“I’ve got—oof!” Jury called. Laughter carried through, growing louder as the men moved into the mouth of the hallway.
Jury and Glitch stopped there, but Rhys was walking toward me.
“I was just gonna say I’ve got the garbage,” Jury said to him, his amusement still clear in his tone as he rubbed his chest.
Rhys ignored him.
“I already got it,” I rushed out, trying to save him the trip as I gestured to the empty space. “I was just being dramatic.”
“A theme,” he said.
“Like my twitch.”
I thought he would smile at that, but he didn’t. “We leave in five. Decide what you want for dinner.”
And then he stormed away like I’d done something wrong.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
STROKE OF GENIUS
RHYS
Ithought I’d finally found control.
I was wrong.
After the unpleasant burn that’d hit my gut when I imagined Lo on the back of Jury’s bike, I’d impulsively mentioned dinner. Thankfully, I’d been able to get my head on straight enough to change it to picking something up for her to eat alone in the privacy of her own temporary house, not going out together. Even more thankfully, she’d shot down the offer in favor of going right home.
The less time I spent with her, the better.
When I’d met her at the station, and she’d called meSirin that stammering voice, I’d thought she was hot.
But the tiny badass who looked ready to go to blows over baked goods? Who didn’t back down? Who rolled her eyes and got snarky, yet still obeyed when I gave an order?
Yeah, she was fuckin’ impossible to ignore.
I had a million fuckin’ things on my plate to deal with, but instead of focusing on them, I’d propped my phone up near my computer with the camera still zoomed in on where she sat on the couch.
That was how I’d seen her watching me, too. Not as much as I was watching her, but often enough.
She was likely doing her job. Working her case and staying on guard. But that didn’t stop my dick from growing painfully hard. That didn’t stop me from wanting her to drop her phone and give me all of her attention, not just some of it.
Two houses away.
The thought looped through my brain over and over again as I stared up at my ceiling. It would take seconds to go there. To knock on her door. To challenge that attitude she threw around.
My cock jerked.
Every time I’d jacked off that week, Lo had shoved her way into my thoughts. I’d tried to fight against it, but when my brain cells were gone because all the blood was in my dick, it was always her and that damn smile I pictured just as I came.
Maybe that’d been the wrong play.
Maybe I needed to give myself one time to freely fantasize to get it out of my system.
The more I mulled the option around, the more sense it made. I wasn’t used to depriving myself. I might’ve been in a dry spell, but it was self-imposed. I’d put up all these rules and restrictions around Lo, making her forbidden fruit. It made sense that she got under my skin. I couldn’t spend a couple of hours fucking herout of my system in the back room—not unless I wanted the rest of our time together to be awkward as shit.
Hell, I wasn’t even sure I would get that far if I was willing to risk it. For all I knew, she would laugh in my face if I made a move. Or, worse, her pretty face would soften with pity for the old man hitting on her. It wasn’t like she’d given me any indication she felt an attraction. She spoke to me the same way she spoke to Glitch or Haze or Jury.