Page 73 of The Lineman

“I’ve got you, Mike. I won’t let you fall.”

“It’s too late, E,” he whispered, a slurry, drooly thing that smeared across my face. “I’ve already fallen.”

Chapter twenty-two

Mike

Thesecondwegotinside, Elliot slammed the door behind us, pressing me against it with the force of a man on a mission.

Outside, Mrs. H was still yelling. “Yeah, get it, boys! Shake the whole damn house!”

I groaned, burying my face in Elliot’s chest. “She’s going to talk about this for weeks.”

Elliot chuckled against my ear, his breath warm. “She’s old. Let her have her fun.”

His kisses were light, tender in a way that stole my breath. He was such a big, burly man, I’d had no idea he was capable of such gentleness. And yet, as caught off guard as I was, it all made sense. The way he treated his friends, how he cared for Mrs. H, even how he laughed when Homer tried to make his leg his own, all spoke of a man who was comfortable in his own skin and loved taking care of other people. I shouldn’t have been surprised.

Then he stripped me naked while he stood there, fully clothed, gaping like a preteen seeing his first set of boobs inPlayboy.

I wanted to crawl under the couch. My body wasn’t a disaster—far from it. I was lean with decent definition and a dusting of cinnamon covering my skin. Still, as any redhead would admit, the insecurities of a youth filled with teasing was hard to ignore.

Beneath the gaze of one of the most stunning men I’d ever known, I suddenly felt even more naked than I was—and I was very, very naked.

“Mike, you’re—”

“Naked?”

“Beautiful.”

“Oh,” I said, unartfully.

Elliot reached up and trailed his fingers across my chest, digging them into the thick pelt of crimson I’d always wished to be any other color.

“God, I’ve never been with a redhead. I don’t think I’ve ever even been attracted to one.”

“That’s us,” I said through a skittish laugh.

“Huh?” Elliot’s face was comically confused.

“We’re either someone’s fetish, the kind where the guy has coffee table books filled with redheads, or we’re anathema to a good time, the guy so ugly no one wants to see clothed, much less naked.”

Elliot’s brow knitted, then smoothed. Something flashed in his eyes. It wasn’t passion or desire. For a moment, I thought he’d grown angry over something, but I wasn’t sure.

“Mike, listen to me,” he said sternly. “You are so handsome, inside and out. I look at you and my whole world tilts . . . and I’m not easily tilted.”

“That’s for sure,” I said before realizing I’d spoken.

He smirked. “And look what else you do to me.”

Without warning, he untied the string on his shorts and let them drop to the floor. I was not the only one in the room who didn’t wear underwear and—

“Holy fuck,” flew out of my mouth as I gaped down at what was, indeed, a light pole of death. “Elliot, you never said . . . oh, my God . . . you’re huge.”

He shrugged, his smirk growing. “Guess it goes with being six-three, two twenty-five. Big boys need big guns.”

“Fuck me, Elliot, that’s not a gun. It’s a cannon.”

He snorted, then yanked his T-shirt over his head.

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