Page 37 of Pick Me
Knox was going to kiss me. Knox Sunday was for real going to kiss me. And if I never won another thing in my entire damn life, at least I’d have this.
His mouth touched mine, and my stomach swooped. His tongue darted out to trace the seam of my lips, and I shivered convulsively.
Then Knox blinked and pulled back. “You taste like lime,” he growled.
“Yeah. Gin and tonic.” I grinned up at him, but he frowned. Did he have a problem with citrus fruits?
He pulled back just slightly, though his arms remained around me. “How many gin and tonics?”
What? He wanted to talk about thisnow? “Um… four. No, five? I’m pretty sure. Plus a couple at the hotel, but that was ages ago. Why?”
He closed his eyes and pressed our foreheads together. “Seven drinks.” He groaned just a little. “Goodman, what am I going to do with you?”
There were a million answers to that question. A billion. And if Knox had the time, I had the stamina and organizational skills to make sure we did every single one of them.
But before I could express that, my stomach did a funny kind of dance move of its own, and my head spun in a way that had nothing to do with Knox’s closeness. “Knox, I think… I maybe don’t feel so great?”
“No shit.” Knox snorted and wrapped an arm around my waist. “Let’s get you home.”
Chapter Six
Knox
“Yeah, if you can resend that invoice tomorrow, I’ll be sure it gets paid Thursday,” I assured our feed vendor, making a note on my calendar to follow up in the morning. “I apologize for the misunderstanding. Things have been a little crazy here the last few months. I’ve been wading through a backlog of receipts, and—”
A flash of movement caught my eye, and I looked up to find Goodman standing behind his desk with his arms stretched toward the ceiling in a Sun Salutation. The move made his T-shirt ride up and his shorts ride so far down they barely caught on his lean hip bones and revealed the thick black band of his boxers.
I adjusted myself surreptitiously under my desk.
Goodman had gotten incredibly fond of yoga in the four days since we’d been back from Boston. These days, he stretched constantly—leaning over couches and countertops to stretch his lower back, bracing himself on doorframes to stretch his pecs, lunging up the stairs to our shared apartment when I was right behind him so he could “stretch his quads.”
And for a twenty-four-year-old, the man was a mess of aches and pains, from the trapezius muscles he’d asked me to knead in the kitchen Sunday morning to his “old hamstring injury” flare-up—which, in a weird anatomical twist, was located in thefrontof Goodman’s thigh, though most humans kept their hamstrings in the back.
He’d also developed a strange insecurity about his clothing. He’d asked me at least three times to check the fit of his T-shirts over his shoulders, he’d begged me to tell him myhonestopinion about the way his ass looked in his tight jeans, and—my personal favorite—he’d made me solemnly swear to give him “friendly erection checks” on a daily basis to make sure I couldn’t see a dick print in the loose basketball shorts he wore around the apartment so he didn’t “make you uncomfortable, Knox.”
Seriously.
From a guy with a degree in applied mathematics, you’d expect at least a subtle nod toward logic in his attempts to drive me insane, but no.
I knew exactly what Goodman was up to. This was payback for putting his drunk ass to bedaloneThursday night after his gin-tastic hurl into a trash can outside Bar-Z and then leaving him to wake up alone while I’d grabbed a very quick cup of coffee with Rick, who’d been way too distracted by some problem at the office (“Nothing you need to worry about, Knox! You’re on leave, for fuck’s sake”) to actually tell me how things were going.
Did knowing it was payback mean that I could stop my eyes from tracking every single movement Goodman made as he dipped into a Downward Dog or stop my dick from responding to it? Did it mean that I hadn’t jerked off literally every single night since then, thinking about Goodman’s eyes on me as I’d changed clothes at the hotel and the feel of his body undulating against mine on the dance floor?
That would be a solid no. Goodman was un-ignorable, and reciting all Dr. Travers’s mantras couldn’t change that.
I knew because I’d tried.
The good news was, all the orgasms were working better than any medication ever had to help me sleep. Five or six hours at a stretch made me feel like a new man. I hadn’t thought about the situation at Bormon Klein Jacovic much at all since we’d gotten back either, which had probably helped, too.
“Knox?” the voice in my ear said.
Fuck.
I squeezed my pen more tightly in my hand. “Sorry, Wayne. I was just contemplating that backlog of receipts and feeling sorry for myself.” I forced a laugh. “I appreciate your patience and your continuing to supply the hay despite the mix-up.”
“No worries, Knox. You know we’ve been supplying Sunday Orchard since your dad’s dad was running the place. My wife can’t get enough of Webb’s heirloom apples. Let me know if I can help with anything.”
Goodman let out a restrained groan as he bent over and touched his toes—facing away from me, naturally, so I had a prime view of his ass—and I had the bizarre urge to laugh.
