Takedown Teague (Caged #1)(51)

Our lives just seemed to…mesh.

She was a morning shower kind of person, and she got out whatever she was going to wear and took it to the bathroom to dress. I showered after running, and I would usually just change my own clothes quickly while she was in the bathroom. She made breakfast and supper on most days but was usually either in class or studying at lunchtime. That worked fine, too, since those were my usual workout times. We both kept late hours, and though she didn’t come back to watch me fight after that first night, she always waited for me to get home before she went to bed.

Every night, I woke up at least a couple of times to her warmth and scent surrounding me. Usually I would just watch her face for a while as she slept, and then I would shift back to my own side of the bed. No matter how many times I moved away, I ended up close to her again. In the morning, she was always up before I awakened and usually in the kitchen making something.

I loved watching that woman cook.

That thing I had always heard about guys looking for a woman like their own mothers is a bunch of bullshit. I was pretty sure my mother didn’t even know what part of the house contained the kitchen. I kept the TV on most of the time when Tria was cooking, but I always leaned way forward so I could watch her. She put a tray of little round things in the oven, and just seeing her bending over did weird things to the pit of my stomach. Every time she pulled a spoon out of a saucepan and used her finger to get a little taste of what she was cooking, my dick got hard.

There had to be something seriously wrong with me.

“Ready to eat?” Tria called, startling me from my 1950s television show fantasies. She was smiling and wiping her hands on a towel, and I had to excuse myself to “wash my hands” before we ate.

After we were done eating Swedish Bean Balls, I still had no idea what they were, but they tasted fantastic. Conversation with Tria during dinner was also easy and flowed without effort from one topic to the next. We talked about her classes, technology, the landlord, politics, and the state of the neighborhood where we lived until the leftovers were cold, and I had managed to down about four beers. We even cleaned up in sync with one another, and by the time we finished, it was late and time for bed.

The only thing that was still weird and awkward was getting into bed together. It was likely just in my own head because all I could do was think about how I was going to wake up with her in my arms at some point. I’d watch her sleep for a while, and I was fairly certain I had her face completely memorized.

That night was no different.

I woke to my nose pressed lightly to the back of her neck and my arm wrapped around her stomach, holding her back against my chest. Somehow, my hand had actually slipped underneath her shirt, and my fingers twitched, aching to stroke softly over the bare skin of her belly.

Inhaling, I closed my eyes again, basking in the scent from her hair and skin and realizing that if I splayed out my fingers, the tips of them could touch the curved undersides of her breasts. I had to stifle a groan as I spent a moment being overwhelmed by the combination of the fragrance in my nose, the soft feeling of her skin on my fingers, and my engorged cock pressed tightly against her backside.

Shit!

I had to grind my teeth together to keep from screaming the word out loud as I quickly extricated myself and rolled over to the other side of the bed. My feet swung over and touched the floor, and I quietly launched myself out of the bed, out of the room, and into the bathroom.

My hand was down the front of my sweats before I could even get the lid to the toilet up. Inside my brain, the scenario from the bed continued with the added memory of feeling her skin and the pressure of her ass on my cock. My real hand gripped and pumped at my cock while the one in my imagination moved up, caressing her breasts as my lower body shifted to push inside of her from behind.

Semen coated the edge of the toilet seat and part of the underside of the lid. I braced myself against the tank for a moment as I tried to catch my breath, then wiped the junk off with a piece of toilet paper. My fingers dug into my eyes and rubbed for a moment while I realized that little bit of clean-up wasn’t going to be good enough. I found a washcloth and doused it in water and soap, cleaned the toilet off more effectively, and tossed the cloth onto the corner ledge of the shower.

This was all so f*cked up.

I was never one to get worked up over a particular girl, but this was getting ridiculous.





Chapter 14—Seize the Opportunity


“The color looks perfect.” Stacy made the remark as I checked to make sure the paint had dried on the bookshelf.

It ended up about three feet high, two feet wide, and a foot deep with four shelves for Tria to house her books. It wasn’t pretty by anyone’s standards, but the paint brightened it up, and it would at least do the job for which it was made.

“I think it turned out all right,” I said, tapping the back of one of the shelves with my fingers. “It seems to be pretty much dry now, too.”

“Are you going to carry it home?” she asked.

“Not much of an option there,” I said with a crooked smile.

“How about you put it in the back of my car and I drive you?” the cook suggested. “I’m done here until this evening. I have the time.”

“Really? That would be sweet! Thanks!”

I put some newspaper down on the back seat of Stacy’s beat up old Ford and placed the bookshelf on top of it. I climbed into the passenger seat of the musty smelling car and rolled down the window.