Page 547 of Bad Prince
“Is that what you tell mirrors?”
“Only the honest ones.”
I fake groaned and hid my face against him again.
I could have stayed there for hours.
Maybe he could tell, because after another ten minutes he brushed his hand slowly up my arm and said, “Come on.”
I looked up.
“Where?”
“I booked us somewhere to sleep.”
I blinked.
“What?”
“Private Airbnb. Close. Clean. No campus. No interruptions.” He looked down at me with that infuriatingly calm, thought-through expression that always wrecked me more than if he’d just made impulsive bad decisions. “You need rest. So do I.”
I stared.
“You booked us a recovery nap house.”
His mouth curved.
“That’s one way to put it.”
“Tristan.”
“What?”
“This is borderline marriage.”
He smiled and stood, holding out his hand.
“Then stop stalling and come be scandalized in the car.”
The Airbnb sat tucked behind a line of eucalyptus trees on the edge of Atherton, modern and quiet and all glass and pale oak and expensive understatement. No nosy students. No campus chatter. No teammates. No phones shoved in faces.
Just stillness.
The bedroom was cool and dim with linen curtains drawn against the late afternoon light. The bed was enormous. The kind of bed designed for disappearing into.
I stood in the doorway in one of his hoodies and leggings and clean skin and utter depletion, and actually swayed.
He noticed immediately.
“Come here.”
I obeyed without argument, which tells you exactly how tired I was.
He sat on the edge of the bed and drew me between his knees, hands sliding up the backs of my thighs under the hem of the oversized hoodie until they settled at my hips.
Not suggestive.
Not even really playful.
