CHAPTER EIGHTEEN DEAN #3
I manage to change shirts with only a few sneaky grabs from Nick while my arms are defenseless in the armholes, and once I'm done, I shove the handsy douchebag onto his bed and plop down next to him, slinging an arm around his waist and scruffing his hair.
I mean, the more jokingly mean we are to each other, the easier it is for me to solidify how we're just supposed to be friends. I think.
Yeah. Even in the face of Nick's cute face and the messy hair and the—
“Fuckboy pants. You're wearing fuckboy pants,” I say, chuckling when I realize.
“I'm wearing what now?”
I point to his red checkered PJ bottoms. “Those are the fuckboy uniform.”
“Of course you’d know this.” He gives me a gentle shake. “I’ll just have to make sure I don’t bring these when I stay with your parents, in case they make any assumptions about me.”
“This isn’t something they’d know about. You’re fine.”
“And do they know I’m coming?” His tone is light, even through the slight strain I detect—I really did put the conversation off for too long.
“Yeah. I told my dad earlier. All good.”
“Did he have anything to say about me?”
“No. He only said you’re welcome to stay, and that he’d set up the air mattress.”
Nick’s face falls. No, it shatters. “I’m not gonna be sleeping with you?”
He’s certainly got a good kicked-puppy impression. I’ll give him that.
“Don’t worry. We’re sharing a bed,” I explain quickly. “We’re gonna get real cozy because it’s only a double.”
“Good, because the point of me going to China with you is to be with you.” He wiggles his eyebrows. “I hope your parents’ place has some thick walls.”
Jesus. I stick a hand up. “Dude, it doesn’t matter. There’s no way I’m gonna chance it. No sex unless my parents are gone.”
The bastard sticks his fingers into my waistband, plunging his whole hand down and caressing my dick as soon as I snicker. “Are you sure?” He squeezes me. “I promise I’ll be quiet.”
Out of instinct, I grab his bicep to move his arm away, and all that does is give me a different reminder of why this guy has such an effect on me.
Gritting through my surging arousal, I push those offending, devious fingers away from my nether regions and cover myself with a pillow, glaring at his smirking face that, yeah, is way too adorable for me to resist.
“My parents both work, so we’ll have lots of chances.” I think for a second. “And my dad snores like an air raid siren.”
Nick reaches over to his desk and grabs his glasses, slipping them on and—
Wait, since when does he wear glasses?
And why the hell does he look fucking delectable in them? The frames are dark and thick, sitting low on the bridge of his nose and framing his cheekbones in a way I appreciate like nothing else.
I’m torn between yanking the glasses off so I can maul him without anything getting in the way, and politely requesting Nick to superglue the damn things to his face.
“Hmm, so that means we can schedule copulatory involvement at the hours of…” He pretends to scribble in one of my notebooks. “Eight a.m. to six p.m.?”
“Uh-huh.”
His eyebrows furrow behind the frames. “Are you listening?”
“No. You're wearing glasses.”
He freezes for a second before barking out a laugh. His eyes usually shrink a little when he smiles, but the lenses are like magnifying glasses for my benefit, and that lets me see so much more.
Nick is already mesmerizing, but holy hell, now this is something else.
“Oh? Does my tutor have a thing for slutty nerds?” He squeezes my bulge again. “I thought that was supposed to be my job.”
“Yeah, well, I'm not your tutor anymore, so I'm allowed to be turned on by your glasses.”
“They’re a turn-on? Jesus.” Nick takes that as a cue to climb on top of me, straddling my waist and giving me a view which all but wrecks what’s left of my willpower. “Good to know. Now I can get revenge for when you tempt me with those juicy basketball calves.”
He trails his fingers behind him across said calves, and I shove him off.
“You gave me these shorts.” Rolling my eyes, I hike said shorts up and lift my legs, depositing them into his waiting lap. “Take your glasses off, and then you can't see them.”
For effect, and because I can't help myself, I nudge Nick's hard dick and shoot him a smirk.
“Alright, I give up.” He gets on his knees and grabs my legs, pulling me toward him. “Now teach me the word for ‘blowjob.’”
I don’t think he seriously wants to know—him yanking my shorts off isn’t the strongest indicator of any willingness to learn.
Not that I’m objecting. When the two of us agreed to keep things physical, I didn’t envision doing so little work to uphold our pact. Nick does a ton of the lifting, and if he keeps this up, the pesky, latent warmth I’m harboring for him won’t surface.
It’ll only get risky if he starts doing cute shit, like serious coupley-cute shit. I’m satisfied with matching his horny energy, but if it shifts into something different, I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop.
And that isn’t something I want to think about less than a week before I take him home with me.