Page 19 of Wounded Fox
There was a bat flying around the bathroom while I tried to take a shower. I didn't know the first thing about them but I didn't think it was good for them to be flying in a brightly lit bathroom.
Seconds later Aaron came crashing through the door, screaming,"What the . . .?"
I cut him off before he could even finish asking the question. "There's a bat!" I haphazardly pointed to the stupid thing flapping around in the bathroom while I sat naked on the shower floor.
Instead of catching it with his bare hands like I expected, Aaron ran back out of the bathroom, leaving me alone with the possibly rabies-laced animal.
"Aaron!"I screamed out for him, and it was a good thing the man came back moments later. Otherwise I don't think I ever would've been able to forgive him.
I watched in awe as Aaron tossed a blanket over the bat and scooped the critter up. Before I knew it, he was leaving the bathroom with the animal as I sat stunned on the tile.
I was still in the same position when he returned minutes later. "All gone!" Aaron announced proudly.
Without a second thought, I threw the glass door open and launched myself at him. "Thank you. Thank you. Thank you!"
It took me a minute too long to realize I was completely stark-ass naked while clinging my wet body to Aaron's fully clothed one. Grasping for the towel on the sink, I quickly yanked it off the counter and wrapped it around my body. "Uh . . . I'm . . . I’m sorry," I stuttered from embarrassment.
"No need to apologize."
It was only after Aaron spoke that I worked up the nerve to look him in the eye and I immediately wished I hadn't because the heat that stared back at me was enough to make my girly parts sing for the first time in nearly a decade.
This wasn't the look of a mere friend, either past or present. This was the look of a man who fully appreciated what he saw before him.
"Ummm . . ." I cleared my throat. "How do you think the bat got in?"
"The open window that's missing a screen," he said without ever taking his eyes off me. So much for hoping I could distract him. But I refused to be deterred.
"How did you know how to catch him?" I would never have thought to toss a blanket over a bat. Then again this was the first time in my long life that I’d ever encountered one.
"A firefighter friend of mine mentioned it. I guess he goes on a lot of calls for bats in houses. He says the blanket stuns them long enough to scoop them up and get them out."
Huh. You learned something new every day.
"I should probably get back to . . ." I pointed to the running shower with the door wide open. Water was spraying on the tile floor, and if I wasn't careful, I was going to further embarrass myself by falling on my ass.
"Yes, you should." Aaron didn't take his eyes off my towel-covered body. In fact, the heat in his gaze was setting it on fire.
Finally, I cleared my throat.
"Shit." Aaron scrubbed his hand up and down his face. "I'll let you get back to it." Like someone had lit a firework under his ass, Aaron ran out of the bathroom.
I waited until I was sure he wasn't coming back before letting the towel fall from my body and land in a pile at my feet. I was just about to step back into the shower when I remembered what Aaron said about the bat entering through the window. On weak legs—because yes, that was what Aaron did to me—I walked over and shut the small bathroom window.
Instead of the quick, hot shower I planned before the bat incident, I took a long and somewhat cold shower, giving myself plenty of time to think about this new predicament I found myself in. And what a predicament it was.
I was no longer able to deny that at some point over the last couple of days, things had shifted for me. I no longer felt the same hate I had when Aaron first came back to town. I couldn't lie to myself any longer and say that I wasn't attracted to him.
Aaron had aged like fine wine with his salt-and-pepper hair cut short and slightly styled to the side and his beard trimmed nice and neat. I wanted to take a big ole sip. I blamed it on the fact that I hadn't had sex in God knows how long. A decade maybe? When I hit my forties, meaningless sex no longerappealed to me, so I stopped having it. Instead I used toys to get myself off and now I was kicking my ass for not bringing them with me. They would've come in handy right about now.
Now my only option was to suffer through the night knowing Aaron had seen me naked.
Fuck me!
Too bad hiding in my room wasn't an option because, at this point, it sounded like a great idea.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Aaron
