His deep chuckle actually helps calm me a little. “I’ll be back in a second.”
The wooden floorboards creek as he makes his way down the hall to the bathroom and I sit up and find my underwear, pull them on and then dart into the living room to retrieve my T-shirt and yank it on. Where is my bra? I tip toe back into the bedroom, still can’t see my bra. I thought I would stop there, with just the t-shirt and undies but then suddenly I am completely clothed. Everything including my Uggs but not my bra because I can’t find that. Why am I fully dressed when he is going to walk out of the bathroom naked? What if he wants to snuggle or go again? I have spent countless hours begging the universe for this exact thing, so why do I want to run to the front door, pull it open and keep running?
He appears in the bedroom door, every naked, sweaty inch of him. And there aresomanyinches. He looks so perfect it hurts. Except for the look on his face which is nothing but shock. No euphoria, no post-orgasmic bliss, no contented cocky smirk. Just shock. “Are you leaving?”
“I… I don’t know…” I confess and run my fingers through my hair. “I should, right? I mean I’ve never had a bed buddy but—”
“I’m your bed buddy?” He looks offended. Oops.
“One night stand?”
“I’m a one night stand?”
“Jake I don’t know what you are,” I blurt out. “I mean… whatweare. Do you?”
“I guess not,” he says and starts walking toward me. “But we can’t figure it out if you go and run away, now can we?”
He takes me by the shoulders and pulls me to him and presses his lips to the top of my head. I relax against his warm, bare body and close my eyes and for the first time… I absorb this moment. I’m in Jake Maverick’s arms. He’s naked and at this very moment, he is mine.
And then someone pounds on his front door.
“What the actual fuck,” he hisses, annoyed.
I jump out of his embrace. He doesn’t move. “I don’t want to answer that. Whoever it is will go away.”
There’s more pounding.
“That sounds like a Hawkins fist doing the knocking and we never go away,” I tell him and he grins.
“This from the girl who was about to orgasm and run.”
Okay, now I’m grinning too. But mine is one hundred percent sheepish.
More pounding. “Jake! You in there?”
It’s Logan. I know because although he sounds like Finn as much as he looks like him, which is completely, Finn is at hockey so it’s got to be Logan. Jake pulls on his sweats and I grab a t-shirt from a pile of discarded clothes on a wicker chair in the corner of his room and toss it at him. He looks confused. “Well you live on the fourth floor and I’m not climbing out a damn window, so put on all the clothes while I think of an excuse for being here.”
“And you might wanna smooth your hair. You look like you’ve just been pounded into the headboard,” Jake says proudly.
“Never touched the headboard,” I reply as I follow him out of the bedroom.
“We’ll have to work on that, Tink,” he murmurs and throws a wink to me over his broad shoulder before he swings open the front door.
Logan is standing there with the biggest, cutest ball of fur I have ever seen in my entire twenty-five years of life. It’s cappuccino brown and fluffy with a dollop of white between its blue eyes and on its chest. Logan is grinning like I don’t ever think I’ve seen before and that makes me just as joyful as the puppy. I squeal! The puppy wiggles in his arms.
“Is that a baby bear?” Jake asks as Logan puts it down and it lumbers, like only a puppy can, into Jake’s front hall.
“What’s its name?” I ask and drop to my knees in front of it.
“I don’t have a name yet, but I’m working on it,” Logan confesses.
Jake squats down too as Logan steps across the threshold and shuts the door behind him. “I was going to surprise you tomorrow, Terra. I didn’t think you’d be here.”
The puppy is the perfect reason not to look him in the eye as I lie. “Wanted to go over some pre-op stuff with Jake so I swung by after work.”
“We were going to order Chinese. You in?” Jake says and I’m too busy burying my face in the puppy’s neck to make a startled face.
“I’m starving,” Logan admits, pulling the beanie he’s wearing off his head. His hair is all over the place. “I drove all the way to Gray to get him.”
