Page 34 of Faking It
“Well, I am.” I smile brightly, more than happy to have found something that will annoy him.
He pulls his cup out from the device and I can’t help but notice the flex of his bicep when he brings it immediately up to his mouth. His hiss fills the room as his tongue burns, but the way he closes his eyes and savors that first sip leaves me to imagine how he’d look savoring other things.
Stop it. It was just a dream.
One dream where I imagined things about him I shouldn’t imagine. The feel of his weight on top of me. The scratch of the stubble on his chin as it rubs between my thighs. The warmth of his hands as they squeeze my nipples. The sound he makes as he comes.
“How about we just steer clear of each other until I’ve had a cup or three of coffee.” His gravelly voice says, interrupting my thoughts—of him.
“Yes. Sure. Okay.” I stumble over the words as I try to clear the dream from my mind that is much more vivid now that he’s standing in front of me. “How many is that?”
Another sip. Another sigh of satisfaction. “You’re perpetually cheerful, aren’t you?”
“Thank you.”
“That wasn’t a compliment.” He eyes me from above the rim, a warning to tone down the morning happiness.
“And this is how you always are in the morning? Grumpy?”
He nods and adjusts the waistband of his shorts that have fallen dangerously low. “Mm-hmm.”
“So no talking, no cheerfulness, no eye contact . . . what?”
One corner of his lip turns up slightly. “That’s a good start.”
I make a non-committal sound as I turn to stare out the window. There are foursomes in the distance on the green. Golf carts putt around here and there. “Maybe I’ll take a lesson today. Go to the driving range. It’s not like we don’t have time to kill.”
“Go for it.”
I take in a deep breath and realize I’m rambling because I don’t want to ask the one thing I’ve wanted to know since I woke up this morning.
“How’d I get in the bed?”
I think of that startled feeling I had when I woke up in a strange bed, in a new place. Then that sudden awareness of the even breathing next to me. The scent of shampoo and soap and man. And then when I had the courage to turn over ever so slowly, finding him lying on his back, arm thrown over his face, sheets pulled down to his waist.
“I worked late. Mick stopped to get fuel,” he says gruffly.
“What does that have to—”
“When Mick stopped for gas, you were out here. I’m the one who carried you to the back.” He pulls his eyes from the scenic course beyond the tinted windows of the coach. “So . . . mulligan.”
“Mulligan?” I ask as my mind stutters over the notion that he brought me to bed. No, not just brought me . . . but carried me.
“Yeah, it’s a golf term. You can figure it out from there.”
“So you do play?”
“I play a lot of things.” A slow smile slides on his lips before he turns around to the back of the coach.
I stare after him. Watch the curve of his ass as he moves, uncertain how I feel about the fact that he picked me up and carried me to bed.
Do I detect a chink in that grumpy armor of his?
The sink runs in the back of the bus, the sounds of teeth brushing commences, prompting me to pick up my phone to look up what mulligan means: when a player gets a second chance to perform a second move or action.
I stare at the definition. A second chance.
Is this Zane’s way of telling me he messed up last night? That he was being a jerk and knows it so he brought me to bed to call a truce of sorts?
