My eyes widen when I find a pile of male clothes on the coffee table; jeans, and a cream shirt with bloody spots. My breath comes faster with panic.
Or at least, it tries to, but my lung capacity seems half of what it should be.
“Relax, Turdsky.” Bry’s deep voice slides into my brain, then his fingers brush over my belly. His heavy arm rests on my ribs.
He’s the reason I can’t breathe. And when I try to lift my leg, I realize he has one of his on top.
“Take a breath,” he warns in a sleepy murmur. “Don’t scream, or I’ll get mad.”
“Why am I… What is…” I ignore his keep still rules, and try to turn in place. “What the actual fuck?”
He lifts his arm, his leg, allows me to spin, then he drops them back down again and traps me. His eyelids are heavy, hooded. Sleepy.
He grins. “Hey, cutie.”
“What the fuck is going on?” I taste my breath, and clap a hand over my mouth when I realize how close we are. “Oh my god! What did… did we…” My heart threatens to explode from my chest. “Oh my god!”
“Relax,” he chuckles. “We didn’t fuck, I didn’t even see your ink – for more than twenty-five or so creeper minutes – and your breath doesn’t smell… bad.” He grins when I squeak. “Seriously, relax. You’re unsullied. We didn’t fuck. We fell asleep watching a movie.”
“The last I checked, you were dressed!”
“Well, you fell asleep during the movie. I couldn’t take you to my bed, and I didn’t wanna leave you down here alone, so I took liberties and got comfortable.”
“Oh god!” I shove back from him and peek under the blanket that covers us. The blanket that absolutely wasn’t here when I fell asleep.
I look at my stomach, at my bare legs. I can’t not notice his bare stomach, his ridged abdominal muscles, but my brain is focused on the search for a lipsticked name.
“Where did you…” I try to look at my back. “What did you write?”
He chuckles and pulls me back in until our chests touch, and my breath comes to a dead standstill. “I wrote nothing, I swear. You’re innocent. Well…” He grunts his displeasure. “You didn’t do anything sexual, but you should know, if you were my girl, platonic sleeping with another man is on the no-go list. That shit wouldn’t fly with me.”
“Good thing you’re not my man, then, huh?” I push away from him a second time, and drag my legs from beneath his.
Sitting on the edge of the couch, I drop my feet to the floor and steal the blanket to wrap it around my shoulders. My shirt is still on, but my sweatpants are not.
“Fuuuck,” I whimper. “Why didn’t you wake me up, Bry? Why didn’t you send me home?”
You’re a coward, Madilyn!
“It’s not my job to save your relationship with another man. In fact, I’d be quite pleased for you to go back to him now and tell him where you slept. After that, I’ll pick you up and bring you right back here where you belong.”
“Where I—” I spin with wild eyes. “You’re insane!”
“You’re pretty.” He reaches up and tucks messy hair behind my ear.
His bicep bulges, now that I see him with no shirt. His chest is thick, his pecs defined, like he spends at least half of his week working on them. His stomach is ridged, and his junk is covered by a pair of black boxer shorts.
Thank god!
But despite all of that, despite the overwhelming sexiness that I see, my eyes are drawn to the ink peeking around his shoulder. His chest is bare of ink. His arms. But there’s a tiny bit of shading that creeps over his traps and calls to me to check.
He follows my eyes, then looks back to me. “If you wanna see, you have to use your manners. You have to say the words out loud like a big girl.”
“I hate you.” I turn away and break the sizzling contact that his playful grin sends straight to my toes. Asshole Bryan is easy to hate. But the playful version… it’s easy to ask him to ruin my life. “I’m going home.”
“Gimme a sec.” He pushes up to sit, but he stops halfway, buries his face in my hair, and draws in a long, loud, obnoxious breath that sends goosebumps to my toes while my temper spikes.
I shove, but he’s far too heavy for me to move. “Get the hell off me!”
Laughing, he sits on his ass in nothing but underwear, drops his face to his hands, and yawns. But he smiles, and between his fingers, he peeks at my legs. “Seriously, though.” He stops smiling. “What do you want me to do? Drop you off? Call you a cab? What’s safest?”
“Safest?”
“Men have been known to snap over less. I’m not sending you home to take a beating from him, so if there’s even a small part of you that thinks your boyfriend might—”
“Jackson isn’t my boyfriend, Bryan.”
His words snap off in an instant. His head whips around to me. Shock, pure shock plays over his face. “What?”
My heart beats like a hummingbird’s wings.
I need to shut the hell up. I need to shut my trap and go home, but I can’t stop the words. I can’t stop my verbal vomit.
“I never said he was my boyfriend.”
“But you—”
“You assumed.” I shrug. “You know what they say about assumptions.”
“You…” He’s speechless – for the first time in his life, I’m certain. “You’re not… Are you someone else’s girlfriend?”
I clasp my hands together as my cheeks fill with warmth. Then, like I’m leaping from a plane, I shake my head. “Nope. Single.”
“Fuck me.” He dives so fast that I squeal when he slams me back to the couch. He jumps on top, pins my hands above my head, and rests his weight on me so heavily that I’m back to struggling for air. “Seriously, Madilyn. Fuck me?”
I scoff in his face. “Despite how utterly romantic that was, I’m gonna go with no. But thanks.”
“But you’re single!” he whines. “I was a gentleman all fucking night, dammit!”
“Except for the bit where you undressed me. Slept against me. Studied my ink while I was unconscious. Then you sniffed me this morning. Is that what you mean by being a gentleman?”
“Trust me, I was controlling my urges. I wanted to sleep inside you.”
I scrunch my nose. “That visual isn’t as sexy as you’d think.”
“I wanted to take all of your clothes off,” he continues. “I wanted to study more than your thigh. I wanted to lick you, not sniff you. Don’t you see how I’ve been restricted?”
“Your levels of self-depravation are admirable, Bryan. But still…”
He pouts. Popped bottom lip and everything. “Please?”
“No!” Laughing, I fight his hold and push up to my butt when he releases me. “Begging me isn’t going to get you laid, Bry. I still have to go home, I have to explain to my family why I slept somewhere other than my own bed, and Jackson is still my friend, and I assure you, he won’t be pleased to hear where I’ve been.”
“Yeah?” Bry stands from the couch, bends and snags the sweatpants I wore last night, and stabs his legs into the fabric. “Well I can assure you, I really don’t give a fuck. In fact, I give less fucks now than I gave five minutes ago. But the fucks I do give?” He grins. “They’re pretty fuckin’ cheerful, because here I was thinking the pretty girl was taken by my archnemesis and I was gonna have to fight him for her.” He tugs the pants up and fixes the rope.