It did.
“Okay,” Dave said, reaching for the blindfold. “That’s the ultimate forfeit. And if they’re too much of a pussy about what’s in the cans, Sayla can apply some hair dye with her blindfold on, too.”
Sayla perked up and clapped excitedly. “Yay for me!”
After the blindfold was tied over my eyes, I realized I had a problem. See, without the ability to see and focus on details visually, my other senses kicked in. And because I was sitting between Alex’s legs, his thighs tightly pressed against my sides, with my arms resting on his forearms as he leaned forward to put his chin on my shoulder—all I could do was focus on him.
He smelled fucking amazing. Not like he’d just run through the men’s cologne department and survived the spray gauntlet in it, but like clean laundry and his body wash, with a faint undertone of sandalwood.
And every time he moved his arms, I felt the muscles under his t-shirt shift and tense, and then his legs would squeeze me slightly afterward, like he was trying to reassure me.
I was wearing a racerback tank top so my shoulders were bare, and every so often, he’d move his jaw or gently rub it across the area. Because he hadn’t shaved since that morning, the stubble that’d grown in the interim period rasped over the skin, leaving goosebumps. Weirdly enough, if Neil rubbed his stubble on any part of my body, it started to itch, and I’d break out in a rash. I was prepared for it to happen with Alex, but it never did.
Could you be allergic to someone? Come to think of it, I’d quit wearing my engagement and wedding ring because I’d developed a rash under them after six months even though they were gold. So maybe I had been allergic to him?
“Ladies, are you ready?” Logan asked, sounding like he wanted to burst out laughing and was only just holding it back.
Man, I wish Cody was here to see this. He’d love it.
Like he was reading my mind, Alex muttered, “When he gets back, we’ll have to order some of these and do it again. He’d enjoy the shit out of this.”
“We doing this again when Bud’s back?” Dave asked loud enough for everyone else to hear.
I swear, everyone held their breath while they waited for Alex’s response.
“I just said that to Evie. He’d fucking love doing this with everyone.”
I began blinking rapidly behind the blindfold to try and stop the tears that were building. I guess if they fell, I ran a good chance of the blindfold stopping them, but then I’d get a snotty nose, and it’d be gross. No, I had to win the fight.
Then Logan said something that helped me win the war. “Open the cans.”
Alex leaned over me, taking me with him, and then I heard the noise of the lid being pulled off. He didn’t say anything, but his body tensed behind me.
I wanted to ask if it was bad, but I really didn’t want to have to take a bite of everyone else's, so I bit down on my lip instead. Tense muscles couldn’t be a good thing, right?
Unfortunately, as were the rules of the game, we were then instructed to reach into the can and take out the item waiting for us.
That’s when all hell broke loose.
Alex
It’s fair to say that I’d been around long enough to assume I’d seen almost every reaction to bugs there was.
I was wrong.
In our can, we’d had a tarantula. Someone out there had actually cooked and salted the poor bastard and put it in the can for the recipient to eat. What the hell kind of person did that?
In Tabby’s can, there was a scorpion, prepared in the same way.
In Bex’s, there were either two locusts or two massive grasshoppers.
And in Sayla’s… Well, she’d come out of it the luckiest because she had dried mealworms.
The minute the women had figured out what they were holding, they’d screamed and thrown them onto the trampoline and ripped their blindfolds off. This meant that the other women could see what else had been in each other’s cans, and when they saw the huge spider and scorpion, they’d all freaked out and started trying to get off the trampoline to get away from them.
With each movement or attempt to stand, the creatures would move around the netting, bouncing from woman to woman, making them scream and move more frantically.
Right now I was standing off to the side with Logan and DB, all of us watching it with our arms crossed over our chests.
“I reckon they’ll get a lot of views on this,” Logan mused.
DB rubbed his jaw as he watched Tabby screech when the tarantula landed on her thigh. “Does this mean they all get a haircut?”
Evie was now curled up in the fetal position with her arms wrapped around her head, unknowingly bouncing around on top of the pile of mealworms that’d spilled out of one of the cans.