I set Ryder on the bed and pull his shoes off before he rolls over and is lost to his dreams. Nelly curls up in the dog bed next to his dresser, tail thumping quietly.
Back downstairs, I stop short when I see Shelby bent over the couch in the living room, clad only in a pair of short shorts and a matching tank top thing. The thin cotton with a dusting of blue flowers across it doesn’t leave a whole lot to the imagination.
“Ah, fuck,” I mutter under my breath, tearing my eyes away from her impressive backside to focus in on why she’s putting sheets on the couch.
She spins around, clutching the top sheet to her bosom. Her boobs are barely contained in the tank top, a detail any hot-blooded male couldn’t help but notice. “What?” she asks, blinking innocently.
I wiggle my fingers around in the darkness between us. “Where the fuck are the rest of your pajamas?”
She looks down at herself and then back at me with a little shrug, dropping the sheet onto the couch. Now my eyes aresearching for anywhere else to land except for her breasts. “It’s summer. It’s hot. I don’t like to sleep in warm clothes. If I’m ‘living here,’ I want to be comfortable.”
I don’t like the way she used her fingers as air quotes. I latch on to the irritation and ride it through the wave of lust that shouldn’t be there. Not with my best friend. Sadly, penises do whatever penises want to do. And when they see boobs, they notice. It’s fucking science, okay?
She points at my crotch area, which does not help. Penises also like attention. “Do my breasts bother you?” Shelby’s struggling to hold back a laugh.
“You fucking know they do, you little tease.”
She bursts out with a shocked laugh like she doesn’t believe me. Even knowing it’s at my expense, I love to hear it. I lunge forward, making her shriek and move out of the way. Snatching the sheet, I plop my ass on the couch and cross my boot over my knee like her half-naked appearance doesn’t affect me in the slightest.
“Get your exposed ass to my room, woman. What kind of man would I be if I made you take the couch?”
Shelby’s smile turns sad. “You certainly wouldn’t be the kind of man I date. That’s for sure.”
With that sad pronouncement of her dating history, she walks down the hallway and disappears into my bedroom. I look down at my lap and tell my dick to settle down. We do not lust after best friends.
Even if they have the best ass this side of the Mississippi.
Chapter
Four
BEWARE: A DEAD SNAKE CAN STILL BITE
Shelby
“I feel like this is an existential question.” Daddy grins at Momma in the passenger seat of the sedan as the radio blasts “Who Let the Dogs Out” by Baha Men. It’s my favorite song of the summer.
Momma laughs with her signature crooked smile on full display. Daddy says its imperfection makes it all the more beautiful, and I agree. Momma is undeniably gorgeous, inside and out.
“Shelby, your daddy’s thinking way too hard again.” Her wavy russet hair falls over her shoulder as she winks at me.
I laugh because that’s nothing new.
“Hey!” Daddy pretends to be offended, and I grin back down at the latest edition ofJanemagazine resting in my lap.
“Oh, Shelbs, I forgot to tell you,” Momma starts, but when I look back up, she’s gone. And so is Daddy.
All I can see is a speeding truck coming right toward me through the windshield. I slap my hands over my eyes and scream like there’s no tomorrow.
“Shelby!” A shout hits my ears, and I feel someone shaking me. “Sweetness, it’s me!”
I gasp for air, my eyelids fluttering open, only to be blinded by a bedside lamp. It takes almost a minute to steady my breathing and bring my heart rate down as I frantically repeat to myself, “It was only a dream. It was only a dream.”
It takes another thirty seconds to fully realize where I am and that Dallas has been stroking his fingers up and down my back while holding me to his bare chest, my head cradled in his other hand. I inhale one long, shaky breath through my nose, filling my head with the clean scent of plain old bar soap and a hint of cardamom and amber from Dallas’s favorite shampoo.
“Shhh,” he murmurs, never breaking the rhythm of his strokes as the bed creaks under us, and he adjusts to rest his head against the wooden headboard.
I squeeze my eyes shut, determined to keep the memories and tears at bay. Despite the sweat from my temples wetting Dallas’s skin and the beginnings of embarrassment that I know will flow like lava from a volcano in the morning, I can’t make myself move. Or apologize. Or explain.
