A wolfish grin shaped his lips at my threat, showing deep dimples that had my stomach fluttering and my hand twitching, eager to smack him. “Keep saying things like that, and I’ll think you’re waiting for me to get down on one knee.”
“Gray,” Briggs said in warning, but the man in front of me—Gray—just smiled wider.
“Not that you’d be the first,” he continued, stepping close enough that there was less than a foot between us, made even more apparent by the palpable tension begging me to take a stepof my own. “But I have a feeling you’d be the one I followed through for.”
“Get any closer,” I began, my teeth clenched as I forced myself to hold my ground, “and I’ll have you on your back before you can take another breath.”
Amusement and intrigue sparked in his eyes. “Such a violent princess,” he muttered with a nod, as if satisfied with the nickname I had every intention of removing from his vocabulary, before altering it to: “Princess Peach.”
My jaw ached with how forcefully I ground it.
Before I could decide between threatening him again—because I’d apparently lost that composure I’d just been so proud of—punching his perfect smile, or remaining silent, he took a step away, his gaze darting over me. “Just say when.”
“I won’t warn you before I take you down,” I assured him.
“Oh, I’m counting on that.” Gray’s smile shifted into something knowing, more significant, and far too confident. “But I meant getting down on one knee.”
“That’ll never happen.”
One side of his face scrunched up in doubt, somehow making him even more attractive. “Marrying you?” Gray winked as he backed up toward the Viking and Thatch. “I’ll take that bet, Princess.”
The moment I woke, I knew something was wrong.
It wasn’t the intense pounding in my skull. It wasn’t the gross feeling of day-old makeup on my eyes and face, even though I preferred not to wear makeup. It wasn’t even the light pouring in from the massive window that was on the wrong side of my room and far too close to my bed.
It was the arm around my waist.
But in the time it took for me to stealthily slip out from beneath the heavy arm, grab the unfamiliar digital clock on the nightstand, and whirl around with the hunk of plastic aimed at the stranger behind me, details started filtering in through the pain.
Briggs and Lainey’s destination wedding. Aruba. A familiar, woodsy scent?—
Gray?
I stopped inches from smashing the small clock against his temple, my hand hovering mid-air, and my heart pounding out a punishing rhythm in time with my head as I stared at my friend’s sleeping form.
No, no, no, no, no. This can’t—Iwouldn’t.
I took in what I could see of Hudson Gray: light brown hair a mess from sleep, no shirt, and displaying naturally tanned skin and relaxed muscles I was well acquainted with. Not in a way that meant anything, or that would explain why I’d just woken beside him. I was just familiar with the way nearly every member of our crew looked, since privacy had rarely been a luxury during the years we’d worked Special Ops missions overseas. None of us had ever made a thing of it because it’d been part of the job. But this was different.
This was Gray . . .
A Special Forces team member turned Shadow Industries coworker. The best friend I’d ever had and the bane of my existence.
He shamelessly flirted with every woman he passed. He made me want to punch things on an hourly basis—specifically, his too-handsome face. Yet I trusted him with my life, I could be myself with him in a way I’d never been able to with anyone else, and—despite my every attempt to prevent it—he’d stolen my heart sometime in the last decade. Not that he would ever know that.
And now he was here. In my hotel room. In mybed. Did I also mention it wasGray?
My stomach twisted and knotted and fluttered as I shakily set the clock on the nightstand.
Gray and I had slept next to each other during missions...along with the rest of the team. While working or watching our favorite shows, we’d crashed on his couch more times than I could remember, with my legs stretched out across his lap and him pretending to be annoyed that I was hogging the blanket. But we’d never gone near a bed, his arm had never been around me, and his missing shirt had never ended up on me.
Except the shirt on my body was absolutely Gray’s undershirt.
I was going to be sick. I never got sick. Then again, I’d never done anything before yesterday to result in the torturous beating in my skull now. I’d also never?—
I tore my stare from Gray, my stomach once again twisting as I worried over the possible events of the previous night.
I wouldn’t have. IknowI wouldn’t have done something so careless.I spared another glance at his sleeping form.Right?
