Tall, Tatted and Tempting (The Reed Brothers 1)

He’s still glaring at me.

What? I ask.

“I told you not to mess with that one.” He sits back, huffing out a big breath. “She’s not like the others.”

I know that. I’m going to sleep on the couch, dickwad. I’m not going to sleep with her.

His brows shoot up.

Shut up, I sign.

“You’re going to sleep on the couch.” He might need a two ton jack to pick his jaw up off the floor.

I nod. How’s Matt?

“Sick.” He takes a swig of his beer. “I don’t think he wants anyone to know.”

I nod.

His brows are still up. “You’re really going to sleep on the couch?”

I nod again, raising my hands in the air to say what the f**k.

He shakes his head. “I just don’t believe it.”

I have a heart.

“Yeah, but it usually gets overruled by your dick.” He takes a sip of his beer. “Does she know you put her tattoo on your wrist yet?”

I shake my head. Not yet.

“Are you going to tell her?”

Why should I?

“Maybe because it’s personal to her. I still don’t understand why you wanted it.”

He’s going to get a permanent crease between his eyebrows if he keeps scowling like that.

I don’t understand it either. I look toward the bathroom door again. Does she look familiar to you? Like you’ve seen her before?

He shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”

I nod and shrug. I would say she just has one of those familiar looking faces, but she’s so f**king beautiful that can’t be the case. She’s gorgeous. She would stand out in a crowd. And that’s not just because she’s in my bathroom naked.

“How’s your nose?” Paul asks.

I shrug. It’s fine. Nothing I can do about it either way. And I kind of deserved it.

The bathroom door opens up and she comes out. She’s wrapped in a towel and her hair is wet and hanging down over her shoulders. She looks like she just brushed a comb through it. She doesn’t have any makeup on. There’s no black stuff around her eyes and I see she has a line of freckles across the bridge of her nose. She ducks quickly into my bedroom, and I sit back, forcing myself not to go and see her. She probably wanted to get dressed somewhere that’s not all steamy.

I get up and go to the bathroom, closing the door behind me. The mirror is fogged up from the steam of her shower. The countertop is clean for the first time in months, and she even cleaned the toilet and the shower before she got in it, apparently. Everything is all clean and shiny. I assume it’s because she’s a girl that she felt the need to clean it before she used it. It looks nice and I remind myself to tell her thank you.

She left her shampoo bottle in the shower, and her soap. It smells nice in the bathroom for a change and I realize it’s her stuff that left that clean scent in the air. Makes me want to go and sniff her. I want to bury my face in her hair to see if it smells as good as the bathroom does.

She’s had enough time to get dressed now, hasn’t she? I knock on my bedroom door and I crack it open, peeping in. She’s sitting on the edge of my bed wearing the towel. It’s open over her thigh, showing a long expanse of naked leg.

I motion to her, asking her silently if I can come in. She grips the towel where it’s tucked between her br**sts and hitches it higher. But she nods.

She looks toward my closet, which is standing open, and then back at me. I raise my brows at her in question. Does she need something?

“Can I borrow a shirt?” she asks. She looks down at her bag. “All my clothes are dirty, and I hate to put on dirty clothes when I just got out of the shower.”

I must have looked at her funny. Because she rushes on to say, “I’ll return it to you tomorrow, before I leave. I just want to sleep in it. Do you have a washing machine?”

I nod.

“Which question are you answering? The shirt? Or the washer?”

“Both,” I say. She smiles at me. I’d talk to this girl all day long if it means she’ll smile at me like that. I take a shirt from a hanger and toss it to her. She catches it and pulls it over her head. After she tugs it down toward her knees, she tugs the towel and jerks it from beneath the shirt. She sits down on the side of my bed and removes a pair of pink panties from her bag.

“Can you turn around?” she asks.

I do, and the fact that I did makes me grin like a kid in a candy store. I hope she can’t see me.

I feel her hand on my shoulder and I turn back around. She’s wearing my AC/DC shirt, and it hangs down around her knees. Damn she’s pretty.

“Can I throw some things in your washing machine?” she asks.

“I can do it for you,” I offer.

She shakes her head. “You are not fondling my panties, perv,” she says, grinning. “Next thing I know, you’ll be sniffing them.” She laughs. I wish I could hear it, because it’s probably the most beautiful sound in the world. It’s not often I wish I could hear, because I can do almost anything I want. But right now, I wish I could hear the sound of her laughter.

I motion to her and she walks out with me to the hallway, where I open the door to the laundry closet. I take what’s in the dryer out, and put it on top. Look like Sam and Pete’s stuff and they can handle their own clothes. I flip what’s in the washer to the dryer, and ask her for her things by holding out my hands. She shakes her head. I step to the side and she starts to take a few things from her bag. She doesn’t have much – just a few shirts, some shorts, a pair of jeans, and what she was wearing today. And the throws in a few pairs of panties. There’s more Betty Boop and I grin at her and shake my head.