16. Liam
16
LIAM
I wake up feeling incredibly warm. Blinking against the bright light, I adjust to my surroundings and realize the source of the warmth is Whitney.
She’s curled into me, her arms wrapped around my torso in a vice grip. Her soft thigh is draped over me and my hand strokes her skin absently. Worse than that, I’ve got a classic case of morning wood.
Shit.
Moving slowly, I lift her arm and try to slip out from underneath her grip. If I can just get to the bathroom before she notices the entanglement we find ourselves in, all awkwardness can be ignored. Just as I think I’m in the clear, she starts to stir. I freeze, holding my breath.
Don’t wake up. Don’t wake up.
Shifting further, I roll her entirely off me and onto her side of the bed. All last night, I couldn’t help but grow more fascinated with her. At some point between our first glass of wine and falling asleep side-by-side, I realized how wrong I was about her. I thought she was too cheery for her own good, but the truth is that she’s just an optimist. She’s filled with this unexpected joy, but she will stick up for herself, biting back with an endearing stubbornness whenever I piss her off. It’s a combination I find myself oddly enamored by.
Not to mention, she’s gorgeous. And that kiss…
I guess I thought we’d just skip that section of the wedding. I definitely hadn’t expected her to kiss me or for her lips to be soft as sin. She tasted as good as she smells — like rose petals and sweetness — and I didn’t want it to end. When she pulled away, I wanted to grab her around the waist and show her what a real kiss with me is like. Though that might not have been appropriate for a chapel.
Then I went and told her about Luke. I have no clue what came over me, but something about the dim light of the room and her soft whisper had me feeling unexpectedly raw. I guess I’m just tired of carrying this shit all by myself, and telling her about it felt like a weight lifting off my shoulders.
It felt… right.
Taking a deep breath, I cross to the bathroom and close the door behind me, leaning against the wall in relief.
This is not good.
We’ve been married for less than twenty-four hours and I’ve already got a raging hard-on for the girl. Guess I’m in for a cold shower. Let’s just hope it’s not the first of many.
“What the hell is this? That is not a word,” Whitney argues, pointing to the Scrabble tiles I laid out.
“Ruddy? It absolutely is a word,” I point out. “Haven’t you ever listened to Supertramp? Breakfast in America? ”
“I literally have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I shake my head. “Your music knowledge is woefully lacking.”
“You can’t use British slang. That doesn’t count.”
“First of all, it’s not slang, it’s a real word. Secondly, I don’t need an American to lecture me about proper English. We invented the language, you know.”
“Yeah, you invented colonialism, too. You an expert on that, Liam?”
“Oh, fuck off,” I say, and this time, we both laugh.
Spending time with Whitney always seems to put a smile on my face. There’s just something about her that seems to both rile me up and calm me down at the same time. She’s grown more comfortable with me overnight, it seems, something I both appreciate and despise, since she’s currently wearing those tiny shorts again. I swear she’s purposefully trying to send my mind into a tailspin.
She lays down a new word, traitor, and I raise my eyebrows, scanning her other words, which are hell, lies, and demon.
“Are you trying to tell me something?” I ask, waving at the board.
“I swear it’s a coincidence.”
“If you put down murder next, I’m sleeping with one eye open tonight.”
She laughs again, a sweet, musical sound that has the corners of my mouth tipping upwards again.
“We’ve been married, what, eighteen hours? And you’ve had enough already?”
She laughs even more, and I want to keep it going forever. Her joy is addictive.
We play for a bit longer, and as expected, she beats me, sending me retreating to my room with a bruised ego. I pull up Luke’s business plan and spend the rest of the night researching educational organizations, adding more details to the outline. Once I have a more fully formed idea, I can start reaching out to some of my old friends from school who have more experience with this type of thing. Until then, I’m on my own.
I’m bent over my desk with about twelve tabs open on my computer when I hear the shower turn on from the bathroom. The sound of it sends a jolt of awareness through my body, and suddenly the article I’m reading can’t seem to keep my attention.
Who cares? Whitney is in the shower. That’s completely normal. Nothing sexual about it.
Except that my mind is conjuring up all types of images. Ones of her naked body lathered in soap and hot water, her hands roaming up and down her petite figure.
Stop it. This is your roommate.
Torn between feeling like a complete creep for listening to my roommate’s shower with bated breath and wanting to deal with the blood that has rushed to my cock, I groan, abandoning my laptop and falling onto my bed. I’m reaching for my headphones to blast music in my ears so loudly I’ll be risking permanent damage when I hear another sound.
A moan.
Whitney’s moan.
Fuck.
No way. No way is she in there touching herself right now. I’m imagining things. My horniness is making me delusional. It’s been way too long since I’ve had sex, and this is the consequence. I’m out-of-my-mind to the point where I’m hearing fake moans that aren’t there.
But then I hear it again, louder this time, and if I thought I was hard before, it’s nothing compared to the throbbing I’m dealing with now. This is worse than Vegas. At least there the walls were thick enough that I could escape to the bathroom. Here, there’s nowhere for me to go.
Holding my headphones in my hands, I hesitate. I should put them on. I know I should. It’s a complete invasion of her privacy to listen to this. She’d hate me if she knew, and she’s just starting to warm up to me. It’s not worth slashing all our progress. With a sigh, I pull the headphones over my ears, drowning out the sound of Whitney’s moans with the bass of the music.
It works; I can’t hear anything. The only problem is that just the knowledge of what she’s doing in there seems to send my thoughts to a dirty place. And if this is going to be a regular occurrence in our household, I am so screwed.