“A reputation that generally revolves around taking pics of half-naked men?” he asked in a teasing tone.
“What can I say? I have an eye for good-looking men, muscles, and sometimes, a nice, thick bulge in a pair of Calvin Klein’s,” I declared with a wink.
I expected him to retort with something about his thick bulge, but he merely laughed and continued to massage my feet, working those big hands up to my calves.
Hmmm…maybe Thatcher Kelly could be serious every once in a while?
I glanced at the clock on the cable box and saw it was nearly ten o’clock. “Well, roomie, I better hit the hay. I have to be out the door before dawn for a shoot in the Hamptons.”
He removed my feet from his lap and stood, holding out a hand to help pull me off the couch.
“What are you doing?” I asked as I got to my feet in front of him. My eyes scrutinized his, waiting for him to raise the white flag and tell me to go home—which would mean the ultimate prankster would officially be dethroned from his royal throne of pranking and I would walk away victorious.
Say it! Say it! Say it! I chanted in my head.
“I’m going to bed too.”
Huh?
“We’re both going to bed? Right now? In your bed?”
“I think you can start calling it our bed now, baby,” he said with a wink as he walked toward the hall.
I followed his lead into his bedroom, until we were both standing in front of the his and hers sinks in his master bathroom. Thatch seemed to be completely at ease, brushing his teeth, peeing—in front of me—and then, washing his hands. A few minutes later, he was cozied up in bed while I remained in the bathroom, just staring at my toothbrush, which he had kindly set in my hand.
“If you forgot toothpaste, feel free to borrow mine,” he called from the bed.
“Uh…thanks,” I muttered.
As I brushed my teeth and stared at my reflection in the mirror, I started to wonder what tricks Thatch had up his sleeve. I had a feeling he had a plan in place, and no way in hell was I going to let him one-up me without already having some plans of my own.
I crawled into bed beside him, fluffing the pillows and patting the plush white comforter around my body. “Good night,” I said into the dark room.
“Night, Cass,” he responded, and I swore I could hear a smirk in his voice.
And because I truly loved fucking with him, I finished the “good nights” off by reaching under the covers, grabbing his package, and whispering, “Good night, Supercock.”
He chuckled softly a few times, and to my surprise, Thatch’s big hands didn’t even try to cop a feel of my tits.
That’s not disappointment you’re feeling, I told myself as a weird hollowness took shape in my belly. Really.
Within a few minutes, I could hear his breaths easing in and out at a slow and steady pace.
As I lay awake beside the sleeping giant, his soft breaths lulling me toward sleep of my own, I tried to make sense of his act of utter contentment.
The only explanation I could find was that the prankster had already planned his next move.
Game on, motherfucker.
“A week,” I said into the webcam, rubbing at the tight skin of my forehead.
“What?” Kline asked. I wanted to poke out his overly amused blue eyes.
“She’s been living with me for a fucking week, dude.”
Boisterous laughter filled my ears, and I flipped him the bird since I knew he could see it. Well, he’d be able to see it when his head came forward again after his all-out humor-seizure, anyway.
“So she’s there a week. What’s the big deal?” he asked as he shuffled some stupid papers from one side of his desk to the other. His voice had finally evened, but a smile still swallowed his face from ear to ear.
“The big deal is that I made her an omelet this morning because she told me to, and we haven’t had any more sex. That office blow job is the last activity my dick saw. Taking orders and not being rewarded? I don’t even know who I am anymore.”
“Have you tried to have sex with her?”
Well, I mean… Not really. I’d expected it would just happen. I chose not to tell Kline that, and he pretty obviously took it to mean the opposite.
“Right. I forgot who I was talking to.”
Yeah, yeah. I had the friend vote for Most Likely to Become a Prostitute wrapped up.
“So ask her to leave,” he said seriously, looking straight into the camera and raising an eyebrow in challenge.
This was a test, and I was definitely going to fail. Or pass, depending on what he wanted from me. Fuck.
I didn’t want her to leave. She was entertaining and funny and so goddamn hot my retinas burned just thinking about her. But the whole “look but don’t touch” thing was really starting to wear out my stamina, and not in the good way. Plus, I still couldn’t figure out what the fuck was going on. I knew she was pranking me. I knew it. But it didn’t even remotely feel like it.
I also didn’t really want to give Kline the inch he was so desperately stretching for.
I fought the natural change in my features to keep my expression neutral. “And give in first? No fucking way.”
I never give in first.
He smiled at that and shook his head, tilting it down to look at his phone at some kind of naked picture of Georgie, no doubt. His eyes came back to me, a full Tyra Banks smize engaged.
What? So I like America’s Next Top Model. Sue me.
“Why aren’t you driving this little game?” he asked, clicking the lock button on the side of his phone and setting it on his desk. “You seem to be sitting back and letting her call the shots, and that’s not normally your style.”
“You’re right,” I agreed, doodling some flames on a nearby Post-it note. “That’s not my style.”
I didn’t wait and see, I did. I didn’t let things happen; I made them. And no woman was going to outlast me. First rule of life: the woman always goes first. Through doors, into orgasm, and in this case, crumbling to the pressure in a battle of wills.
“Fuck right,” I went on, truly fired up now. I probably should have paid more attention to the smirk on Kline’s face, but apparently, I wasn’t quite done being young and impressionable no matter how old I got.
“Oh, honey!” I called as I stepped through the door to my apartment, a new sense of purpose in my step. I’d been inside Cassie’s mouth, and pussy, and by the end of this night, I was going to repeat both.
I was fucking determined.
“Cassie?” I called when she didn’t answer, surveying the apartment with a keen eye. Nothing looked amiss. No new boxes of tampons littered the kitchen counter, and there was no Hello Kitty throw blanket on the couch.
I smiled to myself and shook my head, curious to see what else she’d come up with. She thought outside the normal box. I take that back—my favorite brand of woman wasn’t constrained inside a box. She was sitting dead center inside her endless loop of crazy.
“Yo, Cass!” I called down the hall to no answer.
Anxiety tightened my chest as I moved in that direction toward my bedroom. Maybe she had given in, moved out—gone on some shoot with exotic men in an exotic location—and my apartment would be all mine again.
God, I hope not.
I stopped dead in my tracks at my line of thinking. I hoped not?
That was ridiculous.
Still, it drove me forward again, the quiet in my bedroom and lack of activity in my closet sinking a pit into my stomach.
Before I could look around, hunt for her belongings that I’d battled so heartily to hide throughout the week, the doorbell rang.
I changed direction and headed back out of my room, down the hall, and straight to the door. When I opened it, a flower version of a centaur filled the doorway.
He wasn’t actually half man, half flowers, but the enormous bouquet blocking the entirety of his body from his waist to his face sure made him look like it.
“Delivery for Cassie Phillips?” he asked. My heart swelled and sank at once as soon as he said the words, an extreme war of wills between the two versions of me playing out in my head. She was getting deliveries to my apartment, which was insane and insanely comforting. But she was getting flowers, fucking blood-red roses, and those fucks usually came from pricks with dicks.
Six feet, five inches worth of blood started to boil.
“Yeah, thanks,” I said, nearly yanking the huge vase from his arms. He shrugged and took off as I shut the door behind him.
Two angry steps ate the distance between me and the kitchen counter. The glass of the vase clanged against the stone as I slammed it down and rifled through the blooms to find a card without shame.
“Aha!” I shouted as my forefinger and thumb closed around the soft paper of the envelope and yanked it out.
It was too fucking tiny for my big fingers to open delicately, and it ended up looking like I’d chewed it open, but I could throw that evidence away.
The first side was blank, but the second was filled with the scrawl of whatever employee had taken the order.
Dearest Cassie,
You’re so bangable.
Love, Thatcher’s Boner
“Did you send these?” I looked from the card to my dick in question, but after several seconds of irrational thought, I knew he couldn’t have done it. He’d been with me all day.
The only other explanation, however, was that she’d sent them to herself, as me. Or as part of me.