That way you can fall asleep without me puttering around.”
The thought of Rhys puttering around while I tried to sleep was equal parts inviting and worrying. His presence did weird things to me. Made me feel wired, yet soothed me. Made me agonizingly aware of him, and myself, yet utterly comfortable. Turned on and sexually fraught, but comfortable just…existing near him.
It was a lot to feel from having known him for a handful of hours.
We went back inside, and I handed Rhys my bundle of wet clothes—which was everything, since my backpack had gotten soaked through. I’d tried to bundle it in such a way that my underwear was inside and he’d just have to toss the whole pile in but, of course, as I handed over pile, what should fall out but a lacy pink thong and my favorite stretchy gray romper underwear thing, which I often wore as loungewear—it wasn’t something I’d wear out, as it was definitely meant as underwear, and was clearly what you might call an “intimate” garment.
I looked at my undergarments now sitting on the floor, and Rhys looked at them, and I could see him wondering if he should pick them up, or if I should…
I picked them up, held them. “I, uhhh. Maybe just show me where the laundry is?”
He smiled, not quite a smirk, not quite a kind dismissal of my further embarrassment, but somewhere in between. “It’s just underwear, you know. We all wear it.” He frowned. “Except, I don’t, always. These coveralls tend to fit weird, and they’re more comfortable like this, but commando. I wear underwear with jeans, though. ’Cause of the zippers.”
I felt my cheeks heat again. “You’re…not wearing underwear.”
“Nope. Free-ballin’ it.”
I laughed, and took my laundry. “Well, it’s still weird for you to be handling my unmentionables. We just met. Just show me to the washer.”
He led the way back downstairs to the garage—an industrial-sized, Laundromat-style washer and dryer were up against the back wall; I tossed my stuff into the washer, he added detergent, closed the front-loader washer, adjusted the settings, and pushed the empty quarter tray in to start it.
“It’s a thong, not a dildo,” he said, once the washer was filling with water. “No reason for it to be weird.”
I choked on a gasp of embarrassed indignance. “I don’t have a dildo.”
Another shrug. “Be fine if you did—you’re an adult. May even be a little weird if you didn’t. Girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.”
“This girl doesn’t do dildos.”
I didn’t mention that I did do vibrators, and clitoral stimulators, and that I had one of each in my toiletries bag, which, thank sweet baby Jesus, was waterproof-treated leather and thus had survived being soaked and was, more importantly, opaque, and so he couldn’t see what was in it.
He, however, being stoned out of his head because the pot was exactly that strong, kept talking. “No? Do you masturbate?”
“Rhys, I think that’s a little personal for having just met.”
He blinked at me again, and I saw the normal Rhys poking through in his eyes. “Sheeeit. Maybe this stuff isn’t so good for me. I don’t seem to have a filter at all, huh? I’m sorry. I’m not normally so unfiltered about what’s going through my mind.”
I was feeling that second hit, now. Less offended, and maybe a little more…turned on by his curiosity. And it was definitely just the pot, and not at all anything to do with my own chemical reactions to Rhys.
We headed back upstairs, him leading again.
“So…you’re curious about my personal sexual habits?” I asked, a step down from him.
“I mean, yeah.” He smirked over his shoulder at me. “Aren’t you curious about mine?”
“I can honestly say that I have not thought about your masturbatory habits.” I huffed. And I hadn’t given them a second thought. “But now, yeah, I am a little curious.”
We were in his loft, now, standing near his bedroom area. His bed was the coolest thing I’d ever seen: the footboard was a vintage Ford truck bed gate, the latch cables fastened to the frame, and the headboard was made from the backrest from a bench seat, with the grille from the same Ford pickup mounted on the wall above it. It was a queen-size bed, neatly made. Beside it was a small nightstand made from the springs of a suspension system that had a glass top.
I gestured at the bed and nightstand. “You find that on Etsy?”