Page 37 of Why Cheese?
“Part those succulent lips for me.” Cam brushes his nose against my cheek. I close my eyes tight and lean forward to kiss him.
My body’s buzzing in anticipation of his hands curling over my breasts, of his tongue parting through my mouth, of his knee widening my thighs. A second passes, then two more. When I reach fifteen, I risk a peek.
Instead of a handsome man about to tear my clothes off, a wheel of Camembert sits on the bed beside me. Dawn’s light streams through the window for one final knife to my gut.
Sighing, I lean back and have to laugh.
“This is what I get for taking a cheese man to bed.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Steamy Sirene
THE SUN HAD long set by the time I got my dinner order. Bulging bags in hand, I walk through the door as four men look at me. Cheddy and Brie stand near the gutted shelves while Roq’s behind the counter with crossed arms. Far at the back near the register is Cam, who gives me a tender smile.
Sadly, they’re all dressed.
“I’ve got dinner,” I call out.
“Pizza!” Cheddy shouts and dives to take the bags from me.
“Uh, tacos.”
“Tacos!” He doesn’t miss a beat, nor does his exuberance dim as he pulls out takeout boxes of tacos, burritos, chalupas, and anything else I thought they’d want. Cheddy rolls back the paper and is about to take a bite when he asks, “Do I like tacos?” Rather than wait for an answer, he dives face-first into dinner as the other men slip in around him.
With a more dismissive touch, Roq picks an enchilada platter for himself. “We woke alone,” he says from the side of his mouth.
“The taco place was swamped. I think there’s a festival happening a few blocks away.” I try to collect my fallen hair from a collapsing messy bun.
Brie doesn’t take out his food but peeks over at me. “You’re wearing the same blouse,” he says.
“Oh.” I brush my fingertips across the pale green neckline. “You did such a wonderful job washing it I thought I could give it another go.” There’s also the fact I brought seven days' worth of clothing and am at the point of either finding a laundromat or turning my underwear inside out.
I dig out the specially wrapped food and hand it over to Brie. “Here’s your bean burrito.”
A grin rises across Brie’s lips and he bows his head. “It looks nice on you,” he whispers then chows down, refusing to make eye contact.
I can feel the last one staring at me with a hundred questions. Probably the first being how he woke up here and not, say, on my motel bed.
After Cam changed to his meltier form, I put a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on my door, tucked him into the mini fridge, and went to sleep. It was nerve-wracking to carry him in my purse, always on the lookout for a peckish mugger. But I got to the store an hour before sunset, placed him on his clothes near the others, and went off to find dinner, leaving them all none the wiser.
“You did not sleep in the apartment?” Roq says, the simple question loaded with an accusation.
“How do you know?” I ask, trying to dance away from what he’s not saying.
“I went up to check to make certain you were all right.”
“You did? Why?”
He coughs and nervously pushes his glasses back up his nose. “We…would not do well for you to fall ill. Having to find yet another owner of the shop would be…problematic. That is all.”
“Oh.” I didn’t think it was cause he cared, right? Of course, he doesn’t like me. That’s crystal clear. “The apartment is…gross, so I stayed in my motel for another night. I brought some things to help clean it up and I thought I’d spend the night doing that.”
Cam licks his lips and glides closer. “Why don’t I—?”
“Brie can help you.” Roq stampedes over Cam’s obvious intentions to be alone with me. He glares over his shoulder at Cam who drops his arm. “You have molds that need to be emptied and sterilized.”
“What about me?” Cheddy asks. Hot sauce dribbles from the side of his mouth. I touch my cheek in the same spot and he scrunches his brow. “Got an itch? Ooh, it could be mold on your rind. I got that once right across my bum. Took me weeks to—”
