The Co-op

Chapter Sixteen

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

L A RYNN

It only takes another week before he starts walking around naked.

To be fair, it might be my fault. The first time was, at least.

But he started it when he bitched at me after finding out that I got rid of his bleach-stained, raggedy, threadbare towels. Tie those things to some golf clubs and they could’ve been used as international flags for bachelordom.

“You don’t throw away towels, Larry,” he’d said. “You keep them for things. Like car-washing rags or—I don’t know, but you keep them! Now all we have is your pink foo-foo ones!”

“Where?! Where was I supposed to store your beloved towels? I had no idea that they were so cherished. Was it the holes or the frayed edges that made them the ideal jerk-off rags?”

He put his hand to his chest with a theatrical gasp. “How dare you! I am feeling extremely objectified. You keep my self-care out of your filthy mind, you Jezebel.”

I made a noise akin to a pirate suffering a surprise anal probe.

He laughed in my face, clutching one of my towels around his trim hips. Then he rubbed a big palm across his arrogant chest, scratching at some invisible itch.

“Do you have an allergy you need to address? You’re constantly scratching yourself,” I snapped.

He fluttered his lashes and I swallowed back a growl. “Watching me rather closely, aren’t you?” he said, before he turned and strutted off to shower.

So, yes : I, a twenty-six-year-old adult woman, snuck into the bathroom and took all of my towels. If he’s going to complain, then he doesn’t deserve to use them.

I’d already begun going through my grandmother’s records in the garage a few days before since, during my splurge, I’d purchased a combination record player/Bluetooth speaker. That day I went with the first album by Redbone, cranking up the volume until it reached full blast and effectively drowned out his terrible singing.

This also afforded me the luxury of pretending I didn’t hear him hollering at me when he was done.

I was cheerfully flipping through a home magazine in my chaise, feeling pretty proud of myself, when a wet, irritated, and very naked Deacon came bounding into the living room.

I suppose there aren’t actual degrees of nakedness, but if there are, he was on the extreme end of that spectrum. Miles of suntanned skin dusted in dark hair. Thick, hard limbs stacked in slippery strength. My eyes abandoned my brain and moved from his bare feet to the muscles shifting in his thighs as he stomped my way and up to— God, everything else—before I threw the magazine at him in my panic and screwed my eyes shut with a screech. I scrambled out of the chair blindly and ended up sprawled on the floor and crawling… somewhere. Anywhere. Until he snatched the hem of my maxi dress and dragged me back, where he proceeded to dry himself off with it.

I cracked an eye open to the sight of him looming and dripping over me with a cruel smirk.

“Thanks, wife. Think you’re right, after all. This was much nicer than those old rags,” he sneered and shook his hair like a dog.

I gave up the battle with my eyes and let them watch his bare ass march away—my consolation prize, I guess—while he casually continued humming along to “Come and Get Your Love.”

It’s the day after that incident, and because we are clearly killing it here as it is, I find myself halfway up the stairs “hauling” my end of a mattress, with Deacon barking at me from below. My bed and frame were successfully delivered yesterday, but the company that dropped them off would not bring them up to the second floor.

“Do you even have any of the weight on your end up there?!” Deacon whines.

I insert as much strain as I can into my voice. “Yeah, do you?” I reply, dancing my fingertips on the edges of it. Just enough to maintain some control, to get it past another step while keeping the entirety of the load distributed on him.

The thrill of seeing his face in its red and haggard glory will sustain me for at least another week, I decide.

But then he has to pause for a rest, and a guttural groan rasps out of him. Something so masculine and damn near pornographic that I’m pulled into the mental fantasy of being under him. Of being overwhelmed by him, lost in sensation, that sound spilling out of him like he can’t help himself, brows furrowed, head tossed back…

I’m immediately changing my mind and would like to get it up and over with, after all.

I don’t know what it says about me that I feel the need to remind him when we’re almost to the top, “I didn’t ask you to do this, by the way. I just want to reiterate that. Elyse could’ve helped me later.”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it, Lar— you don’t need me. You were fine on your cot.” We reach the landing, and his face lights up with a grin. I also don’t know what it says about me that I know exactly what he’s going to say next.

“Don’t be that guy,” I say before he can. “Don’t say the thing that every person who’s ever moved furniture since 1999 has said. I’m begging you. It was really before our time, man.”

He ignores me. “PIV OT.”

After we retrieve the box spring and set everything up with the freshly washed linens I also snagged, something in me relents. A bit of ice breaks off and falls away.

“Thank you, Deacon,” I tell him. “This was… nice. Of you. Thank you.”

He frowns and studies the bed for a moment before skimming a palm along it, swinging a hooded gaze my way. “I might have selfish motivations.”

I have no idea what my face is doing while I try to decipher that statement. He traces the entire outline of me with his eyes, smiling so suggestively that he may as well be caressing me with a finger, instead. His tongue darts out to swipe across his lip. “I’ve got our next team-building exercise picked out and I want your back feeling good and strong for it.” He steps close enough that I catch the faint scent of him. Something about that smell, minty pine, leather, campfire… that fine layer of him just under it, calls up the mental image of his palm slipping up my thigh, pushing my skirt up with it, his thumb as it tucked aside my underwear in a darkened theater. My heart thundering in my throat because we weren’t alone and it felt like a dare.

And suddenly, the devil on my shoulder gasps like she’s been bound and gagged, because some part of me recognizes that I expect this of him. I expect him to turn everything into some game. He’s a bird with a worm, one that enjoys watching me squirm and writhe. But…

But I don’t think he could actually handle it if I responded in kind. If I flirted right back and didn’t let him throw me off. He’s nothing if not predictable. I, however, am not nineteen or inexperienced anymore and I am done being toyed with. If he wants to play games then fine, I’ll play willingly, but I don’t like to lose and I certainly won’t make it easy for him.

I school my face into a bored expression, give him a long, sultry look. “Yeah? Planning to put me to work?” I ask, teeth sinking into my lower lip demurely.

The quick double-blink of his eyelids gives it all away, the way his expression pulls wider and a muscle ticks in his jaw. He’ll be rendered useless if I truly dish it back. If I lean into the innuendos and double down on the double entendres. I feel like I just got a hit of some smelling salts, adrenaline and glory in my veins.

He clears his throat, Adam’s apple bouncing. “We have to start demoing some more stuff this week, is all,” he says. And it’s clipped on the edges, like he never got that full breath back. “And I have a maintenance day at the campground planned.” He shrugs before he turns on his heel and leaves.

It feels like a retreat.

The rest of that ice in me remains, but it feels fucking buoyant now.