Chapter 2

Chapter

Two

"Not gonna lie,Jilly, you make an open offer like that, and it's hard to hold myself back from taking you up on it." I say it jokingly, but it truly is getting harder and harder to hold back everything I feel for Jill Elders.

She swept into town two years ago and turned me inside out with one look. Not that Jill has any idea what she does to me. I've never been friendzoned so fast in my entire life. It took the girl two-point-zero seconds to snatch my soul and stuff it into her purse right alongside my balls and my sanity—all without losing her sunny smile as she shot down my attempt to flirt and rendered me useless for any woman but her.

"Can it, Tater-head. I need real help here, not a wiseass. Get down here and help me figure this out!" I hear the smile in her voice, but she's already ducked back under the sink. Leaving me to stare, completely inappropriately, at her soaked to the skin body.

I drop to my knees beside her and hope the frigid water leads to shrinkage, because as always, when I'm this close to Jill, my cock's trying to cross boundaries and bust zippers.

"Let's see what we're working with here, okay?" I roll to my back and shimmy under the sink next to her. The problem is easy enough to spot. The PVC pipe leading into the U-joint has separated from the rest of them, and it looks like the threaded piece is cracked.

"Can you fix it? I don't know if I can get a plumber out soon enough to avoid canceling that speed date thingy Shelly talked me into." Jill sounds more irritated about the matchmaking event booked here tonight than this mess. If that doesn't say everything there is to say about her views on relationships, I don't know what could.

Jill's got a chip on her shoulder when it comes to love and dating, and after two years, I'm still unsure the origin of it. All I know is, the merest hint of romance sends her into ostrich mode where she buries her head and pretends to ignore it.

"I can't tell whether you want me to say I can, so you can stop worrying, or I can't, so you can cancel the Minute Meet Up."

"Definitely want it fixed, Tate. This mess is… It's…" Words fail her, which isn't something I'm used to. She might not be much of a chatterbox, but she always knows what to say.

Lots of years behind the bar, listening and doling out advice whenever requested, have honed her skills as a pseudo-therapist and made for a friend I rely on more than guys I've known my whole life.

"I can fix it. No sweat, babe. Can you grab that toolbox I gave you? I need the measuring tape, so I know what length pieces we need."

Reality is, everything under here is fairly standard and straightforward. I'll likely just ask Thomas over at Lowcountry Hardware to grab what I'll need. But Jilly always does better when she's got something to focus on. Sending her to grab stuff is really just giving myself a minute to pull my shit together.

Lying on my back under the sink with her beside me, despite the less than ideal circumstances, has my body wanting things my brain knows are never gonna happen. The slightest hint of willingness from Jill, and I'd have her pulled onto my lap and be eight deep inside her before she could blink. I bend my knees to hide the effect she always has on me while she wiggles her way out.

Her footsteps splash through the standing water as she hurries to the tiny office that's situated across from the bathrooms along a narrow hallway behind the bar. Fortunately, the build of this old place didn't originally include a kitchen, and when her uncle, the original owner, added it on about a decade ago, it was built a step lower than the rest of the building. So at least the whole place won't be flooded.

Jill's absence gives me a moment's peace to grab my junk and reposition it into a hopefully less noticeable tent. I squeeze myself hard enough to see stars, relying on pain to stifle some of this lust. Sure, some of it's plain old being hard up. I haven't gotten my dick wet in over two years, because it's as if the instant I laid eyes on Jill for the first time, my cock decided she's it for me. No other woman will do. I can't even get off to internet porn at this point. Nobody online holds a candle to my Jill.

The only, and I mean only, way I can come these days is hosting a solo hand party while imagining the filthy ways I want to worship Jill Elders. Glutton for punishment? Table for one.