Rebel Roommate

Chapter 4: Paige

What in the actual hell?

I was pretty sure that when I'd stepped back in time to the city streets where I grew up, the molecules in my body had merged with someone else's, someone much more daring and flirtatious than I ever was. That was not me in the public library back there, caged between a stranger's well-muscled arms and a shelf of Lisa Montgomery paperbacks, while I wished he would just kiss me already.

But holy s**t, it had been hot. He had been hot, with his mirrored sunglasses and the way his just-woke-up sandy-brown hair fell over them, that stubble along his chin that had lightly scraped against my cheek when I turned my head, and the way he kept looking at me. Even with those sunglasses hiding most of his face, the power of his gaze slid up and down my body like an actual caress. I could still feel it, and it pulsed a hum between my legs that refused to go away.

And he knew my name. How could it be that he was a stranger to me, but I wasn't to him? Did I know him from somewhere? Surely I would remember meeting a stud who looked like they'd just strutted out of Lick Me, I'm Gorgeous magazine.

Between the enigma that was him and the D.C. heat on a late May afternoon, my brain was thoroughly scrambled. I'd forgotten what this kind of sweltering heat felt like. Humidity swelled the air so thick, I could hardly breathe.

I needed something to take my mind off everything so I could get to my destination without accidentally flinging myself into traffic - something like my best friend Kay. Somehow, while towing all my luggage, I pulled my phone from my pocket without missing a step.

"H-hello? Paige? Aaron, take mommy's bra off your head and the stilettos out of your mouth," Kay warned her two-year-old. "I swear my son loves my clothes more than I do. Can cross-dressing begin this early?"

"Try not to judge," I said between pants. "It'll just confuse him."

She sighed. "Maybe it's just a phase."

"Or it could be...because he's two...and your clothes smell - and taste - like you."

"Ugh, you're right. Are you there already? Why are you breathing hard?"

I could confess one cause without giving her any reason to believe there was a second, much hotter, sexier cause. "I'm walking to Riley's."

"Are there no cabs in D.C.?"

"It's only...four blocks." Maybe I should've rethought my strategy, though. Nothing says 'Thank you for letting me stay with you for six weeks' like a good whiff of rank body odor. But I'd walked these tree-lined streets as a child, and a part of me wanted to relive those carefree days. Plus, the whole notion of time travel and mixed-up body molecules prompted the Dr. Who theme song to play through my head, and I didn't want to stop it.

"Well, it's your funeral."

"Thanks, Kay," I said dryly.

"So, I'm thinking about hooking up with the cute handyman here for some male influence."

"For you or Aaron?"

"Both of us, silly. Speaking of male influence, you didn't forget to pack Slave, did you?"

A flush burned through my cheeks. A balding man tended to the flowerbed around the mailbox just ahead, and I quickly looked away while trying to convince myself he couldn't have heard talk about my vibrator through my phone. I'd turned my speaker up loud so I could hear over my rolling luggage, but surely he couldn't hear, too. He looked up and smiled, but that was all.

"No, I didn't forget," I hissed once I passed him.

Kay laughed. She'd bought me the s*x toy for my last birthday. Her current reading habits dictated her nicknames for them. For example, she'd named her handcuffs Hogties. We have different reading habits, so I didn't know the meaning behind that one, nor did I want to. But Slave was a...nice companion. Okay, an explosive, try-not-to-wake-up-the-neighbors companion.

"Then again, maybe you won't need it since you're staying with Riley," she said in a low, suggestive voice.

"Maybe." Riley Cleary was my childhood friend, and our families swore we'd be married one day. There was even a picture of us when we were about five with a dishrag veil on my head and a bouquet of dandelions in my hand. But I had no romantic interest in Riley. I never had, but especially now that my thoughts kept straying to the stranger who knew my name in the library. "Hey, I'm almost there. Call you later?"

"Knock 'em dead, sugar plum," she said and ended the call.

I paused at the street corner to unhook my stiff fingers from my luggage and flexed them to work out the kinks. Speaking of kinks, my neck felt like it'd been contorted into a chocolate-and-vanilla twist cone.

Oh, that sounded good right now. Nice and cold... I licked my lips while I rubbed at the crick in my neck. And that was how I was standing, on a street corner, rubbing and licking and dripping sweat all at the same time, when a red car booming loud bass turned the corner. Sometimes, it amazed me how classy I could be.

The dipping sun cast a glare on the windows, and the car thankfully rolled past without slowing. Good thing, too, since my hope for a successful career in prostitution ended after second grade once I found out what they actually did for money. Plus, I didn't have exact change.

I collected my luggage and set off once again. Riley lived in the second house up the street...exactly where that red car was turning in. A friend of Riley's maybe?

As I drew closer, a man, half-hidden behind the green canopy of trees and bushes, hopped out of his car and shot inside without knocking. A close friend, then. We would meet soon enough.

I stared up at my childhood home away from home, a gleeful smile spreading all over my face. It stood two stories high with a fresh coat of white paint and gray shutters. Well-maintained bushes grew along the front, and a large tree in the middle of the yard provided lots of shade. In the backyard was a pool, which I'd practically lived in during summers. Riley's parents left him the house, or sold it to him or something, when his dad's political career became much more promising a few years back. My old house was across the street and one block up. I'd have to check it out later, post-shower.

The front door was left wide open thanks to Riley's friend, and voices drifted from inside.

"You could have told me," a male voice said, faint enough so I could barely hear.

"I only found out two days ago. She was going to stay with someone else, but a burst pipe turned her house into Niagara Falls." That was Riley's voice, familiar only because I'd talked to him on the phone for the first time in close to seven years a few days ago.

"And that was two days you had to warn me about it. Jesus!" Slightly louder that time, and somehow familiar.

"Calm down," Riley said. "I don't know why you're freaking out about this since you're never here. She's staying. And what the hell happened to you? You're bleeding all over the place."

Well, this wasn't awkward at all. I knew this was an inconvenience, and guilt gnawed at me for putting Riley in this situation. Six weeks of staying in his house was a long time, after all, but I didn't have any other affordable options.

I tentatively stepped toward the open door, the roll of my luggage announcing my presence for me, and gasped as a blast of blessed air conditioning hit my body. The frigid temperature dried some of the sweat bucketing from my skin, and I melted into it.

"Is there a librarian in the house?" Riley asked.

I snapped my eyes open, and there he stood. He had grown taller, much taller, in the seven years since I'd seen him, but his bright blue eyes and easy smile were the exact same. He wore a white button-down dress shirt with a few buttons opened at the top and a pair of dark slacks, typical after-work attire for a hot shot at one of the country's best political consulting firms, I supposed.

"Paige," he said, and before I could protest, he scooped me up in a hug.

"Sorry if I stink," I said, but pulled him in close anyway because it was so good to see him again.

"I've missed you too much to care."

"Are you sure my being here won't be too much trouble?" I asked, scanning the living room for the source of the other voice.

"Of course not," he said, pulling away, but the hard crinkle in the corner of his eyes said otherwise while he stared at the wall that separated the entryway from the kitchen.

If I was forced to choose between inconveniencing my childhood friend and my dream internship at the Library of Congress, I would choose homelessness in a heartbeat. The LOC had steps to sleep on. I would be fine.

"It's okay, Paige. Really," he said and smiled, clearing the doubt from his face. He waved me farther into the house then tipped his chin toward the kitchen. "You remember SamRam? He lives here, too, but just barely."

I shifted my gaze, and the first thing to catch my attention was a once blue-striped dishtowel soaked in blood. The man who clenched it in his hands leaned against the wall next to the stainless steel refrigerator. His tight black T-shirt accentuated his broad shoulders and the corded muscles in his arms. As my gaze travelled upward, my stomach flipped over on itself. Facial scruff. Messy sandy-brown hair, but instead of flopping over a pair of sunglasses, it skimmed over a massive shiner on his right eye. And those eyes...they were a startling shade of baby blue that shocked the air from my lungs.

The whole package was devastatingly familiar, likely because he'd had his body pressed against mine less than a half hour ago.