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Since I don’t have clean underwear to change into, I go commando as I pull on pair of oversized sweats and a T-shirt. Yep. Commando in my boss’s pants. Bold move, right?
Is it weird to have all my intimate bits naked against his clothes? Maybe. Probably.
But it doesn’t feel weird. It feels intimate and licentious. Delicious and illicit. I’m certainly not underweight, but I’m shorter than he is, and his clothes seem to swallow me whole. Still, there’s something comfortable about the worn cotton.
Even though it’s just sweats and a T-shirt, I’m sure they’re the rich person version of these basic items. I bet they’re woven from organic cotton and silk from free-range butterflies or some such nonsense. My point is this: everything touching my skin is luxurious, soft, and touchable. Wrapping myself in layers of Ian feels like the most decadent thing I’ve ever done.
There’s a wallet sitting out on top of the dresser. Obviously, I don’t dig through it, but I let my fingers linger over the soft leather. There’s also a T-shirt draped casually over the edge, like he pulled it off and dropped it there. My virus is clearly still affecting my brain function, because I can’t resist picking it up and holding it to my nose, huffing in the scent of him like a drug addict.
Would he notice if I stole it? Probably. I’m tempted to replace it with the one I’m wearing so that I can walk around covered in his scent, but that seems too self-indulgent even for me.
I give the closet one last look. He’s so quiet and self-contained. Somehow the closet says things he won’t. As many clothes as he has, they barely take up a third of the space. This isn’t a house design for a single man. And somehow the emptiness of the closet makes me feel a little sad.
Partly for him, because the unused space in the closet seems lonely. When Ian bought this house, did he imagine his ex living here with him? Did he think her expensive clothes would hang beside his, taking up all that extra room? Does he feel sad every time he comes in here, faced with a reminder of the relationship he doesn’t have?
It makes me feel sad, but something else as well. Something even less pleasant. Defensive, maybe? Angry on his behalf. Offended that dumb bitch didn’t see what she had. Maybe even a little righteous on his behalf. If she didn’t have the good sense to hold onto him while she had him, she doesn’t deserve him.
He deserves someone who sees how wonderful he is. How kind and thoughtful. He deserves someone…
My thoughts stutter to a halt.
I need to rein myself back in. He might deserve better than her, but that doesn’t mean I deserve him.
Chapter Thirteen
Ian
Six months ago, I would’ve described myself as a simple man with simple needs. All I wanted was to live alone and do my work in peace.
Now, all of that has changed.
Now the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen is showering in my bathroom, and I can’t get the image of her naked, wet body out of my mind.
No, I didn’t intend to sneak a peek at her like a goddamn pervert. I cracked open the door just to make sure she was okay and hadn’t fallen or something. I purposefully kept my gaze away from the shower. Unfortunately, there are too damn many reflective surfaces in my bathroom, one of which gave me a perfect view of her body as she scrubbed shampoo into her hair. And like a damn creep, I just stood there, watching the water sluice over her body.
Thank god she didn’t catch me acting like a pervert.
Part of me wants to jump in the car, drive away and never come back to this house. Part of me wants to go into the hall bathroom and jerk off so that at least I can relieve some of the pressure. Of course, the largest part of me wants to go back upstairs to the bedroom and join her in the shower.
Not that I’m going to do any of those things.
She’s been sick. She’s at my mercy and in my care. I’m her boss, for Christ’s sake. Even if I wasn’t her boss, joining her in the shower would be out of the question. See the above. She’s been sick, and she’s in my house under my protection. She didn’t choose to come here on her own. I carried her here while she was too sick to protest.
Mere minutes ago, I was afraid she wouldn’t be strong enough to stand up in the shower. She certainly wouldn’t be strong enough for me to fuck her up against the wall.
Since I can’t fuck her and I can’t abandon her, I do the next best thing. I make her dinner.
Or at least I try to.
I’ve worked my way through all the broth she had stashed in the freezer. There are a bunch of ingredients in the refrigerator, but I can’t cook. If I could, I wouldn’t have ended up in this place to begin with. Which leaves me with the options that I had before Martin hired her. Pizza seems out of the question since she’s been on a liquid diet for the past three days. So I call up the Chinese-Mexican restaurant, order two different soups, and promise to tip the guy fifty bucks if he can get it here to me in twenty minutes.
Which leaves me twenty minutes to figure out how to erase the image of her from my mind before I have to go back up there and face her again.
I’m still pacing the kitchen, wondering what I’m supposed to do when her cat emerges from the stairs to stand in the doorway and meows at me.
The innocuously named Mr. Sniggles is a long-haired beast of a cat who weights least thirty pounds and I suspect is part bobcat. He has long fur and a noticeable crick in his tail. One of his eyes looks a little squinty, as if he got into a barroom brawl once, and it never quite recovered. Despite his size and his bad ass attitude, his meow, which I hadn’t heard until now, is surprisingly high-pitched. I look at him in surprise because he hasn’t sought me out before now. “What do you want?”
He gives me a slow blink and then meows again.
