As it turned out, what really flipped the switch on my usually inactive libido was a guy who looked like he could cut down a tree with one swipe, had unruly dark brown hair that looked like it rarely saw a comb or brush let alone any type of product. It was a guy who made a sweaty T-shirt and torn jeans look like high fashion and that kept me awake all night long while I fantasized what those work-toughened hands would feel like sliding across my naked skin.
I didn’t know what Zeb Fuller had done to me or to my common sense. All I knew was that he was keeping me up at night and making me resent every single time I turned icy and cold when he flirted with me. I hated that I couldn’t act normal around him because all I wanted to do was rip his clothes off and climb all over him. I wasn’t familiar with any of those emotions, so as a defense I locked them all down.
My awkwardness and ineptitude in the face of Zeb’s overt masculinity meant that I could never find any words beyond polite pleasantries and clichéd platitudes, which, I had no doubt, gave him the impression that I was nothing more than a stuck-up bitch. I never intended to treat him like the hired help, but somehow that’s exactly what I had done, and now the job was finished, Zeb was long gone, and I was having phantom orgasms simply thinking about having his hands and mouth on me while I tossed and turned in my very empty and very lonely bed.
So yeah, I missed having him around. I missed watching him, hearing him, and even smelling that unique scent that all men that worked hard for their money seemed to have. Sweat and accomplishment mixed in with something that just screamed hard work and sex appeal.
I pushed my long hair back over my shoulder and raised my eyebrows up at Poppy in a questioning expression similar to her own.
“You didn’t seem to mind him roaming around the house while he was here.” I said casually.
Poppy had had a horrible experience with her abusive ex-husband, and in the aftermath the beautiful young woman had shied away from all physical contact with the opposite sex, including my brother, with whom she had grown up. It was crippling and when I started work on the house I worried how Poppy was going to handle having so many strange men in and out of the place that had been her sanctuary since she started to recover from her abduction.
Initially she handled Zeb and his crew banging around the Victorian by never leaving her room. She spent all day locked in there with a dresser in front of the door until one night when I was supposed to get home early to look at paint samples with Zeb but was running late. When I finally got there, I was stunned to find the bearded giant and the fragile flower with their heads bent together while they looked at paint samples in my torn-apart kitchen. I was so stunned that when Zeb mentioned Poppy really liked an unusual shade of reddish orange for the walls I blindly agreed to the choice, even though neutral and serene was much more my personal style.
After the shocking splash of color made it onto the walls I was surprised at how much I loved it. It took me a few days beyond that to realize it was the same shade as a field of poppies, and then I loved it even more. When Zeb left, I tenderly prodded Poppy about how the big man had coaxed her out of her fortress.
It was simple really. He told her he needed a woman’s opinion. He wanted to make sure he was in the right wheelhouse and gave her the choice and the control. If I hadn’t already wanted to kiss him, his simple understanding of how Poppy needed to take back the reins of her life would have made me want to jump him on the spot.
Zeb Fuller was a nice guy. Ugh … a nice guy I couldn’t stop thinking about or picturing very naked. He had tattoos on either side of his neck and ones that peeked out of the collar of his shirt. He had ink that decorated the back of each hand and wild swirls and designs of it that covered every inch of both of his arms. I wanted to see what else marked his skin and then I wanted to drag my tongue across every single inch of it.