Stripped Down (Tap That)

So for the rest of the cookout he studiously ignored Sloane.

Even when Bridget lit candles on a cake for her, he hung back, trying to emulate what would be his normal behavior.

It didn’t matter that when she bent over to blow out her candles he could see down her shirt, just a teasing glimpse at the pale flesh he’d in his mouth the night before. It didn’t matter that he was picturing her lips wrapped around his cock, something he hadn’t had the pleasure of enjoying yet.

He just shifted behind the breakfast table so no one could see the growing hard-on in his jeans.

Sloane tried to blow out all thirty candles in one fell swoop and failed miserably. A solid third of them were still burning and there were groans of disappointment. Her father said, “Geez, kid, you need to work out more.”

“Yeah,” River said. “You’re really bad at blowing.”

Fuck. The kid had no idea what she was saying obviously but he was already fixated on a blow job and this wasn’t helping. He wanted to laugh, desperately. Rick tried to look anywhere but at anyone.

He almost succeeded to holding it together.

Then Sloane said, “Maybe I need to practice.”

Maybe she didn’t mean it dirty. But he fully aware of his thoughts taking a nose dive straight into the gutter. Without intending to, he lifted his eyes and met the amused gaze of Sloane.

He felt the power paradigm shift ever so slightly in her favor. She had him by the balls, wanting more, and she knew it.

Oh, hell, no. He wasn’t giving up control that easily. He’d pined for Sloane all through school and then the night before the ball had been solely in his court.

He was going to wrestle it back.

Not now, with her family and friends standing around all watching them intently. But back at his apartment building, where the other two neighbors were a ninety-year-old woman, Mrs. Williams, who was hard of hearing, and a guy in his fifties who worked nights at the convenience store and slept all day long.

“Well, isn’t this just so sweet?” Sloane’s aunt Bridget said, looking intentionally clueless.

No. Sweet was Sloane’s lips. Sweet was Sloane’s pussy, hot and wet beneath his tongue.

Rick went and grabbed a beer. He was suddenly very thirsty.

Nine

Sloane was lying in bed Monday night, exhausted and wishing whoever was banging around in the shop downstairs would die a painful, torturous death. She had put in another full day at the groomers and then had come home, eaten a store-bought salad, and attempted to create some sort order to the chaos that was her apartment. She had reached the horrible point where you still have a dozen boxes but no damn clue where to put any of the items in them.

Really, why did she have an egg cooker? Her new kitchen was about five by five, with exactly four cabinets to store everything. The counter space was exactly three feet. She knew, because she’d measured it. Her kitchen in her house with Tom had been enormous, with professional grade appliances. Not that she was a gourmand by any means but she had liked to cook. The irony of that being Tom was almost never home; he was either at the hospital or getting called back to the hospital. She’d made herself some very delicious meals in a beautiful, big, lonely as hell house.

But here, she was struggling to figure out what to do with all her equipment and had come to the sad conclusion she was going to have to either ditch about half of it or take it to her dad’s house. Which wasn’t a horrible idea, either. She could cook for him once a week. The man lived on beer nuts, which could not be healthy.

As her thoughts spun around and around, she listened to the sound of an air compressor going off downstairs. Really? Her own thoughts were clanging and loud enough, she did not need Rick’s night owl work habits preventing her getting a decent night’s sleep. It was his fault all the way around she was sleep deprived, now that she thought about it. Saturday, he’d kept her up half the night—which was worth it—but then Sunday night she’d been exhausted and unable to sleep because she was worried about her brother. Sullivan had clearly sensed the sexual tension between her and Rick.

Now he was fixing something at midnight? Who did that?

Sloane closed her eyes and counted to ten, breathing deeply in and out. Draw the air in through her nose, push it out her mouth. She relaxed her shoulders, one at a time. Wiggled her fingers. Forced herself to relax the muscles in her thighs, her calves. Let her feet droop. The temperature in the apartment was perfect. She had the window cracked for a cool breeze and her sheets were crisp and new.

She started to drop into sleep.

Wham. The compressor went off again, jolting her out of her zen state as she jerked up off the mattress. H

er heart rate increased twenty-fold. “That’s it.” She threw the sheet off of her legs and sat up. She was groggy and dizzy from the tease of repeatedly almost reaching REM and then being yanked back into reality.

Sloane stood up and stumbled across her bedroom. She’d decreased the number of moving boxes in there only marginally, not having enough time to deal with any of it, and she stubbed her toe on a heavy box corner. “Ow. Damn it.”

Grabbing her keys off the kitchen counter so she didn’t get locked out of the exterior door to the building, she left the apartment in sleep shorts and a tank top, shoving her hair out of her eyes. She wanted to murder Rick.

He may be sexy and he may have given her the best sex of her life but she needed some motherfucking sleep or there would be hell to pay.