“No.”
“You’ve got probably the only LFA in this town, and you’re driving it covered in dirt and rock dings, and I don’t even want to know what the undercarriage looks like.”
“Don’t think about my undercarriage, you pervert,” Aiden says, but the insult lacks his usual levity. In fact, he almost sounds…nervous?
“Everything okay?” I ask, watching the back of the dust-covered Lexus as it turns off the street and into the parking garage for his firm’s office.
“Yep. Fine.”
“Were you at the Kauffman for a work thing?” I ask, and as I’m asking, I realize that what I really want to know is if he saw Elijah and if Elijah said anything about Zenny. Or, God, what if Zenny were there? What if Aiden had just seen her? And what if seeing him had reminded her of me? Or what if she talked about me? What if—
Christ. I’ve turned into a teenager. I’ve turned into a teenager because of a girl who’s barely not a teenager, and now even the idea of seeing someone who also knows her is electric. Like her presence has infused itself into the city on a quantum level, and every place and everyone that’s connected to her makes me as skittish and eager as she herself does.
Copper-ringed eyes spark through my mind as Aiden finally answers stiffly, “It wasn’t for work.”
“Did you see Elijah?”
“What would make you think that?” Aiden demands, and there’s a sharpness to his words that makes me think we’re beyond our normal brotherly ribbing.
“I don’t know, because he works there, asshole? And he’s my friend?”
There’s a pause.
Then he says, “I’ve got to go.” And hangs up.
God, what a fucking weirdo.
I’ll see him tonight at dinner and make him explain himself. And in the meantime—the shelter. Getting this Zenny problem all sewn up so I can stop thinking about her all the time. So I can stop imagining what it would be like to kiss her again, what it would feel like to hoist her on another counter and then drop to my knees and prove to her how little oxygen I need when I’ve got a pussy to eat.
And now I’m hard. Just fucking great.
I park the Audi in my building’s garage and limp over to the elevator, my stride hampered by my raging hard-on, and once I’m inside the elevator car itself, I can’t help but to give myself a couple rough strokes through the fabric of my trousers.
Those soft lips.
Those white cotton panties.
Fuck.
I stumble inside my penthouse already peeling off my suit jacket and reaching for my cock. Just a quick jerk to take the edge off, just a few fast strokes to clear my head, I won’t even think about Zenny—
That’s a lie. She’s all I can think of; it’s her kisses and her hands trembling and clinging around my neck and her legs parting for me to step between and the small scratch of her nose ring against my own nose as I claimed her mouth…
The way she lifted up her skirt to show me her pussy…
I drop my coat on the floor and fish out my cock, as fumbling and eager as if I were about to actually fuck her, my blood pounding raw and hot and urgent, my own hand shaking with excitement as I wrap it around myself. I shouldn’t be thinking of her like this, I shouldn’t be imagining it’s her slender fingers wrapped around me now. I shouldn’t be getting off to the thought of those fingers being nervous and inexperienced. I shouldn’t be swelling and leaking as I think about her showing me the cunt that she’s promised to keep pure and untouched for her church.
But I am, I am. I’m hard and aching over Zenny Iverson, someone I held as a baby, someone I’m supposed to keep safe, someone far too fucking young and also consumed with a faith I have spent my entire adult life rejecting. And after nearly two decades of screwing all kinds of women all over the globe—women who are paid to fuck and women who fuck like it’s their job anyway—I have no idea why it’s Zenny who’s got me like this.
Because I can’t fuck her, ever? Because I actually care about her wellbeing? Because she isn’t impressed by me and that makes me want to impress her?
Because she’s actually a good and interesting person, and stirs up a part of me that wants to be the same?
I tighten my grip around my cock, watching the fat, dark head pushing through my fingers. Fantasizing about Zenny’s fingers instead. About her pretty pussy, exposed for me and me alone—
Fuck. Gonna come.
I speed up my strokes, ready for it, ready, ready—and then there’s a knock at the door.
For a moment, I consider ignoring it. I’m three strokes away from spilling, and I need this, I need it bad, and there’s no way I can spend the afternoon thinking about Zenny without needing to come, so I just need to do it now. You know, for my wellbeing.
But then the knock comes again, and reality clears up the hormone mist a little. Realistically, it’s probably just a grocery delivery or the cleaning company coming early, but if there’s even the slightest chance it could be about Mom…
With a pained grunt, I zip myself back up into my pants, try to arrange myself so that my boner isn’t stupidly obvious (it still is) and go to open the door without bothering to check who’s on the other side.
And I open it to find Zenny standing there in her postulant’s jumper and bright yellow flip-flops, a nervous smile on her face.
Chapter 8
My mind buzzes with panic.
Fucking PANIC, man.
And I shut the door right back closed.
“Uh, Sean?” I hear her say from the other side, but I’m too busy pacing in circles right now to answer. And I’m not even thinking, I’m just panicking, turning in circles like a dog walking into a room where the furniture’s been rearranged. All of my normal confidence is gone, all of my normal contingency-thinking, all of my charm and problem solving, it’s just fucking gone.
All that’s left is wanting Zenny and knowing I shouldn’t want her, and oh yeah, this idiot erection I have that is refusing to relent. If anything, my body and my dick are thrilled that Zenny is here in the flesh.
“Sean, I know your mother raised you better than this,” Zenny calls through the door, sounding amused. “Let me inside, please, or I’ll tell her how rude you were.”
Like Elijah, Zenny was somewhat exempt from the Bell-Iverson schism, and I can’t actually be sure that she wouldn’t tell my mom about this, so I spin around and yank open the door before I can think about it any longer.
Zenny gives me a sunny smile and pushes by, leaving that delicate rose scent in her wake. I have to fight myself not to sniff the air like a wolf after she walks past me and props herself against the back of my sofa. I pick up my crumpled suit jacket off the floor and hold it in front of my crotch, a move straight from the Adolescent Boy Playbook.
You’re thirty-six, not thirteen, I have to remind myself. Fucking act like it.
Luckily, Zenny doesn’t seem to notice my odd jacket pose. Instead, she seems taken with my apartment, gazing with large eyes at the clean, minimalist space. I look around myself, seeing it as she would—the stained concrete floors and giant windows, the long, low lines of the furniture—and I feel a spike of pride. It is a pretty nice place, even though it’s really nothing more than a convenient place to sleep and shower before I go back out to conquer the world.