Tainted Love (A Lovestruck Novella Book 1) Read online

  “Hey!” I shout at his retreating back. His steps halt; and he slowly turns around, his face scrunched up with uncertainty, his fists clenched at his sides. I’m almost sure they’re red, possibly bleeding. “Are you okay?” I ask.

  “I don’t know why the fuck I’m here,” he mumbles quietly, either to himself or to me, I’m not sure. He looks down at his fists and flexes them, then back up at me. “Can I use your shower?”

  He wants to take a shower? But that means he’ll be naked, in my bathroom. What if he can tell I just thought about him while I got myself off in the tub? There could be like remnants or something. But despite my embarrassment, he wouldn’t be here asking if it wasn’t important. Especially since he said he lives just down the road.

  “Forget it,” he says before he turns around with a few muttered curses.

  “Wait,” I say to get him to stop when the panic rises inside me again. “You can, um, use the shower. Just, ah, give me a second to clean it up.”

  He stands there, seeming to consider it before finally nodding and walking back towards my apartment. If my heart was racing before, now it feels like it’s trying to thump its way clear out of my chest. This man is too gorgeous to put into words; and in a few minutes, he’ll be naked…in my apartment. My entire body flushes with heat just at the thought. When did I turn into such a horndog?

  “Thanks,” he says when he’s standing in front of me, so big and strong, smelling like sweat and car parts. It’s oddly intoxicating, so very masculine, and I feel my nipples perk up, wanting to get closer. At the same time, I realize I’m not wearing any panties, and the seam of my shorts is now damp.

  “N-no problem,” I stammer in response. “Wait, what’s your name?” I ask, just now realizing I’m letting a man I don’t know anything about into my home to use my shower. All I know is that he’s an auto mechanic and can be sort of a dick.

  “Lawson Andrews,” he says, offering me his right palm that is definitely covered in blood. Andrews, like the auto shop, as a last name, not a first. Must be his dad’s business. “On second thought, maybe not,” he tells me with a half smirk when he pulls his injured hand back before I can shake it.

  “Did you punch someone?” I ask.

  “Yeah, and I wish I had hit him harder,” he replies, with a clenched jaw. That news should make me wary about being alone with him, but it doesn’t. Guess I’m a sucker for a pretty face.

  When he doesn’t elaborate, I don’t push for more information about who earned his wrath. Instead, I step back from the doorway so that he can come in, and then I lock up behind him.

  “Let me…um, I’ll be right back,” I say before escaping down the hall and to the bathroom where I shut the door to take a minute and collect myself.

  Okay, so the hot mechanic who kindly offered me a ride home now wants to use my shower. That means he must not be able to use the one at his apartment for some reason. A reason that left his knuckles bleeding.

  I wipe down all the surfaces with a Magic Eraser, ridding it of any evidence of my earlier orgasm. I sniff the air to see if it smells like sex, and then spray a few squirts of my perfume to make sure.

  After I’m certain that every inch of the small room is clean, I take out a clean towel and wash cloth from the linen closet, leaving them on the sink before backing out as I do a double-check.

  “Shower’s all yours,” I say to my random visitor when I return to the living room. Those three words come out sounding like I’ve been jogging around the block, and I hate my traitorous body for doing that to me.

  “Thanks,” he says again when he walks past me.

  “So, are you hungry? Do you want something to eat? Can I make you something?” I ask his backside in a frantic flurry of words, apparently switching gears from my sultry, sex phone operator voice to my teenage girl with a crush voice.

  “Ah, sure. If you don’t mind?” he asks before licking his sensual lips. Oh, God, I’m gonna burst into flames right here in my hallway.

  “Good. Great. Pizza okay?” I ask, knowing I have a frozen one for sure.

  “Perfect,” he says with an actual smile that makes my legs turn to jelly.

  “Awesome,” I reply and spin around to head toward the kitchen after we stand there in silence so long it becomes awkward. I’m awkward; he’s definitely not. It’s impossible for him to be awkward.

  I preheat the oven and remove the pizza from the freezer, setting it on the counter to unthaw a little while I wait. As soon as I hear the shower turn on, I grab my phone from the coffee table in the living room to call Reagan on the way back to the kitchen.

  “Hi, girly,” she answers on the second ring.

  “You are never gonna believe this,” I tell her without preamble as I watch the temperature readout on the oven rise a few slow degrees at a time. “Right now, at this very second, there is a gorgeous man naked in my shower!”

  “What?” she gasps. “Who did you fuck after work?”

  “Ah, Josie?”

  As soon as I hear his voice from behind me, my entire body tenses and my lust hazy brain replays the words I just spoke to my best friend. How long could he have been standing there? Did he hear me? Oh, fuck, this is so embarrassing.

  “Josie?” he repeats, and I can hear the smile in his voice. Yep, he heard me.

  “Yeah?” I ask without turning around.

  “Do you have a first-aid kit or like Band-Aids or whatever?”

  Shit. He needs something for his hands, so I can’t say no, just to avoid the embarrassment. Reaching up into the kitchen cabinet where I keep all my medical supplies, I grab the plastic kit that I’ve never actually used. Then, I steel my spine so I can turn around and hand it to him.

  “Jesus Christ!” I exclaim in shock, nearly dropping the phone.

  “What? What’s going on, Josie?” my best friend’s voice asks in my ear while I stare for the second time today at the best upper body I’ve ever laid eyes on. It’s like Thor, the god of thunder, is in my kitchen with me, shirtless, barefooted, in nothing but low riding jeans. Oh, shit, and the top button is Un. Fucking. Buttoned, making me desperate to know the exact size of the…hammer Thor’s got swinging down there. Is it big? It has to be, because he’s Thor! This is no man. This here is a freaking god standing before me in nearly all his perfect golden glory.

  When I’m unable to move, other than blink and try to close my gaping mouth, Thor, I mean Lawson, reaches over and extracts the kit from my hand, practically in slow motion. The smile from earlier is still on his face when I eventually force my embarrassed eyes to meet his. Any second now, I may actually be the first person to die of humiliation, melting right onto the floor in a hot puddle of wanton desperation.

  “Thanks. After the night I had…well, I needed that,” Lawson says before turning around and strolling back to the bathroom with the first-aid kit.

  “Josie? Josie? Josie! You better answer me or I’m coming over there!”

  “Yeah?” I reply in a wispy sigh as I sink down until my butt hits the kitchen floor, my back pressed against the cabinet doors.

  “Do you need me to come over?”

  “No, I’m good.”

  “You sure?” she asks.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, who is this guy in your apartment in case he murders you?”

  That makes me laugh because it’s the last thing I could imagine that good-looking son of a bitch doing. He’s too pretty for prison, and I’m sure he knows it.

  “Lawson Andrews,” I whisper.

  “And you’re sure you’re safe with him?”

  “Uh-huh,” I mutter.

  “I can be there in five minutes,” she assures me, even though her apartment next to Madison University’s campus is easily twenty minutes away on the other side of town.

  “I’m fine,” I reply, unable to stop looking in the direction of the bathroom. What I wouldn’t give for a front row seat to him showering, water droplets dripping down his muscular body, his head thrown back
in the stream, his hand on his…

  Reagan gasps loudly into the phone, rudely interrupting my daydream when she asks, “Is he ‘the one’?”

  “What? No,” I instantly reply, even though a tiny little part of me wonders…No, that woman and her “potion” was a hoax.

  “He could be!” she counters. “Have you fucked him?”

  “Oh my God, no!” I exclaim, my face flaming hotter even though I know he didn’t hear her say that, but just because the words on my mind have been uttered.

  “Well, maybe you should…” she suggests.

  I bark out a laugh. “Yeah, right. You haven’t seen him, Reagan. There’s no way he would ever…”

  “Do the wild thing? Sex you up? Get jiggy with it?”

  “Oh my gosh. You’ve seriously lost your mind, so now I’m hanging up,” I tell her.

  “Fine, but I want a full report tomorrow morning before you go to work, if not by text tonight.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I respond. “Goodnight.”

  “Sounds like it’s gonna be a very good one for you,” she laughs before I hang up on her.

  The oven beeps, telling me it’s preheated. So I stand up and get to work, putting the pizza in on a baking sheet and turning the timer to twenty minutes. While that’s going, I open the fridge to see what options I have for drinks. There are thankfully two beers left, so I decide to stick to soda and let Lawson have dibs on those. I have a feeling he might need them more than me tonight.

  Chapter Five

  Lawson

  My forehead slams against the shower tile as the warm, almost scalding water runs down my spine. How did this day get so fucked up? How long has that bitch been fucking him, a man I thought was my friend, behind my back? Why would she do that shit to me?

  The water burns my split open knuckles, but I step back and hold both in the stream to clean them so I can bandage them up. Just thinking about when I went back to ask Josie for the first-aid kit makes me smile, despite all the betrayal and bullshit from earlier. What was it I heard her say on the phone? “Gorgeous man naked in her shower.” Yeah, well, if that was true, then why did that bitch cheat on me? Refusing to fuck me, but fucking my asshole employee.

  Sex was good between me and Katrina, not mind-blowing, but I did my part to make sure she enjoyed herself. And, yeah, I work late most nights, but that’s partially because one of my employees is a slacker, and I have to do most of his job for him. Now I get why Todd fucked around and was lazy during the day, because he wanted to leave me behind with my hands full, while he left to go fuck my girlfriend in our goddamn bed. Guess I’m gonna need to buy a new mattress because there’s no way I’m sleeping on that nastiness now that I know.

  My ego is so bruised I can practically feel the black and blue welt in the center of my chest. Instead of a big S for Superman, it’s in the shape of an L for Loser.

  Since I fired the worthless asshole, now I’ll have even more work to do every day at the shop. But at least with him gone and off the payroll, I can hire someone else. Maybe someone that actually isn’t a fucktard and won’t screw my girlfriend.

  Is this karma paying me back for forgetting her name all of thirty seconds today? I would have to say that’s relatively minor to her fucking someone else, even if it was a jackass move. I don’t know what happened, but when I saw Josie, everything else disappeared. And now, here I am, in her apartment, taking a shower, naked. My balls hurt so bad they’re threatening to burst if I don’t give them some relief soon. There’s no way I can walk back in that living room and not get a hard on so huge Josie notices or one that I can actually survive.

  So what do I do?

  Only feeling a small twinge of guilt for jerking off in someone else’s shower, I reach down and fist my heavy cock, stroking it slowly at first. But then I remember Josie in those shorts and tight top, and my soapy hand starts moving faster up and down my shaft. Especially when I imagine what I would’ve done to her if I had known my girlfriend was fucking someone else. I would’ve bent Josie over the hood of her own car and spanked her ass so hard I’d leave a dirty handprint on her white, spotless dress. Then I would’ve lifted her skirt, yanked her panties down her legs and fucked her so good she would still be feeling me inside her.

  Right now she’s only a few feet away, probably standing in the kitchen in those short as fuck shorts and tank top that offers up her perfect tits like a serving platter, the nipples of which seemed to be as hard as my cock.

  Fuck, fuck, fuckkk. Biting down on my bottom lip, I barely keep from groaning aloud when my release barrels down my spine. Cum sprays halfway across the shower from my pulsing cock. I keep pumping until every drop is spent, leaving me with the happy elation that only orgasms can give. When my body relaxes, I finish washing with Josie’s girly body wash and shampoo. After I climb out of the shower and dry off, I make sure there’s no residual jizz on the walls of the tub, before I redress and head back out into the living room.

  The first thing I notice is that South Park is playing on the television. What the fuck? Did she put it on for me? Because of my shirt?

  “South Park?” I ask her, and she turns from where she’s slicing the pizza in front of the oven.

  “Oh, ah, yeah. I have my favorites DVR’d just for when the mood strikes for a certain one, you know?”

  I do know, and that’s fucking weird. Not sure I believe her, I go over to the sofa cushion and retrieve the remote to check. Sure enough, there are dozens of episodes, all recorded months or weeks ago. And other than the crude cartoons, the only other recorded shows are MMA fights and Marvel comic superhero movies. Who the fuck is this girl? Maybe she has a dick inside those short-shorts. No way. Her tits and ass are too fine to be anything but female.

  “Pizza’s ready,” she says, pulling me out of my fantasy of slipping a hand down her shorts to make sure there’s a pussy inside. I have got to get my shit together.

  “Great,” I reply tightly when I join her in the kitchen. While I watch her, she keeps her eyes down, avoiding my gaze.

  “There’s a few beers in the fridge, water and soda, so help yourself.”

  “Thanks,” I say again as I open the refrigerator and stand inside it to try and chill the fuck out before grabbing one of the beers. Oddly enough, it’s MGD, one of my favorites, not light beer like most chicks seem to drink. And looking over her shoulder, she’s made the manliest of pizzas, a three meat concoction with lots of cheese.

  Is this heaven? Because she can’t be real. No girl on Earth looks like her, a beautiful blonde who likes guy shit and eats like one. It’s impossible. Fuck, she probably has a boyfriend and has all this stuff for when he comes over.

  While I’m studying her, trying to figure out this enigma of a woman, she lifts a steaming slice of pizza up in front of her face and devours it. My own mouth waters at the sight, and I have to swallow down the lust and the hunger that have nothing to do with the pizza and everything to do with Josie.

  “Grab a plate,” she tells me around a mouthful, nodding to the stack of paper ones on the counter. I do as she says, reaching in front of her for a slice of meaty goodness, while my mind keeps spinning.

  This afternoon has been one fucking strange event after another. I guess I sort of have her to thank for coming into the shop after hours and getting me to leave early to take her home. If I hadn’t, who knows how long I would’ve been blind to the cheating going on in my own fucking apartment.

  “You know,” I start, standing only a few inches from her. “If it wasn’t for you, I would be sitting in my apartment with my own case of beer, probably eating a similar pizza with my girlfriend right now.”

  “Oh,” Josie says, her big blue eyes widening before she grabs a napkin and dabs the corners of her mouth in what is a very girly move. “I-I’m sorry?” she asks hesitantly.

  “I’m not,” I tell her. “Because now I know the bitch was cheating on me with an asshole who fucking worked for me.”

  “Oh my God,” she gasps,
covering her mouth again with her napkin. “That sucks really bad. Why would she cheat on you?”

  I bark out a laugh and then shove the pizza in my mouth as I shake my head. “No fucking clue.”

  “Does he have two dicks? He must, right?” she says, making me almost choke on a pepperoni.

  “Must,” I agree with a smile I can’t help as I keep chewing.

  “So, that’s why you’re,” her finger points outside and then swirls around until she swallows her bite of food. “Here?”

  “Yeah. I told her to get her shit out of the apartment by tomorrow,” I answer before taking a seat on one of the two stools at the high-top table. “Your boyfriend won’t care that I’m here, will he?” I ask, trying to sound nonchalant.

  “Ha! Boyfriend?” she repeats before laughing and climbing up on the other stool across from me. “No boyfriend.”

  That’s damn surprising, but definitely good to know.

  “So, the, um, auto repair place, that’s yours?” she asks after we eat in silence for a while and I grab a second slice of piece.

  “Yeah,” I answer. “It was my grandfather’s. And after he died five years ago, my dad, who is the president of a bank, didn’t want it, and neither did anyone else in the family, so I took it over. I’ve always loved fixing up cars, especially classics. There’s not much of a market for just those, so we work on all makes and models, even foreign.”

  “Nice,” she says with a smile. “I love the classics, which is why for my twenty-first birthday my parents had that El Camino fixed up. I’ve always had a thing for those.”

  “Strange, but that’s pretty cool,” I admit before I start chuckling. “How exactly did you lose your door?”

  Josie’s face turns red, and she dabs at the corner of her lips with the napkin again. “It’s gross and embarrassing,” she says, sneaking a look at me from underneath her long eyelashes before they go back down to the pizza on the table. “I, ah, got sick when I was driving down the road. So I pulled over and opened the door. A car or truck came by, and wham, it was torn clean off.”