“Hey, man.”
“Just coming to see if the fireworks had started yet,” he replied, looking around where we were standing. “Is she here yet?”
This was what happened every time I left my house, and it was getting old. “Who?” His sharp eyes came back to me and he looked like he wanted to say something, but was doing his best not to. “Not like you to stop yourself doing something, DB.”
Shrugging, he lifted his bottle to his mouth and then lowered it again without taking anything from it, unable to stop himself from saying what he was in his head now. “Just thinking, you know the old saying about boys pulling a girl's hair because they have a crush on them? Would that mean that the two of you just want to bang each other’s brains out? I mean, you fight and argue like an old married couple, but I swear…”
I held my hand up, hoping it stopped him from saying anything else. Raising an eyebrow, he looked over my shoulder at something, and then grinned as he looked back at me. “You ok? I mean, just so you know, she’s shorter than my wife, so I’m pretty sure you’ll survive.”
Snorting, I took a mouthful of my beer so that I’d have a second longer to think up the perfect response. Unfortunately, all I was left with was the same one I had before I started. “I’m not afraid of her. I’m a couple of inches taller than you, and she’s all of…what, five feet tall?”
During this, I’d noticed him looking behind me, but it wasn’t unusual for him to perve on his wife, so I didn’t think anything of it. Well, that was until I went to take another mouthful from my bottle, and the voice that haunted me said sweetly behind me, “Five-foot-two, actually. And it’s a shame the old myth about a man’s height and his size being relative is a lie. Or maybe it’s just that way with you?”
Turning around slowly, I paused when I came face-to-face with Rose, and saw that Liv was watching me, too. It wasn’t that she was holding the little girl that made me pause, but the beaming smile Rose was shooting in my direction. Call me stupid, especially given the shit that was flying between us, but seeing that smile made two things tighten in me – my balls and the dread in my gut.
Rose was a beautiful woman, and the God’s honest truth was that she didn’t have a clue just how beautiful she was. She’d inherited her dad’s hazel eyes, and with her long lashes those babies were powerful. Add onto it her face, her body, her hair, fuck it even her eyebrows did it for me – she was the type of woman that men made fools of themselves over. And her smile, Christ don’t even get me started on what that did to me when I saw it aimed at someone else, but when it was aimed at me, the effect was even worse. That’s why my balls were tightening, which incidentally meant my pants were, too.
The dread, though, that was with good reason. She had a way of getting even with me, even if it was an accident. A while back, we’d been at the diner and Ellis’s ex had started shit with him, and then aimed it at Jose. To stop Rose attacking her and being charged with assault, I’d arrested her to keep the peace, and ended up throwing her over my shoulder as we’d made our way outside the building.
Just as I’d started to walk across the parking lot to my car, she’d slipped slightly and her foot and had clipped me right in the body part which was currently reacting to her smile. In the end - while I was on my knees trying to breathe in a way that was conducive to survival - she’d somehow cuffed her hands together, and when I’d finally looked up, she’d been sitting in the back of my cruiser waiting for me. Yes, she’d apologized, and it had been an accident, but it was proof that she was dangerous even without meaning to be.
Both of my body’s reactions warred with my irritation over what she’d just thrown at me, though. “You can keep picturing how big it is in your head, baby, but that’s the closest you’ll ever get to it.”
Lowering Liv to the ground and making sure she was steady before letting go – giving me a great shot of her cleavage – she slowly stood back up again and then moved close enough to me that our chests were just brushing each other. Well, I say chests – her tits were rubbing against my sternum given our height difference, but still. Leaning in so that her hand went behind me, at the same time as raising up onto her toes slightly, she whispered, “Is that so, handsome?”