Page 90 of Someone Like Me
Heavy with reluctance, and a bit of a tequila headache, I push myself up and scan Drew’s apartment. My options for the Walk of Shame — if I don’t want to wake Drew (and I don’t) — are last night’s dress and today’s T-shirt.
Neither are great choices, but the dress clearly wins.
Drew’s bed takes up one corner, and I’m on the inside. His bookcase stands at the foot, which means I’m going to need to climb over Drew to get out.
I push up into a side plank and lever one leg over him, careful not to brush against him, and plant my right foot on the outside corner of the mattress. I then lift my hips, anchoring my right hand near the futon’s top corner.
I’m basically suspended above him in a wide-stance downward facing dog when Drew blinks one eye open and fixes it on me.
“Are we playing Twister?” His face is flushed and his voice gravely with sleep.
I laugh and have to brace myself to keep from collapsing on top of him. For the record, I do not recommend laughing in downward dog.
Drew rolls onto his back to study me, his sleep-stamped face morphing into a curious non-smile.
That is the only name for this expression — the one Drew makes when I think he wants to smile, in fact, is smiling on the inside but just doesn’t let it show. I know this now, and I’m getting really good at pegging it.
“I’m s-s-orry,” I say, cracking up, and then I brace, kick my legs up and over, and land on the floor with what I think is a decently impressive dismount. Judging by the widening of Drew’s eyes, he agrees. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
Drew frowns. “Did you just do a sort of handstand above me?” Disbelief is clear in his sleep-drugged voice.
I shrug. “Well, I wouldn’t call it a handstand, but I can do one.”
He tucks his chin and blinks twice. “You can do a handstand?”
Grinning, I nod.
“Well, damn,” he mutters before stretching. His elbows go up over his head, and I get a clear view of the patches of dark hair in his armpits and his flexing triceps.
Holy moly.
His broad chest fills with a yawn, and I’m treated to the moving lines of his ribs, the bunch and pull of transverse abdominals and obliques.
Drew’s pecs are smooth, but a compact inverted pyramid of dark curls covers his sternum. The patch points like an arrowhead down to the line of hair that picks back up below his navel. But the bedsheets now hide the rest of this story. Too bad.
He tucks his hands behind his head and settles once again on his pillow, but now he’s wearing a real grin. No non-smile here. And I blush, because I’m pretty sure he can tell I’ve been checking him out.
“Like what you see?” he teases.
I go from persimmon to beet red. Ilovewhat I see. I’m all about honesty, but I’m not ready to tell him — or anyone else — everything I feel. And he sure as hell isn’t ready to hear it. But I can still answer truthfully, even as ten trillion butterflies take wing in my insides.
“Better than pretty much anything else,” I admit.
A startled laugh escapes him, and then, before my eyes, Drew blushes pink. But his smile is huge.
He reaches up with his massive, calloused, altogether awesome hand and grabs me by the wrist.
“Come back here,” he says, his voice still gruff. I topple onto him, and he presses a kiss to my lips before clutching my braid and hugging me tight to him.
“Mmm,” his masculine sigh caresses my neck. “You smell free.”
Now it’s my turn to laugh, and I do it planting kisses on his bare shoulder. “Free?”
Drew nods into my hair. “Mmm hmm. Like freedom.”
Something sharp and sure snags my heart. Drew has been in prison, and I smell like freedom?
Another wave of love flushes my veins.
