Bad Boy Blues

Zero.

Zero chance of that happening because a microsecond later, the curtain rips open and I come face to face with the guy I’ve been trying to avoid ever since I was ten.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he thunders – I don’t know how he manages that since he just woke up but still, the sound echoes in my chest.

His arm is stretched out wide, strangling the curtain with his grip, and for a few moments, all I can do is stare at his face.

It’s clenched tight, every little line, every taut muscle on display. He’s anger personified with his ticking jaw and gritted teeth.

I’m supposed to answer him; I know that.

But my tongue is swollen.

I stare at the five o’clock shadow on his square, killer jaw. Dark, enticing skin. Spiky, messy hair. Black eyes dripping with rage.

And veins.

God, he has so many veins, running just under his skin. One of them goes down his taut neck. It bumps over his collarbone and then disappears beneath his muscled pecs.

His chest is massive and the curves of it make a tight valley that then changes into the ridges of his abdomen. I go to count those ridges; I’m pretty sure that he’s got a six-pack. Could be eight too.

But I get sidetracked by the fact that he’s not wearing anything.

He’s naked.

Naked.

“Oh my God!” I squeak, clenching my eyes shut.

“How did you get in here?”

“Oh my God. Oh my God,” I chant, trying to dissolve into the tiles my spine is stuck to. “You’re naked. I thought you’d at least have your pants on.”

“What the fuck. Are you doing?” he growls, this time slowly.

“Why were you sleeping naked?” I snap. “Who sleeps naked?”

“People who wanna rub one out whenever the mood strikes.”

My breathing ceases at his drawled reply.

Rub one out.

He means… rubbing his thing out. Right? Masturbation.

The thing that’s on full display right now. A few feet away from me. Within touching distance. Is this the punishment for making up that lie about him?

No. No. No.

“Open your goddamn eyes,” Zach seethes, breaking my internal chant.

I grit my teeth. “Put on some goddamn pants.”

“Not until you tell me what the fuck you’re doing, hiding in my bathtub.”

I can’t believe this is happening to me.

I can’t believe I’m trapped inside a bathtub, with a naked Zach glaring at me.

But I need to woman up. I need to open my eyes, get this over with and leave. From now on, I’m not volunteering to take up anyone’s duties. At least, not without knowing what they entail.

Slowly, I open my eyes and make sure to keep them only on his face. “I wasn’t hiding.”

He shoots me a long stare. “If you’re in there to take a shower, then I hate to break it to you, but that’s not how you do it.”

“What?”

He gestures to my clothes, looking up and down my body. “You’re supposed to take them off. And not only because it makes rubbing one out easier.”

“What?”

This time my what is higher in cadence. I shrink into the wall some more. Although I don’t think I’m going anywhere.

Zach puts his other arm out and splays it wide on the wall. Leaning toward me, he says in a raspy tone, “Rubbing one out. Haven’t you ever done that in a shower?”

“Of course I have.”

Oh man.

Wrong thing to say. So completely, utterly wrong.

The tightness of his face melts away and his eyes shine with mirth. Before he can comment over my slipped-out careless reply, I almost shout, “Don’t. Don’t say a word. I don’t want to hear it, okay?”

His jet-black eyes flick back and forth over my face. “Kind of uptight, aren’t you? For someone hiding in my bathtub.” Throwing me a lopsided smile, he rasps in a low voice, “Tell you what. I’ll turn around and you can do whatever you do to make yourself…” One final sweep of my features and then, “Loose.”

Loose.

Right.

Can I murder him? I mean, how bad can prison be, really? They give you free food and a bed to sleep on.

Puffing out an angry breath that widens his smirk, I snap, “Real classy. I’m here to do my job, you idiot. Taking out your trash and changing your bedsheets. My life goals, remember?”

His smirk is replaced by a sharpened edge of his jaw. I guess he’s still angry about the fact that I work here.

Join the club, asshole.

“And yet, my sheets aren’t changed and the trash is still in the trashcan.”

I narrow my eyes at him. Well, because he’s right. I didn’t clean. I snooped.

“I don’t remember letting you in,” he goes on.

“I knocked. You didn’t open.”

“That still doesn’t explain how you got in.”

I have this grave urge to shift from one foot to another as if I did something wrong, which I kinda did. “I had the key.”

“I want it back.”