Knock. Knock.
I obviously needed a little practice with telepathy.
I looked over at Louie, who was doing that weird sleepy fish thing where it looked like he was awake or dead, but in reality, he was in a food coma from eating one too many fish pellets. “Well, you’re no help,” I muttered. “I mean, if you were a cat or a dog, I could train you to answer the door for me. Thanks for nothing, dude.”
Knock. Knock. Knock.
“Fucking persistent, aren’t you?” I mumbled in annoyance and looked down at my clothes—sleep shorts, a tank top, and leg warmers. It was what most would describe as, “I’ve called it a night.” Definitely not entertaining company attire.
If it weren’t for that one time the Chinese delivery guy accidentally brought food to the wrong apartment, I wouldn’t have even bothered with answering the door, but…Crab Rangoon. I knew asking for that scenario to happen twice in the same month was wishful thinking, but a girl could dream, right?
On the tips of my toes, I did a dainty run across the plush carpet of my apartment until I reached the door. It seemed like the solid wood had barely left the frame when my olfactory system was consumed with the drugging smell of soft vanilla and cigarettes. A few more inches, and I was face-to-face with endless pools of blue that my body honestly wanted to swim inside.
Did he really have to be so tempting?
I groaned and felt like shouting, Are you serious, universe! but settled on something slightly less outrageous.
“Oh, great. It’s just you. What do you want?”
Reed perused my haphazard attire for a few seconds and then flashed a dimpled, devilish smile in my direction. “Were you expecting someone else?”
“I had high hopes you were a Chinese food delivery angel here to give me a bag full of chicken lo mein and Crab Rangoon.”
He grinned. “Disappointed?”
“That’s an understatement.”
“Are you going to invite me in?”
I shrugged. “That depends.”
He rested his palm against the doorframe. “On what?”
“Why are you here?”
“To see you.”
I raised an eyebrow and rested my hip against the doorjamb. “To see me? At this hour of the night?”
“This hour of the night?” He questioned with a smirk. “It’s not even ten.”
“Fine.” I rolled my eyes. “You can come in, but you’ve got about thirty minutes, and then I’m sending your cocky ass packing because I need to get back to writing.”
And masturbating. Lots and lots of masturbating.
The door shut with a quiet click as he walked into my apartment and made himself comfortable on my sofa with a big smile on his face.
“Please, by all means—” I gestured my hand around my apartment dramatically “—make yourself comfortable.”
“Thanks,” he responded, stretching an arm across the back. “I will.”
“Well…do you want something to drink?” I asked after a few beats of silence, struggling a little to play hostess. How does one act when they want to bang and banish someone all at once? “I’ll warn you, though, if your answer is yes, all I have is water or coffee. I haven’t been to the grocery store in days.”
“Deadline chasing, again?”
I flipped him off, and he laughed.
“Nah, I’m good, but thanks.” He patted the couch cushion beside him. “Come sit.”
“You show up at my apartment, and now you’re bossing me around?”
“Just sit your bony ass down on the couch,” he retorted.
I pointed a finger in his direction. “I’m only doing this because I’m tired. Not because you’re telling me to.”
Tired. Pfffft. I had been doing nothing but sitting on that sofa all fucking day. I wasn’t tired. I was an idiot, an idiot who was attracted to an even bigger idiot, probably the biggest idiot in the world, who now happened to be sitting on my couch.
He raised both hands in the air. “Got it.”
I sat down and turned toward him, resting one thigh on the cushion. No immediate award-winning conversation starters came to mind, so I focused on perusing him instead. A conversation starter jumped out at me pretty quickly. “What in the hell are you wearing?”
He glanced down at his attire and then back up at me. “Clothes?”
“The shirt,” I said on a sigh and jabbed a finger toward the white cotton material that fit a little too snugly in my opinion. We get it, Reed. You’ve got muscles. Congratulations on your muscles. I’m sure there are plenty of women who would enjoy your muscles. I mean, I’m not one of those women, but some women might like your firm muscles…
Seriously, he didn’t have to be so goddamn obvious about it. He might as well have just had a giant neon arrow hanging over his head that had the words, “Come look at my muscles!” flashing in synchrony with each inadvertent flex of his biceps. The man was flexy. Too fucking flexy, if you asked me.
Okay, so maybe he wasn’t flexing all the time, but it sure as hell felt like he was constantly shoving his biteable ass and stroke-worthy biceps in my face. If he lifted up his shirt, I was liable to stroke out or suffer a psychotic break.
Biteable ass? Really, Lola?
“Lola?” His voice pulled my attention away from the land of crazy and horny.
“Hmmm?”
“You okay?”
I rolled my eyes. “Of course I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be okay?”
“Well…you haven’t heard a word I’ve said in the past minute, and you just keep staring at my arm like you’re torn between tearing it off my body or licking it.”
My face scrunched up in disgust. “I was not staring at you like that.”
Fuck, was I staring at him like that?
He flashed a disagreeing smirk.
“I wasn’t,” I lied. “Sure, I was spacing out a little, but I wasn’t staring at you. I was doing that weird daydreamy thing where you’re looking at something, but not really looking at it.”
“Daydreamy?” He winked. “Do tell, what does sweet Lola daydream about?”
“The best places in San Francisco to hide a body.”
He chuckled at that.
“Did you answer my question?”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Your shirt,” I stated. “What’s up with your shirt?” My eyes trailed across the simple black lettering across his chest. “Reed ate waffles.”
“It’s my status update.”
“Your what?”
“My Facebook status update.”
I quirked a questioning brow. “I know enough about you by now to know there’s more to this story. So, let’s just skip the part where I have to ask one million questions to get the details out of you, especially that part where you give me some ridiculous lie like ‘I made a seventeen-course meal for six kittens, and they hand-sewed this T-shirt for me out of their ball of yarn.’”
He smirked and shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans…near his zipper…which was covering his ahem… I mean, he might as well have just grabbed his dick and told me to look.
Do not look down. Do not look at his crotch, Lola…
“Are you staring at my dick?”
Goddammit, Lola.
“Of course, I was staring at your dick,” I admitted, but it was in that sarcastic tone people use when they’re trying to play it off like a joke. “I was definitely just creepily staring at your pants like my eyes had the superpower to actually see through clothes.”
An amused smirk crested his lips. “Well…how’d that go?”
“Not good. I didn’t eat dinner, so my superpowers are all off today. So, I guess you might as well just tell me… How many inches, Reed?” I teased, but the second the words left my mouth, I wanted to reach out and shove them back in. The last thing I needed was to be thinking about Reed’s penis.
“Fuck if I know.” He shrugged and smiled that naturally confident smile only someone like Reed Luca could actually pull off without looking like a cocky bastard.
I raised an eyebrow. “Wait…you’ve never measured? Isn’t that like an adolescent pastime for boys?”
“I’m not the kind of guy who needs to measure his cock for validation.”
What in the hell was that supposed to mean?
Most men were all too eager with their cliché answers that painted a picture of a penis the size of a grown man’s forearm—which I have to be honest here, scared the fucking bejesus out of me. My pussy was a pussy, not Mary Poppins’s bag of fun. I preferred to stick to dicks that couldn’t be used as a third leg.
But, once again, Reed didn’t do what most men did. He did the complete opposite.
He was a fucking enigma.
“Do you want to know about the T-shirt or more about my cock?” He stretched his arms across the top of the sofa and grinned. “I’m fine with either subject.”
Don’t say cock, Lola. Don’t you dare fucking say cock.
“Co—” I started, but thank baby Jesus, the word was silent. I cleared my throat. “T-shirt.”
“I made this when I was in college. All of my buddies were on my ass about not having a Facebook profile, and I refused to give in to the whole social media craze.”
“So you bought the shirt?”