the corner and look up at her peeking around the edge of the doorway. “Pipe burst down here. I’m going to have to shut the water off to the lower level.”

“Shit. Do you need some help?”

“Actually, yeah, I do. It’s dark as fuck in the utility room where the shutoff is. Can you come hold some light up for me?”

“Yeah, yeah, of course. Just give me a sec. I’ll be right down.” She disappears around the corner so I take a second to pull a shirt on and grab my tools and flashlight from the closet in my living room.

“Oh my God,” I hear her say after trotting down the stairs. “Oh fuck, it’s a disaster.” The water sloshes as she makes her way over to me.

“And it’s only going to get worse if we don’t get it shut off.” I pass the flashlight over to her. “Follow me. Be careful. I don’t want you to fall.”

“I’m okay. I won’t fall.”

“I know you think you won’t, but I really need you to watch your step, okay? This isn’t something to be flippant about,” I tell her, and she stops in her tracks and crosses her arms over her chest.

“Stop being such a Taurus. Seriously. It’s annoying sometimes. You don’t have to control everything.”

“No, but in this instance, I absolutely do. So just listen to me and help me so we can stop the water before the damage gets worse, okay?”

She sighs because she knows I’m right and she doesn’t like admitting it. “Fine, okay. I’ll be careful and listen to everything you say.”

“Good girl.”

I turn away from her when the words leave my lips, because I don’t want to see her reaction to them, good or bad. I didn’t mean to say them, but they fell out of my mouth naturally. As natural as breathing, honestly, like muscle memory.

Parker

Good girl.

Fuck me sideways.

I want to punch him in the nose for saying that to me right now, though, once upon a time, I would have begged him to groan them into my ear when I came for him.

In fact, I have begged him many times, because those words are an instant aphrodisiac for me.

Even two hours later, when the water to the bottom floor has been shut off and a repairman is scheduled to come check on things for us in a couple of days, his voice is echoing in my head, along with many memories.

“Parker?” he says, pulling me from the mind palace I was building for myself.

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