AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Normally, hoofing it up the basement stairs, then around the outside of the building, up several concrete slabs of questionable integrity, and another fourteen-step staircase to her apartment was a moderate feat of strength for Molly. She’d been used to schlepping far more up and down to the basement, which had zero access points from inside the building itself, especially when all her aprons were dirty and she’d determinedly cram three loads worth of starchy whites into one machine barely up to doing a quarter of the task.
What she was not used to, however, was the unfounded need to hustle a barely spun wet shirt inside as fast as possible because the lone drier was, once again, out of order. Sure, she could have hand-washed it in the kitchen sink, as her microscopic bathroom pedestal sink tended to clog on a good day, but then she’d risk Brass smelling of garlic and olive oil. While that was a fragrance she’d go feral for, she doubted he’d want to smell like an Italian breadstick on his way home.
So, the fifteen-minute quick wash cycle it was.
This left her houseguest, who was decidedly male and very much shirtless, lingering in her apartment with plenty of opportunities to analyze all the ten levels of crazy she’d just demonstrated.
Fuckity fuck fuck!
Molly leaped over cracked concrete, cradling the sodden shirt in her arms like an abandoned orphan baby, and hurled herself through the shared door to her garden apartment stairwell.
“Please, to whoever happens to be up, down, and all around, let me find one of Drea’s hair dryers in the bathroom.” Her friend had been blessed with the ass-length hair of a Roman goddess and, as such, often required the magical stylings of not one but several commercial-grade strand scorchers to get her hair even remotely dry. One of those puppies could certainly blast the water out of Brass’s shirt sooner than it would take Molly to find the dignity she’d left on the side of her building somewhere…
Again, her mind wandered to where it shouldn’t.
Brass.
It did Molly no sort of good to tumble over all the things she’d just shared, both spoken and unspoken, with that man, in her bedroom of all places. Though her legs burned with the strain of climbing too many steps in too chilly air, it was her knees that threatened to give out, especially the spot that still scorched from the small contact she’d had with him. And then there had been the hotter-than-hell hand-holding, which her skin still tingled from the memory of.
Stop it, stop it, stop it, she scolded herself. He is an employee who is clearly going through some stuff in his personal life. You need about as much involvement in that as a plumber needs extra helpings of shit-clogged overtime on a holiday.
The temptation was there, however, loud, proud, and smack-dab in front of her terrified face, but she hadn’t made it up the mountain of male egos and misogyny by giving into every sad story that tugged at her heartstrings. It certainly didn’t matter how he’d made her laugh, or confessed to looking for her through the window from the parking lot, or why his brothers didn’t understand him but she did . . .
None of it would make any lick of difference if she sent the dude home in nothing but shivering skin and a smile.
And why the hell did that thought pluck up urges that hadn’t been stirred in more than a hot minute?
Molly all but fell through the door before she kicked it closed, still cushioning Brass’s shirt to her chest and grimacing at the wet spot on her clothing it left behind. “Dryer was out of order, but I think I’ve got one of Drea’s hair dryers that ought to do the trick?—”
The bathroom door exploded open, bouncing off the wall with a jarring thud. Wood creaked as it hung off a broken hinge, and Molly had to throw herself backward against the dining table to keep from colliding with a veritable safety deposit’s worth of apartment damage.
Brass, in all his half-naked splendor, stumbled from the bathroom in a gale of disorientation, fumbling around for any sort of strong surface that could take his weight. When the wall directly opposite the door met his criteria, he braced tense forearms against it and settled a slick forehead to the surface. Muscles that had only been hinted at beneath form-hugging clothes rippled and jerked in haunted spasms.
“Brass?” Molly abandoned the shirt on the table and inched closer with the care one used to approach a wild animal.
Because there wasn’t an ever-loving doubt in her mind that was exactly what he’d become in that moment.
As she stepped closer, doing her best to swallow down the pulse pounding within her throat, more details about him sharpened. Pregnant drops of water slid off the tips of his hair and cascaded through the misted sheen that had gathered on the surface of his forehead. The hair at the nape of his neck held darker shadows of saturation, while other sections of hair had been buffed dry, revealing tufts of the vibrant auburn she was so used to.
The surface of his skin was similarly mottled, with water dripping down the runnels of ridged muscle between his shoulder blades but noticeably absent from the heaving indentations of his ribs.
Molly took one more steady step, close enough to peer into the bathroom and spy a puddle of pink terry cloth hanging off the lip of the still-running-and-now-overflowing sink.
One with the stopper yanked all the way into thou shall not pass territory.
“Shit!”
She scrambled around the heaving behemoth in her hallway and flew at the faucet. Only once she saw the water level recede did she drop the towel to the sodden bathmat and turn to the man who would owe her new bathroom linens as well as first and last month’s rent.
“What the hell has gotten into you?” The words pelted his broad back like mist on a windshield, and he responded with a startlingly indifferent level of concern. That was to say none whatsoever.
Well, that was just fine. She had more than enough indignation for the both of them. Squaring her shoulders and adopting her best kick-ass kitchen voice, she whirled on him.
“Hey, I’m talking to you.” Molly placed a firm hand on his shoulder, stopping just short of grabbing him by his ear and trotting him back to the bathroom. The instant skin met skin, however, the walls spun away and all that wet, silent bulk that had been braced against a much harder surface was now braced against her.
“You left me.” Shards of ice punctuated every word that left Brass’s lips as he leaned them closer against the column of her throat. “You left and took it with you.”
Confused and, yeah, maybe a tad exhilarated, Molly put her hands against his bare chest to steady herself. “I told you I needed to wash?—”
