she look like?”
“Who?” Thad questioned, though he knew exactly who Benny meant. The woman Thad had spent the afternoon telling himself he wouldn’t be touching again.
“Lissa.” Benny confirmed his guess.
Thad studied the olive cheese sauce oozing out the side of his burger. “Average.”
“Liar.” Nash popped a chip in his mouth. “She’s hot. I can tell that much by the way you say her name like it’s enough to give you a semi.”
Was the hardening effect hearing her name had on his dick that obvious? Thad sent Nash a quelling look. “Sorry to disappoint you, but Lissa’s”—damned hot. A sex kitten, once she got past the whole good-girl persona. Potentially attached—“a nice girl.”
“Nice girls like to be naughty too,” Benny observed.
“I’m telling you, she’s not worth wasting talk on. She might even be married. She lives with a guy.” Some asshole that would leave her alone with a stranger who was clearly hot for her body. Only, hell, Thad had no right calling Sam an asshole. He had no idea what his relationship with Lissa was, but if she was truly a nice girl, then he wasn’t her husband or lover. “Just lay off the flirting around Liss. You guys know how damned bad we need this job.”
“All right,” Nash agreed soberly. A heartbeat later, his mouth curved in a shit-eating grin. “We promise not to flirt with your girlfriend.”
“For fuck’s sakes, she’s not my…” Thad caught the defensive note in his voice and stopped himself. “Nothing. She’s nothing.”
Only, if Lissa was nothing, just another woman he slept with and then went on his way, why was he shifting in his seat like he’d never even done over a girl as a teenager and feeling guilty as hell about lying to his buddies in the meanwhile?
4
They should be able to be adult about things and disregard what happened yesterday. But just in case they couldn’t, Thad wanted to find out before he started working on Lissa’s roof. Quitting the job midway through would both leave her in a bind come the next rainstorm and scar Loose Screw’s image in a way the construction division of the company couldn’t afford.
Thad parked his truck next to a red Dodge Charger he recognized as Lissa’s. He made his way up the gravel drive and along the sidewalk, which was separated from the front of the white ranch-style house by a row of tiger lilies. He was no flower guru, but the summer he spent helping to beautify downtown Crichton through the city’s youth services correction’s department made certain he knew the names and markings of most local flora.
At fourteen, his punishment for illicit behavior had been a court-mandated curfew coupled with community service, or time in a juvenile detention center, his choice. Now, at thirty-two, if his illicit behavior as a gigolo was uncovered, there would be no options. His ass would be headed straight to the clink.
The thought of doing time roiled his gut and strengthened his reason for being here, knocking on Lissa’s front door. Two minutes passed without a response, and Thad tried knocking again. Since her car was in the drive, it followed she would be home.
Unless she was out somewhere with Sam.
Early afternoon on a Sunday that place could easily be church. Knowing that wasn’t enough to stop his dislike of the guy from surfacing. Sam would be a client of Loose Screws as much as Lissa would—it was time Thad started remembering that.
Another series of knocks without a response and he gave the doorknob a twist. Finding the door unlocked, he pushed it in. “Hello? Anyone home?”
More silence.
Damn. He should have called ahead. He hadn’t because he didn’t want Lissa to be prepared for his visit. Encountering her when her guard was down and genuine Liss shining through would be the true test of his ability to keep his hands off her.
Walking into the house, he considered the way the living room branched off in two directions. Yesterday, he’d gone right and arrived at the bedrooms and bathroom. Today, he wasn’t up to finding Lissa alone in her bedroom. Or, worse, finding her and Sam paying homage to the elephants screwing on his wall hanging by doing the same.
Going with the safer route, he veered off to the left. A good-sized kitchen with white and pale blue linoleum flooring and an attached dining room opened up. Hushed music drifted from somewhere nearby. He followed the muted strains to a closed door on the far side of the kitchen. Amped-up music would explain why Lissa hadn’t heard him calling. If she was behind the door, she also wasn’t liable to hear him if he tried calling out again now.
Feeling too much like the rebel teen who’d been caught breaking and entering almost twenty years ago, he pulled open the door to reveal a semidark stairwell. Rock music blasted his ears as he started down the stairs. The lyrics from “Lick It” registered and his gut tightened with the idea he was about to walk in on Lissa giving Sam head. He should turn back, get the hell out of the house, and call ahead next time he wanted to drop by. The idea he could get to the bottom of her relationship with Sam and, in doing so, potentially eradicate his want for her had him continuing on.
Thad reached the bottom of the stairwell…and froze.
Twenty feet to his left, Lissa sat rocked back in a maroon, wheeled office chair. Her bare feet were propped up on a desk in front of a lit computer monitor and her head reclined back, copper tresses flowing over the chair’s top edge. Her eyes were closed. Her lips glistening with shiny red he attributed to the sucker making its way along the curve of her cheek and down the front of her throat.
“You gotta lick it, before you stick it….” She sang a notch or two above the music, pumping the balls of her feet on top of the desk as her left hand continued the sucker’s descent along the column of her throat, past her collarbone.
Her white sports bra should have looked puritan, virtuous even. But the way she was reclined back gave him a perfect view of the line of her generous cleavage and destroyed every ounce of innocence.
In time with the next verse to “stick it,” she pushed the sucker between her breasts and started a thrusting game to mimic the way he’d tongued her tits less than twenty-four hours ago. Thad’s cock pulsed with the memory of sucking her erect nipples into his mouth as her pussy tightened around his finger with her climax. His shaft pulsed that much harder when Lissa’s lips parted on a rapturous cry, suggesting she was doing far more than sucker-fucking her breasts.
He looked to the right side of the basement, half expecting Sam to be sitting there, watching the show while he pumped his meat in his hand. A shuffleboard table and dartboard pitted up against the wall and a short wet bar with two backless stools extended out from the corner. Both stools were empty.
Sam wasn’t around and neither should Thad be. But he was here, was watching, and was anxious as hell to discover exactly what she was doing in that chair.
Where the right side of the basement had concrete flooring, the left side was carpeted. Between the pounding beat of the music and Lissa’s now-and-again cries, he was able to move soundlessly across the gray tweed flooring. Five feet away from her, the angle he approached her at uncovered the fact she wore men’s black boxers. She wasn’t having any problem filling out the area designed to accommodate the male anatomy either. Her right hand snaked beneath the waistband, her knuckles pushing at the cotton material from the inside out.
He didn’t need to see her pussy to know her fingers were pumping away inside it. But he wanted to. Wanted to strip the boxers down her legs and watch her masturbate until her juices were running along her thighs. If she wasn’t a potential construction client, he would probably do just that. She was a potential client, and Loose Screws damned well needed her business.
Pushing out deep breaths meant to calm his raging dick and the thundering of his pulse, Thad let her continue to sing and sigh along with the music. Right up until the moment the sucker left her sports bra and started down the soft rise of her belly to the boxers.