I pulled my shirt on and bent down to tie my shoelaces. “Yeah, I’m going need you to take off Gemma. I've got a lot on today.” I noticed her lace thong under my bed and cringed.
“What the fuck Kyle?” she growled, jumping off the bed and moving towards me. She stood in front of me, butt naked with her hands on her hips. In the cool light of day, she wasn’t as hot as I had thought last night at the bar. Jesus Christ, why did every woman think it was sexy to see hipbones and ribs? It was about as sexy as fucking a skeleton.
She stroked me arm. “I thought last night meant more than sex?”
Where did she get that from? It never meant more than sex.
I walked over to the door. “It was great sex,” I lied. Truth be told I couldn’t remember fucking her, but she smiled, appeased so I continued. “That’s all it was. I’ll let you get dressed.” I closed out the door before she could reply. I was a fucking douche to sleep with her. I knew the clingy ones by now. How had I missed the signs?
Cam, Lee and Derek were all in the kitchen when I walked in. I went straight over to the drawer where I kept the painkillers.
“Good morning sunshine,” Derek said with a stupid smug grin on his face.
“What’s good about it?” I replied, as I popped two Advil from the packet and poured a glass of water
“Rough night last night was it?” Cam asked.
I nodded, forcing the pills down. “You could say that.” I slumped against the counter, as Cam and Derek continued whatever they were talking about before I came in. “Sleep well?” I asked Lee, who was sitting quietly at the table.
She shifted her gaze to me. “No, not really,” she mumbled blushing.
I moved towards her. I couldn’t help myself. “Oh yeah, why’s that?” I asked as I eased into the chair across from hers. Looking at her closer, I could see the dark shadows under her eyes.
“I didn’t get much sleep.”
I felt a strange swell of concern for her, “Why not? Are you okay?” Was Lee not sleeping well every night? Was she finding it hard to settle in here? She had only been here a week, maybe she was homesick. Was she going to leave? All these niggling doubts and worries started to build in my chest.
Fuck, what was that about?
Lee blushed and ducked her head, so I couldn’t see those big gray eyes of hers. It was just as well because her rosy plump lips were calling to me. I shifted in my chair.
“No, I’m fine,” she assured me. I relaxed. “It’s just…” She paused and looked up at me. Dragging her lower lip into her mouth, she whispered. “You’re kind of loud.”
Loud? What was she talking about?
“I’m gonna take off Kyle,” a voice said from behind me. I turned around, just as Gemma welded her mouth to mine. I tensed understanding the meaning of Lee’s words.
Fuck. She’d been awake all night from the sounds of me having sex. How many nights had that happened? I’d brought three girls back this week alone. I’d had to. Lee was tempting the shit out of me. A man had only so much will power. Gemma stuck her tongue down my throat and I felt like gagging.
I heard the sound of a chair scraping and pulled my face away. Lee was leaving. I moved to go after her, but stopped myself. This was the way it had to be, it was better in the long run.
She needed to hate me.
Chapter Five
Lee
I settled into a comfortable living routine at the house. On weekdays I got up, went to work, came home and went to bed. On weekends, I did pretty much the same thing; except I replaced work with hanging out with Cam and more often than not Derek joined us. We took turns with the cleaning and cooking dinner, with Derek usually taking over the kitchen and smothering out whoever’s turn it was to cook. He was working in a kitchen for the summer and had decided he was the new Gordon Ramsey. He was the best cook out of the four of us though so I didn’t tease him about it. The man made a mean lasagna and I‘d even began to enjoy his witty retorts and jokes and Cam was fun to live with. We had fallen back into our old friendship easily.
But Kyle was a jerk.
The man flaunted himself around the place like ‘he was king of the hill,' prancing around the kitchen in his just his jeans, or worse his boxer shorts. I dutifully ignored him every time he was around or at least, I pretended to. Cam told me Kyle’s job required him to travel a lot which explained the sporadic hours of the day and night he came home. But when he was here he was distracting and a smart-mouth and had zero modesty. So much for the truce… He also had no filter on his tongue. The man had a real bad potty mouth.
I decided Kyle was tormenting me on purpose. He had to be doing it on purpose. If he wasn’t banging on our bathroom door when I was showering hollering at me to hurry up, he was blocking my way to the kettle, giving me one his ‘you want it come and get it’ looks. I had gone without coffee most mornings this week, because avoiding Kyle’s half-naked body was much safer than pressing past him. He would love that, to know that he was getting to me.