I pull her hands away from where they are on my neck and chest, and she pouts down at me.
“Wecan’t,” I tell her. “I don’t want us to do something either of us will regret.”
Her brow creases with hurt as she stands up and stumbles back away from me, her arms wrapped self-consciously around her.
“Hey,” I say softly. “I just—you’re drunk.”
“It’s fine,” she spits. “I wouldn’t want you to do anything you’d regret.”
Fuck, now she’s pissed and I’m still just as hard. All she has to do is push back once—maybe twice more—and I’m likely to let go of whatever scraps of morals I have for just a taste of her.
I stand up, because I’ve hurt her more than enough in this lifetime and I’d rather spend the rest of my life wondering about the taste of her, the feel of her, than hurt her again. I hope that telling myself that over and over will make it true. I pull my thermal off over my head and hand it to her, leaving me in my undershirt.
She shakes her head. “I don’t need it.”
“The goose bumps on your arms say otherwise.”
Like an insolent child, she stomps over toward the door, but I step in front of her. I might be a piece of shit who just put my hands all over a drunk girl while I was stone-cold sober, but I refuse to let all those clowns downstairs see her like this.
She sizes me up and must decide that it’s not worth the fight, because she yanks the shirt away from me and tugs it on over her head.
I move out of her way, and she flings the door open before tearing down the stairs and out the front door.
Tate is sitting on the porch, sipping a beer. He’s smart enough to keep his mouth shut, but when he sees me following a very unhappy Clover, he raises his bottle with a self-satisfied smirk.
She crams into the back seat with Daisy and Briar, who are both chanting, “French fries! French fries! French fries!”
Daisy leans forward and pats my shoulder like I’m her noble steed. “Uber man, bring us to the french fries!”
I glance up at the rearview mirror to see that Clover’s ego has slightly recovered as she soothes Briar about her lost Saturday night revenue.
“To the french fries,” I grumble.
CHAPTER 23
Bennett
I head off toward Sports Ball, one of the only places in town that might still be serving food at this hour.
When we get there, I go in and return with four take-out containers of fries. Once Briar inspects my bounty, she sends me back in for extra ketchup and some mayonnaise.
The girls plow through the fries like muscle heads pounding protein powder and by the time I turn into the student parking lot, I have a back seat full of drunk first-years wrapped in foil and sleeping like babies.
The termherding catshas never been so true as it is when I direct them inside.
Upstairs, I make sure Briar and Daisy are settled in their room while Clover gets changed and into bed.
“Water and Tylenol,” I tell her as I walk around to her side of the bed. “Come on.”
“You have to stop taking care of me. It’s not fair,” she says.
“It’s your first semester of college. What kind of husband would I be if I didn’t help minimize your hangover? Now, open up.”
She obeys with her tongue outstretched and I place two pills there. Before I can pull my hand back, she closes her mouth around my finger and sucks for a moment before letting go.
“Flirt,” I whisper. Yeah, that image is going straight to the spank bank.
She shrugs and drinks down half a bottle of water. Once again, she sticks her tongue out to prove she’s followed instruction before settling back into bed, curled on her side.
