“And take a ceiling fan to the face.”
“Nobody dates you for your face.”
Eddie guffawed at his friend’s zinger and resisted the urge to elbow him off the ladder. “Nice. Thanks.”
They worked in silence for a few moments. Aligning the tiny screws proved trickier than either had expected and took some grunting and cursing to get into place. They clambered off the stepladder and studied their work.
“Looks good,” Mick said with an approving nod. He cast a searching glance around the room. “What next?”
“You heard the woman. She wants this place clean when she gets back.” Eddie motioned toward the messy spots. “Just pick something, and get to work.”
“Yes, sir, Officer Dillon!” Mick snapped to attention as he barked a reply. “Right away, Officer Dillon, sir.”
“It’s Sergeant Dillon, smart-ass,” Eddie corrected. “And you could use a little discipline.”
A spark of interest flitted across Mick’s face. “Is that an offer?”
There was no mistaking the blatant flirtation in his question. A blaze of lust burned through Eddie’s belly. The sawhorses and rolls of tape littering the living room spawned dirty visions of hardcore loving, the kind of primal, pushing-the-boundaries sex he lived for.
“Whit could walk in that door any moment.” Eddie battled his raging desire. “She wouldn’t understand. She’d probably be scarred for life.”
“I don’t know about that,” Mick replied. “We mixed up our Kindles a few weeks ago, and let’s just say that girl has some interesting reading tastes. Threesomes, bondage, submission, violet wands, forced orgasms…” Mick shook his head. “One of those stories even had a pony-play scene.”
Eddie didn’t know how to respond. For the first time in his life, he was flabbergasted. Sweet, seemingly innocent Whitney had a secret hankering for kink.
It probably shouldn’t have come as such a surprise. He’d run into women in the local BDSM scene who worked as school librarians and even church secretaries. Sexual fantasies and fetishes had a funny way of leveling the playing ground, so to speak. In his experience, it was always the stiff, uptight, prudish types who liked the dirtiest, kinkiest stuff.
Of course, Whit wasn’t exactly a prude or stiff. She was modest, reserved. With her job in fashion, she always dressed impeccably and stylishly but never too revealing. A peek at her cleavage, a little leg, but never too much skin. In a way, that made Whitney even more appealing and sexy. There was a hint of mystery about her.
Just the suggestion Whit craved the kind of gentle discipline he liked to dole out made Eddie instantly hard. He cursed under his breath and frowned at Mick. “I wish you hadn’t told me that.”
“Why? Because now you want her even more?” Mick wore a daring look. “You ever think maybe she wants us? I have a hard time believing she felt you up right here in our living room without any ulterior motive.”
“And if you’re wrong?” Eddie’s stomach soured with the thought. He slashed the air with his hand. “No. I’m not about to play with fire.”
His emotions jumbled, Eddie turned hard and stalked toward the dining room. He needed some space to think, to sort out his wants and needs from reality.
“Well, get out your fire extinguisher and stand on the sideline because I’m about to play.”
Eddie whipped around at Mick’s parting shot. He clipped the side of a sawhorse and caught his foot in a length of extension cord. Try as he might, there was no averting the impending fall. Like some damned knight in shining armor, Mick jumped forward to steady him but just made things worse. Mick tripped over the suddenly taut extension cord. His fumbled grab threw their combined weight against the sawhorse. In a tangle of arms and legs, they slammed into the floor. A split second later, the teetering sawhorse dumped the open gallon of paint on their twisted forms.
“For fuck’s sake,” Eddie growled, eyes shut as paint dribbled onto his head. The cool, wet liquid slithered along his forehead and followed the curve of his face. It pooled along his ear, prompting him to shake his head wildly like a wet dog.
“Hey!” Mick yelped. “You’re getting paint on my face.”
Eddie cracked an eye to survey the damage. Mick’s back, shoulders, and arms were coated in sage green. His head and face had been spared except for the spatter of Eddie’s castoff.
As the initial shock of their fall and the ensuing paint bath passed, Eddie became acutely aware of their precarious position. Mick straddled his thighs with one hand planted next to Eddie’s head for support. His sweat- slicked, naked chest looked like something off of a romance novel cover. The weight of Mick’s body pressing down on his provoked memories of their bedroom antics. In his perpetually aroused state, it didn’t take much for Eddie to regain the full stiffness of an erection.
“Well, well, well…” Mick grinned and gave his hips a rock. The loose fabric of his shorts did little to hide Mick’s raging erection. Their cocks bumped together clumsily. Mick’s second swaying movement was more controlled, more precise.
Eddie hissed at the contact and wished the fabric separating their bodies would disappear. His control wore thin. The sensation of Mick’s encouraging hip movements was too much. He grasped the back of Mick’s head and drew him down for a hard kiss. Mick played hard to get, resisting Eddie’s gentle downward tug. He nipped Eddie’s lower lip. “Shower?”
“Hell yes.”
Chapter Two
“Crap!” Whitney tried to keep the bags of Chinese takeout from sliding off the window-unit box she held in her arms. She cast a pleading glance at the door, willing it to open. Where the hell were the guys? She’d expected them to come bounding down the sidewalk to help as soon as she pulled into the driveway.
She used her body to hold the box against the wall and fumbled with her house keys. Leaving the keys dangling in the deadbolt lock, she turned the knob and gave the door a little shove with the sole of her flip-flop. She lugged the box inside the house, careful not to disturb the delicate balance of takeout bags.
“Mick? Eddie?” She listened for a reply but heard only silence. In the living room, she discovered an even bigger mess than she’d left. A paint can rested near a sawhorse. Pools of paint congealed on the exposed flooring. Flecks of green paint marred the ceiling fan.
What. The. Fuck.
Whitney’s blood pressure skyrocketed. It was like living with a pair of toddlers. She’d just come back from the most stressful two weeks of her entire adult life, an impetus forcing her to take a damn hard look at her current situation, and had made a big, ballsy, and frankly terrifying decision.
And she needed her guys in her corner. She needed to sit down with them, share a bottle of wine and a few beers and talk this out. She trusted their intuition and respected their opinions. She needed them both to tell her it was going to be okay, that she wasn’t crazy to think about leaving her current job and joining a new venture.
Whit had expected to come home to her nice, cozy, if not somewhat boring, shared space, but instead she’d walked into this home-improvement disaster. As much as she’d wanted to grouch at the two of them, she simply couldn’t. She
And the guys had taken it upon themselves to do it while she was away on business. Even though their little plan had clearly gone awry, it was truly the thought that counted. The ceiling fan, paint colors, and wooden blinds were all things she’d picked out in decorating magazines. Apparently Mick and Eddie had been paying attention to the glossy pages adorned with red circles and hastily jotted notes.
Realizing they cared so much made Whitney feel so good. It had been a long, long time since she’d felt as if she was part of a family. Her parents had died when she was young. Her aunt had done her very best, but she’d struggled with her alcoholism and hadn’t been able to provide a very stable environment. Eventually Whitney had ended up in foster care and bounced around from home to home until graduating high school. A likeminded group
