“Were you writing when I called?”
He confirms, thus quashing my daydream of him jumping shirtless out of bed.
The next room contains a set of weights and half a dozen moving boxes pushed against the wall. I look at him with a raised eyebrow.
“I haven’t been here that long,” he says defensively.
“Where are you going to sleep?” I ask dubiously. “A couch?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t fit. I’m too big.” His words hang in the silence between us as we make eye contact for a bit too long. I slap my hand over my mouth to suppress more giggles.“Get your mind out of the gutter,” he scolds. But when he turns away, I don’t miss the smirk he’s trying to hide. “I’m too tall, and it’s murder on my back. I’ll blow up an air mattress in here.”
“Oh, I can take that.”
“Not happening.” He motions for me to follow him. We stop at the open door of West’s bedroom. I survey the large bed with white sheets and a dove-gray comforter. The room is tidy but lived-in, a jacket draped over the back of a reading chair in the corner, a water bottle by the bed, a stack of books on the floor.
I put the back of my hand to my forehead and pretend to swoon against the doorframe.
“I forgot that you get a little weird when you’re tired,” West says.
“You have a headboard! And pillowcases!”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
“I once hooked up with a guy who kept a bottle under his bed that he would pee in when he was too lazy to get up.”
West looks deeply disturbed.
“I was in a situationship for nine weeks withanotherguy who had a mushroom growing in his shower the whole time.” I double over, giggling at the disgusting memory. “And thenheghostedme!”
“Fucking hell, Mars!”
“What? I’m giving you a compliment! You should learn to take it!” I shove him lightly on the shoulder.
His eyes follow the path of the hand that touched him. “Why would you settle for that? Surely you know that you’re—” He snaps his jaw shut. The muscle works. “You deserve better than a condemned building,” he says somewhat lamely.
“I know. That’s why you don’t see me with any of them now. But the city, my job—it’s lonely.” I shrug as the words tumbleunexamined from my lips. “And most of the guys who ask me out still act like boys. But look at you.” I gesture to the room, the house, him. “You have your shit together. You’re an adult. Aman.”
Heat crawls up my spine.What the hell was that?I meant it as a general acknowledgment of the passage of time, but one look at West’s gobsmacked expression tells me that my diatribe sounds as bad as I fear. Like I’m measuring West against the people I date, and he comes out on top.
Trouble left the station a long time ago.I am well and truly fucked.
“I don’t know why I said that,” I say in a quick breath.
West’s eyes darken as the air between us shifts, stretching taut, pulling us together—though we don’t move. My slaphappy mood sobers, and desire melts through me, dripping slowly, pooling, gathering, simmering until I’m molten. Want reaches every part of my body. Tightening my chest and gathering between my thighs and making my toes curl. I worry my bottom lip between my teeth and suddenly remember West’s words.I don’t bite. Hard.Another flush of my skin, and impossibly, his gaze grows hungrier. His intent is familiar, but the intensity is new.
I glance over my shoulder at the bed, and when I meet his eyes again, all the corded muscles in his neck and arms are visible. His hand flexes on the doorknob for the length of time it takes to build an empire and watch it collapse.
“If you don’t say something right now, I’ll walk to Jazz’s house and take my chances with the cats,” I say in a voice much huskier than I intended.
His expression is tortured, and I can’t tell if my outburst has horrified or intrigued him. I take half a step toward him at the exact moment West tears his eyes away. The tension defuses.He clears his throat and points toward the connecting bathroom. “You’ll find clean towels in the linen closet. T-shirts are in my dresser.”
Horrified, then. Good to know.
I blink at him, unsure how I misread the situation so astronomically.
“I, uh, assume you want to get out of your smoky clothes.”
“Thanks.” I don’t trust myself to say more.
