Of course, knowing she’s in the shower gets me thinking about her bikini picture again. Ordinarily I’m not wowed by a bikini picture, and I won’t say I’m wowed, but I’ve only seen her in big sweaters and her coat. She’s got a pretty small frame, so I didn’t expect nice, round C-cups.
Not that I’ve been thinking about her boobs. Because I didn’t have my head up my ass. But now I’m sitting here while she’s just down the hall showering and sure, I’m wondering what they look like without the bikini top.
Fuck.
I shake it off and flip open the little dossier I put together, flipping through this creep’s comments. Most of them are no creepier than the thoughts I’m currently having, but a few of them make him sound like an asshole.
She stops singing and the shower turns off. The door’s still closed so she’s probably brushing her hair or moisturizing or some shit.
It’s kind of weird, actually. I haven’t done something as casually intimate as wait for a woman to finish her shower since I lived with Mia. Mia always took forever in the shower—not even just in the shower, but before and after the shower. She was so fucking high-maintenance.
Mateo probably doesn’t even know that. He’s busy, an asshole, and he has two women, so I’m sure he doesn’t know the first thing about Mia’s ridiculous shower routine. It brings me a small measure of comfort, feeling like I know something about her he doesn’t.
The door down the hall opens, stealing my thoughts from Mia and bringing them back to the present. I suddenly want to leave—I wasn’t invited into this moment and she thinks she’s home alone; what if she walks out naked or something?
It’s too late to change my mind though. The halls are short, and before I can even push up off the couch, she emerges at the end of it. Gasping immediately upon seeing movement in the living room she left empty, her blue eyes widen and a little yelp slips out of her.
She’s not naked, but man, I wish I hadn’t come over. She’s wearing this thin blue night shirt with no bra underneath. The night shirt barely hits past her ass, and I’m wishing she would have grabbed a pair of pajama pants so I didn’t have to look at her smooth, shapely legs.
“Jesus! God.” She breathes with relief when she sees it’s just me, her shoulders dropping. “Jesus, Vince. You scared the hell out of me.”
I nod smugly, like I didn’t just have second thoughts. (Thing about showing up uninvited in a woman’s house is you’ve gotta own it. There’s really no half-assing or backing down with that kind of thing.) “This is how easy it would be to murder you,” I inform her, tapping the dossier I brought over. “Your Marine boyfriend hasn’t murdered anyone, but he’s damn sure not a Marine and he’s got a rap sheet a mile long.”
Her eyes widen and she comes over to the couch, unconcerned with what she’s wearing, and unconcerned that I literally broke into her house to warn her about some guy who might try to break into her house. “Does he really?” She pauses before she approaches the couch. “Actually, I’m gonna grab a drink, then we can go over this. You want anything?”
“I’m good.”
She nods and heads to the kitchen.
I try not to think about things I definitely shouldn’t, like the unmistakable glimpse I get of the curve of her ass when she walks toward the kitchen.
She is not wearing panties.
Jesus fucking Christ.
Fuuuuuuck.
I desperately want to leave this situation, but I can’t now without being obvious. I’m not about to give her the satisfaction of literally chasing me out of her apartment just because she’s not wearing panties under a baggy sleep shirt that has no business being sexy.
She comes back in, flashing me a friendly smile and hands me a drink even though I didn’t ask for one. Then she drops onto the couch, curling her legs up beneath her and leans over my shoulder to look through the assembled pictures.
I feel like I just got socked in the stomach.
She smells like Mia.
It’s her shampoo. The coconut.
The strangest feeling that I’m going to be sick mixes with immediate arousal and all I want to do is get the hell away from this girl.
Unaware of the Hell she just sent me to, New Girl is all light and playful.
“So, you’re a burglar and a private detective, huh?” she teases. “Do you ever stop getting cooler?”
I can’t even speak.
The scent of her shampoo hits me again and I have to look at her to remind myself it’s not Mia sitting on this couch beside me. It’s damn sure not Mia because she’s being nice to me. Her blue eyes are clear and honest, the little sparkle of amusement is there because of me. Inexplicably because I broke into her house and literally spent the whole night stalking some asshole she exchanged a few emails with, but I guess I like my girls a little cracked.