He turned abruptly for the shower. Before he got the door closed she added, in a slightly louder tone, “Or ignore it.”
To cool down, he let the tepid water stream over the top of his head before he soaped up. And while he couldn’t ignore her, he could ignore the heat thumping in his groin. He could, and he would. He would ignore the ache building in his cock and the woman stretched out on his sofa by turning on Sunday Night Football and watching the game like any normal guy who’d had sex six hours earlier. He wasn’t fifteen, for fuck’s sake.
When he emerged from his bedroom, back in jeans and polo, he found his unexpected and highly unpredictable houseguest watching a public television special on the mating habits of baboons.
Don’t react. The book lay on the couch beside her hip, her index finger functioning as a bookmark, the cover reflecting the light from the TV. After a contemplative pause, he said, “You watching this?”
“Yes. It’s fascinating.” In the dark her face was a pale blur relieved only by the sooty smears of eyelashes and eyebrows and a pink lush mouth.
Hands back on his hips, Matt watched a male baboon clamber up the back of another. After some howling and a few jerks of his furry hips, he scampered away. The victim of the hit-and-run looked over her shoulder and screeched at his disappearing back.
“Guess he didn’t get the message about slow,” Eve said brightly.
Do. Not. React. “The Bears are playing. Preseason game in Tokyo. Where’s the remote?”
“Under my butt,” she said.
Laughter surged in his chest, a startling sound he turned into a cough before bending his head for a couple of even breaths. Under control again, he looked up to find Eve watching him.
“You don’t really want to watch football, Matt.”
Looming over her felt weird, so he hunkered down beside the sofa and folded his arms on his knees. He knew what he had to do here. Say a simple, two-letter word, and this was all over, the humor, the banter, the sex. But just watching life eddy across her face turned off most of his higher neural functions.
She turned her head and looked at him, genuinely curious. “I looked through your CDs. Who still has CDs?”
“They’re on my computer. I never got around to tossing them out,” he said. A partial truth. His digital music library was maybe a tenth of what he had on CD. He’d stopped buying music. Didn’t pirate it either. He just stopped listening to it. When she kept that clear, direct gaze focused on him, he added, “I came for prep at Eye Candy because it was a good way to get information, and because you liked the same kind of music I do.”
This concession didn’t get the response he’d hoped for, a reprieve in the unrelenting longing eddying in the room. She sat up a little straighter and tucked the book to her chest. “Aside from beating the living hell out of the heavy bag, what do you do that’s for you?”
“I find my job very rewarding, and I love my brother.”
“Admirable,” she said quietly. “Noble, even, but you didn’t answer the question. What do you have in your life that’s just for you?”
His whole life was structured around duty and honor. He didn’t need anything else. “Give me the remote, Eve,” he said with a beckoning motion.
She turned back to the book. “Come and get it, Matt.”
A glance over his shoulder at the TV, where the announcer was detailing the signs of a female bonobo’s readiness to mate. Challenges the male … feigns disinterest … pretends to read legal thrillers …
He could end this easily enough. He just had to say no. One simple word. End of discussion.
“We just got premium cable on Thursday,” he said. “Two hundred channels. Any one of them could be ESPN HD. Finding the game’s going to be easier if I use the menu button on the remote. If I can’t … there will be consequences.”
She licked her finger and turned another page. “Not your best tactic, Detective. You have no idea how much that turns me on. A deliciously firm lecture, or something more forceful? I’d prefer firm, but if my refusal to relinquish the remote drives you to forceful, then that’s the price I’ll pay.”
He was not backing down from this. “Forceful? You want me to go get my cuffs?”
“You’re really ripped, so the mirrors in the workout room interest me,” she said without looking up, “but we can work something out.”
On second thought, no banter. No banter, no laughter, no chatter, except her survival depended on looking like a couple so crazy for each other that she’d moved in with him. And while he’d forgotten exactly why, somehow watching football was critical to his sanity.
Just say no.
Desperation drove him to lean forward and press an open-mouthed kiss into her shoulder. A gentle touch of tongue, then he scraped his teeth over her skin, watched a tremor ripple across her nape as her breath halted.