Page 28 of Hammered (Dad Bod Contracting 1)
“Ow! You asshole!” Franco says, pawing at his back and spinning. “You better watch it, buddy boy. I’ll staple your hand to your dick while you’re sleeping, and don’t think I’m kidding.”
I can’t help laughing. “You guys are ridiculous.”
“He’s ridiculous,” Franco says, winking at me as he vanishes into the kitchen. “I’m amazing.”
I mean, I’d have to agree.
“I’m amazing,” Jesse echoes in a sarcastic tone of voice. “Get outta here, twink. I don’t need you anymore.”
“Don’t lie to yourself, Jess,” Franco says, reemerging from the kitchen with a toolbox in one hand and a shirt with the other, “you’ll always need me. For one thing, I can count to twenty without taking off my boots.”
“Fuck you, pretty boy,” Jesse shoots back, grinning.
The two men bump fists, and Franco heads for the door, requiring me to move out of the way.
“Thanks for your help, Franco.”
“You’re welcome.” He aims this at me. “Meaning you’re welcome. Jess, you owe me a few rounds at the bar.”
I slide inside so Franco can leave, and I smell him—sweat and man. Makes me dizzy.
And there’s still Jesse to deal with. I put my back to door post and try to keep my knees from buckling. Why am I so weak right now? Hot guy overload? My poor libido has probably short-circuited.
“Imogen?” Jesse asks, his voice worried.
I blink at him, and realize he’s standing in front of me, frowning. “Huh? What?”
“Are you…okay? You were spacing out, or something. I was talking to you.”
I’m still all…woo-hoo. So my verbal filter, which isn’t the best around Jesse to begin with, is totally kaput. “Oh. Yeah. Sorry. Just…a little overwhelmed. You and Franco both in my house with your shirts off is a little much for my poor underserved libido to deal with.”
Jesse smirks. “Underserved libido?”
I curse mentally. “Um. You know. I—I didn’t mean to say that out loud.”
His smirk widens into a shit-eating grin. “But you did, and now I’m curious as to what that means.” He swaggers a few inches closer to me, so his big frame occludes the house, the whole world, everything. “’Cause I think it means you haven’t had sex for a long time.”
“You’d be correct in that assumption,” I whisper.
“How long?” he murmurs, filling my universe with his scent, his masculine aura of dominance and confidence and sexuality and strength. “Couple weeks? Couple months?”
I laugh bitterly, an unattractive snort/raspberry combination. “Try over a year.”
“Jesus,” he mutters, wincing. “How are you even alive?”
“I wonder the same thing sometimes.”
“How long have you been divorced, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“A little over a month,” I tell him. “The proceedings took three months, and we’d been having death-knell marriage problems for…oh god, almost a year before that. At least a year. But the warning signs were there long before that, I just—” I stop. “You don’t want to hear about my shitty-ass marriage or my even shittier divorce.”
“No, not really,” he says, “but I am sorry you went through all that. You deserve better.”
“Oh? And how do you know that?”
“I can tell. I’m a good judge of people.”
“And what does your judgment of people tell you about me?”
He stares down at me for a long moment before answering. “That you’re an amazing woman who settled for an asshole who wasn’t worth even five minutes of your time.”
“You got at least half of that right,” I say. “Nicholas…was a mistake.”
He frowns at me. “You don’t think you’re amazing.”
“My house is falling apart and I can’t afford to fix what’s broken much less improve it, my car is a piece of shit with no A/C and no radio, and I haven’t so much as kissed a man in almost a year and a half.”
I laugh again, more bitterly than ever.
“So, no,” I say. “I don’t really feel all that amazing, most days.”
He closes in even further. “I can help with some of that.”
“You can?”
“You are…absolutely perfect in every conceivable way. The whole package that is you…you’re stunning.”
I swallow hard and blink harder. “Thank you, Jesse.”
He smiles at me. “I know hearing that from me once isn’t going to undo the months and years of shit your ex put on you, but it’s a start, right?”
I sniff. “Right.” I try a smile back at him, and it’s easier than I expected it to summon a genuine smile for Jesse. “Once from you actually does do a lot to erase all that. So, you know, don’t be shy with the flattery. In my case, it’ll probably get you pretty far.”
He laughs. “It’s not flattery, it’s truth.” He sidles closer, and his hips nudge mine and his chest brushes against the tips of my breasts. “I can turn this place into a beautiful, cozy, attractive home for you—we’ll just take it one step at a time. Like what I did in here today, which you haven’t even seen yet.”
