Page 93 of Hold Me Until Morning

“We agreed last night that was a one-time thing.”

I forced myself to take a step back before I did something stupid and reached for him again. Got to my knees and undid his belt so I could…

I didn’t realize my attention had drifted to the enormous bulge in his jeans until he cleared his throat. I jerked, my eyes flashing back up to his.

A challenge pulled across his ridiculously handsome face. “Is that the way you want it?”

Gathering all my resolve, I said, “We’re just friends, Cody. That’s all we can be. It will only complicate things.”

I repeated his defense from last night.

“And maybe I’ve come to realize I’ll welcome any complication if it means getting close to you.”

That arrogance resurfaced, the man nothing but a taunt, and he reached down to the hem of his tee and peeled it up and over his head like he’d done it a thousand times in front of me before.

My mouth dropped open, and I swore, the world canted to the side.

Annihilated by the sight.

I was pretty sure it was the result he was going for since he let one of those smirks free, the kind that did a little slaying of its own.

I couldn’t form a coherent thought or word, stupefied as I stared at him through the moonlight that flooded through the window.

There’d been no question that he was made of muscle and brawn. A fortress of strength. A mast of power.

But I nearly crumbled at the sight of him like this.

Skin bare and glowing, like the sun breaking on a dreary, gloomy day. A golden, coarse stone, ruggedly chiseled and shaped. A sculpture of tenacity.

Shoulders obliterating view, wide and hulking, that power reverberating beneath the flesh stretched tight across his packed, quivering chest.

It rippled down his abdomen, his stomach engraved in sharply cinched divots and lines, his hip bones jutting out from above the waist of his jeans.

Where I was soft, he was hard, forged of slate.

Designs covered his left arm and scrolled up over his shoulder to his pec, bright colors that gleamed in the night.

But what caught my attention was where the mosaic lines opened to a clock that sat right in the middle of his chest.

Prominent and emphasized like it’d become the focal point of who he was.

An emblem that was drawn to appear rustic like the man, rusted metal or bronzed iron, the teeth heavy and gnarled as it ticked through time.

Though the hands of the clock were bent, jagged where they forever rested at eight-seventeen.

He winced for one beat when he realized what I was fixated on, then he jarred me out of the trance he had me under when he tossed his shirt over to the couch. “You don’t mind, do you? I mean, it shouldn’t be a problem for you to see me like this considering we’re just friends, yeah?”

It was pure provocation.

I blinked a bunch of times.

Damn it. He was distracting me from the point of this conversation.

“You need to reconsider?—”

A finger was pressed against my lips, stopping the words from spilling out. “I’m doing this, Hailey, and I promise you, I won’t have a single regret.”

Why was he proving to be so sweet? So good and right?

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