Free Bones by the Wood by Catherine Johnson

but the color in her cheeks flamed a couple of notches brighter.
     
    Her eyes darted from side to side.  It was plain that she didn’t want to answer, but he wasn’t moving until she came up with some explanation.  He didn’t know her well, but his guess wasn’t that she’d had an irresistible urge to rub one out in full view of potential customers, but he couldn’t come up with any other plausible reason for her to be fishing around down there.  She huffed, obviously seeing no means of escape. 
     
    “I’m trying to sort my... my... my underwear out.”  Her exasperation at the offending garment, and at him, was crystal clear.  “The fuckin’ elastic has snapped and it’s all gone loose.”
     
    “Any way I can help you with that?”  He’d been wrong, she could blush harder, and he found it adorable.  This hot looking woman with the sexy ink was blushing like a schoolgirl.
     
    He decided to save her from answering, since she was unlikely to say anything encouraging.  “You should take ‘em off.”
     
    The blush faded, dialed down by frustration.  “I would, but I can’t leave the register.”
     
    “I could watch it for you.”
     
    “No offense.  It’s not that I don’t trust you, but it’s more than my job’s worth.  You can bet if I did that the manager would come by.  Fuckin’ Murphy’s Law or some shit.”
     
    “So you’re just goin’ to keep playin’ with yourself for the rest of the night?”  He’d meant it as a joke, but suddenly the idea of Thea with her hand between her thighs was no laughing matter.  He was going to need to do his own bit of rearranging once he was out of view of the counter.
     
    Thea cocked her head to one side, as if studying him.  All traces of the red had gone from her cheeks now, and her eyes glittered.  She seemed to have taken his question as some sort of personal challenge.
     
    “No, I am not.”
     
    He stayed where he was and watched, curious and rapt, as she stalked to the other end of the counter.  She bent at the waist to fish around in the cupboard or shelves or whatever underneath.  Dizzy didn’t think she’d bent over intentionally to give him a show, but her ass in its second skin of denim was quite the sight.  When she straightened, she was holding a pair of ancient, metal scissors that were almost the length of her forearm.
     
    She came back to her spot at the register, defiance still flashing in those brilliant blue eyes. Curiouser and curiouser.  Surely she wouldn’t....  And then, with a little toss of her head to send the loose ponytail of hair over her shoulder and her bangs out of her eyes, she undid the top button of her jeans.  That got Dizzy’s attention, and he didn’t even give a shit if he was staring at that sweet spot down low under her belly button revealed by the partially open fly.  There was just the hint of dark hair and... he managed to stop himself leaning over the counter to see if that was white lace just peeking out there.  And then the mammoth scissors came into view and his brain stuttered as she slipped them into her jeans at her hip and snipped at something.
     
    Dizzy couldn’t tear his eyes away.  He’d have liked to have met her bold gaze, but the show was too good to miss.  He vaguely noticed her placing the heavy scissors on the counter with a clunk, before those slim fingers delved behind the unfastened front of her jeans and, with a little tug and pull, emerged with a scrap of, yes, white lace.  There wasn’t enough of it for it to have been anything other than a thong.  As she stuffed it into her back pocket, Dizzy’s brain put the pieces together to show him the picture of how one side had snapped so she’d cut the other side to be able to pull the flimsy material from between her legs without actually taking her jeans off.
     
    His mind was running riot on that visual as Thea fastened her jeans.
     
    “You actually come in here to buy somethin’?  Or just to