Shimmy Bang Sparkle(30)
But I didn’t pull her out quite yet, because her ass was just too hot to ignore. She was still in the same jeans she’d been wearing last night, and I took the chance to run my hand up the back of one thigh. I leaned down and gave her a kiss on the small of her back. Her body went limp in the window and she let out a moan. Once I’d had my fix, I hooked my arm underneath her hips and gave her a tug. I absolutely loved the way her skin felt next to mine, especially like this, when she was way too out of her element to feel self-conscious. The muscles of her stomach weren’t flexed, and I felt the soft curves and lines like she hadn’t let me feel them before. The narrow strip of skin where her T-shirt had ridden up made all those cliché terms make sense. Soft as silk. Sweet as cream. Fucking heaven.
I extracted her from the bathroom window with both arms around her hips and my own hips in exactly the right position for . . .
She was making a total animal of me.
When I got her back inside, her hair was all mussed up and she had scrapes on her elbows. I unslung her purse from my shoulder and handed it to her, careful not to actually groan out loud as I did. She didn’t even flinch when she took it from me. It was unbelievable. Not even a grunt. She very gently set it on the bath mat. Standing behind her in front of the mirror, I dusted some adobe flecks off her shirt. It sounded like sand as it landed in the basin. “Thanks,” she said to my reflection. “My hero.”
“Getting that text from you made my day, so we’re even.” Reaching around her, I turned on the warm water and helped her wash the scrapes on her elbows. I blotted them off using a roll of paper towels. That was one good thing about this totally chaotic bathroom. It seemed to have pretty much half the stock of Target inside it.
“Band-Aids?” I asked.
She got up on her tiptoes and pulled an overstuffed box of them from the top of the medicine cabinet. As I peeled them off their wrappers, I glanced up at her. She was biting her lip and smiling. “I should get scraped up more often.”
I hadn’t taken care of anybody in forever, and it felt fucking good. It was nice to be helpful, and it was even nicer to be needed. I wadded up the Band-Aid wrappers, pitched them in the tiny wastebasket, and took her in my arms. I planted my hands on her ass and hoisted her up on the sink, where her legs automatically parted for me. With my forefinger, I lifted her chin so she was looking at me. I might’ve been feeling pretty sappy, but I had a feeling I knew what had happened. “You didn’t mean to send that text to me, did you?”
She snickered and smiled up at me. “No. But I’m glad you came,” she said, and walked her fingertips up my shirt.
Christ. Suddenly, I was that guy who couldn’t stop thinking about sex, and I wasn’t ashamed of it, either. “I haven’t come yet and neither have you.”
Her mouth dropped open, and she touched the edge of her teeth with her tongue. “Naughty.”
I nodded at her slowly. “You were the one with your ass in the window. I’ll be in the gutter for the rest of the week.”
Before I could really start putting the moves on her, her phone started buzzing in her purse. She stuck her hand into the abyss and pulled it out, the rhinestones gleaming. She poked the home button, and her eyes flashed when she saw the screen. “Uh-oh . . .” she said, zeroing in on what appeared to be a text and clicking on a link.
Up popped the local news, live streaming. A guy in too-tight jeans and a too-small button-down shirt was standing in the blazing sun. Behind him, a fire hydrant shot water twenty feet into the air like a malfunctioning fountain in Vegas. There were ambulances, cop cars, and a fire engine. And right in the middle of the chaos, with its front end folded around the hydrant, was what looked a whole hell of a lot like Stella’s white Wrangler.
“We’re at the scene of a single-car accident on Lomas!” said the reporter, just a little too excitedly. “Two women are being rushed urgently to the hospital for broken bones!”
The camera zoomed in on a blonde bombshell with a smudge of blood on her cheek. As soon as Stella saw her, she slapped her hand to her forehead and grimaced. “Oh no.”
Whoever the blonde was, she was a flirt. She was batting her eyelashes shamelessly at one of the EMTs, a big-boned guy with tribal tats and a neck like the thick end of a traffic cone. The blonde put her hand to his biceps and giggled, then pressed that same hand to her chest. If she hadn’t had her right arm in a sling, I was pretty sure she would have pulled him right down on the gurney with her. The EMT gave her finger guns in return, and she giggled some more. Her laugh tinkled out of Stella’s phone like a wind chime.
The frame panned over to a second woman on a different gurney. The blankets were tucked in tight around her waist, but not over her legs. Her left leg was in a splint and slightly elevated. Her right foot had a boot that looked like the pair I saw in the front hallway. She had black hair, straight and smooth, cut at a sharp angle below her chin. She looked dead serious, and she was typing something into her phone.
A text message alert dropped down from the top of Stella’s screen, pausing the live stream as the anchor gestured wildly at the chaos behind him.
Message from Ruth
Did UPS come?
To which Stella tapped out a speedy:
No and OMG ARE YOU OK?
Remind me never to let Roxie drive anywhere again. K?
15
STELLA