She shivers as I lift her tank top up and slide my hands under it, expertly finding the clasp and releasing her tits from their confine.
“Thanks,” she whispers as she pulls away. She hangs the bra on one of the dresser knobs, then climbs into bed.
I follow, my pulse heavy, my cock ignoring my brain’s blaring reminder that this isn’t likethat.
She stretches out on her side, and I roll onto my back. My arm comes up, muscle memory getting it halfway across her pillow before I remember that we aren’t going to snuggle all night.
I don’t stop soon enough for her not to notice, and she tugs her pillow all the way to the edge of the bed.
I sigh. “I’ll stay on my own side.”
She flops onto her back, cheeks flushed, and crosses herarms tightly in front of her. She’s defiant and gorgeous in her drunken indignation. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t need to. I’ll keep my hands to myself, too.”
She doesn’t reply to that.
Which is…curious.
So I add, ”Unless you text me in the middle of the night.”
Her mouth opens. Closes.
“Not happening,” she mutters, turning over to give me her back.
I’m grinning as she turns off the lamp, plunging the room into darkness.
Feeling her settle next to me after all these months is interesting. Of course I know what it’s like to have her close, to hold her tightly. Did that just three days ago, after all. But none of our hookups were in a bed. And I didn’t think we’d get to actuallysleeptogether again, let alone inthisbed.
Tension radiates off her tight little body.
But we survived eight hours in the truck, and hours with her family. We can handle a night sharing a room.
Chapter 11
Rory
Garrett’s breathing slows and evens out.
It should be soothing.
Instead, it’s exactly the right bass line rhythm for my brain to parade out all of my choices today, in a reverse march ofwhat the fuck were you thinking, Rory Minelli?
From the way he kept watching me in the kitchen as we did those shots, to the Christmas tree delivery, to me calling himbabeas soon as I realized we couldn’t tell my family we’d broken up, to the long drive, all the way back to his arrival in the parking lot behind my apartment.
The weird relief I felt, even as resentment made me prickly. It’s not his fault that I ignored the warning lights on the car.
I drag in a slow, long breath, but that just pulls in the scent of his soap rising off his warm, sleeping body. Makes my thoughts spiral from the parade of regrets to more chaotic, clashing visuals. Sex and kissing and not kissing and babies and work and being too much and not enough.
The way I automatically asked him for help.
And how he instinctively stepped up.
How it’s been hours and we haven’t fought.
We’ve almost kissed and we’ve raced around the skating trail and we made questionable choices about drinking the night before a very busy Christmas Eve. But we also busted his ninety minute rule wide open.
Ihatethat we got to a place where he had to put a time limit on being around me.
