The light for the bathroom clicks on and illuminates the hallway for just a moment before the door closes, shrouding everything in darkness again. I’m exhausted, too. It’s late. But the second I hear the shower thrum to life; all I can think about is how Zach is naked less than twenty feet away. Naked and wet and soapy and—
Shaking my head, I snatch up my phone and scroll through social media to distract myself.
Don’t think about Zach.
Do notthink about Zachnaked.
Don’t do it, Lou.
I mean, it doesn’t help. But at least I can say I tried.
My eyes have started to droop when I hear the bathroom door open and footsteps heading toward me once again. Glancing over my shoulder, I’m suddenly wide awake, and I remind myself to breathe when he walks into the living room in nothing but a pair of sweatpants, a clean t-shirt gripped in his hands as he pulls it on over his head. I get the briefest glimpse of his bare chest and abdomen before it disappears beneath the t-shirt. He scrubs one hand through his dark, wet hair, tousling the strands and pushing it away from his forehead.
“How were the girls for you tonight?” he asks quietly, glancing over at me where I’m still sitting in the corner of the couch. “They didn’t give you any trouble, right?”
Breathe, Lou.Words. Remember words. “Uhh—no not at all. I woke them up around two in the morning, brought out the stripper pole and taught them how to—”
His bark of laughter and the wide, shocked grin that spreads across his face cuts off the sass and makes me smile. He shakes his head and regards me with those blue eyes I hate to admit I like so damn much. “Jesus Christ, Lou. You’re a fucking menace, you know that?”
“So I’ve been told,” I laugh, winking. He heads toward the kitchen, and I push myself up from my spot on the couch again. “Gotta keep you on your toes, old man. But seriously, they were fine. Not a peep out of any of them.”
He grunts another laugh. “Fuck, now you sound like Scar when she talks to her dad. I’m not as old as the chief, thank you very much. And that’s good. Chloe is a bear if she doesn’t get enough sleep.”
“What, only ten-ish years behind him? Not headed to the retirement home just yet?” I tease, following him as he heads into the kitchen. He takes a glass out of one of the cabinets and fills it with water, turning so that he’s leaning against the counter, facing me.
“Louise, I would love nothing more than to show you just hownot oldI am,” he rasps, raising the glass to his lips.
Stunned by the flirty, dirty response, so vastly different than the aloof man that’s avoided me all week, I’m utterly transfixed watching as he swallows the water down, his throat working as he finishes the entire glass in one go. Those blue eyes are on me the whole time. The heat in them… is it hot in here?
Just me?Great.
Setting the glass down on the counter beside him without taking his gaze off mine, through the dark, he rasps, “We’ve been over this.Don’t look at me like that, Princess.”
“Like what?” I whisper back, tauntingly. Honestly, how the fuck am Inotsupposed to look at him like this after what he just said? He just completely derailed my brain with that statement.
I’m only human, dammit. Boy hiatus or not, when a man that looks like Zach looks at me like he wants to devour me whole… what’s a girl to do?
I swallow hard, my eyes bouncing between his and his mouth. Shit, at this point, how many times have I fantasized about that mouth? About what that short-trimmed beard and mustache might feel like against my lips? Against the delicate skin on the inside of my thighs, against my clit…
“Like that.”
My eyes snap up to his again before dropping to his hands, where they’re now gripping the edge of the counter he’s leaned against, like the hold he has on that edge is the only thing holding him back. Through the darkness, his words are so low, so soft, so tortured. It makes me ache. I’m damn near holding my breath to keep from panting.
“Fuck, Lou. You look at me like that… and I start to forget why I’m fighting this so damn hard.”
Oh. Shit.
My core clenches and I lose the battle with trying to regulate my breathing. I want that. I want him tostopfighting this. I want him to give in, so damn badly.
I just wanthim.
I want to know what it feels like to have those big arms wrap around me, what those hands might feel like grabbing hold of me. How that mouth would trail over every inch of me.
Would he be rough? Gentle?
Both?
God, please let it be both.
