Bewitched by Bella's Brother Read Free Page B

never forgive me. Have you ever heard your sister when she’s angry? It’s like being dragged naked over sandpaper and dipped in battery acid—deranged harpies have sweeter voices, you know?”
    “Yeah,” Asa grunted, and Sebastian was surprised
    enough to drop the jar of canned fruit he’d pulled out of the refrigerator. It didn’t break or spill, but it did thunk loudly enough to make Asa look up.
    “You talk!” Sebastian stammered.
    “You shut up!” Asa rolled his eyes and went back to the
    milk. He was going to need another towel—nearly two quarts of it had hit the tiled floor before Asa had righted the gallon.
    Sebastian hurried off and grabbed another kitchen towel
    from the back, then came back and got on his hands and
    knees to help. He was relieved as hell to find that his hard-on had gone to half-mast, because otherwise this situation would have gotten really awkward.
    “Thanks,” Asa grunted as he finished mopping up his
    milk.
    “Sorry I freaked you out,” Sebastian muttered. “I didn’t realize you’d gotten home yet.”
    Asa shrugged. “Wasn’t ready to sleep yet. Here—gimme.”
    He held his hands out for towels.
    Okay—Sebastian took it back. Asa was like Bella
    squared. Forget minimalist poetry—this guy was like a three-word handbook on how to be taciturn.
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    And he was still half-naked.
    Asa came back and sprayed some cleaner on the floor,
    and Sebastian moved to the table and sighed. Apparently, he was some sort of domestic god to boot. Asa looked up at his sigh and raised his eyebrows. “Problem?”
    “Feeling useless?”
    “You’re a guest. Eat. Feel full.”
    Sebastian sat bemusedly and did. “You wan thom
    pizza?” he garbled through a full mouth, and Asa stood,
    putting Sebastian eye-level at his equipment. Sebastian
    swallowed—hard. Twice. Tried not to cough and failed like an asshole. Asa went to the sink and got him a glass of water, setting it down on the table and waiting solicitously until he drank some and sounded like he was going to live.
    “You okay?” Asa asked, and Sebastian frowned up at
    him with watering eyes.
    “I wasn’t expecting to be eye-level,” he sputtered, and
    then he felt like an idiot. Asa looked down to where
    Sebastian had been looking, and the heat of his blush filled the room.
    “Shit,” he mumbled. “Didn’t mean to distract you.”
    “Dis….” Sebastian sputtered, indignant. “Dis tract me ?
    You’d be distracted, too, if something that big threatened to stare at you with its one big eye… distracted !”
    “One big eye?” Asa squeaked, and then he let out a
    sound between a choke and a snort, and then he took a deep breath. It was loud enough to sound unforgivably intimate in the dark.
    “I’m sorry,” Sebastian mumbled, mortified. “Sometimes
    my mouth just does that.”
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    “You may want to find other uses for it,” Asa muttered,
    and an appalling silence descended between them.
    “You didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” Sebastian
    interposed, and Asa shook his head.
    “Not even a little bit,” he muttered. “I’ll go to bed now, before I just blow it a….”
    Sebastian burst into giggles.
    “…gain,” Asa finished with a resigned sigh. Sebastian
    couldn’t even look at him anymore. He did hear the
    embarrassed sigh, and felt Asa stand up next to him. Then there was a gentle, wide-palmed, blunt-fingered hand in his hair.
    “You’re adorable,” Asa said. “As long as I don’t open my mouth more than necessary, you and Bella should have a
    good summer here.”
    Sebastian choked on his own giggles, and then Asa was
    gone. Sebastian pulled himself together and was left in the quiet, darkened kitchen, chowing pizza out of sheer
    embarrassment.

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Chapter 2
    SEBASTIAN woke up the next morning with the vague
    disappointment of knowing he had to go to work. He