She’s too good for you, Jacob.
It’s the main reason I’ve always kept my distance. I tease. I flirt. But then, I rein it in. I will not cross a line she does not want crossed. She’s never given a hint of interest in me, remaining standoffish even when I joke with her.
I trust her implicitly, and trust isn’t something I give easily.
Her fingers react to mine over hers and grab onto them. Touching her sends a thrill through me, like lightning striking the damned or Frankenstein’s monster coming to life. Both concepts are similar. The monster was destined for a horrible life the moment he was born, and the same has happened to me.
I close my eyes, holding her fingers in mine, and think back on the torture of the past two weeks. Thank God, Mandi and I have finally come to a firm agreement. No more. The trip was a test of wills. Will we be together forever, or will we finally end this suffocating relationship? She wanted marriage. I wanted out.
Ten days to sort out feelings I already labeled as zero. It took a lot of alcohol to make it through the days and nights because I have absolutely no feelings left for Mandi. That makes me a coldhearted dick, but I don’t care. All my emotions are wrapped up in this woman across from me, holding my hand like I’m suddenly her saving grace in a storm, and I so want to be deserving of saving her. For all she’s done for me, I want to be something to her, but I also know I’m not worthy of someone like her. I’m a sick bastard for even thinking such a thing, but my heart doesn’t want to stop rattling in the cage of my chest, begging for release. My dick has its own struggles, unwilling to settle down when she’s around. I’m never going to sleep tonight.
+ + +
In the early morning, I slip from the bed and head downstairs to my office for a few hours of work. I’m writing my next fantasy thriller and need to concentrate, which I cannot do with Pam next to me.
“Good morning.” Her soft voice eventually startles me, and I look up from my computer, over my glasses, at her curvy frame leaning against the doorjamb of my office. She’s a vision, but she also looks like hell.
“You shouldn’t be out of bed,” I tell her, taking off my glasses and standing from the desk chair. I’m wearing jeans and a flannel shirt, but I’m barefoot. She’s wearing my tee, exposing most of her legs, and my dick struggles behind my zipper once again. I cannot get myself under control.
“Would you mind if I shower?” she asks sheepishly, and I smile at the guilty look on her face. See, I’m a sick man because I’m thrilled to set her up in my bathroom. My shower is this amazing hexagon shape with only one side against the tile and the other five sides glass. A rain showerhead streams into the middle. Thinking of her naked body under the drenching spray with soap sliding down her lush curves makes me a mess of hormones I shouldn’t even have at forty. But damn, I want her in ways I should not.
“How about a bath?” I state, seeing as she can hardly hold herself upright without leaning against the entrance to my writing space. She chews at her lip. She wants to say yes. Without giving her a second to hesitate, I step up to her, scoop her into my arms, and head back up the stairs.
She shrieks before she speaks. “Jacob, you don’t need to carry me. I’m too heavy.”
“You’re as light as an angel’s wings,” I tell her.
“Oh, my God.” She laughs, loosely wrapping her arms around my shoulders. I want her to hold onto me—really tighten those limbs around me and hold me—but she doesn’t. “That’s sweet but false.”
She’s self-deprecating, and while I sometimes let it slide by continuing to tease her, I don’t want to hear it today.
“Don’t think about yourself like that,” I command as I climb the stairs. Once we enter the bathroom, I lower her to the closed toilet seat while I start the tub. It’s an air tub with jets because sometimes I work out harder than I should and need the muscle relief. The thought of those jets going off and pulsing at parts of Pam causes my entire body to vibrate.
Crystal snowflakes. Frozen eyelashes. A tongue stuck on a cold pole.
I need to get myself together.
Testing the water, I stopper the tub and stand back. Pam watches me, her head leaning back, face upward like she wants to tell me a secret. She’s worn that expression many times in the past, and I’ve always wondered what her thoughts are. What won’t she tell me?
“When was the last time you ate?” I question instead, noticing her pale coloring. She shrugs. “What would you like to eat?”
She chuckles, shaking her head.
“You don’t think I can cook?” I question.
“I know you can’t, remember? Mrs. White and then Ethan.”
Ah, Ethan Scott, my former in-home chef who fell in love with my stepsister. It was kind of nice having another man around the house, even if I was only present for a week, and he was here for five before Ella ran off. I shake my head at the thought of my sister and Ethan. It’s not that I don’t like the idea of them as a couple. I hate how they haven’t found their way back to one another yet. For her sake, and I suppose his, I hope it happens soon.
As for Mrs. White, that cougar-driven hussy hit on me more times than a desperate housewife on a vacation in Vegas. Ella, my stepsister, did everything she could to chase her away, and even though Mrs. White was a good cook, I’d been grateful. A woman nearly fifteen years my senior serving me dinner in her sheer lingerie was too much for me. It might be another guy’s thing, going for the older woman, but not mine. It’s almost laughable that I’d been cougared at forty. Isn’t it supposed to be a forty-year-old woman going for a younger man, not someone fifty-five, reminding me of my mother hitting on me? Like my mother, the woman who ran off and left her kid so she could screw half of Los Angeles before I was even ten. Oh wait, she did that while she was still living in our home.
I realize the hypocrisy of my statement as Mandi is some thirteen years younger than me.
“Yeah, well, I can cook,” I defend, wiping away thoughts of my wayward mother and my equally frustrating former girlfriend.
“Frozen pizza.” Pam snorts.
“It encompasses the four food groups. Whole grains, vegetables, protein, and dairy.” I tick off the categories on my fingers while she skeptically looks at me.
“Except the kind you eat is made from enriched white flour, has processed cheese, probably uses a tomato-paste substitute, and the meat product is questionable.” Her eyes roam down my body, doing nothing to calm its already stiff status, and adds, “I don’t know how you look like you do when you eat that shit . . . I mean, stuff.”
Let it be noted, Pam Carter just swore, and she complimented me. I’m not making that up.
“You think I have a nice body?” I tease. Her face heats to this pretty pink shade I’ve seen a few times on those cheeks.
“You know you do,” she says, her voice lowering as her gaze drops to her lap.
“Maybe, but I’d like to hear more about it from you. What exactly do you think is nice on my body?” Placing my hands on my hips, I turn my head, giving her the side of my face, and wait. A minute passes. When I glance back at her, a hand covers her mouth.
“Are you laughing at me?” She looks like she wants to burst out in giggles.