Love in Bloom (an erotic short story) by Delilah Devlin Page A

too much or you’ll think I’m gay or sexless.”
    “I’d never think that.” Sweet Jesus, would she ever learn to just shut up?
    “I know you. That voice.”
    No doubt, he recognized her penchant for babbling every time he’d smiled at her in the hallway at Reagan High. Her cheeks burned. “Um,” she pointed her thumb down the hallway. “I better go. Delivery boy called in sick. Hope you like the flowers.” She turned and hurried away.
    “Wait! What’s your name?”
    Amanda kept on walking, pretending she hadn’t heard him. He’d never known it in high-school. Now, she was double-damn sure she didn’t want him learning it today.
    She turned the corner, hurrying toward the elevator and hit the button. Her heart pounded so loudly, she never heard him coming.
    A finger tapped her shoulder. “You didn’t stick around long enough for me to tip you.”
    The glance she aimed over her shoulder slid down to his towel, which was still loosening. Because she couldn’t take the stress any longer, she reached for the ends working their way free and pulled them together, retucking them at his hips.
    When she realized what she’d done, she froze, her fingers still trapped against his warm skin.
    The elevator door slid open behind her and she didn’t dare glance back.
    His still features didn’t change. Must have been in shock, which suited her fine.
    Things couldn’t get any worse, but she had to get away. She pulled free her hand and stepped backward into the elevator, her mouth gaping when his towel puddled at his feet. A second later, the doors slid closed between them.
    “Oh my,” came a breathy whisper from behind her.
    Mandy glanced at an elderly woman whose grin stretched wide across her face.
    “Thanks, my dear. I’ve wondered about him for years.”
    “You’re welcome,” Mandy muttered.
    The elevator stopped twice more on the way to the bottom floor. Only then did she breathe a deep sigh of relief, happy the ordeal was over and ready to go back to the shop to lick her wounds in privacy. Seriously, could she have mucked up things any worse?
    She stepped out of the elevator, but only made it three steps before a hand wrapped around her wrist, and she was pulled into the stairwell next to the elevator and trapped between the wall and Dustin Fremont’s broad chest.
    “I didn’t want a tip,” she said, shocked to her toes that he’d run down four flights of stairs to stop her. But why?
    “We weren’t finished.”
    She glanced down. The towel was back in place. She wasn’t sure if she felt relief or not, but now that she knew exactly what the fluffy terry hid, it wasn’t any protection. And what it hid tented against the material.
    “Ignore it,” he bit out.
    “Impossible,” she sputtered and looked into his eyes.
    “Your own damn fault.”
    “How? Did I ask you to answer the door naked?”
    “You rang the bell three times. You could have taken that as a hint I wasn’t ready for company.”
    “I didn’t want your flowers to wilt,” she said, then pressed her lips together as she fought the urge to again cut her gaze down to the towel.
    “So you can conduct a conversation,” he said slowly, his voice deepening to a sexy rumble.
    “This is an argument. Which we can end as soon as you let me go.”
    He snorted. “Go out with me.”
    “What?” Words she’d dreamed of hearing years ago.
    “Sorry, but there’s a breeze in this stairwell and I don’t have time for niceties. A date. I buy you dinner. You tell me your name.”
    “I know what you’re packing. Think I don’t know what you really want?”
    “Is that a problem?”
    If anyone else had said that, she’d have slapped him silly, but hadn’t she been thinking about just what he inferred even before he opened the door to his apartment?
    Before she’d rang his bell, she’d tried to shore up her confidence to ask him out, reminding herself that she owned her own business, sat on the neighborhood development committee where