As she panted, her eyes flew wide, and her gaze landed on her finger, digging into his chest. With a harsh inhale, she jumped back, removing her hand as though he’d burned her. Her fist curled and dropped to her side while her mouth opened and closed repeatedly.
It was too damn late. He’d grown hard as hell from one angry poke of a single finger.
His lips turned up. He also discovered the woman he’d assumed was a cold fish had hot blood running beneath the surface.
And what the hell was he supposed to do with that?
CHAPTER NINE
WELL, THAT LITTLE outburst was the opposite of everything she’d been trying to achieve in her new life. It was also the antithesis of how she’d told herself to act around Keith. If he’d hated her before, there wasn’t a word to describe how he’d feel about her now that she’d screamed and cursed at him. The hissy fit was way too reminiscent of how Scarlett would have behaved. Michaela was supposed to be able to control herself and her temper. At least that’s what she’d been working on.
But, man, he’d hit a nerve. She’d woken at five, unable to fall back asleep, so she’d decided to tackle the dessert, an apple pie, for tomorrow night. Fully expecting to screw it up, she’d purchased enough ingredients to make multiple iterations. After hours of chopping, sauteing, and attempting to make freaking crust, she’d nearly burned the house down.
Keith couldn’t have picked a worse time to take a little dig at her independence and hard-won sobriety. The man was a master at knowing how to cut her down. Still, she hadn’t meant to go all psycho on him.
“I’m sor—”
Wait, why was he smiling?
“It’s about damn time,” he said.
“Huh?”
Eloquent, Mickie.
Her forehead scrunched. Seriously? The first smile she saw out of the man, and it came after she laid into him? Maybe he was a little tweaked in the head.
“Bet that felt good, huh?” He folded his very thick arms across an equally thick chest, then leaned against her wall. “Ripping me a new one like that?”
“Um, well…” Yes, yes it had. “If I’m being honest…”
He laughed, and she nearly peed herself. Damn, that was a deep, gravelly, sexy sound. The kind that went straight to a woman’s panties.
“Don’t go back to being all stiff again.” The word stiff came out a little strangled as though it caught in his throat.
Her sex-deprived mind went to one thing and one thing only. And, of course, her gaze followed. Holy shit. Was he hard? Did he have some sort of humiliation kink where he got off on being insulted by women?
Wait, he’d called her stiff, not himself.
Get your mind out of the gutter, Mickie.
“I’m not stiff,” she said, as her shoulders straightened in opposition to her words.
“You are stiff.”
God, they needed to stop saying the word stiff. She risked another glance at his crotch before looking back at his face.
“I’m pretty sure that rant was the first time you let your guard down around me and were your true self.”
She frowned. “A raging bitch is my true self? Gee, thanks. You sure know how to charm a girl.” Oh God, was she flirting with him now? Why did she lose her brain around him?
He laughed again. “Not what I meant. It’s not a bad thing—you yelling at me. I was an asshole, and I deserved it. You stood up for yourself instead of pretending everything was fine.”
That had her meeting his gaze. “I don’t do that.” But she did. She so did. In trying to start over again she’d felt the need to continually act okay with everything in her life and always be on an even keel no matter how tumultuous she felt inside.
“I think you do.”
“I’ve been through a lot in the last year.” Understatement of the century. She shifted her gaze to the disaster of apple peels, cores, and sugar on her kitchen island. “Moving here…well, I left a lot of toxicity behind. Not a relationship, but a life I was drowning in. Right now, I feel a little like a square peg trying to fit into a round hole. I’m trying to find where I fit in the world. So yes, maybe I pretend everything is fine because I’m trying to make it all be fine.”
He pushed off the wall and strode toward her. Helpless to untether herself from his molten gaze, she did nothing but stare with arms limp at her sides.
“We’re pretty simple,” he said when he was close enough to touch.
And smell. Damn, what was that intoxicating scent? Whatever it was, it trumped the smoke still lingering in the air. She wanted to bathe in it, then maybe spend the rest of the day hiding in her room.
With her vibrator.
He cleared his throat, making her blink.