The Neighbourly Thing to Do Series Book 3: Lovingly
Penulis
Al Holland
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'Her first snoop was an accident, but that one glimpse of something private, led to a glance here and a peep there, until she was out of control and digging through things to find out more.
Why had he done it? Why had he hid this? How had he kept something so significant from her, for all this time? Was their whole thing—relationship, whatever—for this?'
Lara and Zavien are committed to their undeniable connection. They grow closer and build a deeper bond day by day, but there are still so many mysteries surrounding Zavien’s life. He evades and distracts from her questions, but one way or another, she will get all the answers she’s looking for. It’s more a matter of what will follow when she does.
Chapter 1: Interrupted
LARA
Coming home from work was usually very predictable for Lara.
If she had been working a graveyard shift, she went straight into her apartment, washed off the hospital smell, and then hit the sack, face first. If she came home at a decent hour, Zavien was usually waiting for her. Those days were her favorite, and since having come under the mentorship of Dr. Lima, they seemed to be more frequent.
It meant a built-in way to unwind. Everything about Zavien screamed relax, despite all the ways in which he grated her nerves. Since having declared a truce in lieu of a budding relationship, seeing her only-sometimes-infuriating neighbor generally brought her peace.
Adapting some of that Zavien-esque nonchalance was quite possibly the best thing that had ever happened to her. And so long as she didn’t start slouching like him, she would continue to be grateful for it. It was just easier to breathe around him.
It helped that he smelled so good all the time.
As always, she flopped straight over the edge of the couch to bury her face in whichever part of his body it hit first. This time, it was the crook of his neck. She inhaled deeply, wrapping a hand around him to bring him closer, but instead of the usual warm, pliable body she was used to, she was met with rigidity.
“Are you stressed?” she blurted out in shock.
Zavien sighed and rolled his shoulders, giving her one of his winning smiles to distract her from the cracking and popping of his joints, but she had fallen victim to that smile too many times. The corners of his mouth were lifted in near-perfect symmetry, and his lips were pulled just a hair too taut over his teeth.
“I’m fine,” he dismissed, finally leaning into her touch. He was cute, but she was not so easily swayed.
“Zavien,” she challenged, deadpan.
“Lara,” he mimicked.
“I’ve never seen you stressed out before,” she said, pushing her hand into the tense muscles of his shoulder until he heaved a shuddering breath and sank into the couch. “Is it work?” she asked softly, mostly out of concern and a little bit out of her innate curiosity about this facet of his life he had kept completely closed off to her.
She told herself that she only pried because they were together and it was odd that he would be so private with her. In reality, she knew she was a primal creature, driven by a competitive and nosy nature that simply burned at the idea of someone knowing something she didn’t.
“Mmm,” he grunted in what she assumed was an affirmative.
“Do you wanna talk about it?” she asked, carefully hiding her keen interest behind kneading hands.
“No,” he said resolutely and so harshly that even he grimaced. “It’s not worth talking about,” he added in an unhappy grumble.
She continued pressing into his shoulders, working out the knots and maybe indulging a little in the feeling of his muscles beneath her fingertips. If she was going to massage him, she might as well enjoy herself. His sighs as she worked him over certainly were enjoyable, to say the least.
As unsatisfied as her inner sleuth was, her inner horndog (a much wilier and louder presence) was jumping for joy.
She lowered her lips to his neck, letting them linger on his pulse point as she slowly eased away his tension until he was malleable enough to be pushed flat onto his stomach, laid out across his couch.
He didn’t complain when she climbed over the back of the couch and sat herself on top of his butt. On the contrary, he seemed more than happy to let her use him as furniture, so long as she continued massaging out the kinks in his back.
“I should be stressed more often,” he murmured into the couch cushion.
“So, this was just some ploy to get me to dote on you?” she teased.
“You’re a cruel creature by nature. I’ve got to take advantage where I can,” he replied, his easy smile appearing on the half of his face not buried in a cushion, and this time, she knew for certain that it was genuine.
She reclined over him to press a kiss to the corner of his smile.
“You’re not slick, Crane,” she whispered, pressing her thumbs into a particularly tight area between his shoulder blades until he groaned in a mixture of pain and pleasure.
Maybe she had a teensy bit of a sadistic streak, because she loved it when she could get to him like this. He was so cute when he was at her fingertips, powerless against her charms.
She rarely indulged anyone with one of her massages (mainly because they were wimps who couldn’t take it), but Zavien was a worthy candidate, and not just because the sounds he made turned her into a whole ass slip ’n slide.
“Feeling better?” she asked, granting herself another slow kiss on the warm skin of his back and smiling into it.
“Mmm, nearly there,” he said, a teasing lilt in his voice. He was trying to rile her up, but she wouldn’t let him get to her.
“You’re a decent masseuse,” he tacked on for good measure. That did the trick.
“Decent?!” she cried. “You are putty in my hands!”
He laughed, his whole body shaking beneath her, making her bounce gently where she was perched on his backside. “All the kinks are gone from my back, but I have one more area that’s feeling a little tense,” he said with a smirk, abruptly turning over and nearly launching her off the couch in the process.
“You’re incorrigible,” she chastised.
“And you’re wet.”
“You don’t know that,” she argued.
“There’s a damp patch on my ass that says otherwise,” he said, that infuriating, arrogant smirk in full effect and his hands sweeping up and down her thighs.
“Don’t blame me for your accidents.”
He groaned and removed his hands from her. “You are ruining this for me,” he complained.
She couldn’t stop the laugh that bubbled out of her, but she did lean over to kiss him in apology.
His hands had just slipped back onto her thighs when his phone buzzed from deep inside his pocket, inconveniently (or conveniently, depending on how you looked at it) situated beneath her straddling hips. Zavien’s eyes flashed at the little moan-and-wriggle routine she did at the sensation of it vibrating against her.
“You should get that,” she said, feeling vilified by his betrayed expression as she scooted off of him.
“I’d really rather not,” he grumbled, even as he pulled his phone out of his pocket and swung his legs to the floor. “Hello?” he said blandly after swiping the call open. He sighed and shot her an apologetic and disheartened look as he silently excused himself and disappeared into his bedroom.
