Rachel conked her head against the shower wall. The perfect position to notice that her nipples were hard.
God damnit! Out there, right now, was a man so hot that he might as well be on fire. And so fine that not even the best China in the universe could compare to his chiseled body and the easy way he moved from one place to another. He oozed confidence, charisma, and a natural know-how of a woman’s body. He practically drew them for a living, after all.
Fuck him. To pieces.
And fuck me. Because that’s what I want him to do.
Rachel glanced at the detachable shower head. She could grab it right now and finish herself off before going back out there to Zack and his ready-to-go-at-any-moment regard for life. Maybe this was all a part of his plan, anyway. Rachel didn’t fear that he would force herself on her – although there was a dangerous fantasy to stow away for another day, another shower – but she did fear that he would attempt to seduce her again, and she wouldn’t be able to say no.
A big part of her begged her to let him do it. Have his way with her. Take her in that sterile bed like he had taken a hundred women before her. Who cared? As long as she got the best lay of her life, right? He probably had condoms stored in the nightstand for these occasions.
But the smallest part of her warned her that it was a bad, bad idea. This was how she got into trouble. Men like Zack were trouble incarnate.
She knew one thing, though. This whole “just friends” thing was not going to last as long as they kept seeing each other as available sexual beings. He needed a girlfriend. And she needed a partner of some kind. There. Temptations gone.
Rachel shut off the water before she completely lost her mind. When she toweled off, she took extra precaution to not touch her erogenous zones. That way led to madness.
True to his word, Zack had left some clothes by the door. A plain black T-shirt and a pair of small basketball shorts that looked suspiciously like they had belonged to another woman. Well, Rachel wasn’t a small by any means, but the shorts were old and worn-out enough that they had plenty of give around the hips and thighs. She looked ridiculous, but that was probably for the best. Less temptation for Zack.
Then poor Rachel walked out of the bathroom to find Zack already in bed. Shirtless.
He lay so casually, flipping through TV channels, that this must have been how he spent most of his nights with his female friends. Oh my God, he better not be naked. He barely acknowledged her presence when she walked out. Who was to say he had completely forgotten she was there and stripped down to his birthday suit?
“Uh…” Rachel instinctively crossed her arms over the nipples poking through her shirt. “Nice chest, friend.”
“What?” He put the remote down, leaving the channel on some crime drama Rachel hadn’t seen in years. “I don’t sleep with shirts on. You’re lucky I’ve got boxers on.”
Too much info. “Do you actually want me to sleep in there with you?”
“Yup.”
“Don’t you wanna take a shower now?”
“Nah. I’ll do it in the morning.”
Rachel sighed. It was now or never. And by never, that meant grabbing her shit and running with his old, borrowed clothes still on her.
“Besides,” Zack continued, turning off the TV. “The show’s about to start next door. You don’t wanna miss it. Trust me.” He raised his eyebrows as if he had another secret to tell her. “It ain’t a show I let any woman in on. Only my friends, Rachel.”
She took a step back. “Uh. What?”
“Get over here and hope you don’t go deaf in the next minute. Trust me. It’s hilarious.”
Rachel had no idea what she was getting into. She couldn’t say it made her feel easy.
Zack clapped the lights off as soon as Rachel had one knee on the bed. “It’s better with the lights off.” She hoped for his sake that he hadn’t realized his double entendre when he said it. He certainly wasn’t apologizing for it!
She slipped beneath the covers and kept to her side of the bed. Too bad the mattress was so nice, the sheets so exquisite that she instantly closed her eyes and dreamed of going to sleep right away. Who knew I was ever this tired in my life? Who knew that a fantastic bed could bring the sleep out of her? Oh, wouldn’t this be convenient? She could go right to sleep and avoid the awkwardness that way!
Or something could smack against the wall and wake her right back up.
“Ah,” Zack said with laughter in his breath. “Here we go. Good ol’ Sunday night.”
“I…” Rachel had no idea what was happening. Not until another thump shook the wall behind them. An ecstatic moan shortly followed.
“My neighbor,” Zack explained, “has an active sex life with her boyfriend.”
“Oh my God!”
“They’re total sluts for each other.” Zack propped himself up on his arm the moment a masculine grunt filtered through the wall. “Kinda romantic, honestly.”
Rachel pulled the covers over her head. “You brought me into this room so we could listen to your neighbors have sex?”
“You don’t get it. It’s hilarious, as long as you don’t want to get any actual sleep on Sunday night. Or any other night of the week they decide to stay over at her place.”
“Unbelievable.” Rachel couldn’t drown out the sordid sounds of feverish, famished sex no matter how hard she clapped her hands over her ears. I have no idea who is over there, and I don’t want to know! “This is too much like college for my liking.”
“If it makes you feel better, they’re pretty people.”
“It doesn’t!”
“Come on! They’re already reaching the finale. You have to admit they’re quite efficient when they have to be up early in the morning.”
Rachel leaped out of the bed and ran back toward the bathroom, hands still over her ears. “Not listening!”
“What do you mean you don’t wanna hear the whiny-ass moan she makes when he nuts in her?”
Rachel closed the bathroom door behind her. To Zack, she probably looked like a prudish nun who hated anything that had to do with sex. Okay, so I’m not a fan of having the neighbors’ sex sessions sprung on me. But that’s not the only problem. Technically, it wasn’t a problem at all. Maybe with other friends it could’ve been hilarious for a few minutes. But with Zack?
The man she shared a mutual attraction with, although they both ignored it in favor of a different kind of relationship? Yeah, right. The last thing Rachel needed to do was go out there and listen to sex, sex, sex, while denying how much she wanted to do that same thing with Zack.
In his bed. In his studio. In his arms.
“There it is!” Zack’s voice echoed. “They’re done! You can come back out now!”
Rachel remained frozen against the sink, arms crossed and head pointed downward. I can’t do this. I really need to go home. The past twenty-four hours had been one mess after another. From kissing Zack – and getting kissed back – to coming to his place and being so intimate with him already… what had Rachel been thinking?
This wasn’t going to work at all!
“Hey.” Knuckles rapped against the bathroom door. “You okay in there?”
Rachel opened it an inch. Bad idea. Under no circumstances was gazing upon Zack in nothing but his underwear a good idea.
“Fine. Forgot to brush my teeth.”
Zack gave her a disbelieving grin. “Geez, Rachel,” he said, tongue-in-cheek, “a guy might start thinking that you don’t want to be around him.”
“Only when he says things like nuts.”
He hissed through his teeth. “Yeah. You know. Guy talk.”
Rachel opened the door wider. His eyes went straight to her chest before looking back at her face. “Let’s get one thing straight, Zack.” She meant to sound strict. Firm. Unwavering in what she believed was something they must hash out before they could continue this farce of a friendship. “I’m not one of the guys. I’m not your buddy. I’m your friend, but I’m still a woman. We can talk about a lot of stuff we talk about with our other friends, but mind how you say it.”
He saluted her with two fingers. “Yes, ma’am.”
She glanced at the cursed wall between the bed and the neighbor’s bedroom. “You sure they’re done in there?”
“One of them’s already snoring.”
Rachel pushed past him and approached the bed as if she had planned on sleeping there all night. Might as well see this through now! “You really should look into better soundproofing.” She pulled back the covers and crawled in before Zack fully turned back around, “I would expect way better from luxury apartments that let you remodel one into a studio.”
Zack got into bed next to her. “You’re right. I should look into that.”
She grinned. “But you won’t, because you enjoy listening to the neighbors have sex.”
“It’s like I never left college.”
They lay side by side, careful to not touch while they stared into the darkness and imagined what it would be like to do more than simply lie there.
In the morning, Rachel awoke to Zack’s breath blowing against the back of her neck.
She didn’t tell him to back off.