The jerk.
“Is that a challenge?” He rubbed his jaw. “I can’t resist a challenge.”
She forced a laugh and grabbed her robe off the bathroom door. After shrugging it on and pulling it shut so he could no longer see her boobs, she felt a bit more in control of the conversation. “Call it what you want. I call it fact. We had sex, it was fun, but now we can pretend it never happened, and go back to our regularly scheduled lives as best friends.”
A muscle in his jaw ticked, right above where his fingers rested. “That easy?”
“That easy.” She added a shrug for good measure. “We’ve slept in a bed together before. Let’s treat it like that’s all that happened.”
His shrewd gaze was way too intent for her liking. And she was probably imagining it, but it was almost as if he was…pissed. When he caught her staring, he replaced the expression with a bland look and a smile. “All right,” he said, stepping back and dropping his hands to his sides and scanning the floor. Bending over, he picked up his boxers. “Consider it done.”
She swallowed hard as he stepped into his underwear, his muscles flexing and stretching and—oh my God, he caught her staring. Plastering a smile on, she nodded once. “Excellent. Glad it’s settled. Now if you’ll excuse me…?”
“Good night,” he called out.
“Night!” She slammed the door shut behind her.
Leaning against it, she breathed heavily. The only thing she could think about was all the magical things he’d done to her with his tongue, and his hands, and his big hard— “Stop it,” she whispered to herself.
Shaking her head, she washed up and walked back into her room, but tripped over her own feet. Her bed wasn’t empty. She stumbled forward, but caught herself before she hit the floor. “W-What are you doing?”
“Sleeping.” He yawned, covering his mouth. “What’s it look like I’m doing?”
“Lying in my bed,” she pointed out, hugging herself.
“Like you said, we’ve slept together tons of times before, so if we want to go back to normal”—he shrugged and yawned again, but she didn’t miss the challenge he issued to her, it was written all over his expression—“I figured we might as well sleep together again tonight. Get the awkward part over with right away. If what we did meant nothing to us, we wouldn’t hesitate to sleep together, right? We wouldn’t think it was weird. We’d just go on and have a fun sleepover.”
Yeah. Fun. “Right. Of course. Good thinking.”
Without another word, she climbed into the bed, rolled away from him, and yanked the covers over herself. He lay directly beside her on his back, his body heat emanating toward her like a freaking beacon or something, and let out a soft moan. Her heart picked up speed at the sound. It was undeniably sexy.
“Night, cupcake.”
“Good night,” she whispered back, staring blankly at the wall while trying to pretend she didn’t even notice he was there.
“Oh, by the way?” He rolled toward her and ran his fingers over her cheek from behind her, his touch gentle and almost nonexistent. “That’s how I would have done it.”
She swallowed, not saying anything.
Quite frankly, she had nothing to say to that in the first place. Steven’s breathing evened way too fast, like usual, and soon he was asleep. She lay there a little while longer, trying to shut him out of her mind. It didn’t work. Every time she closed her eyes…
He was there.
Chapter Nine
The next morning, Steven woke up before Lauren, even though he hadn’t slept more than an hour or so, after she basically told him that last night meant nothing to her. From any other woman, this would be great news. The last thing he needed was his one-night stands falling in love with him.
But she wasn’t just a fling.
The fact that she could fuck him and forget him like he meant nothing—well, it kinda pissed him the hell off. No matter how much he denied it, or how many times he acknowledged how wrong he was for her, all he could think about was what she did to him with that damn tongue of hers…
And when they could do it again.
For the first time in his adult life, he woke up craving more from a woman. There was no denying that his usual wham, bam, thank you ma’am wasn’t enough with Lauren. This was an entirely new feeling for him. One he couldn’t handle, quite frankly.
Sleeping in bed with her had been impulsive. There had been booze, and kisses, soft touches, long repressed desires let loose. But he hadn’t planned it.
And now he had no damn clue what to do.