Page 7 of Protector Next Door
5
Sammy
To me,a shower is the best way to hit the resent button on your day. Stuck in traffic? When you get inside your house, get straight into a hot shower. Bad date? Shower. Generally all-around bad time? Get that hot water flowing and squeeze some extra body wash on yourloofah.
But the shower I just took didn’t clear my head. All I could think about, as I shampooed my hair and scrubbed at my skin, was Xander’sthreat.
You’re coming home with me if I have to throw you over my shoulder and carry youthere.
Oh, god. A shiver runs up my spine. Why did I have to argue with him? I mean, I know why I put up a little fight. My ex bossed me around and it wasn’t out of concern for my personal well-being. It was because he was insecure and wanted to exert control over me. Same thing with this stunt with the photographs and the leaked selfie. But the way Xander spoke to me - rough around the edges, intense with passion, and confident that it was the right thing forme?
I liked it. I really, really liked it. It felt raw, intense…real.
He makes me feel like the real me. And the real me is a person I’ve been missinglately.
I’ve spent so much time overcompensating for just being me. For being a woman, for always being the smallest person in the room. I’ve had to put on armor in the form of perfect makeup and baggy clothes. It’s getting old. I just want to be…me. The realme.
I even had to change my name. I now go almost exclusively by my nickname, Sammy. I never liked it. I like the little advantages it gives me, though. The last tech company I interviewed at emailed with me back and forth for a few days to hammer out the details of the meeting. I went by Sam in the email and the person I was communicating with was male. When I arrived, I accidentally identified myself as Samantha to the man at the front desk and when the person who was to interview me arrived, he assumed I was interviewing for the HR position - even though my last name was the same. When I meekly slid my resume across the table to him he apologized profusely. I aced the interview was offered the job. But the experience left a bad taste in my mouth. How many women have things assumed about them and ultimately don’t get a job because ofit?
I hate whining. I hate complaining. I hate looking like a sore loser, and I’ve never shared these feelings with anyone. Maybe men are just more quantitatively-inclined than women are. I don’t know. I can look at statistics all day long and see the imbalance in my chosen field, but all I can personally attest to is my own experience. I don’t like getting into gender politics. All I want to do is make a good product that people will enjoy. Good apps cross gender lines, don’tthey?
I get out of the shower and dry off, wrapping the towel around me tightly and tucking it against my breasts. Xander has made me feel more empowered, more respected, more cared for in fifteen minutes than anyone else has in a very, very long time. I can’t exactly say I’ve sworn off men, but…maybe I’ve done just that, if only byaccident.
But that’s not all Xander’s done. He’s also made me feel more womanly. I bite my lip and let his stern command echo in my head, reveling in every little tickle and every little spark his words set off inside me. If he’s this incredibly sexy, confident man in his everyday life, how is he in the bedroom? Despite my lack of experience, I know what I want. I want someone to take charge. I want to trust someone enough to hand over control, and I want to know that the control I give will be handled with care and in the interest of us both. Our mutual pleasure. Our mutual enjoyment. Our mutual love? Yes, I hope thattoo.
But with Xander? He wouldnever…Iwouldnever!
Right?
I don’t have much time at all to ponder the intricacies of my imaginary love-life. The doorbell rings which means the pizza is here, and I expect Xander’s Doberman Pinscher to start going crazy. When I was a kid he had a pair of them, and they were these gentle giants, even though he was overly-cautious and wouldn’t let me spend too much time around them, and definitely not if there wasn’t going to be an adult in theroom.
I towel off my hair and slip into some pajamas, coming out of my room just in time to see Xander carrying two plates to the living room with two beers tucked under his elbow. I hurry toward him and grab the beers from him, getting a fast glimpse of the thick band of his underwear as he lifts his arm. I try to wrestle the cotton sensation from my mouth with a forceful swallow, but I’m rendered incapable of doing so. Instead, my body has taken any moisture from my mouth and somehow done some biological magic to me, making my panties pool up in response to the combination of seeing the band of his underwear, the cut of his hip, and the woodsy, masculine scent that seems to be ever-enveloping when he’saround.
“Here we are,” he says, putting the plates on the coffeetable.
“Where’s your dog?” I ask, settling in on thesofa.
“He’s atdaycare.”
“Oh.Right.”
Of course. I’m getting so wrapped up in my own head and so comfortable in this kind man’s home that I’ve all but forgotten that I’ve cut his business trip short, forced him to eat pizza and drink beer with me, and forgo whatever other cool stuff he had planned. He probably had a date set up for tonight back in LA. I imagine every sexy guy out of town on a business trip to LA has a hot date set up for any and every night he chooses. That’s like in the sexy single businessman handbook. A jet-set lifestyle accompanies a nice glass of scotch and a pretty lady. Always. Ithink.
“Go on,” he urges me, grabbing his plate. “Digin.”
It’s New York style. Big, foldable, and still a little too hot to eat. Hell yes. I throw a glance toward Xander and watch him bring the pizza to his mouth, his knees parted in his dark jeans and his broad chest flexing against his snug black tee. He grabs a napkin to wipe the corner of his lips and crumples it to toss it on the table. I will never get over how sexy his forearms are. I could be married to the love of my life with three or four kids, completely forget Xander’s name and the fact that he ever existed, and I would still remember how sexy his forearmswere.
“So tell me why you think it was your ex who took the pictures,” hesays.
“Oh.” Is it totally stupid of me to have already forgotten why I’m even here? Get me in a room with a sexy man and a hot slice of New York style pizza and I forget to worry about the monster under the bed. “Well. The whole mess started pretty much right away. He was an asshole, but I’d never had a boyfriend before, so I didn’t know what I wasdoing.”
“An asshole how?” He grabs a notebook and a pen from the middle of his coffeetable.
“Little things,” I sigh. “Like, one time he was on a golf trip with his friends and when I called him he didn’t answer. I thought nothing of it at the time, but when I called him again after like, an hour I think, he answered, and when I asked why he didn’t answer his phone thefirsttime, he accused me of thinking he was with another girl. I didn’t think he was with another girl. Not until he brought it up. Turns out hewaswith a girl, but I didn’t find that out until much later. And, you know, he was just generally a bossy asshole. I don’t know. I wasnaive.”
“Yeah, I think that counts as asshole behavior,” Xander says, shaking his head. “Accusing your partner of being afraid you’re doing the crappy thing youaredoing? Not a good look. Okay, what else…why do you think it’s him who took thepictures?”
And now for the embarrassing part. I take a big breath and a sip of my beer, standing to pace the room a little. Maybe if I kind of disperse the words into different bits of the room they’ll settle in patches instead of all in one big embarrassment clump. It works with dog fur. Why not stories involving poor judgement, too? Patches, patcheseverywhere.
