Page 33 of Hot and Bothered

He brushed by her into the apartment, his upper arm kissing her shoulder and shiver-shocking her system. The one with all those newly forged neural pathways that led to Destination: Unfulfilled.

She shut the door behind her, the definitive click bringing Jack’s words about the size of the apartment back to her in a rush. Not so much character as claustrophobic.

“Where’s the gelato?” she asked, removing her heated focus from his muscular body to his empty hands.

“What? Oh…I don’t have any.” He scanned the living room, still box-cluttered and messy from her move-in a month ago. “How are you settling in?”

“Okay. You want to tell me why you’re here?” For a moment, she had forgotten that she was mad at him from earlier and now he had waltzed in like she had nothing better to do but be at his beck and call. Her sour mood might have had something to do with the broken promise of salted caramel gelato.

He rubbed his chin and in the strained silence, she could almost hear the rough bristles under his palm.

“Jules, about what I said earlier at the studio. I’m sorry if it came off as—”

“Paternal? Assholic? Slut-shaming?”

His eyes widened. “I’ll gladly own up to paternal and maybe, ass—”

“—holic,” she supplied helpfully.

“Okay,” he said, the word dragged out to soothe the barmy woman in the room, “but slut-shaming is all wrong.”

“You pretty much said that photo gave off a vibe. That’s the kind of crap guys come up with when women are attacked and they’re making excuses for their gender. She was asking for it because of what she was wearing. Commonly known as slut-shaming.”

He looked gobsmacked. “That’s not what I meant at all. I worry about you and I don’t want you to attract sleazy assholes looking to use you.”

She let loose a sigh in the hopes it might relax her anger-taut muscles. She wasn’t even surewhyshe was so angry. All she knew was she was cheesed off at all the paternal shit.

“I’ve already got a big brother, Tad. I don’t need another one.”

Thoughts chased each other across his face before finally settling on intense. Shocking, thunderstorm intense. “I don’t want to be your brother, Jules.”

The way he said it—a low rumble of sex—sent a shiver all the way down to her good parts. She opened her mouth to ask more and then closed it because she had nothing. Her mouth was desert dry. The sensitive area between her thighs? Not so much.

He walked into the kitchen, drawing her attention to his loose-limbed gait. She loved how he moved. He grabbed a spoon off the counter, twisted off the lid of the Nutella jar, and scooped some out.

“I heard you’re going to get busy with some guy in the back of his Honda Civic.” He popped a heaped spoonful of Nutella into his mouth as if that punctuation would keep him from shoving his other foot in his mouth.

Rage boiled up once more. “Been having a nice old gossip with your girlfriend, Shane? You braid each other’s hair, too?”

She took the spoon from him and helped herself from the jar of chocolate-hazelnut goodness, careful to keep as much distance from him as possible. Because there was a fair to middling chance she was going to use the spoon to excavate the sensitive area betweenhisthighs.

“I thought you wanted to ease into the dating game. Now I hear you’re looking to hook up.”

She let out an exasperated noise. “And this is your business how?”

“Paternal. Assholic.” He held her gaze long enough to make her tingle. “Indulge me.”

She dug deep for her casual voice. He was here because he cared about her as a friend, no other reason, and she needed to get on board with that.

“Cara thinks I should play the field a bit. Pick a guy to have a summer fling with. Nothing serious, then start looking for the real deal after I’ve worked it out of my system.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “You’ve got something to work out of your system?”

“It’s been a while, Tad.”

“And you think picking some stranger off a website and starting an affair is the way to go about this?”

Of course not. She had no intention of touching that option with a ten-foot pole, but the facthethought so was interesting. Eventually, she wanted to find a nice guy, a man who would treat her right and would love Evan like he was his own.

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