Dirty Distractions (Afternoon Delight 1)

“How long’s it been since you took your medicine?”

“Dunno.” She curled up around her pillow, already drifting. But she woke in a hurry when a cold washcloth skimmed her forehead an instant before an icy stream of water trickled into her hair. “Dammit, Brad.”

“You need to cool off.” He nudged her up and sat behind her, cradling her body in his strong arms. He wiped her face, eventually reaching the back of her neck. She couldn’t deny it felt good, so she didn’t stop him.

She frowned, realizing the room was strangely silent. “Where’s Telly?” she asked, noticing his cage was gone.

“Downstairs. Didn’t want you to give him the avian flu.”

“I don’t have the avian flu, you ass.” But she giggle-coughed just the same.

He unlaced the top of her nightgown and smoothed the compress over her breasts. “See, you’re cooling right off,” he said against her ear, rubbing the wet washcloth over her shoulders.

Despite her near-slumber and general rundown state, her nipples perked up the minute his competent hands roused them. Since he still hadn’t covered her again, she figured they were probably standing sky high, but she was too tired to check. Everything below her forehead that didn’t ache felt numb.

“If you’re trying to take advantage of me, you’d probably get more resistance from a corpse.” She smiled as he tugged her earlobe. “So do what you must.”

“Oh yeah.” His irritated tone elicited a grin. “Watching your chin slump into your chest from exhaustion gives me a huge boner, let me tell you.”

It hurt her sore ribs to laugh, but she did it anyway. Her reward was yet another coughing fit. “I’m not used to having someone take care of me.”

“So? What’s the verdict?”

Already heading toward sleep again, she snuggled into his embrace. “I think I kind o

f like it.”

When Sara woke, he was gone. It didn’t really surprise her. What guy wanted to hang around the sick bed of a woman he had the hots for? At least he had before she’d been attacked by the super virus from hell.

She sat up and winced at the new pains that presented themselves. Her chest hurt, her back hurt, and her nose twitched with the near-constant need to sneeze. Charming. Good thing she had a nearly full bottle of cough syrup and a ton of movies to watch on Netflix because she so wasn’t going to work today.

How had she gotten sick so fast? In the last two years, she hadn’t had so much as a fever. Now all of a sudden she’d been laid flat by the mother of all bugs.

Yawning, she inched across the bed and grabbed her phone. After placing a quick call to the bird sanctuary, she sank into her pillows and stared at the ceiling with blurry eyes. Her oversized nightgown clung to her, and she desperately needed a shower. She glanced down at her attire and winced. God, had Brad really seen her in this?

And partially out of it too.

She moaned and rolled over, dragging her pillow over her head. Maybe blissful unconsciousness would claim her again, and she could forget she’d come onto Kim’s brother while in a cold-induced fog. Come onto didn’t actually cover it. She’d commanded him to orally please her, for God’s sake.

And he had. Oh, he had.

How could she ever face him again?

Their brief conversation in the middle of the night didn’t count. She’d been half-asleep and feverish. His sweet attempts to take care of her had lulled her into not erecting her usual boundaries, whatever ones she had left.

Him seeing her sick wasn’t bad enough. Why not go for utter mortification? Flipping up her ginormous, old-fashioned nightgown and expecting him to distract her with pleasures of the flesh had been a great plan. They’d totally go back to their comfortable friendship now, despite the fact that he knew what she tasted like. And how she got really rough in the throes of climax. She’d probably yanked out clumps of his thick, silky hair.

“Ugh!” She groaned again and pulled the pillow down tight over her ears. Maybe she’d had a nightmare. Sometimes she did if she ate weird things before going to sleep. More than once she’d consumed Brad’s late-night junk food creations and paid for it afterward. But this went way beyond indigestion from fried bologna and pickle sandwiches. This was complete and total humiliation.

“Morning, Sara Smile.”

She went dead still in the center of her bed, forgetting even to breathe. No. Didn’t he have to work? It was Monday morning.

“Go away,” she pleaded, hoping he’d get the message. Now that the cough syrup was out of her system—hard to believe she could have such an extreme reaction to routine medication, but there you go—she could view this situation with an objective eye.

Brad simply wanted a rebound affair with someone he found reasonably attractive, preferably a woman who wouldn’t be difficult to extricate himself from afterward. He knew she wasn’t clingy. Maybe he even had a thing for older women.

She was nice-looking, even pretty, but parts of her body sagged that did not sag on the women he usually dated. She wasn’t blonde or particularly stacked. Her jeans were not size four or six. She had long hair, yes, but that was due to the ease of putting it up rather than a desire to seem young and sexy.