Page 32 of Cheap Heat

“I’m fine.” I gave the fae a tight, embarrassed smile. “Uh, sorry about the—”

“Oh, don’t even worry.” He waved a hand and gave me a sweet smile back, and my face grew even hotter when I realised, yep, I’d definitely seen him leaving Ewen’s place in the past.

And now I was letting myself realise just how pretty he was. Which wasn’t helping, to be honest.

“Did it break the skin?” he asked in concern as Nev watched us in silence, amusement dancing in his eyes as he sank his teeth into his lower lip to stop himself from laughing. I knew the expression well. Bastard.

“Uh, no.” I reluctantly removed my hand so the fae could see my forehead—god, I hoped there wouldn’t be a lump—and cleared my throat. “Let me grab those. Sorry.”

I’m going to kill you, Nev, I thought viciously as I bent to pick up several knotted dildos before the fae could tell me not to worry again. My head swam from the throbbing in my forehead, and I reflexively leaned my weight on one hand as I knelt.

Unfortunately, there was a dildo in that hand. A dildo with a suction cup base. A well-made one, it appeared, because it seemingly fused to the floor and became a permanent fixture.

“Oh shit. Oops.” I tugged. It didn’t move. Neville and the fae watched in silence as I tugged again, trying to break the seal, but instead my sweaty hand just slid up the length of the werewolf dick and flew off the tapered tip. A bleat of nervous laughter burst from me. “Wow, that’s, uh… that’s got great suction!”

Fuck, why the fuck did I just say that? Cringing, growing increasingly flustered, I tried to yank the dildo off the floor and once again only succeeded in sliding my fist along its length.

“You can just leave it, hon,” the fae said in a sympathetic voice as he and my best friend watched me jerk off a werewolf dildo suctioned to the floor of a sex shop at 10 a.m. on a Friday morning.

“’Kay!” I replied in a strangled voice, trying to sound blasé about it when inside I was dying.

I was out of breath for some reason when I stood back up, and my legs were shaking a bit.

“Did you want the pumpkin head?” the fae asked with an encouraging smile.

“No.” So much blood rushed to my face that I thought I was going to pass out, the bump on my forehead throbbing angrily. “No, thank you. I’m just—We’re going to go now.”

And I was never going to show my face in here again.

—

“He absolutely knows you’ve seen him, and he absolutely wants you to keep watching,” Neville declared as I pulled into my driveway.

I’d just finished confessing all my sins to him—yes, including the mattress-humping—and while I was relieved that he wasn’t calling me a pervert and putting an end to our fifteen-year friendship, I was pretty sure his response wasn’t actually the greatest one.

“Um, I think assuming that is probably super problematic, right?” I asked doubtfully. “We don’t know that he knows, and we definitely don’t know that he, uh, likes me watching.”

“But you told him!” Nev insisted, unbuckling his seatbelt as I killed the engine. My belly clenched when I saw Ewen’s truck in his own driveway. “You told him to close his blinds that first night. You made it really obvious you’d seen him. And you said he responded by saying ‘maybe’ and sucking on his beer bottle like it was a dick. His own dick.”

Heat prickled in my cheeks. “That might’ve just been me imagining things.”

“I think he’s putting on a show for you,” Nev said with a resolute nod before opening his car door. “Which is hot as fuck, bro.”

I let out a strangled groan and shoved my way out of the car. “No, it’s humiliating.”

Was Ewen throwing me a bone because he thought I was some sad, repressed voyeur who sat by my window every night like a horny little ghoul, salivating over my professional wrestler neighbour’s big dick and muscular body and cocksucking skills?

I sighed miserably as I grabbed my shopping bag from the back seat. That was, in fact, pretty accurate. Fuck.

“You know what you should do?” Nev gave me a bright smile as he bounded around the car to join me. “Give him a show back! Jerk off in front of your window later.”

I inhaled too fast and ended up choking on my own spit. “Are you kidding me?”

“If we’d bought the pumpkin head, you could’ve stood at your window fucking it for him. Oh man, I bet that would drive him wild.”

I could not think of anything more acutely humiliating. And deranged. Perverted. My best friend was as deranged and perverted as I was, but he seemed to embrace it.

“Neville,” I began through clenched teeth as we walked up my driveway, “I am not fucking a pumpkin head in front of my window for my neighbour to watch.”