“Right. Nothing. It looks like it hurts.”
“Nah.” He jumped to his feet as if to prove her wrong. “I’ll tell John we’re good to go.”
“Thank him for the five minutes of riding.”
He winked at her. “Don’t worry. I’ll apologize for the heart attack I just about gave him.”
“You should give him a good tip. Like a couple of grand should do it. Maybe that will entice him not to tell others about your little mishap. The great Blaze Hanson fell off his quad. I’d suggest that we get something to eat after all of this, but I assume you’re already full. I never thought sand was appealing but did it taste good? Maybe I could be persuaded to give it a try.”
Blaze swung his long leg over the picnic table and when he stood, his ass was just about right in line with her face. She immediately slammed her eyes shut so that she couldn’t see the way his jeans rode up and defined his rock-hard ass cheeks. God. He had an ass that could inspire even the saintliest of saints to sin. Or maybe just lead them into temptation. Because she was definitely tempted to put her hand out and squeeze just to see if it was even real.
“Could you be persuaded to give other things a try? I have a long list for you…”
“You’re disgusting.”
“I’ve been told that I’m dirty, but never disgusting.”
“Well, there’s a first time for everything.”
“Apparently not for you. That’s why you’re still a virgin. Because you have a stick up your ass.”
“I don’t have a-”
Blaze sauntered off, whistling, his head high after he dropped the last word on her. She wanted to chase after him and stick him with that cotton ball again. God. She wanted to stick that cotton ball right in his eye. Or maybe jam a bunch into his dirty, smirking, pouty, sinful mouth.
Colette slumped down at the picnic table while she waited for Blaze to get back. She reassembled the items back into the first aid kit and shut it, trying to tell her uncooperative body that it needed to calm the hell down.
Unfortunately, her heart wasn’t getting the memo. It was working double-time, making her pulse jump and her palms sweat. An electric tickle zapped her thighs and she was uncomfortably damp a little higher up.
Which was of course due to the heat of the quad and the sweltering metal building with a severe lack of air conditioning. Of course. Because Blaze Hanson wasn’t getting to her at all. Not in this lifetime. Not in the next. Not in any damn lifetime.
Even if his ass really was made of pure gold granite.
CHAPTER 13
Colette
Somehow, Blaze managed to drag her to a five-star looking, fancy-ass hotel. She wasn’t sure how much he paid to get a room at one in the afternoon, but it couldn’t have been cheap. It wasn’t cheap regular. The fact that they looked like a scruffy pair of vagrants, him with his messed up arms and blood-stained shirt and jeans, and her- well- she never did look like she had any money, made it half a miracle that the girl working the front desk took them seriously.
The room was huge. It wasn’t anything fancy, just something regular with a queen bed, huge TV mounted on the wall, two end tables, a mini-fridge, counter, table and sofas on the far side. Still. It was large enough to fit her entire apartment inside and was so new that the air smelled dry.
“You know,” she snapped after she did a perusal of the room. “If you just wanted a shower, we could have gone down to some gym or like a pool or something. Any rec center would probably have had public showers for a hell of a lot cheaper.”
“Do I look like someone who would enjoy showering with a group of sweaty dudes in a public place?” Blaze stripped his wallet and the keys to the rental out of the back of his sinful jeans and set them down on the nightstand.
Colette shrugged. “You never know.”
Blaze ignored her and tried to tug his t-shirt over his head. He didn’t get far. Which was a damn good thing, because even the one-inch flash of his muscled, bronzed abs nearly gave her a coronary. Colette whirled, heart pounding wickedly, the air suddenly thick and charged like there was about to be a storm in the room between them.
“Come on, Office Baby. It’s just a chest. You see male chests all the time. It’s not going to strike you dead right where you stand.”
Says you. She counted to ten before she turned back around, praying like hell that her face wasn’t as flushed on the outside as her entire body was on the inside. She was sweltering, drowning in internal sweat. Was that even a thing? She swore it was a thing.