And why the hell did that bother him so much?
Shit.
“Mmm.” It was all he could manage to reply as he gave Katia’s hips a brief squeeze and then a peck on the lips. “Go ahead and finish your posts. I need to shower anyway.”
She pouted, sticking out her lower lip dramatically before whining, “Okay, but you’ll wait up for me if you finish first?”
“Sure.” He shot her a smile and then padded from the room, heading for the only room in the apartment that didn’t have cameras. The bedroom. Well, that and the attached bathroom.
It wasn’t until he shut the door that he breathed easier, and then he groaned as he made his way toward the bathroom, entered, and locked the door behind him. This was not new. He locked the bathroom door every time he went in.
Other than for the sake of the camera, he had not kissed Katia. He had never done so with passion, nor had he used tongue. It wasn’t hard to keep his distance. He didn’t like her. She was certainly sexy and attractive, but her personality rubbed him wrong.
Katia, on the other hand, worked pretty hard for the last few months to get him to pay attention to her. He suspected it was mostly because she did that with everyone. She wanted people to like her, and she saw him as a challenge. He felt confident she’d been sleeping with at least a few of the actors on the show, but he never had any intention of becoming a notch on her bedpost, no matter how hard she tried or how often she thrust her fake tits at him.
She rarely even shut the bathroom door all the way, let alone locked it. When she showered, she hummed the entire time as if to get his attention. He usually vacated the bedroom altogether.
As he stripped out of his jeans and T-shirt, he sighed. The next few weeks were going to be brutal. Working long hours at the bar and then spending the mornings pretending to be a half-assed husband was already proving to be taxing. He essentially had two full-time jobs. He wasn’t even sure which one was more exhausting.
When steam started filling the room, he climbed into the shower and directly under the hot spray. Eyes closed, he washed his hair and then soaped his body. Was Jodi still watching Katia in the other room? Thoughts of her dimples and wild curls made his dick hard, a dick he’d been neglecting for weeks and would continue to do now.
No way was Tuck going to rub himself off in the shower with Katia possibly on the other side of the door. Never. His cock would have to wait until this arrangement was over.
Hell, he still didn’t know where he might go when the show ended and he lost this apartment. He couldn’t continue to mooch off his friends, sleeping on their couches, forever. Eventually, he needed to find an apartment of his own. That was going to be tough in the Coronado area. Even a studio in this part of California would drain his finances. He needed every dime.
Drawing in a deep breath, he flipped off the water and stepped from the shower into the small bathroom. He dried himself off, gritting his teeth over the erection he sported. Surely Katia had noticed he never got hard around her. He sure didn’t want to leave this bathroom tonight with a hard-on. She would either jump at the opportunity or grow suspicious about his evening.
He closed his eyes and gripped the edge of the vanity, trying to will his cock to simmer down. It didn’t listen. If anything it grew harder, probably because he couldn’t shake images of Jodi from his mind.
Fuck. He hadn’t realized she had affected him this much. Something about the way she’d grilled him about the game show one minute and switched to hounding him with questions the next appealed to him. The duplicity.
There were so many sides to Jodi. She wasn’t just the hard-nosed bar owner he’d met the moment she entered the room. The one who didn’t think it was a good idea to employ him. She was also sharp as a whip. She had a long-term memory for drink orders that rivaled even the most seasoned barmen in the industry. She could laugh hard, glare daggers, and narrow her gaze pensively all in less than a minute.
Tuck spent most of the night learning her expressions, unable to avoid keeping one eye on her while the other scrutinized every single patron. He told himself the reason he watched her so closely was because she had insinuated she would let any man or woman who offered her drugs lure her into a sale. He had to watch her for her own safety.
Sure. Right. Keep telling yourself that.
Tuck’s hand found its way to his cock and began stroking it without permission. Tuck ducked his head a bit farther and pursed his lips, knowing the effort to stop himself from jacking off was lost. All he could do was hope he could do so quickly and quietly without Katia knowing.
He would be flushed when he left the bathroom, but that seemed preferable to having a hard-on.
It didn’t take long. The visual of the mercurial woman he’d met twelve hours ago made it easy for him to quickly stroke himself to completion. He even held his breath, not releasing it until he was spent.
After a few moments, during which he fought for composure, he took a slow breath, grabbed a pile of tissues, bent to clean up the floor, and tossed the mess into the toilet. No way was he taking a chance Katia might go through the trash, snooping on his actions.
Making quick work, he flushed, brushed his teeth, and put on clean underwear, sweatpants, and a T-shirt. This was as unclothed as he permitted himself to be when he was alone with Katia. On the show, he frequently wore nothing but swim trunks because apparently that was the extent of the clothing budget for the damn show. Since they’d moved into this apartment, however, he’d switched to behaving more normally, as in wearing actual clothing.
The moment Tuck opened the bathroom door, he nearly jumped out of his skin. Katia was leaning against the frame. She was wearing nothing but one of her two thousand negligees and a thong. Not unusual. “Sorry,” she murmured, biting her bottom lip playfully as if fighting a giggle. “I was just about to knock and make sure you were okay.”
Sure she was.
He frowned as he skirted around her. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
She shrugged as she turned around with him and followed him toward the bed. “I don’t know. You were just in there a while.”
He was not. She was full of shit. If anything, he’d been quicker than usual. He glanced at her as he grabbed two pillows from the bed and tossed them on the floor. Interestingly, he noted that he wouldn’t have any trouble with his cock in her presence. He was so not attracted to Katia that even thoughts of Jodi wouldn’t give him a hard-on while Katia sashayed around the room. The woman grated on his nerves.
“You don’t have to sleep on the floor, you know. The bed is plenty big enough for both of us.”
He opened the closet and grabbed the pile of blankets he used for this arrangement every night, unfolding one to stretch out over the carpet. The other he would use over his body, more to add another layer of protective barrier than to keep from getting cold. In fact, he lowered the thermostat every night just so he wouldn’t swelter.
He glanced at her as he lowered to the floor and settled on his back. “Seriously, Katia, are we going to have this conversation again?”
She pouted, something she had perfected that was also grating on his nerves. “It’s just so silly. I mean, we’re married. And even if we aren’t desperately in love with each other yet, that doesn’t mean we couldn’t…you know…have sex.”