Decker looked down at me, his slowly traveling eyes taking me in. I felt breathless and on edge. “When’s your next day off?” he asked, surprising me. I’d expected him to lash out, prove me wrong, or tear me apart.
“Tuesday,” I replied.
“Good. Don’t make any plans. I’m taking you somewhere,” he replied before biting his lip and pulling away, taking his heat with him. It felt like I could actually breathe again.
“I’m not sure I want to go anywhere with you,” I replied before crossing my arms at my chest and inadvertently pushing my breasts up. His eyes traveled down to my cleavage, then snapped back up to me.
“Too bad,” he replied with a smirk before leaving my bedroom, taking his confusing personality with him.
Too bad? Too fucking bad? Decker Harris was one confusingly sexy jerk, and I didn’t like how much I was starting to like it.
6
Decker
I wasn’t up early to see her.
Nope. Not me.
I normally woke up at fucking six a.m. on a Sunday. I normally went for a run to get rid of the tension in my chest. I normally sat at the kitchen table, staring down the hall like some goddamn creep.
I knew the moment she woke up. I could hear her alarm going off through the thin walls of Lance’s loft. I lifted a strategic yet casual glance in her direction as she left her bedroom and strolled into the bathroom across the hall with a yawn.
I was so totally, utterly fucked. Her age was already an issue, but that, combined with the fact that she was Lance’s little sister, made her completely off limits. Besides, I wasn’t even sure if I liked her or not. I was a man of science—double majored at fucking Princeton in Chemistry and Biology. I liked to solve things, rip molecules apart just to figure them out. And Blakely? She was a conundrum of contradictions, an experiment I couldn’t get a hold on, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
I could hear the water running in the bathroom, and my mind wondered how she looked in the damn shower, droplets of water flowing over her perky tits. Nope. Not going there. Not even for a goddamn minute. Get your shit together, Decker.
When Blakely first showed up, I had her right under my thumb. Some long lost sister appeared out of the blue and wanted to set up in Lance’s house? I’d decided: Fuck that.
People like Lance and me had had wagon hitchers breaking down our doors since the day we were born. I might have been a damn teacher, but my trust fund was worth a couple hundred years of my cushy private school salary—and then some.
We were simple guys with simple lives, avoiding the money and bragging rights our parents gave us. But that didn’t mean we were able to go blindly into any friendship, any relationship. When we moved to Memphis, we ran away from that all, but of course Blakely had to show up and tilt our world on its axis.
The bathroom door opened, releasing a plume of steam. And God dammit. She walked out clutching a towel around her curvy frame and quickly disappeared into her bedroom. I gripped the table so hard my knuckles turned white. What the fuck was wrong with me? I needed to do something. Get the hell out of this house, maybe go to a hotel or something.
No. That wouldn’t do. Lance was like a brother to me, and I needed to keep an eye on her.
Or at least that’s what I was telling myself. I couldn’t figure out what it was about Blakely. Every time I expected her to do one thing, she did the complete opposite. I was ripping apart her truth, and every damned layer brought me to a new understanding of the tortured girl walking around our apartment. But that wasn’t even the part that had me transfixed. It was that she claimed she wanted to protect Lance from their deceased mother in her own strange way. I wasn’t sure if I believed it or not, but I wanted to know more.
“Good morning,” she said in a sleepy voice while towel drying her hair and walking barefoot toward me. She didn’t bother to put on any makeup, not that she needed it. It was strangely intimate. I lived with a complete stranger, but she didn’t even bother trying to impress either of us. She always walked around in her damn pajamas, swaying her hips as she hummed to herself, and it was driving me fucking nuts. This morning it was her work uniform. Had I known Rose owned a bar where Blakely would be wearing that, I would have never gotten her the job, not in a million years. She needed to work at a nunnery.
“Morning,” I grumbled back, pissed that the thought of seeing her was making me wake up at the ass crack of dawn just to gawk. Shit, was I really admitting this to myself now? I was fucked with a capital F.
“You’re up early for a Sunday,” she said before pouring herself a cup of coffee.
“I like to start my day with a run,” I lied. I actually liked to start my day with a blow job, but that wasn’t happening.
“So you’re one of those people,” she replied with mischief before opening the fridge and bending over to grab some creamer. Her ass was perched high up in the air, and I wanted to burn my eyes with acid to stop them from wandering in her direction.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
“I don’t trust people that run for fun. Masochists, all of you,” she replied with a lazy wave of her hand before methodically pouring creamer into her cup and mixing it with a spoon.
“There’s nothing wrong with being healthy,” I said. I didn’t necessarily like to work out, but having a healthy lifestyle was ingrained in me at a young age. My dad played pro ball for most of my youth, and even though I didn’t follow in his footsteps, working out was one of the few things we bonded over.
I watched her as she leaned against the countertop, sipping her coffee as she took in my basketball shorts and tank. I wasn’t blind. I knew the effect I had on most of the female population. I’d gotten enough anonymous love notes from my students to prove it, not that I’d ever entertained that. I wasn’t some fucking creep. I usually went for older women—women that were sure of themselves in and out of the bedroom. It would be unethical to even think about it, and yet here I was, imagining what Blakely would look like with her lips wrapped around my co—
“So where are you taking me Tuesday?” she asked while rolling her neck. My eyes traveled the defined lines of her collarbone and dipped down to her cleavage. I snapped my eyes back up, realizing she’d asked me a question.
“Huh?” I asked, sounding lame even to my ears.
“I said,” she began while pushing herself away from the counter and sauntering over to the kitchen table. She sat down before continuing. “Where are you taking me Tuesday?”
Ah. And there it was, just the opening I needed.
“I’ll tell you if you tell me another truth,” I replied with a smirk. I don’t know what it was, but hearing her past was like a fucking drug, and I just wanted another hit. I was addicted to her story, addicted to learning what made her tick. In the beginning, I told myself that it was because I wanted to protect Lance, but now I wasn’t so sure.
“You and these truths. Haven’t you had enough?” she asked in a coy voice I could practically feel in my chest.
“No. Tell me,” I demanded, hoping she couldn’t hear the tension in my voice or how tempted I was to plead for more. I was worse than Lance’s ex-girlfriend, the meth addict that stole thousands from him.