Page 8 of Not That Ridiculous

My brain shorted out as I took in the view before me.

Good.

God.

While I’d always appreciated him from an aesthetic standpoint, my attraction to Kevin wasn’t based on his appearance. I’d never spent all that much time pondering what he looked like under his usual uniform of t-shirts, hoodies, and work trousers.

I’d certainly never, not once, expected to be sitting in a front-row seat to the Naked Kevin show.

Perhaps that was why, confronted with him in all his physical glory, I felt as if I’d walked into a door.

Back when I was still wide-eyed and hopeful about fixing up my house, I used to go to B&Q after work or on a Sunday afternoon to wander around the paint and wallpaper aisle and make bold plans about redecorating. On one such trip, I’d seen him loading up the back of Craig Henderson’s white Ford Transit with twenty-kilo bags of sand. He’d tossed those things around as if they were party-sized bags of kettle chips.

So I’d known that Kevin was strong, but this was ridiculous.

After logging a few years of hard physical labour on the job, the youthful bulk he used to carry on his big frame had been whittled down and replaced by definition.

I hadn’t noticed until now that his arms had gone from enormous and brawny to still enormous but lean, with distinct biceps, tight, thick forearms, and thosehands, work-rough yet artistic.

I hadn’t noticed that his legs had gone from sturdy to sculpted.

I certainly hadn’t noticed the definition on his abs. Why would I?I’d never seen him naked.

And that, I told myself, was the only reason I’d stopped dead in the changing room to stare at him.

It was merely the surprise observation that Kevin had gone from looking like he could bench-press my car to looking like he could bench-press my car and arouse everyone in a three-mile radius while he did it, at which point the curvature of the earth would block the spectacular view.

That was all.

It had not one thing to do with his dick.

Which was…it was…

It wasright there, oh mygod.

Kevin slid a hand across his abs—they flexed—and scratched the solid slab of his left pec under the small, erect ni?—

“You okay, Charlie?” he said.

My head snapped up. He was watching me, unconcerned by my appalled perusal—how dare he look like this, howdarehe? Ten feet away from me!—and still smiling.

I have no idea if I said an actual word, or if it was just noise that came out of my mouth. If I had to put money on it, I’d go with random noise.

The unflappable Kevin watched steadily as I leaped away.

By then, Jasper had noticed that I wasn’t following him and had turned back. So I leaped away from Kevin and into Jasper, getting tangled up with his unnecessarily long arms and legs.

He grabbed me to keep me upright. “Charlie, what?—”

“Nothing,” I hissed. “It’s nothing. Get out of my way.” I shoved him backwards and then snapped, “Where am I going? This is awful and I hate it.”

“Give it a chance. You’ve only been here thirty seconds.”

It was the longest thirty seconds of my life.

I was here to take my stress levels down, not to be fiercely and unexpectedly aroused by a naked Kevin Wallis.

“This way,” Jasper said, herding me deeper into the changing room.

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