20
Bronte’s cell phone rang, waking her from a dead sleep. Her eyes popped open, then snapped shut from the scratch of her contacts, and she rolled over, blindly reaching for the phone.
“What is that?” Chris grumbled from beside her, and she blinked a few times, fighting her burning eyesight to take in the body next to her. With his arm thrown over his face, all she could see was his left forearm and full lips nestled in his thick, dark beard. She was held back from kissing him as her phone stopped ringing for a few seconds, then immediately began again.
“Baby, please, pick it up.” His voice was all groggy, as if he’d smoked a lifetime of cigarettes or used it too much during the night. Resisting the urge to climb on top of him, she hunted for her phone, hanging her head off the side of the mattress, searching under her clothes. That was when she felt a sharp smack on her butt, and she yelped, surging back onto the bed.
Chris was up, resting back on his elbows, grinning. “I couldn’t resist.”
“I left my contacts in. My eyes are like sandpaper.” She pressed the heels of her hands into them. “I can’t find my phone, can you?” she asked and headed in the direction of the bathroom, bumping into the wall twice. As she blinked under the fluorescent lights, her bloodshot eyes stared back at her. Not to mention the bed head and hickey on her chest.
Fantastic.
“Found it,” Chris called from his room. “It’s your mom. Do you want me to answer?”
She heard him pad down the hall as she removed her contacts and set them on the sink before squinting at him. “No.” She rubbed at her eyes then looked back at him, still squinting. “I can’t see a thing without my glasses.”
“Can you see this?” He tugged on his morning wood, and Bronte frowned.
“Forever thirteen years old, I suppose.”
She rolled her eyes as he pushed off the wall and crowded into the bathroom behind her. Wrapping his arms around her waist, he pressed his erection against her lower back as his lips started on the spot behind her ear and worked down. Even after all the hours they’d spent tangled up in each other last night, she was still so hungry for him and reached her arms up behind his head to hold him in place at her neck. He moved his hands past her hips and between her legs, dipping his fingers inside her, and she purred, letting her head fall against his chest.
“You’re so sensitive,” he said against her ear, and she ground into his hand.
She breathed out his name, and he bent over, gently curling her against the sink, spreading her legs open farther. “Chris,” she said again when she heard the doorbell, and he stopped, peering at her reflection in the mirror. “Someone’s at your door.”
“I didn’t hear.” He shook his head like he was in a daze. With a reluctant graze of her nipple, he stepped away from her and snatched a pair of sweats from the floor then tossed her a pointed look. “Don’t move.”
Bronte combed her hands through her hair, straightening it out as best she could, then ransacked the medicine cabinet. She hastily finger-brushed her teeth, rinsed with a bit of mouthwash, then tried out a few poses in the bathroom, contorting herself into something sensual, but she gave up the ridiculous idea of being sexy in a green-tiled bathroom. Instead, she walked back to the bedroom and plopped onto the bed, swiping her cell phone on. She had three missed calls and one voice mail, but before she could listen to them, Chris stormed up the steps.
“Your sister’s having the baby.” He held his hand right in front of her face as if testing her vision. “Also, your mom knows you’re here,” he added, almost as an afterthought.
She gaped at him. “She knows?”
“Your car’s out front,” he said nonchalantly.
“She knows I’m here?” She stood up, pacing. “Oh god. She knows we had sex.”
“What?”
“My car’s out front, you answered the door like that—” she gestured to his bare chest, a few marks of sex left there “—and she figured out we’re doing it.”
Chris snorted a laugh. “Doing it?”
“Yes! My parents can’t know I have—” she lowered her voice on the last word as if her parents could hear her saying it “—sex.” This was worse than the time her parents walked in on her making out with Anthony Rudnick in the eleventh grade—the ultimate embarrassment.
He only laughed harder. “Bronte, you’re a grown woman. Of course you have sex.”
“Yes, but they don’t have to know. And right next door!”
He gathered her in his arms and kissed her forehead. “You do realize your parents have sex too, right?”
“No, no, they don’t. And as far as my parents are concerned, we don’t either.”
He kissed her again. “Okay, whatever you say.” He tossed her the crumpled skirt from last night. “Come on, get dressed. I told your mom we’d be at the hospital shortly.”
Bronte held the clothes away from her. “I can’t wear this. It screams walk of shame. I have to go home.”