“This is the right address,” I said softly, and only just raised my hand in time to catch the package that he threw at me before he ran away.
“Well, that’s unprofessional,” my dad, Sam, muttered as he watched the guy run. “He’s meant to check details and get you to sign the clipboard he had under his arm.”
Before I could say anything else, both of them looked back at me, and I kind of wished I could run like the delivery guy had.
“Well, Miss Sasha, I think you’ve got some explaining to do.”
Just as I opened my mouth to reply to Sam, the Alexa beside me started talking with the latest announcement from Jackson.
See, a few days ago, we’d discovered that if you told her to announce something, it played the recording of what you’d said. It came in useful when he needed a drink or I’d needed help picking something up before he got sick.
So, at that moment, his voice croaked, “Baby, ass itchy. Can’t scratch ‘cause Milkshake’s licking balls.”
Wincing, I waved my dads into the living room. “I just need to…” I gestured toward the hallway that led off the room.
“That cat better not be licking Jackson’s balls,” Sam growled. “He’s got an obsession with licking my face, and I don’t want Townsend balls anywhere near it.”
If he weren’t my dad, I’d have asked him if he was insane after that statement. But he was, and that’d be inappropriate and gross, so I bit my tongue and made my way carefully back to the bedroom.
What greeted me had me biting my good fist to stop the bark of laughter that wanted to burst out. If I laughed, my dads—who were not curious by nature, they were nosey by nature—would have come to see what’d brought it on, and the balls Sam hadn’t wanted any part of would be right in his face.
Apparently, while I’d been sorting out the pharmacy, doing schoolwork, navigating the apartment with broken limbs, and everything else I’d done, Jackson had apparently decided he was too hot and stripped off. He was now lying on top of the sheets, his bare balls and penis front and center, with one arm over his forehead while he watched Milkshake licking his balls.
Not Jackson’s, his own.
“Uh, I’ve got the antibiotics the doctor kindly arranged for you.” I wiggled the bag in the air, but he didn’t turn away from the feline show going on. “Oh, and my dads are here.”
His head turned slowly to look at me. “Your dads came with the antibiotics?”
Each word out of his raw throat made me wince. “No, they arrived at the same time.”
“Your dads were sent by the doctor?”
Chuckling, I hobbled over to him and carefully sat down on the edge of the bed next to his bare hip.
“No, the delivery guy brought the antibiotics at the same time that my dads surprised us with their bodies being outside your apartment door—”
“Our apartment door.”
Ignoring the correction and confusion it brought, I continued. “The delivery guy from the pharmacy didn’t even check your details or get me to sign for them once he saw my dads. Then again, that might be because they were glaring at him.”
Lowering the arm over his forehead, he reached for my good hand and threaded our fingers together.
With his eyes on them, he mumbled, “Like two pieces of a puzzle. We fit together perfectly to make a whole.”
“A hole?”
“Pie.”
My mouth opened and closed as I tried to figure out what he was talking about.
Finally, I went with a subject I understood better than his addled-by-the-fever brain. “How are you feeling?”
Shrugging, he swallowed painfully. “Like shit. My ass is itchy.”
Not wanting to pull my hand away from his, I pinched the corner of the paper bag between my teeth, and pulled it with the thumb and forefinger of my casted hand until it ripped open and the antibiotics dropped out onto my lap.
“That was so hot.”
Ignoring him, I picked up the box and read the instructions on it. “Says you’re to take them three times a day for five days. I think we should give you one now, and then you can take the next one before you go to bed tonight.”
Not waiting for an answer, I managed to open the box one-handed and pop out one of the pills for him. “Open for the choo-choo.”
Fortunately, he was too sick to call me the lame sac I’d just been. Also fortunately, with the curtains closed, he couldn’t see how red my cheeks turned as I said the words without thinking how lame they were first.
At least, that’s what I thought.
Just as I put the bottle down next to the bed after he’d drunk almost half of it, he murmured, “I love it when you blush. I love seeing your cheeks go red, watching it spread down your chest, and how the color of it makes your nipples—”