Nope. Definitely not Rose.
Jesse tossed his hat onto the island before tugging his shirt free of his jeans. They were just as tight as the ones he’d worn yesterday. I was ready to bolt up and demand to know what the hell he thought he was doing stripping in front of me when he pulled the dirty, damp shirt from his body and tossed it into one of the laundry carts.
He didn’t know I was there. I wasn’t exactly making my presence known by staying motionless in my hiding spot. I might have been on all fours on the floor of a laundry slash torture room, but right then, I had the best damn view in the house.
Making his way over to the utility sink, Jesse cranked on the water before leaning down and splashing his face and hair. Hello, fine, fine ass. How I’d missed you.
He turned off the water and grabbed a towel hanging over the edge of the sink. As Jesse straightened up, my eyes shifted from the denim suctioning that backside up the seam of his back.
Hot damn, did that man have more than his fair share of muscles. As my eyes explored his back, lingering on the shadowed groves and highlighted peaks, I had the nearly uncontrollable urge to touch him. To feel him. To scroll my finger through the lines making up Jesse Walker.
My heartbeat picked up, along with my breathing, and the space below my navel started firing to life in a familiar way.
What the hell?
Was I about to get off in a laundry room spying on the back of some cowboy I’d known for all of a day and a half?
After Jesse finished drying his face, he tossed the towel into the cart, too. Okay, he was done. He’d removed his filthy shirt, washed up, and he could get out of here so I could get back to taking full breaths again.
That was when he unfastened his belt buckle and moved for his fly.
Ah, hell.
“Stop!” I shouted right as his thumbs hitched beneath the waist of his jeans. If I had to watch the rest of the Jesse Walker strip tease, I would moan the alphabet.
Jesse spun around. His look of surprise fell when he saw me peeking my head around the side of the island.
My gaze shifted from his face down. And I thought his back had been worthy of building the pyramids all over again. The wide chest, flowing down to his tapered waist, trailing down to his . . .
The undone belt buckle and button of his jeans did not make it easy to not think about certain pieces of anatomy I really shouldn’t be thinking about when he looked at me like that.
“Are you spying on me?” Those sky blue eyes sparkled as he took a few steps my way.
I forced myself to close my eyes because I seemed incapable of looking away from his general navel area. Those deeply grooved muscles angling their way to his . . . ahem . . . weren’t making it any easier for me to not think about it.
“No,” I replied, my voice three notes too high. “I was looking for some stupid sock I dropped, minding my own business, when you burst in and started taking your clothes off.” In addition to my voice being a few notes too high, it was also a few notches too loud.
“And you decided to stay silent and hidden for the entire time I was stripping and washing because . . .?” he asked, but he wasn’t really asking. That smirk of his gave away that he knew exactly what I’d been doing. When I didn’t answer, his smirk grew more pronounced. “Because you were enjoying the free show.” Not a smidgeon of doubt.
My eyes snapped open, and I forced them, upon penalty of plucking them out, to stay north of his neck. Not that Jesse’s face calmed my heartbeat, but at least my lady business wasn’t about to bust something.
“Not even,” I said, narrowing my eyes at him. “I was waiting patiently for you to be on your merry way.”
“Sure you were.”
“Sure I wasn’t doing whatever you so egotistically think I was doing,” I snapped back.
“Whatever, Rowen. You were checking me out so hardcore your face is still red.” Jesse took a few more steps my way. Crouching down beside me, his smirk shifted into a smile. “Mind if I join you down here?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I do,” I lied. “Besides, I don’t think there’s enough room for your big head and bigger ego down here.”
He leaned his arms onto the tops of his legs, making his shoulders roll forward. So much for keeping my eyes in the safe zone.
“Not to mention my big muscles,” he replied in that tone that was as infuriating as him smirking at me. To drive the point home, the muscles spanning his chest popped a bit more to the surface.
My throat went dry.
“If you’re going to hover a foot in front of me, put on a damn shirt or something.” I wrote off playing it cool because I’d failed miserably. Jesse knew exactly what he was doing to me, and from the look on his face, he was enjoying the way I was unraveling.
“If I put on a shirt, will you do something for me?” His eyes, for the first time since he’d kneeled beside me, shifted from my face. They skied down the plane of my back and bend of my legs. His eyes went a shade darker before he clamped them closed. “Could you sit up? Or, better yet, stand up?” When his eyes reopened, one side of his face lined when he found me in the same position. On my hands and knees. With a short skirt on and my ass practically hanging in the air.
I don’t know if I’d ever sat up so quickly in my life.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, skimming my hands down the front of my skirt before standing. I didn’t know what the big deal was. It wasn’t the first short skirt I’d ever worn, and I’m sure it wasn’t the first time I’d been in an inappropriate position wearing one, but Jesse had a way of making me more self-conscious about it. He made everything a bit more intimate.