Muffin Top (Page 26)

He stared at her with a look she’d never seen him have before. Oh, she’d seen flirty Frankie. This wasn’t him. This was something different altogether. Hotter. More intense. The air around them sparked and sizzled.

He lifted a third finger. “I have had more inconvenient and unplanned hard-ons in the past five days than a grown man should admit to. And after I woke up in that B and B and saw you sleeping in the bed next to me, with your tank top not even having a hope in hell of containing your boobs? That’s when I started revising my definition of what sex is, because thinking about how good you must taste is all I can think about when I’ve got my hand wrapped around my dick. There is nothing more that I want to do right now than find out just how much my imagination sucks, because I bet you taste better when you come than anything else in the world. And there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.”

It was probably just because they were together twenty-four seven. It was a vacation-from-reality reaction on his part, that was why he couldn’t do anything about it. Besides, he was an admitted man-whore, and she was basically the only single woman he’d met all week.

Still…it was hot in here.

Check that.

It was scorching. Her whole body had that oh-my-God-yes tingly thing going on. Just from his words. Was that possible? She hadn’t thought so until that moment.

It was so disconcerting that her next question flew out before she had a chance to consider it. “You saw my boobs?”

One ginger eyebrow went up. “After everything I just said, me seeing your fan-fucking-tastic rack is what you’re caught on?”

“Yes,” she said as she shook her head no.

He shoved his fingers through his hair. “Thank God I didn’t tell you the rest of it.”

She gulped, her heart beating so fast it had to be approaching light speed. “There’s more?”

This was how he flirted? She resisted the urge to fan herself and pull at her collar like some kind of cartoon. No wonder the women of Waterbury couldn’t resist him. The man was lethal to the better-decision-making process.

“Would you like to hear all about it?” he asked, his voice low and rough as if he was trying not to sound so damn sexy and failing miserably.

Of course, that’s when the waitress stopped by their table and asked if there was anything else she could get them and—judging by the fact that the waitress stood so her back was to Lucy—by “them” she meant only Frankie and by “anything” she meant a blow job.

The dismissal of even the idea that Lucy could be with someone like Frankie by the waitress was enough to take an ice pick of reality to her hot air balloon of sexually frustrated anticipation. This was reality.

“Just the check,” Lucy said to the waitress’s back.

The waitress glanced back over her shoulder with a shocked expression as if she’d genuinely forgotten Lucy was there. It wasn’t the first time Lucy had gotten this reaction after speaking. It was as if being fat put a target on her and gave her an invisibility cloak at the same time. If she wasn’t so used to it, it would have pissed her off. As it was, it just made her tired.

“Don’t even think you’re paying for this,” Frankie said, ignoring the waitress. “I asked you out, I get the check.”

Nope. That took this whole thing too far into the pity date territory she was determined to avoid at all costs, and she was still too flustered from Frankie’s outburst to agree to that. “You know why that’s not gonna happen.”

“There’s a lot that’s not gonna happen.”

And double ouch. Sure, she knew it was just an attraction-by-proximity thing with him, but the swiftness of his declaration made her wince anyway. “With the number one being you paying for lunch.”

The waitress let out a huff and smacked the bill down on the table. “Once y’all figure it out, you can pay up front.” Then she sashayed away from their table without a single look back.

“I think you pissed her off,” Lucy said, stating the obvious because her brain was too fried and her body’s reaction to the man across from her too strong to think of anything witty.

And the constant belly-tightening awareness of him made no sense. She knew she and Frankie couldn’t be a thing. Taking a deep breath, she went over the list. One, she wasn’t his type. Two, he wasn’t hers. Three, he was on the sex bench. Four, he was only flirting with her because that’s what he did, not because he meant it. Five, they’d have to go back home eventually, and being one more on the long list of Frankie Hartigan’s women did absolutely nothing for her.

Okay, it did something for her, but only in a late-night-fantasy way, definitely not in a real-world, light-of-day way. No way did she want to turn this pity date week into a pity fuck, too.

Flustered and annoyed with herself, she grabbed the bill before he could and hustled over to the cashier by the door. Chicken? Her? Totally.

Frankie didn’t press her on her fast getaway from Charbroiled. He changed the subject and kept her laughing and made her heart beat faster with a little touch here or a look there all the way back to her dad’s house. They’d no more than walked in the door—Frankie having to pivot to avoid a flying ballistic missile otherwise known as Gussie, who seemed to be as interested in what Frankie had behind his zipper as she was—when she spotted the note. It was three sentences on a yellow Post-it stuck to the mirror next to the coatrack.

Muffin,

Leading group session and then meeting Alvarez for drinks. Don’t wait up. Be good.

Dad

Be good? Like she needed to be told that. She was a grown woman. Her gaze drifted over to Frankie, who was holding Gussie in his arms but at a distance, sort of like a non-kid person held a toddler with a stinky diaper. Her pulse ticked up. Shit. Maybe she did need a reminder if watching him avoid getting a Gussie tongue bath as the French Bulldog whined in frustration was getting her worked up.

“What are we going to do with ourselves?” he asked, putting down Gussie, who immediately began running in excited circles around him.

She had ideas. She had lots of ideas. None of which would be put into action.

“Up for a movie?” he asked.

“Sure.” She could totally sit next to Frankie Hartigan in the dark and pretend to pay attention to a movie plot instead of how sexy he looked with a few days beard scruff, or how even the idea of his thick fingers touching her made her need to squeeze her thighs together to relieve the ache that had been building since they’d left Waterbury.

She was a grown-ass woman.

Of course she could do that.

Really.

Maybe.

Okay, this was going to be hell.

…

It took about ten minutes into the movie before Frankie realized he was the world’s biggest dumbass.

They’d sat down on the couch, Gussie collapsed in his doggie bed across the room, and he flipped on the first movie on Netflix that didn’t sound like complete crap and turned the lights out to better get the movie experience—that’s when things went south.

The choice of movie didn’t help. It was supposed to be a comedy. What he hadn’t realized was that it was a sex comedy about two friends who decided to add benefits to the mix. There was nothing like being alone in the dark watching two people decide whether or not they could fuck without making things complicated to pretty much guarantee that he wasn’t going to be able to stop imagining how a similar conversation would go with Lucy.