Джей Крауновер - Built

Out of the corner of my eye, I watched the wings of the big firebird he had inked across his rib cage flex and move as he worked toward the top of the wall. I was also trying not to watch the way the pinup girl seductively sitting on a hammer taunted me with the words “hit it hard” every time his massive biceps flexed. There was ink and color everywhere on him and I wanted to soak every single inch of it in. I was so absorbed in trying to covertly check him out instead of what I should be doing that I missed that spot where I thought I had left the paint tray and ended up tripping over the stupid thing, which, of course, made a huge mess and had white primer oozing all over me and the floor. To make matters worse, the noise startled me so much that I lost my grip on the roller, which went flying like a weapon where it ended up hitting that pinup girl on his arm right in her smug face.

“Oh my God! Zeb, I’m so sorry.” I immediately got to my knees and tried to keep the spill from leaking off the tarp he had laid down before I got there. “I didn’t want to make more work for you. This is a disaster.”

“Sayer . . .”

“I mean, seriously, who does that? Ugh . . . I’m not normally such a klutz.” I wasn’t listening to him, but I heard him say my name again. My hands were covered in white and so were my clothes. The stuff was everywhere and I realized I was making a bigger mess than I had started out with. It was his fault for being so . . . distracting, and sexy, and masculine, and simply perfect in all his rugged glory . . . Gah, of course I couldn’t focus on what I was supposed to be doing and had made a mess.

I felt a heavy hand fall on my shoulder and I looked up at him in exasperation. He was grinning at me and I forgot whatever I was going to say when he reached down and swiped a finger down my nose. It came back covered in white. “You have paint everywhere.”

I groaned and got to my feet, looking down at my paint-covered hands. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. The room is almost done and it was just an accident. The floors haven’t been laid yet, so even if you did get some primer on the subfloor it’s not a big deal. Okay?”

I didn’t really believe him, but I wasn’t sure what else to do, so I lifted my shoulders and let them fall uselessly. “Okay.”

He took a step closer to me and put his finger under my chin so that I had no choice but to look at that darkening green gaze. “You know what is a big deal?”

Without thinking I put my wet hand on the center of his chest and watched as my handprint covered the place where his heart was thudding heavy and strong. He felt so vital and real, like everything I had had my hands on before him was just make-believe.

“What?” My voice came out more of a whisper than anything else.

“We hung out, I bought you dinner, we talked about our families and shit. We shared. This was a date, Sayer. Maybe not the best first date ever but it was still a date, so you know what that means.”

I did? I was still trying to get my head around the fact that it really had been kind of a date when his head lowered toward mine and my lips tickled as his beard got close enough to brush against them.

“It means we went on a date, so now you should absolutely put your hands on my dick . . . a lot. My gentlemanly tendencies only reach so far and with you they have about reached the end of the line.”

I gulped a little. “Oh.” That sounded like so many different kinds of dangerous and delicious. I never asked him to be a gentleman, and frankly one of the reasons I was so attracted to him was because he seemed so rugged and untamed by the conventions I was used to and bored to death by.

“Yeah, oh . . . which I fully intend to make you say over and over again while I’m as deep inside of you as I can get.”

When his mouth settled over mine, it was an entirely different mess I was suddenly worried about. There was going to be no cleaning up the wreckage that was going to be left of my heart and body when this man was done with me and that felt entirely like a great big deal even though I was helpless to stop it. It was one mess I intended to embrace and not apologize for even if that went against everything I had ingrained deep down within the very core of me.

CHAPTER 8

Zeb

The primer splattered all over the tarp on the floor was a minor catastrophe compared to the tragedy I saw brewing in Sayer’s eyes. I wasn’t going to give her time to think about what I was doing, about what we were doing.

I also wasn’t going to give the nagging voice in the back of my head that told me that I needed to finesse her, needed to handle her with kid gloves, the chance to get louder than the blood roaring in my ears.

When her back hit the wall and some of the wet primer smudged away with the impact, it became crystal clear why I had ordered the wrong color for the walls in the first place. The bright, blinding blue on them peeking back at me over her head matched perfectly the ocean-colored gaze that was locked on mine and filled with a thousand questions.

I couldn’t stop thinking about her. It didn’t matter how pressing, or how complicated the other stuff in my life was at the moment, Sayer occupied most of my waking and sleeping hours. The way she frosted over like an ice storm, and then thawed out like a warm spring day the moment I touched her, tore at me. I was caught up in the tempest of this woman and I was in no hurry to get myself free of her.

After my first visit with Hyde, she’d created an obvious emotional distance between us, and as frustrated as that made me, I really wasn’t sure how to broach the subject without seeming like my priorities were all screwed up. I wanted my son more than anything. The need to have him with me, to be the one to care for him, was bordering on obsessive, but that didn’t make the want and the need I had for her any less. I wanted them both and I wasn’t sure how to go about telling her that without seeming greedy, so I let her drift off like a storm cloud. I let her put on her professional mask that seemed shatterproof, and I told myself I could tackle my attraction to the pretty lawyer after I had my kid in my home, where he belonged. I didn’t like it, but we had been dancing around one another for months and months now, so I figured a little more time and patience wouldn’t kill me. I was wrong.

We were covered in paint, but Sayer didn’t protest. Instead she kissed me back and tunneled her fingers in the shaggy hair at the back of my neck, for sure leaving a trail of white paint all over me, while I continued to eat at her mouth and pressed my bare chest into hers. The thin cotton of her top did little to keep the points of her lush breasts from rubbing across my skin, and I knew that even though she deserved a four-poster bed and silk sheets, she was about to get rough and raw up against a wall. I had told her we could do better, but now I wasn’t so sure, because as she whimpered into my mouth as I started to pull on the edge of her top, I couldn’t remember anything ever being more amazing or all-consuming than even this simple touch with her.

I wasn’t nearly as covered in the white primer as she was. I had the drying spot on my arm where she hit me with the roller and a few spots on the back of my hands and across my chest where she had touched me, so I was careful when I started to pull her top off not to get any more of the stuff on me. I wanted to touch her— everywhere— and that meant I needed to keep my hands as clean as possible.

When I pulled back from her hungry mouth our eyes locked as the stretchy and tight material cleared the top of her blond head. I sucked in a breath because she was so pretty and perfect she almost didn’t seem real. Girls like her, with wide blue eyes, a perfect pink blush, skin softer than a flower petal, and a set of breasts topped with the sweetest, perkiest pink nipples weren’t for guys like me . . . at least not normally. She was even more flawless seminaked, ruffled up, and flushed than she was in her power suits with her professional cloak firmly in place. I was careful not to break delicate things that I knew would cost a fortune to replace. I knew just how to handle them . . . and how to handle her if the way she moaned and pulled at me with impatient hands was any indication.