“Being a blackmailing dick while looking like Jesus really should be a crime!” I yell at his back.
“Good thing it’s not or I would be serving a life sentence!” is his gruff response.
Chapter Five
Nash
* * *
The smell of smoke hits my nose seconds before the screeching of the fire alarm goes off.
What the fuck? Is someone trying to burn down the apartment complex?
I actually made it to my bed before I passed out last night, so I push myself up to a sitting position. After the room stops spinning, I throw my legs over the side to stand up and stagger out of the bedroom in nothing but the navy-blue sweats I’ve had on for so many days I’ve lost count to try and find the source of the smoke.
It immediately hits me that I must have wandered into and passed out in the wrong apartment last night. There’s a girl in the kitchen surrounded by dark smoke struggling to push up the small window over the sink. Things get stranger as I glance around the living room. The furniture is the same as mine, but there’s no trash or old beer bottles strewn all over the tables, counters or piled up on the floor like I left mine yesterday.
Hoping I can slip out of the apartment without the girl seeing me, I pad barefoot quietly across the floor to the door. My hand has just wrapped around the knob when she exclaims, “Hey! You’re awake!” at a volume that should never be used unless someone’s being murdered.
Without turning around, I mutter, “Sorry I crashed in your bed.” I’ve got the door open and I’m halfway out when a small hand grabs my elbow to stop me.
“Wait! Where are you going? I’m making you breakfast. I promise not all of it’s burnt!”
Good god, she’s even louder standing right behind me. I turn around to ask what kind of twilight zone I fell into, but then I get a good look at her. She’s almost short enough to be classified as a midget and is so lean she probably doesn’t weigh a hundred pounds soaking wet. Her sandy blonde hair is pulled back, leaving only a row of thick bangs across her forehead. Her triangular face is either small or just looks tiny thanks to all the bangs and a large pair of black-rimmed glasses that take up more than half of it. The ocean blue eyes looking up at me from behind the glass look huge and also familiar, along with the smell of fruit and flowers…
“I’m Lucy, your…” Her button nose wrinkles, and then she suddenly staggers backward several steps in her bright pink flip flops that match her oversized shirt with a giant smiling cupcake on the center of it. “Whoa, buddy. Ever heard of deodorant?”
I not so subtly sniff my underarms and find out she’s right. I fucking reek like month old gym socks. Before I can respond to her insult, the pixie-sized girl dashes away, only to return with a bottle of what I assume is air freshener. She sprays me down with the shit until I taste the ‘clean linen’ scent on my tongue.
“What the fuck?” I shout at her as I try and wave the smell away from my face.
“You smell like garbage, dude! I thought it was all the trash you kept scattered about the apartment, but now I know it was you.”
“This is my apartment?” I ask in surprise.
“Ah, yeah.”
“You cleaned it?”
“Yep. Took all morning and four garbage bags, but I did it,” she says with a big smile, her hands braced proudly on her hips as she surveys the living room and kitchen where smoke is still lingering around a pan of what looks like used to be biscuits.
“And who the fuck are you? A trash fairy sent to break in and clean my shit?”
“Ha! You’re funny! I’m Lucy, your neighbor from downstairs!”
People who talk in all exclamation points should be required to also have a mute button.
“Then why are you in my apartment?” I ask.
“Oh, well, long story short, that guy Malcolm asked me to clean up your place and try to get something other than alcohol in your stomach. No, really, he didn’t actually ask me. It was more like he coerced with threats…”
Oh right. This must be the little bitch from the roof. Lucy.
“Serves you fucking right for running your big mouth to him,” I tell her just as my stomach growls loud enough for the entire building to hear it.
“Hungry? There’s eggs, bacon and I substituted toast since the biscuits turned out a little black.”
For a moment, I weigh the pros and cons of enduring a hot meal with the last surviving member of the Lollipop Guild, but my hunger, unfortunately, wins out.
“Ah, yeah, I guess I could eat something,” I agree. Honestly, I can’t remember the last meal I had. Two days ago? Or has it been three since I ate the last of the peanut butter straight out of the jar?
“Great!” she says with an excited, rapid clap of her hands. I keep waiting for it, but surprisingly, she doesn’t spontaneously erupt in a shower of magical glitter all over my carpet. “You go get a quick shower, and then we can eat without me puking from your horrid stench!”
“Now that’s just fucking rude,” I tell her when her comment contradicts her pixie-like, goody two-shoes appearance.
Ignoring me, she heads into my bedroom saying, “I should probably throw your sheets in the wash too now that you’re up! Are there any cumsocks or cumrags in your bed I need to know about? If so, they will definitely make me barf.”
My jaw drops at her incredibly blunt words about such a personal act as I follow her into my room. I don’t know who the hell she thinks she is talking to. I’m the goddamn VP of the Dirty Aces, not some teenage boy who can’t stop playing with my dick. A tiny part of me wants to throw her in my bed and shut her up by fucking her disrespectful mouth.
Jesus. I don’t know where that perverted shit came from. I haven’t thought about being with a woman other than Ellie that way in years. It must just be the fact that she’s the first one I’ve had in my bedroom since my wife left me. Ex-wife.
“Well?” Lucy asks when she grabs one of my pillows and holds it away from her as far as possible to remove the case.
“Jerking off is the last thing I’ve had on my mind lately,” I admit to her, pretty sure it makes me sound pathetic.
“Doesn’t look like getting it up is a problem,” she mutters under her breath.
“Of course I can get it up,” I say as I reach for my dick and realize…it’s hard. Fuck. When the hell did that happen?
At thirty, I’m damn good at controlling myself. Hell, I rarely even get morning wood anymore thanks to all of the alcohol in my system.
“Do what you want with my sheets, I’m heading to the shower,” I grumble before I take off to the master bathroom to hide my erection. Although, it’s a little too late for that since she’s already seen it.
Lucy
* * *
Nash Kincaid’s body is fine as hell. He’s tall and sinewy, so it looks like each of his muscles have been carved from stone, and there are tons of them, from the rounded shoulders and biceps to the eight pack of abs that end just before the hip indentions pointing the way to what’s below the waistband of his boxer briefs. And whoa, buddy, is he very endowed in the area that was bulging!