It took me a second to register what I was seeing. It looked like there was a blanket larva with a cord sticking out of it on her bed. It was a blanket-covered lump roughly the length of a small, sassy woman and some sort of loud machine was running inside the covers.
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered. I walked over and yanked the cord out of the wall.
The blankets stirred, then Jules’ head popped out. Her forehead was plastered with wet hair and sweat. “Uh,” she said, blinking through sleepiness. “I was going to turn that off in a sec.”
“Turn what off?” I asked, yanking the covers back. The moment I pulled the covers back, I knew I’d made a mistake. Jules was topless and wearing only a thin pair of white panties beneath the blankets. The only saving grace was that she had her arms crossed and her knees pulled up in a way that kept me from really seeing anything.
Somehow, in the course of three days, I’d seen my personal assistant in her bra and panties before the office party, with her bottoms down and her ass out on the airplane, and now topless and nearly nude in her bed. It felt like the universe itself was testing my self-control.
I jerked my head to the side. “Shit,” I said through clenched teeth.
I heard the blankets ruffling as she pulled them up to cover herself. “What’s wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with you?” I countered. “I couldn’t sleep with that sound. I thought you were vacuuming or something.”
“Why would I be vacuuming a hotel room?”
“I don’t know? But you were sleeping with a running hair dryer under your blankets. Apparently I can’t assume you’re going to be doing something sane or logical.”
“My heater won’t turn on,” she said. “By the time I was done studying your stupid slides I didn’t have time to wait for someone to come try to repair it. I figured I’d just get through the next couple hours any way I could.”
“You’re lucky the bed didn’t catch fire,” I said, lifting up the hair dryer, which was extremely hot to the touch.
“What do you suggest I do, Mr. White?” she asked. God, she even looked incredible with her eyes puffy from sleep and her hair wild. She looked raw and unfiltered. Worse, I knew the only thing between her nearly nude body and my eyes was that comforter.
“You’ll sleep in my room. We don’t have time for this.” I started walking toward the door. “And put some clothes on. Bring your pillow and comforter, too.”
I didn’t wait up for her. I got to my room and looked around, making sure there was nothing incriminating in view. I didn’t make a habit of being careless with my identity, but I wanted to be sure.
She came shuffling in a little while later. She was wearing pajama shorts that barely covered her ass in the back and a white and blue striped top that was too thin to hide the shape of her breasts and nipples. I averted my eyes. This was a bad idea. I should’ve offered for her to sleep in Jordan’s room, but I didn’t want to admit to my sister that I’d gone into Jules’ room to check on her in the middle of the night.
It was bad enough to have to face my unprofessional attraction in my own head. I didn’t need my sister figuring out how bad it was getting.
“You take my bed. I’ll sleep on the floor. Just let me switch out the blankets.” I started to strip the comforter.
Jules shook her head, yawning. “No, it’s fine. We don’t need to swap them out.”
She handed me her comforter—the same one she’d just had wrapped around her naked, sweaty body, and pillow. I considered insisting we switch the blankets out, but she was already crawling into my bed.
Fuck.
I tossed the pillow on the ground and tried to make myself comfortable. The moment I laid my head down, I was washed in that smell of strawberries and sugar from her shampoo. Worse, the comforter smelled fantastic. Her scent was all over it, and I went immediately hard.
This was pathetic. Jules made me feel like some middle schooler with raging hormones. So much as a whiff of her scent and I was hard? Her hair brushing against me on the airplane and my cock was at full mast? It was ridiculous.
I glared at the ceiling, trying to focus on my anger instead of my arousal.
Jules rolled over on the bed, rustling the blankets. A few seconds later, she shifted again. Then again.
Within a few minutes, I realized she was the most active, restless sleeper on the face of the planet. She moved at least every few seconds. Between the intoxicating scent on her blanket and comforter, the rustling noises coming from the bed, and my aggressively hard cock, I couldn’t sleep.