Returning her own smirk, she teased, “Maybe.” Then she sobered. “The invitation is contingent on no shenanigans.”
“You’re doing it on purpose, aren’t you?” I asked as I headed toward her bedroom.
“Doing what?” Her tone was perplexed as she followed me.
“Testing my willpower.” I tugged my shirt over my head and draped it over the chair in the corner of the room.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
Her look of genuine consternation would have cracked me right up if not for the fact I knew how my body was going to react to holding her close in her double bed.
“I’ll be good tonight, T. Promise. But it might wreck me.”
I shucked off my jeans and padded into her en-suite bathroom where I located her toothbrush. When she followed me into the space clearly meant for one at a time, she about wore me out in her camisole and a skimpy pair of sleep shorts.
“Hey!” she cried out when she caught sight of where her toothbrush was.
I spat and rinsed my mouth then stepped aside and handed the toothbrush to her. With a massive roll of her eyes, she conveyed her thoughts about my antics rather loudly. Chuckling, I watched her over her shoulder in the mirror as she cleaned her teeth. My hands found their way to her hips, and there was something intimately domestic about us together this way. A picture of us like this every night for the next fifty years flashed warmth through my chest.
She wrinkled her nose at my reflection and bent to rinse her mouth in the sink. Turning in my arms, she planted her hands on my chest and shot me a stern look. “No. Shenanigans.” Then she slipped out of my hold and returned to the bedroom.
Together, we turned down the blankets on the bed and climbed in as though we performed this ritual nightly.
“Testing me, T.”
“It’s not intentional.”
“I know.” Gathering her close, I forced myself to stop with a soft kiss. “Good night, Taryn.”
Resting her head on my shoulder, her hand on my chest, she murmured, “Good night, Danny.”
?Chapter Twenty-Five
?Taryn
The drive homeon Wednesday morning passed in a blur as I replayed the night before and the early morning with Danny in my head. I still didn’t know exactly what had possessed me to invite him to spend the night. It was such a crazy risk, because if he’d decided to push my boundaries, I wasn’t sure I’d have stopped him. Then he would have discovered my terrible secret and probably run out the door screaming into the night.
Thinking about his hot kisses on my mouth, my skin,my breasts, it’s a wonder I hadn’t started something with him when we’d stood touching in front of the bathroom mirror after he helped himself to my toothbrush. Add to that the incredible orgasm he’d given me with his hand and the excitement I’d experienced when he let me return the favor, it was a marvel I hadn’t initiated the shenanigans that probably would have ended our friendship.
Having that knowledge in the back of my head should have made it impossible for me to sleep next to him, yet my alarm waking me this morning had come as a shock. Even more shocking? How rested I felt. I couldn’t remember ever sleeping as well as I did wrapped in Danny’s arms all night.
The only thing stopping me from helping him with his morning wood—which was wedged in the crack of my ass when I awoke to him spooning me—was that he was about an inch from being late to morning lift. He’d hopped into a freezing shower for about two minutes, dressed, and given me a swift, hard kiss on his way out the door.
Cupping my face in his palms, he’d issued a direct order: “Text me the second you get back to town on Friday night, T. I mean it. I don’t care how late it is.”
Sometimes he sounded exactly like the captain. It was all I could do not to salute him, which would have gone down like dropping a brick in the middle of a five-year-old’s birthday cake. But he didn’t need to worry. No doubt I’d be texting him tonight, all day tomorrow—likely with pics of Mom’s delicious Thanksgiving spread—and most of Friday before I headed back to campus. By the time the holiday was over, he’d probably be sick of my texts.
Yeah, I needed to dial it back a bit. But the way things escalated during our “study break” last night had left me hoping—fantasizing, really—that moving from best friends to lovers might not result in such a terrible outcome as my first relationship with a guy.
When I pulled up to the driveway at Dad and Mom’s, I had to hit the brakes and back into a spot in front of the house since both Tally and Tina’s cars were taking up all the available space. As I walked around to the trunk of my car to grab my overnight bag, the sound of a loud truck engine announced someone coming down the street. Call it a survival instinct, but somehow I knew without even seeing it, that the truck belonged to my nemesis, Derek Watson.
Though I hustled to grab my bag and my backpack and run up onto the porch to maybe make it inside before he drove past, my backpack snagged on the hinge of the trunk lid, and I had to drop my overnight bag on the pavement and use two hands to free it. In the few seconds it took to free my pack, the truck pulled up behind my car so close it nearly drove over my bag lying on the ground behind me. Derek cut the engine and leaned out of the driver’s side window.
“How long are you back in town for?”
“Thanksgiving.” I didn’t bother to glance in his direction as I slammed the trunk of my car shut and touched the lock button on my key fob. Picking up my overnight bag from the pavement, I stepped up on the curb, intent on going inside before he could start in on me.
But I underestimated the speed of his ugly.
