“I’ll take the blame for all this.” His deep voice came from very freaking close behind me as I slowly recounted all the body parts I felt pressed against my own much softer ones. Thighs, chest, arms, all hard and flushed against my back. Against my ass. Against my own thighs and … I had to stop thinking of body parts. “Hard to resist myself really.” My fake boyfriend’s words entered my ears at the same time I noticed the muscles underneath me flexing. “Right, bollito?”
Oh my God.
He was … I was … I just—
“Right,” I croaked, “osito.”
Charo beamed at us, one hundred percent satisfied with the show. She had just gotten to the apartment and already obtained a story I’d be hearing about for the next ten years. The time Lina and her boyfriend broke that twin bed. I bet she’d add stuff that never happened, maybe that she had seen Aaron naked or something.
A mental image intruded my mind. One of Aaron. Sans clothes. With all those muscles I was feeling—
No. No. No.
“Ay, look at you two,” my cousin said, bringing her hands under her chin. “You look so adorable together. And, Lina! I never thought you’d be this kind of crazy.” Charo wiggled her eyebrows.
Aaron’s hand landed on my knee, the contact branding the skin under my jeans. God, I could feel him all around me. If I relaxed my spine, I’d snuggle right into him.
That warm palm squeezed my thigh.
I kept losing my focus, and now, Charo seemed to be waiting for me to say something.
“Oh yeah.” I recapped as fast as I could. I needed to get out of here. Off Aaron. The position we were in was too distracting. In a very, very, very bad way. “Erm. Yes, crazy. Oh, you bet! This is all super crazy,” I said, squirming in Aaron’s lap as I unsuccessfully tried to make my way out of the man-sized black hole that had sucked me in. “It is crazy because I am super crazy. Crazy about him, that is.” I squirmed some more, realizing I might be stuck somewhere between his large thighs. Keep talking. “Like, so crazily in love, it’s even crazy, you know what I mean? So crazy—”
“I think she got it,” my fake boyfriend whispered in my ear, sending a stupid shiver rushing across my whole body.
I kept shifting further in his lap, ignoring how everything I felt underneath me—or my ass, more specifically—was solid and warm. No, hot. It was hot. Muscles upon muscles upon more muscles. Some of them becoming harder with every useless effort I made.
Oh my gosh. Oh Dios mío. Was that … no. It couldn’t be. Aaron couldn’t be … aroused.
Desperate, I tried to propel myself off him one more time, obtaining a little grunt from Aaron’s lips. It landed on the back of my neck as a puff of air.
“Stop,” he breathed in my ear. “That’s not helping with the situation.”
I immediately obeyed, forcing my body to relax into him. Okay, I have this. Think of it as a chair. A throne. Not Aaron. Just a hard man-sized throne.
I gave my cousin a fake smile. “So, what are you doing here, Charo?”
“Oh, I was going to stay with a friend for the wedding weekend, but the bathroom in his apartment flooded or something, and I have no choice but to sleep here instead,” she explained with a little wave. “I’m sure you thought you had the place to yourselves, huh?” She wiggled her eyebrows again. “I swear I won’t be in the way. You won’t even notice I’m here.”
There was only one way we wouldn’t notice Charo snooping around, and that included hard-core narcotics.
“Great. Well, we should really unpack and let you do the same,” I announced from my position on my Aaron throne. I cleared my throat. “Yeah, all right. Let’s do that,” I added, neither Aaron nor me moving. I cleared my throat very loudly. “Don’t you think we should get going, osito?”
Before I could ask, Aaron’s big hands were on my waist, and I was lifted off his lap and then up in the air. With shaky legs, I landed in front of my cousin.
Whoa, okay. So, it could have been that easy.
Aaron—who had mysteriously regained his usual agility—followed suit, leaving behind him the spring and wood disaster.
“I haven’t introduced myself.” Aaron stretched out one of the hands that had been wrapped around my waist a little more than a second ago. The one hand that had squeezed my thigh. “Soy Aaron. Un placer conocerte.”
My cousin—who I suspected had already requested all of Aaron’s available information from my mother—took his hand and pulled him to her. “Ay y habla Español! El placer es mío, cariño.” She planted one kiss on each of his cheeks.
Yeah, I was sure she hadn’t been lying when she said the pleasure of meeting him was all hers.
After my cousin released Aaron, who looked a little dumbfounded, she engulfed me in a hug too. “Come here, prima. I have kisses for you too.” And she added in a whisper so only I could hear it, “¿Dónde tenías escondido a este hombre?”
Where were you hiding this man?