Free All I Want Is You by Toni Blake

stool, she jerked her eyes upward, to his handsome face. Then she blinked, trying to look natural.
    â€œThe mudding I’m doing here is more of a cosmetic fix,” he explained. “Not really strong enough to screw something into it that’s gonna hold any weight. So it’ll be better if I relocate the brackets for your curtain rods a little. Just enough to make ’em hold better, but you won’t even notice the difference.”
    â€œOh,” she replied softly, “okay.” Though she still sounded far too spacy for her own liking.
    â€œYou all right?” he asked with a slight tilt of his head.
    Oh good—­she sounded spacy to him, too. “Um, yeah—­fine.” She spoke more boldly, normally, now. “I’m sure they’ll look great, wherever you put them.”
    After that, Jack went back to work and Christy resumed watching his hands, and his shoulders, and his butt. And then she decided it would be wise to stop watching him altogether, and she was just about to excuse herself and go find something more productive to do—­when he said, “This is gonna take more than two hands—­can you climb up here beside me and hold this in place?”
    He held one of the metal brackets against the wall with one hand, wielding an electric screwdriver with the other.
    And Christy heard her voice go all whispery and light again as she said, “Yeah, sure,” and stepped up beside him on the stool that was really only meant for one person. Their hips and outer thighs pressed together.
    â€œTight fit,” he said, his voice going a little softer, deeper. But he kept his eyes from meeting hers and that suited her just fine since every molecule of her body rippled with electricity now. Even more so when she lifted her hands over her head to hold the bracket, giving her the sensation of thrusting her breasts none too modestly in his direction.
    As he reached up to twist a large screw into the wall, his arms brushed warmly against her, and their hands touched a little due to close proximity. She held very still, uncertain if what she experienced was closer to pleasure or torture. But she was pretty sure she’d never been more conscious of a man’s body. Even guys she’d gotten much more personal with than this.
    She grew startlingly aware of his face, the dark, unshaven stubble on his jaw, his mouth. At the same time, she felt the presence of his bigger more masculine hands near her smaller, softer fingers, the broadness of his shoulders, the hard muscles in his arms. Everything about him was just so very . . . male. So very different from everything about her .
    She suffered the desire to lean in to him, to know that maleness more, to let it envelop her. And at the same time, she endured the awkwardness of fearing he felt her yearning—­and maybe didn’t feel it in return. Or even if he did, that he didn’t like who he thought she was—­in a girl/guy way—­so no matter how she measured it, it came out feeling one-­sided and embarrassing.
    â€œOkay,” he said a few agonizingly long seconds later, “now we just need to move the step stool over and do the other one.”
    â€œThe other one,” she repeated dumbly, a little horrified to find out this wasn’t over, that there was more. And yet somehow, at the same time, she was secretly ecstatic inside. More closeness. More drinking in the musky male scent of him.
    â€œThe other bracket,” he clarified, stepping down to the floor.
    â€œOh. Yeah,” she replied, following suit.
    And a short moment later, he was holding that second bracket in place, and she was rejoining him on that folding stool meant for one, and their bodies were brushing together again, and then—­dear God—­his forearm grazed her breast and sent a trail of fire blazing all through her. And if she wasn’t dealing with enough physical assaults on