Page 100 of Neighbors With Benefits

“I mean okay. Does okay mean something else to you?”

“You said it with an attitude.”

He grunted. “Okay, Jasmin.”

“I told you,” I gritted out, “Jasmin isn’t my name.”

“It suits you, though.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Here,” he interrupted. “Take this.”

Dante had removed a large pane of glass in order to access part of the metal framework that needed repairing. He lowered it to me, and I reached up and took it with both hands. It was the size of a car door.

“Careful,” he said before letting go of the top. “It’s heavy.”

“I know,” I said testily. “We’ve moved a dozen panes of glass just like it.”

But as soon as he let go of the top, I realized I had misjudged the glass. It was thicker than the other pieces, and almost twice as heavy. I widened my stance to bear the weight, but my foot slipped out from under me.

I cried out as I fell backward, landing first on my butt, then on my back. Somehow I had managed to keep a grip on the glass, holding it wide in front of me. It hadn’t broken.

But my back ached.

Dante jumped off the ladder, landing next to me and immediately taking the glass. “Nice save,” he said, setting the glass against the greenhouse. “I guess you’re not totally useless.”

He extended a hand, and I took it gratefully. I was annoyed by how much his backhanded compliment made my heart race. I was also annoyed by the flutter I felt in my stomach as he pulled me to my feet like I weighed nothing, the corded muscles in his arm tightening in the late-afternoon sun.

After pulling me up, he gently clapped me on the back and turned to examine the pane of glass. Why was my skin tingling? And why was there a growing ball of warmth in the pit of my stomach?

That feeling was desire, hot and urgent. Especially as Dante bent over, allowing me to admire his ass and back.

Damnit.

36

Dante

Damnit.

God-fucking-damnit.

I wasn’t into blondes. That wasn’t a lie. There were a whole bunch of other reasons why I had zero interest in Jazz. For one thing, she was our neighbor. If things broke bad with her, it would bereallybad. One of Aiden’s exes had tried getting revenge on him by lighting my plants on fire. Since then, I liked keeping our romantic interests at arm’s-length.

But the biggest thing about Jazz that turned me off? Aiden and Bash had a head start with her. That wasn’t how this was supposed to be. The three of us had agreed that we wanted to get to know the same woman at the same time, in equal amounts. That’s why we were pursuing women on a dating app—we would each get a clean slate.

Yet my roommates had been friends with Jazz for two fucking months. I was coming in as the new guy. That was fucking with the entire dynamic. This kind of relationship, three guys sharing one woman, was already practically impossible to pull off. We didn’t need to make it any harder than it already was.

There was also something about Jazz that annoyed me. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. She was very friendly, and almost too agreeable. It made me wonder if she was hiding her disagreement because she was afraid of confrontation. I preferred it when people were open and honest, even brutally so. I expected the people around me to be their true selves, not hide behind all the bullshit social niceties.

These were all the reasons I wasn’t interested in Jazz. All of it made perfect sense.

Logically.

Illogically, however, I couldn’t stop thinking about this goddamn woman.

Since we started working on the greenhouse together, my opinion of her had steadily risen. She followed instructions. She knew when to be quiet, rather than nervously filling the silence with awkward small talk. When she didn’t understand what I wanted of her, she asked for clarification rather than trying it herself and fucking up.

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