Work Me Up

I’m not sure what’s more surprising. The fact that she doesn’t have a cheeky comeback for once, or the fact that she’s actually willing to listen.

I tap the window. “This baby. The tree went through the window, as you may have noticed—”

“Unfortunately, I did,” Selena mumbles.

“So, we need to assess whether there was any damage to the window mechanism itself. Now, in a modern car, this would be a bigger issue, because you’d have the automatic window system to contend with. Those are finnicky as hell and involve about a million parts.” I step around her to open the door.

She moves at the same time I do, and for a split second, my side brushes against hers. Not for long, just enough time for me to get an impression of the way she feels—soft, curvy. Her body supple in every place that mine is hard. Fuck.

Then I’m past her, yanking the door open a little harder than I meant to, which I internally scold myself for, because I didn’t even stop to check if the handle might have been damaged by the impact of the tree before I went and did that. Lucky for me, it doesn’t seem to have been, because the door opens easily. A few pieces of glass I hadn’t managed to catch when I cleaned up last night fall to the ground. Thankfully I drove home late last night, since it brought me no small amount of shame to be driving a car in this kind of shape around town, given my job.

Selena steps back daintily, dodging the pieces of glass, and then she steps up beside me again to study the door with me. But this time, she moves close enough for her arm to press against mine. Her skin feels soft, warm, smooth as silk against my rough forearm. She’s so close I can feel her arm moving as she breathes, slow careful inhales and exhales that drive me wild at the soft sounds.

“Luckily for you,” I say, trying to regain some modicum of control here, or at the very least, decent behavior, “Rolls from this era had crank windows, which I preferred to keep.”

“Let me guess.” She fires me a snarky little sideways smirk. “Because it’s more substantive?”

“Because I’m a picky asshole,” I reply with a smirk of my own, and that makes her let out another one of those little surprised snorts of laughter. Which in turn makes me want to do that all the time. Make her laugh when she doesn’t expect it, just because it lights up her whole face whenever it happens.

Something tells me she doesn’t laugh like that often.

Though I have no idea why. What sort of problems could the daughter of Mark-fucking-Brown really have? Nothing serious or substantive, that’s for sure.

Still, there’s something melancholy to the tilt of her head as she faces the car once more. Or maybe I’m just reading too much into her every motion.

God, why can’t I get this woman out of my head?

“So, hand crank windows are easier to fix,” she says.

“And also harder to break.” I gesture at the crank. “Go ahead. Give it a turn for yourself, see what the damage is.” She reaches out, but I catch her wrist, stopping her fingers just inches from the handle. Her skin feels soft under mine, and she inhales a quiet breath, like she has to catch it, before she could help herself.

I watch her throat work tightly as she swallows.

“Be careful,” I tell her quietly, and I’m not so sure I’m talking about the car right now. “There could still be broken glass.”

“Right,” she replies. Is it my imagination, or is her voice a little shaky? Still, when I let go of her wrist, she listens to me at least, using the hem of her T-shirt, which she untucks from her jeans in a motion that nearly sends me over the edge, to brush the handle off. Then she grasps it and turns the crank. Once. Twice. A few times.

“Should something be happening?” she asks, biting her lip and tilting her head to look up at me.

The look alone hits me like an electric shock to my dick. I can imagine that look on her face as she kneels at my feet, my pants around my ankles, ready to take my cock between those plump, perfect lips… “Well, you knocked the window out, so no, you can’t see if the glass actually goes up and down when you crank,” I point out.

She grimaces. “Oh. Right.”

“But the handle is turning,” I say, smiling, letting her off the hook. “So you can assume the mechanism itself still functions. That’s good. It means we’ll only need to replace the glass pane when we take off the door’s inner frame.

Her eyes nearly bug out of her head. “We’re taking apart the whole frame?”