Page 44 of How to Deal

Me:You know where I live, so there’s that. I’m sure you’d stalk me until I held up my end of said deal.

Tathan:True.

I don’t like replying through messages, so I type out:

Me:This is ridiculous. Meet me at the hot tub in ten minutes. I have to walk Oliver.

Tathan:Deal.

Of course he agrees instantly.

It’s a bad idea, and I know it, but I go anyway. I blame that kiss.

We meet outside my door five minutes later, and I try not to look, but I do. He has his towel over his shoulder revealing his tight body.

Not me. I wrap my towel tightly around my body. Tathan looks down at Oliver. “Is your dog going to bite me?”

“Nah, he’s not a biter. Just likes to growl and pee.”

Watching him as we walk, his head is lowered, concentrating on the ground, his lips parted slightly, and it draws me in. “So he’s like most men marking their territory?”

I raise an eyebrow at him as we walk toward the hot tub, Oliver growling at him the entire way as he walks behind us, mainly focused on Tathan. “Do you pee on my doorstep?”

I’m teasing, but he goes with it.

“No, just around the apartment complex. I’m very much like a lion patrolling my territory.” He smiles and holds open the gate for me. “I like to mark the neighborhood. That way they don’t even come close to the building.”

I laugh, a full-on laugh where I cover my mouth as it’s so loud. He’s funny, and I never realized that before now. “Your territory?”

He winks. “One could be optimistic, right?”

“If one wasthatconfident.”

Confidently, he drops his towel to the ground. “One is.”

Goddamn. I give an audible sigh—which he notices—and sink down in the water across from him. I’ve never seen a man as pretty as him. Never.

“No one is entirely that confident,” I point out. “Youhaveto have a weakness.”

“I do.” He smiles. “I can’t whistle.”

“See, I was hoping for something weird. Like a third nipple.”

Laughing, he glances down at his bare chest in the water. “Nothing like that. Sorry.”

Nope. Nothing but a perfect body I want to lick every inch of.

“It’s okay. I was hoping to feel normal around you instead of completely inadequate.”

His brow pulls together. “You shouldn’t feel that at all.”

“I do.” I watch the water for a long moment and the way the water bubbles around my knees I’ve pulled up to my chest. If I’m being honest, I’m afraid if I let my legs down, I’ll spread them and coax him between them.

It’s when Tathan opens his second beer he brought down with him, he opens up. “I always wanted to play music,” he admits, trying to make me feel better about my body I assume. “But I can’t. I’m horrible at it.”

“Like sing?”

“Yeah, but I can’t sing. At all.”

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