His face twisted with satisfaction and his intense gaze burned with heat, and I loved the way it always seemed to find me. There were two other people in the scene, but they only seemed to exist in the background. Secondary characters, while he treated me like I was the main one.
Even as the scene drew to a close, and Abbie and I were on our knees in front of the men preparing to finish, he barely glanced at her. Once he started to come? Well, then he didn’t look at her at all.
He stared at me with eyes full of things he wanted to say, but then the orgasm was too powerful for him to keep them open any longer. God, he was beautiful.
When it was over, I was supposed to kiss Abbie, but it was cut short. His hands went under my arms, and I was pulled up to stand so he could seal his mouth over mine.
The kiss was blistering and made me go weightless. I might have swayed, but his arms locked around me, holding me up. He kissed me, knowing that time was running out, and when the scene was over, we’d have to go back to the safety of whatever we’d been the last three weeks.
Coworkers?
Friends?
I hated that and didn’t want the kiss to end, and he didn’t either.
But Scott cleared his throat in the attention-getting way.
“I guess they didn’t hear Nina say cut,” Jaquan teased, although it was true. Everything stopped when Colin’s mouth was mine.
“Aw, leave them alone.” Abbie’s tone was warm and sweet. “They’re so cute.”
All the blood in my body rushed to my face, heating it until it was as hot as the surface of the sun. Colin and I separated, both making an attempt to not look embarrassed, although I was sure he was more successful than I was.
Shit.
If this was what every scene was going to be like with him from now on, I was in big trouble.
Colin and I didn’t see each other until a few days later. I wasn’t avoiding him, but I’d been busy with classes, and only able to work out in the mornings, when he seemed to prefer the afternoons.
I was in the kitchen, prepping my meals for the rest of the week, when he strolled in. His footsteps slowed as he made his way to the fridge, caught off guard at seeing me unexpectedly.
“Hey,” he said.
My body was taut, acutely aware of him. “Hi.”
He pulled a sports drink from the fridge, unscrewed the cap, and drank as he watched me mince garlic. “What are you making?”
“Honey sriracha meatballs and rice.”
“Nice.”
He lingered like he didn’t want to leave, but also had no fucking clue what else to say. Things between us had changed, and he felt it too, but neither of us knew where to go from here.
But before we could figure out anything to say, the door to the garage opened and shut, and Scott appeared in the doorway from the mud room. He held a stack of mail, but one letter had been opened and read already, judging by the way he clutched the unfolded paper in his hand.
The pissed off expression on his face was another clue.
“Fucking HOA,” he groaned to no one in particular.
It was a sore subject around here these days. The Woodsons had fought the association about their mismatched AC units . . . and they’d lost. It was stated in the bylaws that all exterior equipment visible from the homeowner’s driveway had to match.
Scott offered to put up a fence, but naturally the HOA declined them a permit.
Then they suggested landscaping to hide it, but the plans couldn’t get approval.
After paying the outrageous fines for three weeks, Scott and Nina had caved. They’d decided it was better to cut their losses and get back in Judy Malinger’s good graces, so they’d upgraded the other two units to match. It had cost a lot of unnecessary money, but then it was over and done, and Judy stopped making impromptu visits to check on the mismatched equipment.
“What’s going on now?” I asked.
Scott tossed the crumpled letter down on the counter. “They’re raising the monthly association fee. I don’t fucking get it. With all the ridiculous fines they collect for every goddamn thing, how do they not have enough money already?” He dropped the rest of the mail and leafed through it, but his irritation didn’t dissipate. “I swear, if we’d known, we never would have moved in.”
“Can’t something be done?” I asked. “Like, a group complaint or a—”
“Several of us homeowners tried to recall her in February,” his expression turned bitter, “but she got wind of it, and the board—who all fucking love her for some reason—voted to change the rules. We couldn’t reach the new quorum of eighty-five percent, so the effort failed.”