he still had his narrow-minded days, my brother had come a long way since then, was a valuable member of the Ladder 19 fire crew and a guy in whose hands I’d put my life more than a few times while on the job. That didn’t mean I wanted him tracking my every move. I sure as hell didn’t want him referring to Carinna as a piece of ass.
Since he knew about Carinna’s relationship phobia, and I could guess he would think I was a hopeless fool to still be making a long-term play for her, I didn’t want him knowing I’d hooked up with her again.
I dismissed his words with a shrug. “You’re the one who’s always saying shit happens. Besides, how was I to know you’d be spending the night home playing curfew cop?”
Dressed as he was, in baggy gray sweats and a faded black T-shirt with a picture of a bunned hot dog and the words Bite Me beneath it, Ryan didn’t look like a ladies’ man. The endless string of females that crossed our threshold on his arm and proceeded straight to his bedroom proved he not only cleaned up well but knew how to work his year-round tan, dark good looks and muscles honed on the job to their best advantage.
“That wasn’t the plan,” he said dryly. “I had a blind date that five minutes in had me wishing I really was blind so I could trip over a rock and fake my death. I got in around ten, watched a couple movies, then headed to bed around three, wondering where the fuck you were.” He gave me the death glare a few more seconds, which was pointless since I was the one who’d taught him the look fifteen years ago in an effort to get a schoolyard bully off his back. Finally, he let the glare go and gave me a conspiratorial smile. “So, how was she?”
The best of my life.
I might not have liked the way our talk had gone in the bar that morning, but memories of loving Carinna and holding her well into the night had a euphoric smile tugging at my lips. I knew Ryan would see it and know damned well who was behind it, so I pushed him out of my way and headed for the coffeepot.
Thankful to see the light was still on, which meant it hadn’t been brewed too long ago, I poured a cup before turning back. I was shitty at lying, but attempted it anyway. “She was a poker table down at The Liege. I was hot as hell last night.”
Ryan settled at the kitchen table, reclining back in one wooden chair and propping his bare feet up on the seat of another. “Did you see Carinna?”
“Should I have?” I groaned inwardly as I slid onto a chair across the table from him. Shit, I’d sounded defensive.
The amusement that passed through Ryan’s eyes said he hadn’t missed my reaction. “Like I said yesterday, she dumped the foot-fetish dude, model, whatever the hell he is. I checked in on her last night to see how she was handling things and she was about to head out for The Liege. She wasn’t dressed in that itty-bitty-titty costume, either.”
In the midst of sipping my coffee, I winced at the mention of Carinna’s uniform. I hated the way the black sarong-style top spangled with gold sequins was cut so low her cleavage risked spilling out. The matching miniskirt was a waste of about three inches of material, given every time she moved it threatened to expose her entire ass. In the twenty minutes I’d been in the tequila bar that morning, I’d caught a glimpse of the black thong sheathed between her firm butt cheeks three different times. I’d been hard with the first glimpse, aching with the second and ready to throw her over my table and fuck her in front of every patron in the place with the last. The knowledge most every other guy in the bar was experiencing the same reaction killed that urge.
“I didn’t see her.” My disapproval of her uniform came through in both my voice and the way I slammed my mug onto the table, sloshing coffee over the rim. I mentally calmed myself before adding, “Like I said, I was in the card room all night.”
Ryan snorted out a laugh. “Nice try, bro. But you can’t lie any better than I can. You saw her. You were probably just too much of a pansy to talk to her.”
There were times I hated living and working beside my brother 24/7. It made it impossible for him not to know exactly what buttons to push. Calling me a pansy was a pretty damned big one. “Fine. She was in the card room. I talked to her. Happy?”
He smirked. “Was that before or after you bent her over her bed and tapped her ass?”
Damn, I should have known I’d never be able to get last night with Carinna past him. At least he wasn’t mocking me for wanting her. Yet. “You’re pushing it, Ry.”
“You deserve it for not calling. So what’s the status quo? Friends again, or just fuck buddies?”
“I don’t know. We don’t fuck.” We had tidy, missionary- style sex. Okay, so that wasn’t true, but I hated the way the word fuck made sleeping with Carinna sound so detached from emotions.
“Maybe you don’t, but I’ve heard too many of Carinna’s tell-all sex stories to believe she doesn’t. Hell, that time I stopped by her house last summer to see about borrowing her Crock-Pot, I could have heard her shouting about what an amazingly big dick the guy with her had even if the windows hadn’t been open.”
I knew Carinna’s track record, as well as she knew mine. It shouldn’t bother me to hear about her past lovers, but my gut roiled in a way that made it seem my one sip of coffee had been toxic. “Are you trying to get your ass kicked?”
Ryan narrowed his eyes astutely. “What I’m trying to do is get your ass in gear. You know how Carinna works. She’ll have a new fuck buddy by the end of the month and I’d just as soon see it be you. Why don’t you invite her over for poker tomorrow night? It’s been too long since we played together.”
“She’s working a double.”
“That never stopped her before. Make it a late game, and I’ll make it a point to be home.”
“Planning on a threesome or chaperoning?” Or why the hell was my brother pushing the idea so much?
“Neither. I just know you well enough to suspect you didn’t walk away from Carinna with a simple goodbye this morning. You probably did or said something to freak her out and the odds of her seeing you again so soon will be that much better if she knows I’m part of the equation.”
He was mistaken about her seeing me again. She would see me tonight, and in her own apartment, no less. At the same time, since I was liable to do exactly as he’d guessed, and do or say something to concern Carinna come tomorrow morning, I kept my mouth shut and accepted that the reason Ryan was pushing the idea so much was simply because he was my brother and, as such, he wanted to see me happily laid. It was simply chance the woman doing the laying would be Carinna.
Jack
Carinna and I had exchanged keys years ago, when we’d first moved into our respective places. I took advantage of that tonight, slipping into her apartment ten minutes before I expected her home from work, in order to prep her bedroom.
She’d suggested I add olives to tonight’s schedule and while I was reasonably sure she’d meant for her martinis, I’d spent the four hours since today’s tournament play had ended imagining a hundred-and-one olive-enhanced scenarios that had nothing to do with drinking alcohol and everything to do with dirtying her pristine-white silk sheets.
Hearing her enter the apartment, I popped the lid on the olives and tucked the jar between her dresser and bed. She appeared in the doorway of the bedroom seconds later. Any fear I might have had about looking guilty faded the instant I saw she hadn’t changed out of her cocktailing outfit.
I hated the scanty getup as a uniform. But I loved it as a vice to get me hard on sighting
Tonight, the uniform looked naughtier than ever. At some point during her double shift, she’d added black stockings to the ensemble. Seductively sheer nylon hugged her shapely legs, ending in a lace band a few inches shy of the miniskirt’s hem.
My