both if we just didn’t even dip our toes in that pond.
I cleared my throat. “I, um. I’ll get your things. So you can change. Be right back.”
I bolted before my libido ran away with my sense. Her clothes were in the dryer, and I dumped them into a plastic laundry basket. Brought them up to her. “Here. I’m gonna go get started on the Nova. Join me whenever. I’m not much of a breakfast person, but help yourself to whatever, if you’re hungry.”
“Not a breakfast person, either.” She took the laundry basket from me. “Thanks for this.”
“No problem.”
I turned away before I flat out asked her if I could watch her change. Fucking creep.
I headed downstairs, for the Nova, grabbed a socket wrench and flipped it in my palm, peered into the open engine bay and figured out what was left to do on the installation of the rebuilt 440.
Once I had my game plan for the rest of the work mentally sorted out, I got to work. I was just getting started on the wiring harness when I happened to glance up to where the laundry machines were—and saw that an article of Torie’s clothes had fallen on the concrete floor at the base of the dryer.
A bright red thong. Barely a handful of silk strings and a scrap of crimson lace.
Shit.
I left the wiring harness and snagged the underwear off the floor, headed back upstairs to give it back to her. I didn’t sniff it, because that would be creepy. It was just clean laundry. Nothing weird.
I tapped a knuckle on the door and pushed in, speaking as I entered. “Sorry, I just realized this fell out of the basket—”
Torie—standing in the middle of the loft, a pair of jeans up around her waist but not yet fastened, opened to show an upside down triangle of bright yellow. She was topless. Her shirt was in her hands, and she was about to lift it up and put it on—frozen, now, the shirt crumpled in her fists at her waist.
I blinked, my eyes helplessly taking in her bare tits, which were just as magnificent as I’d imagined.
A beat.
“Um. Hi.” Her voice, soft, hesitant, shook me out of my tit-hypnotized stupor.
“Wow. I…sorry.” I held up her thong and let it dangle from my finger. “This…um, didn’t make it into the basket.”
Less than six feet separated us. I took a step forward, extending the thong to her.
She stepped forward to meet me, took it from me. Our eyes locked, momentarily. She held my gaze.
I couldn’t help the way my eyes involuntarily dropped from hers to her chest, taking another long, hungry look. And then, with an effort of will, I shut my eyes, gritted my teeth, and turned away. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I should have waited for you to tell me to come in.”
A soft rustle of cloth. “I’m wearing a shirt, now,” she murmured.
I turned back around. “I’m sorry, Torie.”
She shook her head, shrugged, but her pink cheeks told a different story. “Well, now we’ve both walked in on each other. Call it even?”
“Yeah…even,” I said, my voice faint.
She held the thong up. “I was actually looking for this. Thought I’d packed it and wanted to wear it. Explains why I couldn’t find it and had to settle for the yellow one.”
She’d buttoned her jeans, too, but I had a pretty solid mental image of the not-quite-sheer lace of the yellow underwear.
“The yellow looked plenty good to me,” I heard my own idiot voice say, and then I apparently doubled down on stupidity. “But I’ve always been partial to that shade of red. It bet it would look super hot on you.”
“Yeah, it’s my favorite thong. Looks good, feels good.”
“Glad it wasn’t lost, then.”
“Me too.”
Okay, time to go. This was getting weird.
“I’m…” I somehow had my coffee mug in hand. Not sure when or where I’d grabbed it, and I didn’t remember taking it downstairs. Was I losing my mind? “I’m gonna get more coffee.”
I turned away, blinking to clear my mind of the vision of Torie, topless, as glorious and gorgeous as I’d fantasized her to be. More—she was breathtaking. Porcelain skin, long, elegant arms, delicate ribcage supporting those mouthwatering breasts, a waist curving in to strong hips. Flat, taut stomach, a hint of abdominal definition. Jesus, she was perfect. Those tits, god, those tits. Plump at the base, peaked and pointed at the tips. I loved how they curved slightly upward. Her nipples made my brain