He fiddled with the radio but gave up when he couldn’t turn it on. “And as a world-class connoisseur of backsides, I can tell you that you have a good one. Perfect to be honest. Some guy is gonna be lucky to have your cheeks—” He gestured as if he were sinking his fingers into a nice, big butt in front of himself. “Right in the palms of his hands.”
I was watching the road, but seeing his massive paws squeeze an imaginary butt in the front seat of my vehicle was almost like I could feel him—or someone—touch me like that.
Probably because I hadn’t been laid—or laid well—in a long damn time, but my heart raced as I turned down his road. “Shut up. We’re almost there.”
“I’m serious, Lex. When you finally let someone in one day, that guy is going to be one lucky sonofabitch. You’re the total package. Fuck-hot body. Gorgeous face. Big, green eyes. A rack like blam. You’re smart and independent.”
As he listed things off, I was reminded of how this very same conversation had gone the last time when we were fighting at Huey’s.
This time, I didn’t wait for him to get to the punchline though. “Yeah, all except for this bad attitude and mouth, right?”
He turned to face me and a wicked smile bent both corners of his mouth, but he didn’t answer. As I passed under a street light, his drunken eyes locked on mine, but I had to pay attention to the road and looked away. When he didn’t say anything and nearly burned a whole in the side of my face with his laser-like stare, finally I asked, “What?”
“Yeah, your attitude is something, but your mouth isn’t all that bad.” Missing on the first swipe, he reached out again and touched my bottom lip with his index finger.
My breath caught and a cool sweat broke across my skin. What the fuck was happening?
“Your mouth might be nicer than your ass now that I’m looking at it.”
I swatted his hand away and pulled into his drive. The ride was almost over, and I could go home and sleep away all these weird fe—well, whatever the fuck was happening.
“Yeah, you’re definitely drunk.”
And he was, but that didn’t explain why my chest was seriously pounding.
Maybe I was sick.
Maybe I was chronically horny or something.
Maybe I was too sober to be around a handsome drunk guy.
Because surely, in the back of my mind, I wasn’t thinking why I couldn’t find someone more like him.
He was Hudson.
My brother’s best friend.
My reluctant partner in crime—or at least the man there to bail me out when I was partnering in crime alone. He was…a really fucking good guy. Not to mention stupid hot and all that masculine energy I craved.
Shit, was I having a nervous breakdown? At the very least, it had to be a momentary lapse of judgment.
I should have skipped the beach and hauled myself to a doctor the next morning instead.
Afraid to look at him again for fear of the horrible, disgusting, but so, so very sexy thoughts my brain was going to fire off next, I kept my eyes on his two-story brick house and said, “Your chariot has arrived. Get out.”
Pulling his hand back to his lap, he spoke in a low, gruff voice that did not at all travel down my spine and send chills over my skin. “I’m sorry. I just don’t think I ever noticed so much of you before.”
“Wow, you sure know how to give a compliment.”
“You know what I mean.”
And I did. Because as he sat there, his messy hair falling over his forehead while the veins on his forearms taunted me out of the corner of my eye, I suddenly realized there was a lot I hadn’t noticed about Hudson before too.
“Well, stop,” I snapped roughly because I was, without question, freaking the fuck out. “You don’t mean it. You’re just drunk and lonely.”
What did that make me? Sober and pathetic for buying into it?
I knew better.
“It’s all true. Some man is going to come along, and so help me fucking God, if he doesn’t treat you right, I’m going to kill him.” He shifted in his seat and pressed his back against the window, giving me his full attention. “Because, Lex, after all you’ve been through—”
And just like that, I was snapped back to reality. I held my hand up between us to make him stop right there. It wasn’t the time or the