The Magnolia Chronicles: Adventures in Modern Dating(49)

To start with, I didn't have a Manhattan recipe at the ready. But more importantly, my aunt wasn't here. It was just me and Ben—and a zonked-out dog—and the whole night ahead of us.

"Come on," I said, waving toward Ben. "Let's get you warmed up."

With his free hand—because he couldn't possibly stop drawing my attention to the thumb tugging his waistband indecently low—he grabbed my elbow. Squeezed just a bit. "Yeah. Let's do that."

He followed me down the hall, toward the back of my home, his fingers loose around my elbow. I didn't know what I was going to do when we reached the bathroom. Was I going to watch him undress and then hop in the shower? Was I hopping in there with him?

I didn't devote much energy to answering those questions, instead pushing the door open and flipping on the lights. Before I could tear back the shower curtain, Ben hooked his arm around my waist, pulling me tight against his chest.

"I'm gonna rinse off," he said, his lips on the side of my neck. That spot was dangerous. Just real damn dangerous. I lost my sense and spatial awareness when touched there. "I'm not going to ask you to join me but I won't turn you away if you invite yourself in."

His lips brushed over that sensitive spot and Kenny Loggins's "Danger Zone" started playing in my head. He moved around me and reached into the shower stall. The sound of running water filled the room. I had a flash of the locker room scene from Top Gun but instead of Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer, it was Ben.

"I'll order some food. And get you a towel too," I said, stepping back. Distance was the key to keeping myself from jumping in there with him and I wasn't doing that right now. Naked and showering together was one hell of a leap. "I'll go do that now. Just leave your clothes on the sink. I'll toss them in the dryer when I come back."

I stepped back over the threshold, my hand curled around the door. Ben went right on grinning as he unbuckled his jeans. He knew I was thinking about bare skin and hot water. He knew it. That was the thing about Ben. He could read my mind from fifty feet away.

He pulled his t-shirt over his head, dropped it in the sink with a soggy thunk. There he was, shirtless.

A line of dark hair ran down the center of his muscled chest, his deep olive skin glowing under the overhead light.

One tattoo circled his bicep. Another ran from the ball of his shoulder down to his elbow. An arrow.

His torso's muscular cuts seemed to point toward his crotch.

His jeans hung low. Explicitly low.

He brought one hand to his waistband, the other to his zipper. "Medium rare. Brown rice. Extra provolone. No anchovies," he said.

"Huh-what?" I mumbled, my gaze glued to the space below his navel. I didn't even try to look up.

"Whatever you're ordering," he replied with a snicker. "Make mine medium rare. Or brown rice on the side. Or extra provolone if that's what you're feeling. No anchovies."

"Got it." Still staring. Still waiting for that zipper to come down. "Got it," I repeated. "No anchovies on the brown rice burger."

The zipper inched down but—dammit all to hell—his bright blue boxer briefs kept the goods under wraps. "Thanks, Magnolia," he sang. If a shit-eating grin had a tone of voice, it was that one.

Finally, I glanced up to meet Ben's sapphire gaze. "I'll be right back with that towel."

I closed the door but kept my hand on the knob for a minute. Maybe more. I needed every one of those seconds to catch my breath as I imagined Ben climbing into the shower. The water rushing over him, traveling down along his body's grooves. When I heard the curtain scraping along the rod and then back into place, I gripped the knob harder. Thought about turning it, pulling back the curtain, staring at him while he washed. I didn't even have to get in there to enjoy this. The visual impact would do it for me.

It would do just fine.

But I shook my head and turned toward the linen closet. I was getting him that towel and snatching his wet clothes, and I was ordering food—no anchovies—and then I'd get my fill of Ben. When he was clean and dry. And clothed.

Maybe it was silly to center around this point but I'd never had a man in my shower before. Not this one. Not here. The dognapper and I had lived together, as all slow-moving train wreck tragedies should. Peter refused to visit the suburbs because everything about him was a red flag. Rob was the only other man I'd welcomed into this house.

I yanked a towel out of the closet and pressed it to my face, squealing straight into terry cloth. It was a mix of frustration, hunger, happiness. All those things bubbling up into a cry that needed to go somewhere. It needed to escape me or else I'd burst.

The shower curtain screeched on the rod again and damn, I needed some WD-40 on that thing.

"I heard that," Ben called over the water.

"Heard what?" I yelled at the bathroom door. "I didn't say anything and this place isn't haunted. You're imagining things, Brock."

"Just get in here," he said, a laugh softening the command.

I pushed the door open a few inches, peeked inside. Ben leaned out of the shower stall, his shoulders looking like the broad side of a barn and his ink black hair plastered to his forehead.

"Something you needed?" I wagged the towel at him before dropping it on the closed toilet lid.