Chapter 12
At some point during the night, I had swaddled myself in my usual unsexy cocoon of blankets, so it wasn’t until sunlight started slicing through that annoying gap in my tasseled curtains and right into my eyes that I even remembered there was a naked Dash on the bed next to me.
Moving out of the glare, I parted my eyelids and glanced across at my guest pillow.
Dash’s eyes were still closed, the beam of golden light illuminating his chiseled profile like he was in a goddamn indie film full of honey-voiced vocals and handheld cameras capturing dust motes dancing in shafts of light.
He was still there. He was still there. The words beat a happy tattoo against my rib cage, like the patter of raindrops on a window.
“Would you stop it?” I groaned, giving his shoulder a push.
From the quick way he turned his golden-brown eyes toward me, I knew he hadn’t been asleep. “Stop what?”
“Being so fucking handsome. It’s offensive to the eyes so early in the morning.”
If his head had been lying on anything more beautiful than a faded Urban Outfitters pillowcase I’d bought on sale, I would’ve had to shove him entirely off the bed.
Laughing, he flipped me around so that he was spooning me, his bare thighs cradling mine. The bristles on his jaw scraped pleasantly on my bare shoulder. “Don’t tell me you were watching me sleep.”
“I’m not that kind of creep,” I said. “But you’re so nauseatingly attractive, I might find myself doing something just as—”
“Romantic?” he murmured into my ear.
“Alarming.”
A low laugh gusted into the sensitive hollow behind my ear, and I had to fight the urge to squirm.
“You have to admit, watching someone sleep is objectively creepy.”
“For the record, I agree,” he said.
I wriggled around to face him, even though it meant losing out on the scratch of his stubble against my shoulder.
“What are you doing?” he asked, faintly amused.
“I want to lay on your chest while you do that rumbly thing with your voice.”
“What rumbly thing?” he asked, pitching his voice so that I felt the reverberations shiver all the way down my chest and thighs.
I pushed myself up slightly so that he could see how hard my nipples had tightened. “See? This is why they call you the talent.”
“Oh? I thought it was because I can do this…” He trailed his fingertips down my spine, making me shiver. “And this…” His hot mouth closed gently around my earlobe. “Not to mention… this…” And he began to hum, turning the rumble into something deeper, an earthquake shaking my foundations.
His hand dipped lower, following the curve of my hip until his fingertips were delving between my thighs in strong, sure strokes.
I moved against his hand, murmuring something under my breath, not entirely sure of what I was saying but knowing that they were things I needed desperately for him to know. My mouth found his just as my fingers closed around him.
I was awash in pleasure, and I wanted nothing more than to bask in it and let it fill me up.
The light was in my eyes, but it hardly mattered because it was also all around me and I was nothing more than a dust mote floating in the sunshine.
I drifted off into a midmorning nap to the sound of the shower running.
When I woke up again, the slice of light had moved up the wall and I expected Dash to be gone.
But there he was, cross-legged on the bed in his boxers, a tray with pastries and strawberries and two cups on the mattress before him.
Turning to face him, I propped myself up on my elbow and regarded him silently.
He put down his phone, already smiling down at me even before the screen went black. He didn’t dip his head to kiss me, or say anything, or do much but hand me one of the reusable lidded cups I kept by the door.
“Hot chocolate,” I said, pleasantly surprised when I caught the sweet, earthy scent.
“Frozen hot chocolate,” he corrected. “With whipped cream, caramel swirls, and mini marshmallows. I also got an assortment of pastries, some savory, most of them sweet.”
I quirked an eyebrow. “Big spender.”
“I’m also very good-looking and so refined,” he answered, grinning.
The first sip coated my mouth with sweet warmth, making me feel as if fireworks should be going off behind my closed eyelids. “I think frozen hot chocolate might be my love language,” I said dreamily—then I froze as I heard the l-word tumble into the space between us.
But Dash didn’t look panicked, or like he was purposefully trying to ignore it. He leaned down and swiped his tongue over my lower lip, sucking lightly like he was trying to savor the sweetness. “I’ll try to remember that.”
More than anything I wanted to believe that Dash was nothing like all the other men I’d dated. Where they were as insubstantial and ephemeral as true ghosts, the man beneath me was solid and warm and there.
Not that it made any difference. I tightened my grip around my cup, willing my heart to stop drumming inside my chest. I mean, Milo had seemed as substantial as a brick wall and his ghosting had hit me about as hard.
If I knew anything about men and relationships, it was that there were never any guarantees.
I did not have the emotional maturity to deal with this. “Come on, that’s too much effort when we’re just buddies who bone,” I blurted out.
Dash’s eyebrows drew up, making him look… well, disappointed really. As if he’d been hoping for something more. As if he wanted…
Nope—I was not going to read too much into a pair of raised eyebrows. Just because he hadn’t ghosted didn’t mean that he wanted something serious. We’d all but agreed last night that this was going to be strictly casual. Sex and flirting, no feelings—that was the way to keep things fun.
And safe.
Thrusting the hot chocolate at him, I scrambled out of bed, not panicking. Definitely not panicking. “What are we doing lying around? We have stats to check! Comments to answer! Other creators to boost! Hair to wash!”
He remained in bed, looking at me as I dashed into the bathroom, just barely managing to slam the door shut behind me before I melted into a puddle of cringe.
I know, I know. It wasn’t my finest moment.
I was a coward and this definitely counted as running away.
And after all my big talk over Aria’s cards the night before.
To be fair, it was far easier to be brave when staring at a painted goblet than when looking into Dash’s honey-and-brown-sugar eyes.
I turned the hot water tap and squeezed my eyes shut as I stepped into the warming stream.
He definitely deserved more than one of my flails.
If the alternative was having another conversation about our feelings, though, I was happy to keep flailing.
Even if it did stink a little of self-sabotage.
In the clear light of day, away from neon signs and Aria’s piercing gaze and, yes, the starriness of Dash’s gaze and the desire fizzing all through me, it was hard to believe that I could have let so many things spill out.
It was one thing to confide in a stranger I was probably never going to see again. But to have let Dash see so much of me? To have let him slip even a little bit past the defenses I kept around me?
Anxiety beat at my rib cage, and I had to bite down hard on my lip to keep from groaning out loud as I squeezed out a dollop of shampoo into my palm.
It wasn’t that I was any less emotionally immature when I finally emerged out of the shower, it was just that I’d employed my time there wisely. I mean, I’d detangled and washed and conditioned my hair. But I’d also come up with a plan for the day.
“I know that we have a couple of banked videos,” I said without preamble as I opened the bathroom door. “But we really need to get started on shooting more content. Do you have plans today?”
Dash was on my bed where I’d left him, looking at his phone. Glancing up, he shook his head. To my relief, he didn’t mention my flail. “Not really. Want to go over to my place and get started?”
I barely gave him enough time to pull on his pants—not that I should have deprived my fellow citizens of the sight of Dashwood in a pair of clingy boxers.
When we got downstairs, the sidewalk was egg-frying hot, the humidity so high I could feel my curls tightening into ringlets.
As we walked past my pals at the bodega, who were hanging out just outside the door, and the elderly couple who ran the laundromat down the street, I slipped on a pair of sunglasses with flower petals around the rims, to keep my eyeballs from being seared by the bright sunlight reflecting off windows and cars.
Dash gave my fingers a questioning bump with his own, waiting for my answering bump before tangling our fingers together.
Big mistake on my part—mine tingled at the contact, so much that I quickly disentangled my hand from his and pretended that I needed to scratch my nose. Buddies who boned didn’t hold hands.
We were almost exactly halfway between Dash’s block and mine when I saw it again—the basement window with the purple curtains and the neon sign advertising ten-dollar palm readings.
I’d been in too much of a haze to give it any conscious thought, but I guess a part of me expected that it wouldn’t be there the next time I went by.
But there it was, purple curtains shimmering slightly in the daylight.
I was making a mental note to come back later that day with some cupcakes or something to thank Aria for indulging my mini breakdown, when the door at the head of the steps opened and a woman in black shorts and an oversized The Love Witch T-shirt came lightly down the steps.
My gaze went directly to her shoes, these gold booties with the area where the toes were split into two compartments that made her feet look like hooves.
“Your shoes are amazing,” I blurted out a second before my gaze shifted to her face. “Aria! Hi!”
So much for a stranger I was never going to see again. The universe was laughing at me again. Still, I was genuinely happy to see her.