Chapter 14
Fourteen
I giggle before I argue. Gotta start my engine.
—Bernice’s secret thoughts
Bernice
I had the TV on mute, and I was reading the subtitles of the show I was watching, a C-Drama that had snatched my attention from the moment I turned it on hours ago, when there was a shift outside my door.
Movement.
Then the bathroom door closed.
I looked at the red numbers on my alarm clock, then bit my lip.
I was really thirsty.
Pausing my movie, I uncocooned myself from the covers and shivered.
Thinking I could just be quick since I’d just heard Hux enter the bathroom, I opened the door and walked quietly to the kitchen where I opened the cabinet next to the fridge and glanced inside.
All of my glasses were dirty.
I looked at the dishwasher and groaned.
“That’s what you get for being a procrastinator, Bernice,” I grumbled to myself.
“What?”
I jumped and whirled, staring at Hux in the doorway of the kitchen with his shirt off.
The only light was from the green numbers glowing on the microwave and the moonlight bouncing off the snow shining into the kitchen window.
“What, what?” he repeated as I willed my heart rate to settle.
“Being a procrastinator,” I said. “I haven’t run the dishwasher yet because I wanted to put more stuff in it. But I didn’t cook at home yesterday, so I never filled it up the rest of the way. And I used my last glass before bed to put some warm milk in.”
“Just wash one,” he suggested. “Or use a coffee cup.”
I pointed at them. “They’re too far up there. I’m only five-foot-three…”
“Five-foot-three?” he rumbled, coming closer.
He came into the splash of moonlight spilling in from the kitchen window, and that was when I saw he was wearing a pair of sweatpants…nothing else.
I’d thought the sweatpants craze was a weird thing to go goo-goo eyed over. I mean…they were sweatpants. Men wore them all the time.
But seeing normal men in sweatpants and Huxley in sweatpants…
Those were two separate things.
Huxley filled out all of his pants rather nicely.
But it was as I was looking down at his sweatpants, taking in the bulge at the front, that I realized that the man wasn’t wearing any underwear under those sweatpants.
There was no way, because there were things that swayed and bounced as he made his way toward me.
“Maybe five-foot-two and a little bit,” I found myself saying, but still staring.
He stopped in front of me, then reached over my shoulder above my head to pull down a coffee cup.
He handed it to me, and I wrapped my fingers around the cold ceramic.
“Thanks,” I said quietly.
He watched me hold the empty cup for a long moment, then took the cup from my hands and got me some ice out of the ice maker.
Or he would have, except when the “ice” came out, it wasn’t ice. But Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.
“What the…”
I giggled at his puzzled expression as he pulled a red-wrapped treat out of the cup.
“I don’t drink ice water,” I admitted.
“I can see that,” he murmured as he dumped the cups on the counter beside me, then filled up the cup with water. “You don’t like ice, but you like frozen Reese’s?”
“I don’t use ice. And anyone that’s a Reese’s connoisseur knows that the only way to eat Reese’s Cups are frozen. The shapes are fine at room temperature, but the cups?” I reached for one on the counter and unwrapped it. “Perfection when they’re frozen.”
I popped the chocolate into my mouth and groaned.
He placed the coffee cup next to my hip, then reached for one of my Reese’s.
Since I liked him, I allowed it.
But usually I didn’t share them with anyone. Not even my brother.
I reached for the cup of water and drank it down.
The shivers hit me almost immediately, and I was reminded that I was wearing a crop-top t-shirt and panties.
“What are you in there giggling about?” he asked as he reached for another Reese’s.
I jerked my chin toward my bedroom, then grabbed the rest of the candy. “Follow me. I’ll show you.”
He came into my room and stopped as he stared at the screen.
“Pretty,” he mused as he saw the tall, long-haired Asian man in his battle regalia.
“Sexy,” I corrected. “I love C-Dramas.”
He sat on the edge of the bed, and all my previous candy wrappers hit the floor.
He looked down with amusement on his lips and said, “The first step is admitting you have a problem.”
I shrugged. “That’s if you actually have a problem. I don’t have a problem.”
“If you say so,” he mused as he gathered the trash he had just dropped and placed it on the end table.
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.
I got up on my knees and looked into the drawer, praying that I wouldn’t find what I knew I would find.
And yep, there it was.
Pink Lambo 4000 with the six speeds and the twirling beads for the best G-spot stimulation, right there for him to see.
I cursed and covered it up with the novel that was resting beside the bedside.
When he came back inside, he tossed the Maglite in the drawer and shut it with his knee before sitting on the bed and kicking off his boots.
“You need better trash cans,” he said. “Fuckin’ bears ransacked it. I’ll help you clean it up in the morning.”
I sighed. “That’s the fourth time in a month that they’ve hit me. Last week I had to pick up used tampons all over my yard.”
“Gonna have to get some metal cages for them. The bearproof ones are shit, anyway,” he said as he swung his legs back over. “Press Play.”
I did, and his hand came back to my leg, though this time it was at knee level.
That was how we stayed until my eyes became so heavy that they were drooping.
I dropped my head to the bed and watched as long as I could.
I’m not sure when I fell asleep, but as I did, I knew that it was the warmest I’d ever been in my life.