Chapter 11 #2
She whipped her head to look, her blunt bob swinging after. She cleared her throat, her cheeks properly red now as she turned back to Robbie.
“We should probably go to bed,” she said.
She seemed almost afraid—or if not afraid, at least nervous. Robbie stood and came up to her, lifting his hands to rest them on her shoulders but freezing before he could set them down, instead looking like he was holding them up in surrender.
“Talk to me,” he said.
“About what,” she said, staring at her feet.
“Do I make you nervous? Are you afraid I’ll try something?”
Her gaze flew up to his. This close, he could see that her eyes were a black coffee brown, with little flecks of something lighter.
“I’m not afraid of you, Robbie. I just—”
She stopped abruptly, swallowing, but didn’t finish the thought. He was so close. If he took half a step closer, their toes would touch. The thought of that little intimacy made his stomach jump.
“Can I touch you?” he whispered.
She looked at him warily, but she didn’t say no. He lowered his hands to the tops of her shoulders, feeling the muscular ridge of her trapezius under his palm, the bony line of her clavicle under his thumbs. He squeezed gently and felt her exhale against his throat. He squeezed again.
“I won’t hurt you, Nadja,” he said. “I promise.”
She nodded firmly and then met his eye again. “Let’s go to bed, then.”
They took turns in the bathroom. He told her to go first and was amused to find that she’d chosen the yellow toothbrush from the options left on the counter, both printed with different dentist office names and phone numbers, leaving him the green.
The travel size toothpaste was cinnamon flavored, which he hated, but used anyway.
Before going to bed, he went to the cabin door and tested the handle, pulling on it to check the deadbolt. He checked the window locks and turned off the kitchen light. He was about to turn off the bathroom light when Nadja interrupted him.
“Can we leave it on? We can close the bedroom door so it doesn’t bother you, but I just—” She bit her lip.
“I don’t like the dark.” He remembered when she’d said that her upbringing had been one of mostly benign neglect.
Mostly. The same way he had glossed over every detail except divulging that his grandfather was a miserable tyrant?
But she was afraid of the dark and he hated being alone and he had a feeling they were both only mostly fine.
Robbie nodded, entering the bedroom and leaving the door half ajar. She stood next to the bed, fully clothed still in her wide jeans and sweater. Robbie reached behind his head and pulled his T-shirt off before reaching for the buckle of his belt.
“Do you sleep naked?” she blurted out before muttering unintelligibly under her breath.
Robbie couldn’t help but laugh.
“Nah. My mama always told this story of her first house catching on fire and rushing out of there with her cat and having to greet the fire department buck naked with nothing but a big orange tabby to cover herself.”
Nadja snorted, stifling a smile. Robbie grinned back at her.
“So I always sleep in my drawers because I’m shy.”
“You’re shy?” she asked, eyebrows high on her forehead.
He crossed his forefinger over his chest. “Yes, ma’am. I don’t want the fire department or, God forbid, EMS, looking at my bait and tackle.”
She smiled in earnest then, her teeth showing, and Robbie was enchanted.
“I don’t believe it.”
“Okay, so maybe I’m not shy. But I’ve never lived without a roommate or four, so I sleep in my boxers. Do you sleep naked?”
The smile fell. “No. I’ll sleep in this,” she said, gesturing to her outfit.
He nodded before crossing the room to get into the bed on the other side.
“Wait,” she said, and he paused from pushing his pants down to the floor. “The whole point of this is to smell like each other.”
“Right,” he said, finishing his task and stepping one foot out of the leg of his pants. But he paused with his other foot midair when she spoke next.
“But they won’t be able to smell me on you if I’m wearing all this.”
“I want you to be comfortable, Doc,” he said, using the nickname that had made her laugh earlier. “If they have any questions, they can come to me.”
He meant that sincerely. Smelling like her would make it easier to claim that they were mates but he didn’t want to do anything to make her feel unsafe. Hell, he’d sleep out on the porch before he’d let that happen.
“I’m not uncomfortable,” she said. “I’ve just… never done this.”
“I think it’s safe to say that fake mating is new territory for both of us,” he said, with a smile, shaking his pants out with a slap and draping them over the foot of the brass bed.
“No,” she said quietly, wringing her hands. “I’ve never slept with anyone.”
Oh. Oh.
Robbie had lots of thoughts on the construct of virginity, but regardless, he hadn’t been one by society’s definition in a very long time. It was easy to forget that not everyone had been as bored and curious as he had been coming up.
“I promised I wouldn’t touch you or do anything inappropriate,” he said, making sure that she was looking at his face when he did. “I would never do anything to make you feel uncomfortable.”
“No,” Nadja said more emphatically. “I’ve never slept with anyone.”
It took him a minute longer than he wished it had to make sense of that. His brain did feel tired. Sluggish.
“Never? No one?” He hadn’t meant to sound so surprised, but the question was out before he could filter it.
“I never stay. I leave as soon as I can.”
Her arms were crossed over her chest, a defensive posture, like her only armor was her arms and her wool sweater.
“Okay,” Robbie said, tossing a ruffled throw pillow into the corner and pulling back the quilt.
“Well, I guess now would be a good time to tell you that I snore if I lay on my back too long, and sometimes, if my allergies are bad, my nose makes this whistling sound. Or so I’m told.
I don’t sleepwalk, I don’t talk in my sleep, and I don’t kick. ”
She smiled. It was a small smile, shy almost. But Robbie was gratified to see her arms uncross and drop.
She took a deep breath and took the hem of her sweater in her hands, pulling it over her head to reveal a soft-looking bralette.
He was trying not to look, but she was right there, and it wasn’t hard to see the gentle outline of her nipples through the fabric.
As the sweater passed over her face, he averted his eyes.
She unbuttoned her jeans and wiggled them down her hips, revealing the top lacy edge on a pair of pink panties. Robbie turned away to keep from swallowing his tongue, bolting out of bed to get to the light switch next to the door.
“Ready?” he called out, his eyes averted.
“Yep,” she answered.
The bathroom light cast a bright triangle against the dark wall through the half open door. Robbie saw the shadow of her climbing into bed. He got in on the opposite side and slid under the quilt and sheet, pulling both up to his armpits. They were quiet for a minute.
“Should we—” she started to say but stopped.
“What?”
“Never mind,” she said quickly.
“No, tell me,” he said, before adding a hasty “Please.”
“Should we be closer? For the whole smell thing?”
He swallowed thickly, wondering how the hell he was going to be closer to her without certain things becoming a problem. But he cleared his throat and said, “Probably” all the same.
She wiggled backward, scooting toward him until her back was close enough to his front for him to feel her body heat under the covers.
“Is this okay?” Nadja asked in a timid voice.
He slid his bottom arm into the space under her neck, between her shoulder and the pillow, feeling the slide of her soft skin all the way. She froze for a moment, but only for a moment, before relaxing again.
“Is this okay?” Robbie whispered.
She shifted her body backwards the remaining few inches, until her backside rested against the cradle of his groin and her shoulder blades connected with his chest. He bit his lip. How was she so damn soft? He didn’t even know people could be that soft.
“Is this okay?” she asked breathily.
He moved his top arm over her, resting it against her ribs and finding her hand with his, curling his fingers around her fist.
“Is this okay?” Robbie asked, wondering if he’d gone too far, expecting her to slide away from him and cling to the opposite edge of the bed like a cliff’s precipice.
But, instead, she sighed.
“Goodnight, Robbie,” she said in a sleepy voice before yawning.
“Goodnight, Doc,” he said back, feeling more physically exhausted and yet more alive than he ever had been in his life.
But eventually, the even tempo of her breathing, the rustling of the wind, the creaking of the cabin settling, and the faint howls, far in the distance now, lulled him to sleep.
Before he slipped into the depths of dreaming, he imagined how she might look in the morning, pink-cheeked and bleary-eyed from sleep, blinking up at him from where her head rested on his chest. He thought about tracing the line of her spine with a single fingertip while tucking her dark hair behind her ear with his other hand.
She smiled at him in this fantasy, a soft, happy smile that matched the one Robbie pressed against her hair in the darkness, inhaling the scent of her shampoo and giving over to sleep.