Page 27 of Don't Date Your Nemesis

Then I deleted it and typed.

No, I didn’t and it was nothing. Everything’s fine.

Priya: Boo, Id have helped u w/that shovel I thrifted and anyway, u r a terrible liar.

I turned off my phone.

In the mirror, I looked as if I had been through a war. Hair everywhere, makeup smudged, and… ah, yes, drool.

I splashed water on my face, trying to look less like someone who had the best sex of her life with her childhood nemesis.

“Deepika?” Liam knocked on the door. “Are you alive in there?”

“Go away!”

“Need your dress?”

I looked down at the sheet I was clutching. My golden dress was definitely out there, probably in a crumpled heap next to his pants and the condom wrappers that were evidence of our spectacularly bad decision-making.

Two condom wrappers, my brain helpfully supplied. Two.

“Just... hand it through the door,” I called out.

Silence, and then his deep voice, “I saw every inch of you last night. You can get it yourself.”

The audacity.

I was about to storm out there, naked as the day I was born and dignity be damned, when there was another gentle knock.

“Deepika.”

Something in his voice made me crack the door open just enough to stick my hand out.

He placed the dress in my palm, his fingers brushing mine. That simple touch sent warmth spreading through my body, betraying me completely, and then⁠—

Something wet touched my hand.

“What the hell was that?!”

Through the crack in the door, I could see him smirking. “My tongue.”

“EW! EW EW EW!” I snatched my hand back, trying to wipe it on the sheet. “You just licked my hand! What’s wrong with you?!”

His laugh echoed through the room, rich and genuine and so fucking infuriating.

“I licked something else too last night,” he called out, voice full of wicked amusement. “And you didn’t react this way.”

I slammed the door, face burning, and got dressed while trying to ignore the mental images his words conjured.

When I finally emerged, he was standing by the window in nothing but his pants and his unbuttoned shirt from last night, hair tousled like he just rolled out of bed which, technically, he had. The morning light hit him just right, making his eyes look unbearably light gray, almost silver.

He glanced at me, and I immediately turned around.

“Zip me up,” I demanded, lifting my hair.

For the first time, he obeyed without taunting, moving behind me. His knuckles brushed my spine as he slowly pulled the zipper up making me shiver.

I lifted my hair completely so he could zip easily and caught my reflection in the mirror above the dresser.