Take My Body (Curse Bound 2)

It seemed he’d need to have another chat with Gunner then. And soon.

“Fine. See you in two weeks,” Caspian said, cursing when he rose and hit his head on the lamp. Being tall had its downsides too.

He walked out of the office and toward his new home with shoulders squared and mind clouded by rage he couldn’t pinpoint. It was like smoke in his brain, obscuring all logical thought and making his fists clench. Nobody paid him any attention as he made his way down the narrow asphalt road winding through the trailer park. He took his time to spy on the unfamiliar community and get to know his neighbors. Some of the residents kept their places tidy and even owned small gardens, while others had literal trash piles around their homes, as if the owner of the grounds didn’t care about everyone’s health and hygiene.

He put on a pair of sunglasses to protect himself from the sun and fed his curiosity from behind the reflective lenses. A couple fought nearby, shouting at the tops of their lungs. An older gentleman made a table in a makeshift carpentry workshop set up under an awning in front of his trailer. A mom watched her kids play outside, sitting on the steps of her home with a thick layer of green cream on her face and a magazine in her lap. It was the society in microcosm, with its own heroes and villains.

And a bunch of lazy asses who did nothing useful with their time.

He scowled when Sandy lifted a pair of bejeweled shades from her eyes and waved at him from a sun chair. She was chatting to a bunch of female friends, who’d gathered by a trailer near the road, drinking cocktails and making full use of the sun in their bikinis.

“Hey! Gun-gun! Wait up, we need to talk!”

“I’m not giving you money,” Caspian said, heading straight for Gunner’s place and the truck parked next to it. He needed to get away from here. From the cockroaches. From Snowman. From the thugs dumb luck had cast in the roles of his friends. And from Gunner’s girl.

At least hunger was no longer a problem, since he’d stolen provisions from his parents’ fridge, but who the hell knew how long those would last? This wasn’t the life he’d imagined when he dreamed of having a body like this. He’d been dealing with problems all morning when he could have been looking for a sweet piece of ass to pin.

“Asshole!” One of Sandy’s friends yelled. “This woman could be carrying your baby, and you’re making her pay for your cat’s food? What kind of man are you?”

“But she’s not,” Caspian said, hoping that Gunner didn’t in fact owe anyone child support. He went faster as he approached the beat-up truck and slid into the cab, muting the squeaky voices of Sandy’s friends with loud music. In the corner of his eye, he saw one of them hurry his way, but he had no intention of letting anyone berate him. He might have to deal with the debt, but considering that Gunner had mentioned his cat, but not his girlfriend when they’d met, Caspian assumed she wasn’t that important, and he wouldn’t jump through hoops to please her. She had her own two hands and could search for a job instead of sitting around in the middle of the day if she needed cash.

He only relaxed once he could no longer see the gate of the trailer park in his rearview mirror. The road, and the familiar buzz of the engine made him relax. He glanced at the thick fingers resting on the steering wheel and imagined what those massive hands could do to a man… The right kind of guy would also think so. Maybe Caspian didn’t even need Grindr to hook up? He was hot now and could surely find someone willing to bend over in no time.

His face heated when he remembered finding the cute barista from his favorite coffee shop on the app, and since he knew where the pretty boy worked, he could just go there and casually propose a date while he placed his order.

His wallet might have gotten lighter by five hundred dollars minutes ago, but he still had enough cash on him for a coffee. Or two, if the barista agreed to a rendezvous after work.

In his mind, he was already pressing the blond cutie against the wall at the back of the building, smelling the coffee and sugar in his hair, and lowering the pale jeans to expose the round globes of his buttocks.

He stepped on the gas with fire burning in his veins, but just as he was about to make a dash toward the cafe, a red Porsche blocked his way, changing lanes as if its driver hadn’t noticed that Caspian had picked up his pace. He punched the horn, getting agitated when the rude fuck refused to go faster and rolled forward at the pace of a turtle, laboriously overtaking the car on the other lane, as if it were a long-haul truck, not a sports vehicle.