Read Obsession (Southern Comfort) for Free Online Page B

he’d kissed her, and then kicking himself for… hell, he didn’t know.  Maybe it was kicking himself he enjoyed.
    Who was he kidding?  He’d been thrilled with that kiss.  Ecstatic about that kiss.  And had spent the past week and a half reliving it in vivid Technicolor with surround sound empowered by Dolby – thinking about her moaning against his mouth still made him shiver – and if he was kicking himself at all it was only because he’d basically flushed three years of self-restraint down the drain. 
    For a few, glorious, minutes.
    “What are you doing?”
    The overhead light flicked on, and Justin squinted at the blurred features of his younger brother.  “This is a little thing I like to call sleeping.”
    “You’re on the sofa.  In your underwear.  And your face looks… weird.”
    “You should talk, since yours looks just like it.”  He sat up and scrubbed a hand over the face in question, his palm rasping against a day’s worth of stubble.  Two days?  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d shaved.  He’d been working like the indentured.  “And the sofa was closer than the bed.”
    “Well the game’s about to start.”  James shoved at Justin’s bare legs, making them slide across the leather, plopping down with bottle in h and.
    “Is that beer?” He peered at the label.
    “I’m over twenty-one.”
    “Hell, when did that happen?”
    “About four years ago.  Probably arou nd the last time you showered.”
    Justin stared at his baby brother.  “Why are you here again?”
    James clicked the remote, satisfaction running over his face as fifty-two inches of high definition kicked in.  He sipped his beer, propping his enormous, sock-clad feet on Justin’s table.  “Christmas break. Final semester of law school. Stress.  Your house is the only one without r ugrats.”
    Justin currently felt annoyed with his three older brothers for their tendency to reproduce.  “You could have spent the rest of the week with Mom and Dad.  Or, you know, gone back to your own apartment. ”
    “Yeah, right. Dad would have talked about patent law and mom would have talked about nice young women. Like I have any interest in either of those. And my apartment is a shoebox filled with dirty socks.”
    Justin dubiously eye d the socks touching his table.
    “What?”  James lifted a foot.  “They’re clean .”
    “I know.  They’re mine.”
    “Hey, something came for you.”  Clearly anxious to change the topic, his brother gestured with his bottle.  “I p ut it on the kitchen table.”  
    Too tired to be appropriately annoyed, Justin stretched before heading toward the kitchen.  He spared a glance for the cardboard box sitting on the table, much more interested in the contents of his coffee pot.  The final drops were just falling into the carafe.  James might be a pain in the ass, but he was a considerate pain in the ass.  And he made damn good coffee.  After filling a cup and taking that first, bracing sip, Justin wiped a little spillage off the black granite counter.  He’d finished the final installation with James’s help, after living with plywood over his cabinets for a year.  Having belonged to an elderly woman, the house had been an overly feminine, out of date dump when he’d bought it, but he was slowly fixing it up.  It wasn’t big, and it wasn’t fancy. But it was close to the beach, and the foundation was good.  He could work with that.  He liked repairing stuff that was battered and broken, giving it new life.
    Good thing, he thought wryly, considering his day job.
    Slightly more focused after his cup was half-drained, Justin topped it off and turned his attention to the box.  There was a little heart drawn where the return address should be. Probably some kind of care package from his mother.  Leftover Christmas cookies, maybe, even though she’d already loaded him up last week.  But with James temporarily bunking with him, it had to be nearly