Page 55 of Delicious

“Well, if you’d just?—”

The sound of a door opening cuts through his words.

Fuck.

We both freeze.

I peer through the branches and my heart climbs into my throat as the familiar form of Aiden Jones emerges onto the back doorstep of his cottage.

I glance over at Benji’s face. His eyes widen as New Zealand’s legendary rugby player crunches on the gravel path.

Shit. He’s coming in our direction.

But he stops at his woodpile thirty feet from the hedge.

Even though I knew Aiden Jones owned the place, it’s still surreal to see the Ice King himself, the guy whose poster probably hangs in half the teenage bedrooms across the country, only thirty feet away.

I feel Benji’s quickened breathing against me.

Aiden grabs his axe and positions a log on the chopping block.

As he starts to chop the wood, my shoulders unclench. He hasn’t seen us.

Benji uses Aiden’s distraction to make another attempt to wiggle free, stretching his arm at an impossible angle that forces him to arch against me. His shoulder slides beneath my chin, his thigh wedges between mine, and suddenly, I can’t breathe.

Heat pools low in my stomach, my skin suddenly hypersensitive beneath my work clothes.

I’m acutely aware of every point where Benji’s body touches mine, like someone had drawn a map of all the places we’re touching and set them on fire. The steady thunk of the axe provides a rhythm to my rapidly beating heart.

What the hell is wrong with me right now?

Benji seems oblivious to the effect our enforced proximity is having on me.

Which is lucky, especially as the heat pooling in my stomach seems to have migrated lower, and my cock is starting to firm up.

Oh my fucking god. This seriously can’t be happening. I can’t be about to sprout wood while stuck in the woods pressed against my nemesis neighbor.

I shift, angling my hips backward, pressing myself against the unforgiving branches. Better twigs in my back than the mortification of Benji realizing exactly how my body’s responding to him.

But then, a sound from the cottage snaps my attention away from my predicament and makes me freeze again.

The back door opens, and a blond-haired guy saunters out, wearing only a pair of track pants that sit indecently low on his hips. His chest is bare.

When I realize who it is, my jaw drops so hard I nearly dislocate it.

Tyler Bannings.

The flashy Greens player. Aiden Jones’s fierce rival for his starting slot in the New Zealand team.

My brain short-circuits, unable to process what I’m seeing.

Tyler Bannings. Here. Half-naked. In Aiden Jones’s backyard.

When I glance at Benji, my astonishment is mirrored in his face. His eyebrows have shot up so high they’ve almost disappeared into his hairline.

“Holy fuck,” he breathes in my ear.

I couldn’t have put it better myself.

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