Either the light in Xander’s bathroom was incredibly flattering, or I looked better than I had in years this morning. I could barely detect my dark circles, and my hair was a mess, but… it was kind of a sexy mess?
Was I allowed to think that about myself?
Ifeltsexy. For what was probably the first time in my life. Xander had made me feel that way.
When I opened the bathroom door again, he was standing on the other side of it in a threadbare t-shirt and a pair of old sweatpants, slung low on his hips.
“Hi,” he said, eyes glittering as he looked up at me. “I didn’t mean to wake you. Baker’s hours. Sorry.”
“No, umm… no need to be…”
It was too early to be confronted with an unfathomably hot Xander and also the reminder that for some reason he’d wanted me last night. Now that there was enough blood in my brain to think, I could barely believe any of it had happened.
“I’m notthatsorry,” he said, curling a hand over my shoulder and pulling me into a kiss, sleepy and lazy but with a hint of need threaded through it.
That was the thing about Xander. I couldn’t kid myself that he didn’t want me. He wouldn’t let me.
“Wouldn’t want you to be,” I murmured when he paused to let me breathe, glad now that I’d rinsed my mouth out in the bathroom. Xander already smelled of cinnamon and sugar, and I figured he must have been downstairs prepping for the day.
“This is the part of the day when I normally take a shower,” he said. “If you wanted to come with?”
He slid the hand on my shoulder down to the first still-done button of my shirt, his other hand coming up to help. But he didn’t unbutton it. All he did was look up at me.
“I’m not going to touch this,” he said, flicking the button with the tip of his finger. “Unless you tell me it’s okay. But,” he added, pausing to wet his lips. “I’d like it to be okay. I like you.”
“I like you, too,” I said, and it might have been an automatic response, but it wasn’t. Ididlike Xander. I’d liked Xander for months, but I hadn’t realized how much more intense it could be in person.
More importantly, I trusted him. “It’s okay.”
Xander beamed up at me, then focused on my buttons, wrinkling his nose in concentration as he undid each one down the front of my shirt, then reached for my cuffs. He laughed when he found one of them already open, but focused on the other, and then turned his face up again when he was done.
“Can I take it off?” he asked, like a kid asking to open a birthday present.
Heat rushed up the back of my neck, but I made myself nod.
“You sure?” Xander paused, his hands on the bare skin of my shoulders, poised to push my shirt off once and for all.
“I’m sure,” I said, and now I meant it.
He beamed up at me, bright as the sunrise peeking through the blinds, and eased my shirt off my shoulders, backing me into the bathroom at the same time. Before he even looked at me again, he pulled me down for another kiss, laughing into my mouth.
This I could do. I could’ve kissed Xander until we both died of old age and then some. Experience might not have been my middle name, but I knew enough to know that this wasn’t like kissing just anyone.
When I said Xander didn’t feel like a stranger, I meant it. He maybe felt like the least strange person in my life.
My breath caught as his hands skimmed down my chest, gentle fingers running over me, exploring with unhurried interest that made me feel warm all over.
Xander kissed his way down my neck, one hand pausing at the obvious scar low on my belly.
“Can I ask what happened here?”
“Oh, uh,” I blinked at him. “Appendicitis.”
Xander raised an eyebrow. “Don’t they normally do that… uh, up your…?”
“Not if you waited a week and passed out in the middle of your history exam with a fever of a hundred and six,” I said, looking down at where he was stroking along it.
This was the only thing he noticed about me?
