Page 12 of Mayhem
“You did, yes, but I wasn’t expecting you until Saturday morning,”Erin responded.
“You didn’t want to try to do all of your packing in one day, did you? That’d be pretty stressful,”Paetyn responded.
“I got a jumpstart on some of the smaller things,”Erin replied, moving aside to let them both in. Cruz followed Paetyn inside, closing the door behind them. “I was just about to ordersome food. Do the two of you want anything and from anywhere in particular?”she asked, turning to them.
Yes, there was something in particular he wanted to eat, and it was on the tip of his tongue to say it, but he didn’t miss the look Paetyn quickly threw at him. Cruz refrained from going with his first answer and bit his tongue briefly to keep from smirking.
“Whatever you want to order is fine,”he told her.
“Is pizza okay?”
“Sounds good,” Paetyn responded.
“Okay, make yourselves at home. I’ll order, and then we can tackle the kitchen if you want.”
“It’s whatever you want to do,”Paetyn replied.
Cruz watched as she walked into the kitchen before he went over to the loveseat and sat down while Paetyn sat on the couch, both at the end closest to one another.
“Were you honestly going to tell her you wanted to eat her?”Paetyn asked him in a low voice.
“Are you trying to tell me you don’t want to?”Cruz challenged with a smirk. Paetyn raised an eyebrow at him but didn’t respond. “Besides, I don’t think she’d object.”
“That isn’t the point,”Paetyn responded.
“So you’ve said before. You have to admit that even your patience is wearing thin.”
Paetyn sighed, leaning back, propping his right ankle on his leg. “I’m a bit over waiting, yes. But it’s necessary that she knows what she’s getting into and can make the choice before she’s overwhelmed with testosterone.”
Cruz found himself chuckling because he knew that Paetyn wasn’t kidding. It wasn’t something that tended to happen on purpose. It simply did when they first started dating someone and often continued throughout the relationship.
Cruz turned his attention to Erin as she returned to the living room. She stretched, and her shirt rose a bit. He licked his lower lip. He honestly couldn’t wait to overwhelm her.
Paetyn wrapped the dishes Erin was pulling from her cabinets in bubble wrap. They’d finished eating about an hour ago and sat around and talked briefly before starting in the kitchen. Paetyn told her that he and Cruz could handle it, but Erin insisted it would go faster if the three tackled it together. He was sure that it was more so that she needed to be in control of the situation. However, he wouldn’t call her on it.
They were working in an assembly line of sorts. Erin would hand him the dish, which he’d wrap before giving it to Cruz to pack into the box they were currently filling.
Erin had turned on music, and the songs filtered through the kitchen. Paetyn would see her swaying slightly to the song’s rhythm as she’d hand him dishes. It didn’t matter how fast the song was. It was as if she was catching some unheard melody as she moved slowly. Paetyn wasn’t the only one watching her. He’d caught Cruz giving Erin the same look he was.
It didn’t take them long to finish packing everything except a tumbler from which Erin liked to drink. All the boxes were labeled, and he and Cruz moved them over by the door.
“Will you come into the bedroom with me?”Erin asked, and Paetyn didn’t have to look at Cruz to know what he was thinking. “There are some boxes in there that are a bit heavy,” she added.
“Of course,”Paetyn responded before following her down the hall.
Once inside the bedroom, he saw the boxes she was talking about: two labeled bottoms, three labeled shoes, and one labeled tops. He and Cruz grabbed two of the boxes with shoes since hewas sure those were the ones she was referring to as being heavy, along with the bottoms.
When they’d moved the boxes to the living room with the ones from the kitchen, Paetyn glanced at the watch on his wrist and saw it was close to nine.
“Are you leaving?”Erin asked, and Paetyn turned to look at her, finding her leaning against the entryway to the hall.
“Are you trying to get rid of us?”Cruz countered, and Erin laughed lightly before smiling at him.
“No, I was going to put you to work if you weren’t tired of helping yet.”
“Idon’t think we’d ever get tired of helping you,”Paetyn responded, and Erin swung those dark brown eyes to him.
“Well, while I have you here, I was going to see if I could put you to work a tiny bit more,”she stated, holding her thumb and index finger close together.
