Page 28 of Rules in Love
In fact, I thought he was pretty ripper too. I also wouldn’t mind him ripper-ing his clothes off whenever it took his fancy.
Okay, enough ripper jokes.
When the endless looping of the same streets became a little too hard to ignore, we took three left turns in a row and ended up on my beautiful tree-lined street. We pulled up to my house, and as I predicted, no parking spots were available. Being forced to double park didn’t stop Finn from his gentlemanly duties. He leapt from the car and ran to open my door, but something strange happened as he scooted around the hood. He stopped, dropped, and disappeared.
“Finn?” I climbed out of the Jeep, shielding my eyes from the pouring rain with one hand and the same to my frizz-prone curls with the other. While I couldn’t see him, I could hear him.
“Puss, puss, puss. Come here, little matey. I won’t hurt you.”
Edging closer to the sound, I peered around the hood, and there he was, his ass aglow in the headlights, face-down on the wet asphalt in a full-body stretch with his hands reaching under the car parked in front of his.
“Is this a hobby of yours? Lying on the street in the rain?”
“Oh yeah. Everyone does it in Australia.”
“Really?”
Finn’s whole body jiggled as he broke into laughter. “No. Not normally, no. God, I can’t believe you believed that. A bloody cat ran under the car, and I think he was limping. I can’t just leave him.”
I gasped. “Mr. Pickles!”
“What? Ohh, fuck!” Finn jumped, his head cracking loudly against the underside of the car. My laughter outweighed any concern I may have felt, rendering me useless to help in any way, shape, or form. So, I just stood there and laughed some more. I may have even pointed. Hearing the commotion, Mrs. Horowitz, who never strays far from her windows, ran outside, massive umbrella in hand.
“Look! We—well, Finn found Mr. Pickles! He’s under the bloody car.”
Finn was still lying in the filthy street and began to laugh as he resumed his search.
“Oh, thank you, young man. He hates the rain and won’t make it easy for you to get him.”
The once-pristine shirt, made even more delicious by the rain, rode up his back, exposing his obliques and the tanned dimples at the rise of his peachy ass. Never in my life had I desired to be compacted layers of dirt, gravel, and tar, but there I was, envious of the road scraping against and tasting his skin.
My eyelashes didn’t know whether to blink rapidly or glue to my brows, as I stooped to take cover beneath my short neighbor’s umbrella. Thankfully, she was holding it as I needed both hands to wipe my drool. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one.
“Is that your boyfriend, Scarlett? I hope you don’t mind me saying, but he has a lovely bottom.”
“Yes. Yes, he does,” I replied robotically, mesmerized by his continued writhing. “But no, he’s not my boyfriend.” Not yet, anyway.
Finn
Fetching that damn cat took me twenty minutes and cost me half the skin off my stomach. For a good, tortuous portion of that time, Scarlett was crouched beside me in her short skirt and see-through shirt. The soft, creamy thighs and the teasing hint of pink lace that greeted me each time I turned my head were tattooed on my mind and added another layer to an already complicated day.
Working in a confined space with the hottest woman in New York should have been a pure delight. She was dressed as the sexiest pirate I’d ever seen, after all. Her outfit inspired a bevy of inappropriate puns that would have had me in a sexual harassment lawsuit before I could blink.I wouldn’t mind docking my bow in your port, for example. But it was a fucking nightmare, led by the ghost of Shelby that I couldn’t escape. I had left the house with a plan. I was to distance myself from Scarlett, be the red-hot temptress’s antithesis, acting colder than a witch’s tit. It was my only hope. I’d also left without saying a word to Evie or eating the suck-up pancakes she made me. The whole Nate-monk thing was still bothering me too.
It would have been so easy to seek comfort in Scarlett’s arms. My fingers still buzzed with her touch. But I couldn’t. Shelby’s face flashed before my eyes every time I even considered it.
At lunch, when Scarlett licked that damn yum-yum sauce from her plump, red-stained lips and sucked it from her fingertips, my cock rebelled and twitched like it had the first time I saw a real booby, but then I heard Shelby’s voice…I have loved him my whole life. We will always be a family.
The opposing thoughts and feelings drove me to the point of distraction. I was frustrated, a complete ass, and Scarlett was right to flee. But, in all good conscience, I couldn’t leave things like that. I wanted to distance myself. I didn’t want her to hate me.
My internal conflict waged on as she fished around in her bag for her keys, swearing under her breath and occasionally peeking up at me beneath her long lashes. She was so pretty and sexy. And then there was her scent. Even the stench of a Greenwich Village Street couldn’t stop the undeniable lure of her perfume, or was it just her?
Damn, she smelled so good. On every inhale, I was transported back to Byron, to Mum’s flower garden that sat below the kitchen window, overflowing with violets, lilacs, and freesias. They all smelled amazing, but ironically, the scarlet-red, white and pink sweet peas were my favorite. Each color carried its own fragrance and would linger on my skin for hours. Every day after school, I would get off the bus, lug my heavy backpack down our dirt drive, and stop to pick Mum a posy. Evie always called me a kiss-ass, but I loved the smell as much as Mum’s expression of love and pride when I placed them in her hand. It was a tradition I kept up till the day she died. I missed that scent as much as I missed Mum. Being surrounded by it again gave me a feeling of home.
It was comforting yet confusing.
Scarlett found her keys and celebrated with a hop on her toes and a cute cheer. I really was fucked. “Would you like to come in?” she whispered, keeping her gaze on the door while sliding the key into the lock.
Such a simple question but painfully difficult to answer. I rubbed the back of my neck and managed to eke out, “I don’t know.” It was a blatant lie. I wanted to go inside, alright. I then wanted to peel that damp, clinging shirt from that body and warm it up as only I could.
