Page 10 of Mechanic Next Door
7
Peach
I’m packingup a cooler with a few bees and some cobbler when Thomas starts to stir behindme.
“Good evening,” I say over my shoulder, shutting the refrigerator door. A tug pulls at my heart as he ruffles his hands through his thick, dark hair and pulls his phone out of his pocket to check thetime.
“Evening?” he asks, scrubbing the side of his face. I think if I look at him for too long he might take away my ability to speak and my ability to even move, except to throw myself down at hisfeet.
The stubble on his cheeks is thicker than normal, and his hair is tousled in this dangerously sexy way that sends a shockwave through my system when I imagine my fingers playing around in it. He gives me a smile and stretches his arms over hishead.
“Yes, good evening,” I reply. “My ankle feels fine and I wanted to know if you’d like to go down to thelake.”
“The lake…now?” he says, his lips pulling into asmile.
“Well, yeah, if you wantedto.”
“I don’t want to. Ineedto.” He pushes himself to his feet and crosses the room to grab the cooler from me. “I don’t think I’ve ever needed to put my feet in some cool water than I do right now. I think this is the best idea you’ve had in…” he checks the invisible watch on his wrist, “well, all day. As long as your ankle isokay.”
“Come on,” I say, bringing up the lead to the back door. I lock up behind us and we start across the lawn, the dewey blades of grass peeking up around the soles of my sandals and tickling my feet. My ankle doesn’t feel a hundred percent, but I can’t sit around waiting for it to feelperfect.
Especially if Thomas is going to be around. I think if I stayed in that room with him any longer I might just spontaneouslycombust.
It’s an odd, intimate thing to sleep in a room with someone. As soon as he fell asleep, I started throwing glances over at him, unable to keep my eyes to myself. The way his hips jutted out slightly, the way his butt was scooched down on the couch a little, the way his knees were spread and the way his thick, tattooed, muscular arms were draped across hischest.
He was in a vulnerable position. He trusts me. And when I realized that I trusted him just as much back, I let myself scoot over closer to him and put my hands under my head, put my head on the armrest, and fall asleep with my knees near my chest and my feet near hislap.
And I woke up soaking wet between my legs. I don’t know if I had an orgasm-inducing dream or had my body taken over by aliens in the short time between the evening news and the late-night talk shows, but something happened to me, something that caused me to wake up feeling like I was being kissed by a million little lightningbugs.
And he was still sleeping soundly next to me. In my post-sleep blissful haze, I considered getting down on my knees between his parted feet, slowly undoing his buckle, and when he woke up, putting my finger over his lip and telling him that I just wanted to do something forhim.
Not as a thank-you. Not as a token of my gratitude. The idea of sex having a transactional nature makes a little bit of nausea swing at my belly. But yes, I did want to do it for him. Just for the pleasure itself. Just to make him feelgood.
To make him feel close to me? I don’tknow.
And even though it would have been for him, it would have been for me,too.
God, if he knew I was thinking of him in this way? He’d probably lock me up in my house and only feed me those little packets of fruit snacks by sliding them under the door of my bedroom. In fact, I think if he knew I thought ofanyman in a sexual way he’d lock me up until I wasthirty.
We make the little hike in silence, careful to take the same path we’ve always taken, through the acre of backyard, an uninterrupted plane of moonlight-soaked fresh grass, though the thick woods at the edge of the property, over some slippery rocks and the little brook beyond it as he takes my hand and guides me through, and then, finally, to the sloping ground leading down to the dock at the edge of thelake.
I get goosebumps when I see it, and my heart flips over when he smiles over atme.
“Come on,” he says, waving me forward. I strip my top over my head and toss it at him, breaking into a run down the dock and toward the water, ignoring the lingering, dull pain in my ankle. When I get to the edge of the dock I strip off my shorts and as my feet are about to catapult me off the edge and through the lake’s calm surface, I check behind me to see Thomas stripping his dark blue henley over his shoulders, past the tattooed skin of his neck, and taking chase after me as he yanks his jeansoff.
I suck in a big breath before taking the leap. Thomas crashes into the water as I do. I feel him swimming toward me beneath the surface of the lake, and I pop over the surface, pushing my hair away from my forehead as Ido.
Thomas breaks through the surface looking like a god on the cover of a magazine. His chest ripples and flexes under the sheen of water flowing over his body, and he drives his hands through his hair in slowmotion.
“You make that look so damn good,” I complain, kicking my feet in front of me to back away from him. Okay Peach, calm down. The man knows how good he looks. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have emerged from the water like that: in torturously slow motion, acutely aware of very flexing muscle and withering flash of his emerald eyes, every tick of his lips as a sexy smile plays againstthem.
“Have a good idea you could make some shit look good too, Peach,” he says. I’m partially shocked at his observation, but also partly turned on. He doesn’t know exactly which class I had my ankle-roll in. He’s just being nice, joking around like we alwaysdo.
“Oh yeah?” I ask, swimming parallel to the shore. “Likewhat?”
“You know what,” he says, keeping his distance and tipping his chin up. “Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talkingabout.”
“You have something specific on your mind you want to share withme?”
