Page 46 of Rafferty's Rules
‘Maybe, maybe not. I’d love it if you’d help me out, but I absolutely insist on paying.’
‘Fine, but you’re not paying for your coffee and cake.’
‘Fine, then I’ll just leave you a big tip.’
‘Fine, then I’ll have to take you out for a drink.’
I open my mouth to add my reply when Lou, the other barista calls across the empty coffee shop, ‘At the peril of your nips!’
Chapter 13
RAFFERTY
‘What is that ugly yellow thing outside?’ I ask as I open the front door, an arc of late afternoon sun cutting across the floor.
Somewhere deeper in the house, a door slams and is quickly followed by the pitter-patter of bare feet. ‘Huh?’
‘This huge yellow dinosaur style bike.’ The hallway grows darker as I close the door. ‘Where’d it come from?’
‘Dinosaurs can’t ride a bike,’ Lissa calls back as I catch a glimpse of her reflection—a reflection of a reflection, I suppose—as she pushes up onto her toes to see herself better in the mirror to tidy her hair. As she lowers to her soles again, she smooths the front of her T-shirt, then, in an action that surprises the fuck out of me, she pinches her nipples over the fabric.
Fuck me. That was... that was so fucking erotic. Maybe not the act itself, which was pretty hot, but the realisation that she’s preening, maybe even preparing herself.
For me.
Her standing naked in my kitchen this morning was sexy as fuck. Something illicit and wicked from such an outwardly prim and proper girl.
‘Because their arms are too small.’ Her soft voice pulls my attention from my head and my cock, or maybe the head of my cock, to where she stands at the other end of the hall. Her cheeks appear to be a little pink. I wonder if mine are, too.
I swallow and shake my head, my brain unwilling to relinquish my turned-on state. ‘I... ’saw you ‘... just zoned out for a minute. The bike is yours, you say?’ I will my feet to move again, bending to kiss her cheek as I reach where she stands.
‘Only for forty minutes,’ she answers breezily. ‘And I’m pretty proud of myself. I rode it through the rush-hour traffic.’
My eyes close as I inhale the sweet scent of her hair and squeeze them closed further when her words permeate my lustful thoughts.
She rode a tourist bike.
Through Sydney CBD.
During rush hour.
Fuck, anything might’ve happened to her out there. I realise I’m frozen in place, my lips at her cheeks, my fingers curled around her shoulders as though to keep her in place.
‘You’re a keen cyclist, are you?’ I fight to keep my voice even and unconcerned as I play back the number of bike couriers and the like coming close to being plastered all over the bitumen as they’ve jostled in lanes filled with buses and cars.
‘I am today.’ Lissa takes my hand, pulling me into the kitchen, intomy kitchen, I remind myself because it feels like I need the reminder. What is it in her that provokes this kind of reaction in me? Is it her demeanour, or stature, or her scar that points to some childhood adversity? It could be any or all of these things, but I’m keeping my gob shut. This is just a temporary arrangement. What she does with her time has nothing to do with me, even if she thinks she’s a little badarse.
‘Jesus, what have you done to your leg?’ Pulling hard on her hand, I force her to stop, moving to my side to examine her thigh. She must’ve been shopping because she's wearing a pair of tiny shorts, but I’m pretty sure she didn’t pick up the sore looking gash down the side of her leg in any clothing boutique.
‘Oh, that.’ Her tone is breezy, though she winces when I press the pale flesh surrounding it. ‘It’s nothing.’
‘That . . . that’s not nothing. What the hell happened?’
‘I had an argument with a tree.’ She carries on in the same light, inconsequential tone, but I still hear the tremor in her voice.
‘Did this tree take offence to the monster bike?’
‘No.’ She sighs a sigh full of annoyance before making her way into the kitchen.My kitchen still.‘If you must know, I fell out of a tree.’
