“She sniffed all her pee-mails,” he said, shooting me a smirk.
“Good job, girl,” I cooed at her before getting her in the truck.
Then I went ahead and cranked up the radio just loud enough to make conversation impossible and spent the next twenty minutes sipping my coffee and picking at my apples and peanut butter. Before, eventually, pretending to take yet another nap.
And maybe eventually I did actually drift off.
Because I assumed Colter would have tried to call my name first. But what woke me up was a hand on my thigh.
I jerked awake, a little disoriented that it was dark out when it had been sunny what felt like just moments before.
“It’s alright,” Colter said, his voice soft. “You were really out,” he said as my gaze slid down, looking for Sugar, who’d been asleep with her head on my lap. But she was gone. “I handed her off to Saint and Syn to walk ten minutes ago.”
“Why didn’t you wake me?”
“I just did,” he said.
His hand was still on my thigh. The placement was just an inch too high to be a fully casual touch. And damn if my sleepy body didn’t just thrill at the idea of it slipping just a few inches higher and inward.
My thighs pressed together. And the way his eyes went a little more heavy-lidded told me he knew exactly where my mind was right then.
His fingers tightened.
My breath hitched.
But then he pulled his hand away.
“Let’s go check out our rooms,” he said, turning, grabbing the keys, and climbing out of the truck.
Alone, I slammed my head back into the rest, taking a few slow, deep breaths. It was no use. The desire was already flooding my system. It was the buzzing sensation just beneath my skin, the heavy pressure on my lower stomach, the way I was hyperaware of the brush of my clothes as I moved.
“Get a grip,” I grumbled to myself before gathering my bag and Sugar’s stuffed animal before climbing down.
With that, we checked in and waited for Saint and Syn before going up to our rooms.
We’d managed to all end up on the same floor, with Saint and Syn down near the stairwell and Colter and I almost on the complete other end.
“Let us know if you guys decide to order anything for dinner,” Saint said before disappearing into his room.
Unsurprisingly, it was a major upgrade from the motel. Which wasn’t hard. But this was a legitimately nice room, seemingly redone in faux white oak nightstands and desk, beige and white distressed carpet, and thick linen drapes. It was a single king-sized bed with crisp white bedding that seemed like it had seen the inside of a washing machine recently. The TV? Not a tube.
The bathroom wasn’t huge but seemed recently renovated too. The floors and walls were covered in a warm tile that had an almost sand effect. The shower was a glass walk-in, and there was a floating vanity with warm golden lighting all around and under it.
“This’ll do, huh?” I asked Sugar, who was already sniffing around the room.
I set my bag on the desk and was about to pull out my monitor to test my sugar when there was a knock. From… inside the room?
I stiffened and waited.
It came again.
But it wasn’t really inside the room.
It was from the other side of a door that I figured was another, smaller, closet.
Upon closer inspection, though, there was no reason for a closet to have a deadbolt and a swing lock.
You only needed that kind of security if that door went to another room.
