Page 61 of With Spite

Then, surprising me, he pushed my blankets to the side and sat down, his long legs stretching out in front of him as he said, “Catch me up.”

So I did.

Eight hours’ worth.

“So he’s really a soldier?” he guessed.

“He hasn’t admitted as much yet, but you suspect,” I said as I lay down on my belly and kicked my legs up behind me, somehow completely okay with my near nudity. “My guess is he’s some high-up general. Or maybe the crown prince. Or something.”

“What do you want to bet that she won’t know until the last episode?”

I paused so I could see the number of episodes. “I have thirty-two episodes left. Surely he tells her before that.”

“Doubtful,” he mused. “These C-Dramas are slow burns. Really slow burns. I’ll bet that they don’t even kiss until the last ten episodes.”

“Have you watched this one before?” I asked, looking at him over my shoulder.

He had his belly button full of balled-up Reese’s wrappers.

My lips twitched as he popped another one in there then reached for the last candy on the bed.

I noticed he went for the hot ones, and not the cold ones I’d just brought in here.

How thoughtful of him.

“Not this one in particular, no,” he admitted. “But when I run out of anime I want to watch, I look for C-Dramas. Or K-Dramas. They’re almost like anime.”

I turned over on my side and went onto one elbow so that I could look at him directly. “You watch anime?”

His eyes went to my hips, then my thighs, and the triangle of my panties that covered my pubic area before coming back up to meet mine. “Blame it on Dragon Ball Z. I fell in love with it when I was a kid and never looked back.”

“Huh.” I flopped back over to my belly and hit play. “Now be quiet.”

At some point his hand went to the back of my calf and stayed there.

It was the warmest I’d ever been without being wrapped up in my heating blanket.

Just the heat from his palm on the lower part of my leg was enough to warm me up…everywhere.

A crash from outside had me sighing. “I swear to God.” I pressed pause. “These damn bears are going to be the death of me.”

He got up and walked to the window, looking out.

“That one you can’t see anything more than your house from,” I said. “You’ll have to go to the other windows. And Creed put some sort of film on them. You can see out but no one can see in. I’m blaming my lack of sunlight now on the Hubers and my brother’s overprotectiveness.”

He walked out of the bedroom, then came back with his duck boots on.

The LL Bean boots weren’t laced up, and the wool at the inside top was folded over, making him look somehow hotter in those boots and his sweatpants.

“You have a flashlight in here?”

I gestured toward the end table. “In there.”

He flicked on the lamp next to the bed and opened the drawer, freezing momentarily.

I felt my face flame as he reached inside and pulled out the Maglite that my brother insisted that I keep in case I needed it.

He disappeared, leaving the drawer open.