CHAPTER
ONE
ATHENA
“No,” I mumbled to myself, pacing around in our kitchen and shaking my head. The mahogany hardwood was cold underneath my feet, and the low hum of our central heat did nothing to calm my racing heart. I crossed my arms over my chest to hide my taut nipples. “It can’t be Charlie. I … I can’t believe it.”
No way was my best friend an adult entertainer.
Heat swelled in my core, and I gripped the kitchen island until my knuckles turned white. He was the definition of puppy dog with big blue eyes—the nicest, sweetest man I had ever met. He’d help me with anything I asked, and he wasn’t one of those rich snobs just because he had come from a wealthy East Coast family.
I squeezed my eyes closed, replaying the moment last night when I had realized that the man I had been gawking at for months now was not only my best friend, but also my roommate.
What was I thinking?!
When I recognized his room in the background, I should’ve closed the tab immediately. But instead, I rewatched every single one of his videos to make sure that it was really him. Charlie never showed his face, but I knew his body too well. Those tattoos and his scar.
I even paid him to grunt and growl my name last night because I wanted to hear it so badly. He had said my name many times before in person, so softly spoken, but last night, it had been fucking wild, rowdy.
“Morning.” Charlie yawned from the doorway with his sun-kissed skin, light blonde almost-white hair, and sculpted muscles taunting me.
After leaping up in surprise, I twirled around and backed up into the counter. He rubbed his eyes the way he did every morning when he woke up, tired from staying up all night.
“Morning,” I squeaked and hurried past him.
“What’s wrong?” he asked almost immediately, catching my wrist before I could escape.
When he turned me around, another squeal left my mouth. I held my hands over my chest to hide my aching nipples and attempted to come up with an excuse. Any excuse. Something that would be believable at the very least!
“Um … nothing. Why?”
His gaze dropped down to my hand-covered chest, and then he lifted it back up to mine, his jaw twitching. God, he was screaming all kinds of trouble this morning!
He gently tightened his grip on my wrist. “What’s wrong, Athena?”
I needed to get out of here. Now!
“Nothing!” I exclaimed and hurried toward the door. “Nothing at all.”
“Come on, Athie.” Before I could make it three feet past him, he wrapped his hand around the nape of my neck and gently tugged me backward against his muscular body. “I know you. You can tell me if something’s?—”
“I think I forgot something, um …” My gaze snapped around the hall. “In my room!”
After escaping his grasp for good, I sprinted past him and down the hall to my bedroom. What was wrong with me this morning? Why couldn’t I get my-damn-self together around him? I had touched myself one too many times to his videos, but I had never reacted like this …
Maybe it was because he’d said my name last night. Or that I now knew it was him.
Once I reached my room, I slammed the door and ran to my computer because my dumb ass had fallen asleep to his videos, and I realized that I had never closed the tabs. I whipped my fingertips along my touchpad to turn it on.
The screen glowed, and my favorite video of Charlie’s lit up.
Fuck, what is wrong with me?! Why didn’t I close all these tabs?!
“Can I come in?” Charlie asked while opening my bedroom door, his blue eyes huge.
I snapped my laptop shut and stood in front of the computer. “U-um … ye—no.”
He walked into the room anyway with a smile so soft that I couldn’t believe the man I had watched last night was really him. There was no way in fucking hell that it was him. The man in the video was vicious, dark, filthy-mouthed, and … loved choking.
