Page 52 of The Love Scam
He got a pinch in the ribs for his pain, and couldn’t hold back the yelp. “Easy! You don’t want to hurt your fingers trying to pinch through all the muscle.”
“Oh,thismuscle?”
“Yeow! Those are—my—rock-hard—abs!” He was gasping around each word, because Delaney’s long, skinny fingers were relentless, like evil, sentient bread sticks.
“I can’t believe I told you that,” she was saying, never letting up on the tickling for a second. “I always tell you things I mean to keep to myself. Forget a dairy, buy a bar, you’ll be great at it and no one will care that you refuse to serve vermouth.”
“It’s the devil’s—agh! Quit! You—agh! Don’t make me—agh! My abs! My rock-hard abs! All right, that’s—huh.” He’d used his superior weight and height to tumble them over and off the bed, but somehow she’d twisted in midair and landed on top, her knees pinning his hands flat to the carpet while the tickling somehow intensified. He tried to flop like a fish on the dock, but Delaney had him cold.
“Jesus Christ,” he yelped, “the first boss I’ve had in over a decade is a dairy-loving American ninja with an Easter fetish!” He tried to buck her off, but Delaney rode him easily, and he really wished she hadn’t, because now he was thinking about another situation in which she might ride him easily, and it wasn’t exactly his fault; she was exceptionally yummy and he hadn’t had sex in days, and he tried again to buck her off and it worked just as well as it had the first time.
“Ha! Give up?”
“Uh.”Please don’t notice I’m hard please don’t pleasedon’tnoticeI’mhard.“Yes. Sure. Um, listen, I don’t suppose you’d be interested in—”
He cut himself off, since someone was fumbling with a key card, and then the door was thrown open and Sofia and Lillith were there, and spotted them on the floor, which, for some reason, didn’t phase them even a little. She immediately rattled off a bunch of Italian, and they both frowned, Delaney because she couldn’t understand, and Rake because he could. (Lillith seemed neutral.)
“Wait, so the church you didn’t think you could go to youcango to?” he said for Delaney’s benefit, and then, to Sofia: “Ho ricevuto questo diritto?”
“Yes.”
“I just came for my toothbrush,” Lillith said, and disappeared into the bathroom. Sofia barely noticed; she seemed a little frazzled, but the good kind. Her carroty hair was standing out in some kind of orange nimbus, and she was wearing purple—again! Her outfits made her look like a mobile migraine. “But we must be quick, Delaney.” And she actually hopped in place, like a frazzled, giddy rabbit.
“What?” Delaney stood straight up from Rake’s tickled body without using her hands. Just popped right up, like a sexy jack-in-the-box. “But that’s great! We didn’t think we were going to get in there for a month, at the earliest.” Then she looked down at Rake and bit her lip.
Ohhhh, he wished she hadn’t done that. Her glossy dark hair fell forward to frame her face, her full lower lip swelled when she nibbled it, and she’d just been riding him a few seconds earlier, so he barely had to use his imagination to picture what she’d look like during his second-favorite sex position. Even better, what she’d look like during sex withhimin his second-favorite sex position.
Please don’t notice I’m hard please don’t please don’t pleasedon’tnoticeI’mhard.
Then Sofia said something perfectly innocuous
“Ci può aiutare—we need the help.”
and Delaney just went off. “No! We can’t. Absolutely not. No.”
Even if Sofia hadn’t understood English fairly well—and she did—Delaney’s tone alone would have been sufficient translation. But she stuck with it. “Perchè no?”
“Because it’s our work. He and Lillith need to keep out of it. Especially Lillith—you know Donna would never want this for her.”
“Tale merda! Abbiamo bisogno di lui.”
“You get thatnomeans the same in English and Italian, right?” Delaney asked, exasperated.
“Hey.” To his relief, his hard-on was fading. Thank God, because here was a conversation he wanted to be part of. “Hey, it’s fine.”
“No.”
He decided it was good that Sofia had interrupted them. If she hadn’t, he would have made a bigger fool of himself than usual. Nothing like putting the moves on a woman you knew (a) you weren’t worthy of, (b) had no interest in you, and (c) might be skittish about sex in general through no fault of her own. And since the blood had left his dick and gone back to his brain, he could think (pretty) clearly.
“What, no? Listen, my phone hasn’t fixed all my problems yet.” In response to their stares, he elaborated. “I mean, it will, give it time, but I’ve only had the thing for an hour and Blake’s gone crazy, my money’s still missing, we still can’t call the cops, I still have to crash with Delaney at least one more night”—Yaaaaay!—“and pay for breakfast in the morning. I’d be glad for the chance to earn some more money.”
Wow. What was happening to him and yet another charitable impulse? It definitely wasn’t a niggling fear that Blake had been telling the truth about everything. It definitely wasn’t a way to postpone finding that out one way or the other. And it wasn’t a way to keep hanging out with Delaney and Lillith without making it look like he wanted to keep hanging out with Delaney and Lillith. It was all altruism, all the time: his new motto. He made a mental note to have shirts made. And maybe bumper stickers.
For some reason, Delaney was shaking her head even as Sofia nodded so hard, she probably made herself dizzy. “Grazie,Rake! We need you.”
“Wedon’t,” came the sharp reply. “Sofia, we can’t let him—”
“Whoa, ‘let me’? Delaney, how’d you like it if some man came along and tried to tell you what to do? Exactly,” he added before she could reply, “you’d drown him in milk or set cows on him or push him into traffic or tickle him until he barfed. I want to help.” (Somewhere, Blake was laughing his ass off.) “I demand you let me help.” (Laughing so hard he choked. Rake hoped hedidchoke.) “And we still don’t know what those two hoseheads are up to. We haven’t seen them lately, but they did follow us, and one of them tried to grab Lillith. We should all be sticking together.”
