Page 19 of Protected By Razor

I tighten my arm around her. She makes a soft sound in her sleep and turns her face into my chest, and I close my eyes and I don’t sleep, but for the first time in ten years I’m not fighting anything either.

CHAPTER 5

DARCIE

Iwake up with a Razor’s arm across my waist.

I don’t move. I don’t breathe. I lie there staring at the grey morning light on my ceiling and I wait to see if it’s a dream or if I’m going to need to deal with it being real.

His thumb moves on my hip. Once. Small.

Nope, not a dream. My best friend’s ridiculously hot brother is definitely in my bed.

“Morning.”

His voice. Low. Rough with sleep. Right next to my ear.

I turn my head very slowly.

He’s on his side. Propped up on one elbow. Already watching me. His hair is a mess and his jaw is stubbled in a way it wasn’t yesterday, and he’s looking at me like he’s been looking at me for a while and has no intention of stopping.

“Hi,” I whisper.

“Hi.”

“How long have you been awake?”

“A while.”

I don’t know what to do with the fact that he is in my bed, in the morning, warm and heavy against my side, looking at me like I’m something he doesn’t plan on letting go of.

“This is weird,” I say.

“Which part.”

“I don’t know how to do this. What are we supposed to say to each other?”

His thumb keeps moving on my hip. Slow. Absent.

“We don’t have to say anything,” he says.

I want to stay exactly where I am for the next hundred years with his hand on my hip and the smell of him on my pillow.

It’s a terrifying thing to realize at seven in the morning.

I pull on his t-shirt when I finally get up, because it’s just there. Not to mention, the fact that there is something about his scent that I find ridiculously attractive.

It’s enormous. It hits me mid-thigh. I roll the sleeves twice and catch a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror — hair wild, lips swollen, wearing a man’s shirt that smells like him — and I don’t recognize the woman looking back at me.

I like her.

That’s the part that shocks me.

I’ve spent my whole life looking in mirrors and seeing the sensible one, the one who does things properly, the one who doesn’t make trouble. This morning I see a woman who had sex last night with a man she’s wanted since she was sixteen, and she let him have her, and she wants him to have her again.

She’s smiling. Small. Private.

I’ve never been pleased with myself a day in my life.