Page 109 of Interference

Laughing, he rolled his eyes. “Yeah, that sounds like them.”

“Lily takes up a fair amount of space, too, so we’ll all just have to get cozy.”

Anthony’s smile was ridiculously sweet. “I think we can make do.” He kissed me again, lightly this time. “It’ll just give us an excuse to sleep closer together.”

I shivered and bit my lip. “You’re going to be sore for tomorrow night’s game.”

The smile turned to a wicked grin. “Worth it.”

I just laughed. As I thought about what we’d been talking about, though, my amusement shifted to worry. “Fair warning? If we’re sharing a bed…” I hesitated. “I mean, I have Lily for a reason.”

Anthony sobered, too, and I wondered if he was remembering the night he’d heard me freaking out downstairs. He was definitely going to rethink sleeping together, and quite frankly, I didn’t blame him.

“How often does that happen?” he asked softly. “The… night terrors, I guess?”

I exhaled as an unpleasant chill worked its way down my spine. “Depends. Sometimes it’s multiple times a night for weeks. Other times, I can go a month without much. And then sometimes it’ll just happen once out of the blue, and that’s it.”

“Wow. Does anything make it better or worse?”

“Lily, mostly,” I whispered. “She can usually shake me out of them before they get too bad. Sometimes I don’t even know she’s done it until I wake up in the morning and realize the light’s on and she’s asleep on my chest.”

Anthony’s eyes widened. “You don’t even feel her? She’s bigger than my cats!”

I laughed quietly. “I probably do. I just don’t remember. Like I’ll kind of vaguely remember having some bad dreams—I always have those—but I don’t remember her turning on the light or waking me up.”

“Damn.” He trailed the backs of his fingers down the middle of my chest. “So it’s not always… like…”

“Waking up screaming?”

Grimacing, he nodded.

“Not always, no. But I dated a guy who couldn’t stand it. He hated it when I woke him up, and he’d get annoyed if Lily jostled him while she was getting to me. It especially pissed him off that she’d turn on the light.”

Anthony rolled his eyes. “Nice guy.”

“I know, right?” I held his gaze. “But… I do get it if you don’t want that. Especially since you have a physically demanding job, and you need to be able to get a good night’s—”

The kiss caught me by surprise and shut me right the hell up.

When he was apparently satisfied I’d been rendered speechless, he drew back. “I want you in bed with me. I know you’ve got trauma, and I know what I’m signing up for.” He ran his fingers through my hair. “If you want to be here, then I want you here.”

I didn’t have words to tell him there was nowhere else in the world I wanted to be. I had no idea if this was just a fun fling or if had any potential to become something more, but what we were doing right now? I liked it. I hadn’t even realized how starved I’d been for intimate human contact until now, and the last thing I wanted to do was pull away.

“Just tell me if it gets to be too much,” I whispered. “I promise I’ll understand.”

“I don’t think you have anything to worry about there.” And once again, any counterarguments I might’ve had melted in the warmth of a soft, sweet kiss.

Was it too much to hope there was more going on here than mutual attraction? Because while the sex was hot and the man in my arms was fucking gorgeous, it wasn’t just the physical that had drawn me to him. Was I delusional if I thought this could go somewhere?

Well, it didn’t need a direction tonight. Step one: enjoy the hell out of this amazing sex. Step two: let things develop and see what happened. This was the best I’d felt in a long, long time, and even if it was a short-term thing, I could live with that. Finding it once meant I could find it again, and just like I had at every turn with Anthony, I found hope I’d thought was gone. Not just of survival, but of actually finding some happiness, whether that was now or in the future, with him or with someone else.

In this moment, I hoped it was with him.

But, I reminded myself, he was newly single. He was also in a complicated situation with his ex. Entangling himself with me beyond friends—or, well, housemates—with benefits might be biting off more than he could chew, so I wasn’t about to push. What happened… happened.

What was happening right now… was amazing.

Anthony broke the kiss, and he was breathless as he met my gaze. “I’m starting to think I should’ve gone for the Costco pack of condoms.”

---