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He sat up.

My blood rushed like a whirling wind, and my mouth was suddenly so dry I might as well have swallowed a bag of mothballs.

He was all surly and ginormous as he came to eye level.

Head and shoulders poking up over the height of the mattress.

His fierce brows were basically slashed into daggers.

To my great misfortune, he donned a shirt, but that black tee was stretched so tight across his chest that I could see every corded, bulging muscle beneath it, anyway.

“Funny, you seemed to sleep a whole lot better once I was lying here,” he grunted, fully wry.

Tou-freaking-ché.

“And how would you know?” I tossed it out like a tease.

“Because I spent the last five hours listening to you breathe.”

My lips clamped shut to stop the gust of emotion from wheezing from my lungs. God, he had a way of making me feel like the most important person in the world.

“And how was that?” I hiked an indifferent shoulder, so nonchalant.

He arched a coy brow. “If you weren’t snoring the whole time, it might have been a whole lot more pleasurable.”

I untangled our fingers so I could give him a little shove to the shoulder. “You’re such a jerk.”

Too bad there was laughter in it.

He didn’t let my hand get away. He gathered it up, his mouth twisting into a loopy grin as he pressed it to the burning heat of his chest.

Severity filled his gaze. “It’s the best sound in the world, Little Apple.”

My smile turned wobbly, and I allowed myself to feel the thunder of his heart for one singular second before I forced myself to peel my hand out from under his big mitt.

He turned away for a beat, his head dipping as he scratched his fingers at the base of his skull before he looked back at me.

“I’m gonna need to take a shower. How much time do you need to get ready?”

My heart rate accelerated.

Right. Then there was this tricky little detail.

How was I supposed to manage it? Knowing he was going to be right there, behind the closed door, naked beneath the fall of the water?

“About forty-five minutes.” I wondered if he could tell I choked it. “Why don’t you go first? I’m sure this whole look takes you all of three minutes.”

I flicked at a dark, messy lock of his hair.

A smirk appeared on his ridiculous lips. “Can’t tell if that’s a compliment or a dig.”

A compliment, obvi. He didn’t need to know it.

I shifted all the way up to sitting, crisscrossing my legs as I gave him a shrug. “Guess you’ll never know.”

He pushed to his feet. So freaking tall as he came to tower over me.

A dark shadow that made me feel like I was standing in a spotlight.