Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME
Denny didn’t throw me out of her room that night.
I fully expected an eviction notice when I sneaked into her bed after returning from practice and a couple drinks with the guys, but that didn’t happen.
D slept beside me and when she stirred, woke me in the process.
The most precarious part was after she took the opportunity to use the bathroom and mumbled, “This gonna be a thing where you come and sleep in my bedroom now?”
I just hummed, fully aware that the wrong answer could get me kicked out. Thankfully, that satisfied some part of her sleepy brain because she rolled into me and snuggled me harder than before.
I should have known from all the pillows that she was a snuggler.
But this is different.
She cleaves herself to me and I never, ever want her to let go.
Even now, four days later, her face tucked into my throat as she fights wakefulness, her body nestled against mine, fingers toying with the chain my mom gave me before she died, I’m still counting my blessings because though she frowns at me whenever I show up at her door, she lets me in—doesn’t matter if it’s 2 AM after we bussed back from an away game and I just got home. She never turns me away.
Hand stroking over her back, I spend the first few minutes of the day assimilating this new normal.
We’ve slept in the same room before. But I didn’t know that her feet are always cold and, by contrast, that her ass is molten.
The shape, sure.
B. A. N. G. I. N. G.
One day, I hope she’ll let me fuck it. That’s how banging it is. She has these little bumps on her hips that are perfect for grabbing too.
Not that I’ve told her that.
I don’t feel like getting scalped.
Those were Denny facts one and two. Three was me knowing that she always needed this battered Kermit plushie to sleep, but number four was that she genuinely had nightmares without it.
I cast a smug glance at the ugly green frog that’s decorated my pink sheet-covered bed—stolen from the laundry room. Just for her comfort!—for the last couple nights, since we crashed here after a marathon session of Red Mist. (I swear, she just says she hates it but she plays better than Logan.)
Five: I also learned that she has a meditation playlist, complete with a couple Camden songs, to help with anxiety.
Denny.
Anxiety!
Honestly, the shit I’m learning.
I never imagined her bull-in-a-china-shop personality could ever lean itself into anxiety. I told her to stop wearing the headband/earphones so I could listen before sleep too.
I play with the baby strands of hair at her neck because I can. They’re silky soft. Wispy but not ticklish.
All the different facades I thought I knew, she’s showing me a thousand more and I can’t help but be honored.
The movement of her hand stroking along my abs, aiming south, jerks me to awareness.
I snatch a hold of her wrist, suddenly aware that she woke up while I mused the morning away. “I told you. You don’t have to do that.”
Another fact—she’s squeamish about her period.
I figured out why the first morning too. She bled onto the sheet and I thought she was going to die of mortification.
That she’s still sleeping with me is a testament to how I handled that situation.
Thank fuck Mom normalized this stuff for me.
“I don’t see why I have to wait. You’re not having your period, are you?”
I tsk. “I’m not going to let you do that without reciprocating.”
She tosses her hair in my face. Like she’s done every other time this has come up.
Alongside my morning wood.
“How come I knew you were a butthead but not irrational?”
“This is how a man should treat his woman!”
She groans. “Stop saying that!”
“It’s the truth!”
“You told me the first night you hadn’t gone down on another woman in years. So who’s lying?”
“It’s how you should be treated,” I argue, expression settling into mulish lines.
“Sex doesn’t have to be reciprocal. What if I want to get you off, huh? What if I find pleasure in that, huh? Mr. Chauvinist!”
I’ve craved Denny for weeks.
We’ve been friends since we were four.
That’s a big gap filled with mistakes I’ve made.
“Me wanting you to associate everything we do with pleasure is chauvinism?” I can hear my voice getting louder. “Do you know how I’ve treated the women I’ve fucked in the past? I’ve been an out-and-out shit, Denny.
“Not only am I never going to treat you that way, but I also refuse to let you believe that’s how good men treat women.”
She gusts out her cheeks. “You make zero sense. What is this? One rule for the rest of the female population and one rule for me?”
“One hundred percent.”
“You not letting me have a choice is chauvinistic, Zach.”
With a flounce that’d make Addison proud—not that I tell her that—she scuttles off the bed.
At least, that’s what I figure she’s doing.
Until she yanks off the duvet, tosses it aside, knocks my desk, and switches my gaming console off sleep mode. While my character, Lucius Nightshade, stares at the ceiling in his bunker at the guild’s HQ before falling back asleep and snoring, she crawls between my knees.
There are at least fourteen seconds where I gape at her blankly.
That whole thing set her curves into action, making her tits bunch together in my jersey, her hips swinging in a way that has my morning wood turning into a problem.
A massive one.
I gulp.
God, those short, bare legs were wrapped around my waist six nights ago and I’m so ready to feel that again.
Fuck!
“Do you always keep my jerseys?”
She tugs on the fabric. “What?”
“My jerseys. From my old teams?”
“Of course.”
Fact no. 6.
My voice turns hoarse. “You wear them to bed?”
“Yes.” Her chin angles to the side. “Every night.”
I learned that this week but…
“The whole night?”
Her smirk will be the death of me. “Yes. When I masturbate too.”
My head tips back. “I need to see that before I die, Denny.”
She slaps my thigh. “Shut up.”
“I do. I have to see that because when you fulfill that fantasy, I will expire.” I lick my lips. “I figured you still sleep in pajamas and wore them this week for…me.”
Maybe if I’d known this sooner, I wouldn’t have wasted my firsts on anyone that wasn’t her.
“Why would I do that, Mr. Bighead? They’re comfortable.”
I press my fist to my forehead. “You’re making it really hard to be a gentleman, Denver.”
“Something’s really hard. Thinking about me touching my clit while I wear your name—”
“DENNY,” I bark.
Giggling, she runs her hands up and down my thighs, her short nails scratching over the muscles, making me jolt in surprise.
I grit my teeth when she bites her lip at the sight of my bobbing erection.
“Did I tell you how much I like waking up to that nudging me?”
“I’m a glutton for punishment,” I return before closing my eyes when she leans over me. “Oh, fuck, Denny—”
“Why are you?”
“You think I wear underwear to bed on the regular?”
Her throat bobs. “You mean you could have been naked this whole time and you chose not to be?”
I’d laugh. But I’m in agony here.
“What are you doing?” I rasp when her hands approach my dick, nails scraping an inch below the hem of my boxer briefs.
“Trying to stop you from being a gentleman.”
“Oh, trust me, precious. I won’t be once you’re off your period.”
“You call me that because you’re Gollum and I’m Isildur's Bane?”
“Fuck,” I hiss. “If I wasn’t hard before…”
Though she smirks, she pouts. “I want to give it a shot. Please?”
I stare straight into her eyes. “Are you sure?”
The last thing I want is for her to feel like I’m pressuring her.
“I’m sure.” Then, she blusters: “Been sure this whole time.”
“Hush. You were in too much pain to be horny.”
I knew she needed chocolate during her periods. But I didn’t know how much pain she endured. That was another Denny fact. Number seven.
“Maybe an orgasm would have helped.”
I still. “You’d be into that?”
“I don’t know, do I? Someone decided to be a white knight.”
My lips purse at her exasperation, then I shove the waistband of my briefs down, lift my arm, then hook it behind my neck. “Okay. Have at it.”
Her bottom lip gets sucked between her lips. The flush on her cheeks has me studying her, then snorting when she whispers, “Wow. You’re so hot.”
I hide a grin. “Glad you think so, gorgeous.”
She wafts the hand I grasped earlier. “You’re like an all-you-can-eat buffet.”
“Turned cannibal, have you?”
“Don’t know if I’m a good girl or not yet, so hold that question until after.”
I guffaw. “You don’t have to swallow—”
“I’ll decide that for myself, thank you very much.”
Then, gaze on my dick like it’s a textbook, she tilts her head this way and that before stroking a finger along the vein that runs down the back.
With some pre-cum already leaking out of it, I stammer, “I-I feel like you’re dosing me with lust potion when you make me a coffee.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment and not an insult that you think I’m drugging you… Lust potion.” She snickers. “You’re such a Middle-earth nerd.”
Ignoring her teasing, I release a shaky breath when D follows the path of that bead of pre-cum with her lips.
“Fuck.” I close my eyes to stave off what’s already looming.
Jesus.
Christ.
Her tongue swipes down, flattening before stroking back up. She prods the slit then purses her lips around it, sucking until my hips buck and I’m cursing, “Fuck, D.”
“We need to work on your vocabulary,” she murmurs, but the words are whispered against the tip and I feel the vibrations like she’s using a goddamn vibrator on me.
“Vocabulary isn’t my problem right now,” I half-croak when she chuckles, letting me feel that too.
She has no idea how hard it is to hold off my orgasm.
I’d be seriously worried if I didn’t know she was the only trigger of my cum-happy problem. I don’t need her to know that sometimes, with other women, I find it hard to finish. Especially if they bore me.