Page 33 of Service Included

“I’m…” One deep breath, and she went for it, trying to pitch her voice between casual and interested. A chunk of her brain knew she shouldn’t worry about how she sounded because, duh, a few hours ago, he’d been extremely involved in her vagina, but still. “I’m glad you came back.”

“Is, ah, anyone else going to be at the house tonight?”

“No.” She shook her head. Her mother had made the all-clear extremely clear. “Just me.” Under the flowing water, his hands entwined and spread the squirt of soap. To avoid making the imaginative leap from the pearly sheen of liquid to thinking of Nico’s hand on his own cock, she focused on the bottle. Odd it had been left behind, but she guessed it made sense that the painters who would shortly take over needed to be able to wash their hands.

He took his time rinsing, until the foam was long gone. One part of her recognized that she was staring at him, and that she shouldn’t, because the situation risked careening past awkward, but at this angle, she could watch his hands rub together. Fingers twisting in the opposite palm. She couldn’t dispel the image of a man fisting his own cock, or, heaven help her, fingers twistingin her. Her feet felt glued to the floor, her legs stone pillars.

Then he cupped water in one hand and bent over the sink to drink. If she didn’t have a young child, she’d gladly hang a framed view of Nico’s ass in that soft denim on her wall. When he turned, she saw that drips had made dark spots on his shirt. One spread across the “X” insexy, another over the “R” inchert.

“Sorry.” He wiped the back of his wrist across his chin. His tongue gathered moisture off his wet lips before he continued. “We packed the glasses.”

A polite woman would look elsewhere, but etiquette reminders weren’t part of the slogan on the fabric he bunched to dry his hands, and definitely weren’t written on the skin revealed above his waistband. She wanted to follow the trail of dark curls arrowing from his navel, follow it behind the beckoning silver button and zipper, to see if he resembled a sun-kissed demigod everywhere, or if the trail led to a paler region.

More for something to say than curiosity, she glanced at the brown paper bag he’d set on the counter and asked, “What did you get?”

“Drinks.” First he unloaded two waters, then a growler-sized bottle from a popular downtown brewery. In profile, it was easy to watch the rise and fall of his chest. “I didn’t know which you’d prefer, so I brought both.” He hesitated with his hand still concealed in the bag. “And these.” The final item he produced was a purple-and-gold box that made her heart stop.

Condoms.

“If you still want to.” Instead of looking at her, he kept his gaze on the counter.

Thudding began again, from her ears to her chest and then lower. Could be her heartbeat. Could be wild dance moves about to break free. “I do.”

After hearing her own voice, strong with assertion, her head cleared and she felt satisfaction similar to when she left the grocery store with everything she wanted, but without spending an extra hundred dollars.

“About what happened this afternoon…”

Shit.They were going there. She kept her voice gentle in the pause. “It’s okay, truly. I said that and I meant it.”

“I want to explain. I have to.” His words winged after each other, seemingly unplanned. “My therapist says I have survivor’s guilt.”

“Oh.” With a smidge of her own good-girl guilt, she realized that she didn’t want to listen to a description of how he felt responsible for some undoubtedly very sad event that would likely cast a pall over the evening. She just…didn’t. Damn, she was shallow. “Whatever happened, you don’t have to talk—”

“It’s been”—he waved a hand between them, indicating their bodies—“two years.” He took a breath. “Actually, more, I guess.”

All right. Two plus years. Even if she’d been wrong to assume he wanted to burden her with a long story, she hadn’t expected to hear that this spectacularly sexy man had gone far longer than she had without having sex. She moved closer, drawn by the need to touch his shoulder.

“Mostly, I’ve dealt with it, I go out with friends again, and stuff, but this is—well, the last thing. I mean, obviously not the last last thing, but mostly. I guess. Or not.” They were less than an arm’s length apart when he turned to fully face her. The way his lips had tightened and the outside corners of his eyes looked drawn down made him look older. “So yeah, if I drift off or get lost in my head, talk to me, okay?” He looked so alone. “Keep me tethered. Keep me with you. Talk.”

This beautiful, sad man kept surprising her. “I can do that.”

Chapter 9

The ultimately versatile phrase

As soon as sheagreed to talk, Megan found herself with nothing to say. Abso-fucking-lutely nothing, of course.

The simplest thing, or at least the only thing she could think of that wasn’twell, let’s go, thenwas to pick up the box and read the brand name of the condoms. “Did you know that contrary to popular belief, the whole Trojan Horse thing isn’t in theIliad?” He’d claimed to want her to talk, so he would get whatever came out of a classicist’s mouth and he’d learn from it. So be it.

“There are a few references in theOdyssey, but most of the story actually comes from Virgil’sAeneid.” She’d never considered the Latin title to be particularly intriguing, but with a gorgeous guy signaling sexual interest, all those vowels somehow felt dirty. She stared harder at the box, and hoped that she could stop babbling about Virgil and Homer long enough to encounter some male nudity, maybe even to use one of the items he’d bought. “Nobody makes movies out of that epic, so somehow in popular imagination it glomped on”—that was the least sexy word her lips could form, so of course it tumbled out.Next she would probably saymoist—“to the more popular story of the Trojan War.”

Finally, finally, her brain stopped the ongoing social catastrophe that was her mouth.

“I did not know any of that. Afraid I’m limited to movie versions.”

She glanced through her eyelashes without looking him in the face. His wobbly smile was an improvement.

“I like listening to you.”

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