Page 33 of Since Day One

He shook his head with a goofy grin. “Uh-uh. You need to go to bed.”

“Where are you going to sleep?” I groggily asked.

“On the couch, Princess,” he softly answered, bumping the bedroom door open with his hip as my eyes fluttered closed again. I felt myself gently press into something cool and soft before the blanket was tugged from around me and a warm quilt replaced it.

“Don’t leave,” I complained, waving an arm, feeling his body heat edge away.

“I need sleep too.” His voice sounded muffled, farther away as my eyes remained closed.

“I like it when you touch me. No one’s ever held me the way you just did.“ I rolled over onto my side, tucking deeper into the pillow. Feeling like the farther he went away, the emptier I became. But I was so tired.

“Ever?” His hollow voice sounded a little closer. I shook my head feeling sleep almost upon me.

“I’ve only ever had one boyfriend, and he wasn’t very nice,” I muttered, tucking my knees into my chest, trying to keep my eyes open, but they didn’t budge.

“What about your parents?” he asked as the bed dipped beneath his weight, pulling my back toward the middle.

“They’re not really touchy people.” I yawned, the quilt tugging tighter across my torso. Warmth engulfed me in the next second as his arm snaked around my body and the other slipped under my pillow. He pulled me into a steel frame that swallowed me whole. Every tense muscle in my body relaxed as I snuggled deeper into Gunnar’s embrace.

“Goodnight, Princess,” he whispered, and I’m not sure if I managed to smile before slipping blissfully to sleep.

Blinking the hazy sleep from my eyes while rolling onto my back, my gaze rested on the wood ceiling just visible in the early morning light; my body felt well-rested. Glancing at the window on my left, the curtains were pulled back, revealing the nothingness of swirling white and dark gray outside. The blanket white sheet of snow masked the world from a sense of time. It could be morning, noon, or night, and I wouldn’t know.

A soft snore tore my attention from the window to the large, slumbering mass beside me. Gunnar was flat on his belly, sound asleep. He had one hand tucked beneath his own pillow and the other stretched toward me, his fingers resting against the mattress next to me. Rolling over, I faced him and studied his messy brown hair, tousled in a way that only sleep could do, drawing me into his peaceful presence; all self-control fled my body. Reaching forward carefully, I brushed my fingers through the soft curls, gently twirling them. Sliding my hand down his warm skin, I explored his cheek and the shadow of whiskers over his jaw before brushing my fingertips across his lips with a feather light touch. So soft, so inviting…

His head moved slightly, but he didn’t wake as I pulled my hand back, wondering what he was dreaming of. My eyes, wandering from the strong, steady pulse at his throat to the rhythmic rise and fall of his breathing, widened with a start as I realized he wasn’t wearing a shirt. The muscles of his back were thick and defined, and with every breath he took, they rippled with immense power. My fingers hovered a hair’s breadth over his back, feeling the heat emanating, desperately wanting to trace every crevice of the mountains and valleys carved across his body.

Guiltily, my attention was drawn to the quilt that was draped tantalizingly low at his waist, hiding everything, and I reached forward, hesitantly pushing it down. If he was naked up top, was he…? Sighing in relief, I exposed the new pair of gray sweatpants sitting low on his hips as my fingers continued with a mind of their own and brushed lightly over his skin. A low pulsing ached deep within my core as they gently traced over the dimples in his lower back just above his waistband.

A little wave of disappointment that he was wearing sweatpants washed through my mind.

That dirty thought shocked me to my senses, and I quickly flipped around so my back was toward him, embarrassed. What was I doing? Even though I knew he couldn’t read my mind and was completely asleep, I’d spent more than half a second wondering what he might have been blessed with.

Chiding myself, I backtracked. No! I shouldn’t be embarrassed. It would’ve been an easy way to get confirmation as to whether or not he was lying when we first met and I called him out on his pee-pee size. I bit my knuckle, wondering if I dared to simply ask if he would show me, before clutching my head in disbelief at what I was thinking.

But, that reasoning made sense. A justification for wondering exactly what delicious—

Shaking my head, I furrowed my brows. What was getting into me? A second dirty thought. Within the span of five minutes, I’d wondered things about this man that I’d never thought about anyone else before. Almost never.

Pressure draped over my torso, and, still asleep, Gunnar pulled me hard against him. My backside bumped against his front, pressing everything of his into my ass. Absolutely everything; well, there was my answer. He most certainly had not been lying at all. Although I had little to no experience in that department, there was no denying how long and thick it felt—meaning that it was not something a girl would ever leave him over.

Taking a deep breath in, accepting that I’d thought those things, and then shoving them out immediately, I relaxed into his embrace, still tingling with awareness. I slipped back into that comfort that I sought from him when barely conscious last night. There was a part of me that was grateful I had been unable to filter my thoughts before he placed me in this bed, because I was being held by someone who seemed to genuinely care about me.

And now, here he was holding me again despite being dead to the world. I drifted in and out of consciousness until he rolled onto his belly once more, taking his warmth away from me. This left me wide awake, and so I slipped softly from the bed and padded to the cold kitchen. The wood in the fireplace had burnt to embers, and Gunnar had put out all of the lamps before bed. Grabbing some firewood from beside the mantel, I got to work reigniting everything, then decided to make some eggs for breakfast.

It wasn’t more than ten minutes later that I heard the bed groan from the bedroom, and then a figure swamped the doorway. Gunnar rubbed an eyebrow, then placed both of his hands against the frame above him emphasizing every muscle of his chest. His sweats were slung low, exposing his obliques and the trail of dark hair from his navel. He leaned forward and gave me a lazy smile.

“Morning,” he said, his voice deeper and raspier than usual. My body roared with the most lustful flames as I stared. Throbbing pulsed between my legs, begging for relief from the man across from me, and my breathing increased. And despite my desperation, I was unable to pry my gaze away from the shirtless man whose sweats hid something I was now very aware of. The etched muscling dancing in the flickering light across his massive figure did nothing but cause the fire inside me to roar even wilder.

The lazy look upon his face slowly shifted, revealing he knew exactly what I was staring at. “The eggs are burning,” he said, lifting his chin toward me, and I cursed under my breath before whipping back around and looking at the pan.

Clicking my tongue, I rolled my eyes. “No, they aren’t,” I snapped in annoyance, and he chuckled, his voice sounding much closer than it had been, but I refused to turn to look at him.

“Well, something else is, then,” he whispered in my ear and calloused fingers wrapped encircled my neck. Spinning me around to face him, I did everything possible to keep my legs closed as tightly as possible as he forced my chin up so my eyes could meet his. He was not wrong—everything inside me was burning with this unquenchable desire to have him touch me. To hold me. Everything that I should not feel for him, I was experiencing—and it wasn’t one-sided. With that look he was giving me right now, it couldn’t be. His eyes slid down to my lips and he stared, every ounce of him I had to believe was feeling the exact same thing I was.

His hand was still gently but firmly wrapped around the back of my neck, and it took physical restraint to not shove myself against his body right now. Slowly, he applied pressure with his fingers, moving me sideways and away from the stove before pushing my backside against the counter.

I watched his bedroom eyes leave my lips and slowly drift down my neck and then across my exposed collarbone. Lifting his free hand, his fingers traced along the skin where his eyes had just left, running toward my shoulder and then down my arm. He didn’t stop where the shirt began, instead continued along the fabric until his fingers slid across the back of my hand and then against my fingers.

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