50 Shades of Drake 1 and 2

50SOD II: Chapter Eighty-Five

    If you ever wanted to test a man's character, all you had to do was walk around him dressed in a tank top and shorts. Bonus points if your hair is pulled up into a topknot with sexy, curly little tendrils that have escaped it.

    Brian was trying to be on his best behavior. He had told himself that he wouldn't even flirt with Destiny. From his conversation with Aubrey, he got the feeling that Aubrey expected him to flirt with her. Out of respect for her and out of respect for Aubrey, he was trying not to.

    He was innocently sitting on the living couch with the television serving as background noise while he worked on his laptop. Wire-rimmed glasses perched on his nose while typing. Completely minding his own business. And then there she was. He heard her on the stairs before he saw her. From where he sat on the couch, he had an unobstructed view of the stairs. After hearing her, he raised his eyes over the top of his laptop monitor. He saw her feet first. Cute, dainty little things. Toenails painted and reflecting the light above the staircase. And then he saw her legs. Bare, brown, glowing. Then the rest of her. No bra, which led his perverted mind to wonder if she'd decided not to wear panties either. Being the good guy that he was, once that thought occurred to him, he angled his eyes downward to his monitor again.

    See? He was trying to be good. But then she was padding across the living room and sitting next to him, leaning close to him so she could get a good look at his laptop monitor. Asking what he was doing and smelling delicious while doing it.

    He groaned inwardly, not an audible sound, just an inward cringe. But the frustration was real in that moment. "Just work," he said casually.

    "I feel like I should be working," she said, pouting. Don't get him started on how cute her pout was.

    "You shouldn't be. At the rate you're going, you're going to burn out by the end of the year. Just...relax."

    "Kind of hard to do that, with everything that's going on," she muttered, leaning away from him and glancing around the living room. "Did you decorate the place yourself?"

    "Yeah."

    She stood up from the couch and walked over to his fireplace.

    He made the mistake of looking at her. He had just been curious to see what she was doing. Honest. When he realized that she was peering closely at his family photos lined up on the mantlepiece of the fireplace, he should have looked away. But tearing his eyes away from her was so damned hard when she was that damned beautiful. No makeup, not a spec. His eyes traveled down the length of her. "Do you always do that?"

    She turned her head and looked back at him. "Do what?"

    "The thing you're doing with your foot."

    She looked down. One foot was angled behind the other leg. She smiled sheepishly. "Yeah, it's kind of a thing...that I do. Yeah."

    He nodded and smiled. "Just checking." He returned to working on his computer.

    "Why is it that you can work after work hours and I can't?" she asked, walking around the room and perusing the knickknacks scattered around his living room.

    "You ask a lot of questions."

    "I'm a journalist. It's what I do. Just call me...naturally curious."

    "That curiosity of yours would be why you're forced to stay here with me," he pointed out, removing his glasses from his face and looking up at her.

    Her mouth slanted. "Touche."

    He laughed. "The short answer? There's not really much chance for me to burn out. Work is all I have."

    She had the grace to look sympathetic.

    "Aww, do you feel sorry for me?" he joked, grinning.

    "Whenever I feel anything for you, you always ruin it with wisecracks like that," she muttered, turning back to his bookcase. One of several that he had in his house, all themed for the room they were in. In the living room, he had books themed around casual reading. Fiction. In his home office, his bookcase was filled with literature centered around the business, topics including media, public relations, marketing, etc. Non-fiction. The bookcase in his bedroom had a blend of the two, casual reading and more intense reading such as business and psychology.

    "Touche," he said quietly, knowing exactly why he tended to make flippant comments like that whenever she expressed genuine emotion towards him. It was because she made him nervous. He couldn't act the way he wanted around her, affectionate and flirty, so he didn't know how to act or respond.

    She turned and looked at him. The little vixen had the uncanny ability to look at someone like she was trying to see into their very soul.

    He returned the stare, dropping all pretenses, all attempts at sarcasm, all bravado and gave her a peek into who he was as a person.

    With slow steps, she made her way back to the couch and sat beside him. "I feel like you hide behind sarcasm sometimes. And If I'm going to live here with you, for any period of time...you should really just be yourself. You don't have to put on any fronts with me."

    The muscle in his jaw twitched.

    "So, just...be Brian, okay? I would really like to get to know him."

    Emotion crept into his eyes. He lowered them to keep her from seeing it, because he knew it was there. Those words, spoken so gently and so pleadingly, it was all he could do to stay on his side of the couch. "Yeah. I can do that."

    "Good. So...if you aren't going to watch TV, can I change the channel then? Or would that bother you while you're working?"

    "Have at it," he encouraged, pushing the remote control towards her.

    She grabbed it and tucked one leg beneath her, making herself comfortable.

    He made an effort to keep his focus on his laptop screen, but every now and then he would sneak a peek at her. His eyes would linger on the bottom lip she started to bite while scrolling through movie options, or the toes she wiggled while musing over which selection she wanted to go with. This moment was when he realized that there was no hope for him. He was head over heels for her, and there was no stopping it. His feelings for her were like a runaway train that he was fighting just to keep on the tracks.