Page 40

I shivered. She scared me just as much when her mischief was aimed at someone else.

“That is not funny.” Carter’s voice brooked no argument.

He was so serious that even dauntless Iris dropped the subject.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

IN AN UNPRECEDENTED and shocking move, I kicked everyone out of my house before one a.m.

Ro was still drunk and still half naked, and I simply couldn’t take it anymore.

It was just us and a busy cleanup crew as I carried/led/dragged her back inside the house. I stopped and she kept moving enough to glue herself to my chest. Her head was tilted back, and she was looking up at me with a glazed bedroom stare.

I tilted my head down, closed my eyes and inhaled her sweet, boozy breath, shuddering and not with distaste.

I took a significant step back, and she stood on her own without me having to touch her, thank God.

“Have you ever been this drunk before?” I asked her pointedly.

“Neverbeendrunkafore,” she slurred.

“See what happens when you overindulge?” I asked her, trying my best to sound like a chiding parent. “I’m left to take care of you at the end of the night. I don’t even trust you to put yourself to bed in this state.”

“Oh, staaahhhp. Jus’ lemme be. I know where m’bed is. Leave me ’lone.”

Drunk Ro was too much for me.

I knew it, but I still couldn’t keep away.

My concern overrode my natural inclination to run away from, instead of into, an obvious trap.

I was trying to keep my hands to myself as much as humanly possible, but she was swaying on her feet. I sighed. “Hold onto me, or I’m going to have to carry you up like a baby,” I warned her sternly.

She gave me a drunk pout for that. “You can’t carry me thafar. Thas alot a stairs, and Imma grown woman.”

“Barely grown. You’re an itty bitty barely slip of a woman, and I could carry you easily for miles. Do you want to be carried?”

She harrumphed. “Nuh uh. I canwalk.”

“Fine. Then hold onto me.”

“Where?”

I lifted up my arm and held it out. “Hold around my waist,” I told her. I was so tall, and she was so small that it was the only way we fit walking side by side.

She actually listened, hugging me around the waist, her big, soft, nearly naked tits nestling into my abs.

I sucked in a breath, but quickly recovered, cupping her shoulder and moving her slowly in the right direction.

I was tempted to give her my bed as we passed my room, but quickly abandoned the idea. She’d likely get the wrong idea if she woke up alone with her first hangover in my wicked, wicked bed.

We ran into a slight problem when we hit the stairs that led to her wing of the house. She saw the first carpeted step, and it was just too tempting for her.

She pulled away from me with a grunt and parked her cute little ass on it, elbows perching on the step behind her, thrusting her magnificent tits forward at the same time that her lovely, slender legs spread limply out in front of her. “Jus’ leaveme here. Thisis good.”

I sighed, hands going to my hips. I loomed over her, jaw clenched, whole body clenched, and wondered how I was going to last another five minutes with a nearly naked Ro sprawled out in front of me.

I didn’t realize what the stance accentuated until her eyes traveled rather unerringly to the obvious erection that my swim trunks were never going to hide.