Page 30 of Need Him Like Oxygen

I didn’t need Dav to bring me meds because I couldn’t get them for myself. Or to get me food. I was even managing to wash my own hair now. Though that was out of my steadfast determination not to be naked around him again because, quite frankly, I didn’t trust myself.

I didn’t understand my lack of self-control around him all of a sudden. I’d never been someone who struggled to control their baser instincts. Sex was, you know, fine. But it wasn’t like I was walking around thinking about it all of the time, eye-fucking hot men I came across on the street, waking up tangled in sheets from vivid dreams about them.

Not even Dav.

Until now.

I woke up with the tendrils of desire still clinging to me. And it only intensified. When I would come out and catch him fresh out of the shower, a towel draped scandalously low on his hips. When he got himself all dressed with that familiar tobacco, leather, and vanilla scent clinging to him from his cologne.

God, it was bad enough that I even found myself freezing mid-stride when I came out of the bedroom at night to find him sleeping on the couch wearing nothing but his thin, low-slung sleep pants.

We weren’t even going to talk about the way need clawed at me when, on one of those trips, I came out to find him having similarly happy dreams, his hard length pressing against the material of his pajama pants.

Or how the only way I’d been able to tolerate it had been to go back into the bedroom, slide my hand between my thighs, and try to sate the hunger with an orgasm.

It did no good, though.

It wasn’t just about the sex, just the pleasure.

It was about Dav.

And that, well, was dangerous.

Hence why I needed to get my ass back home.

But week three ticked by, and I still found myself crashing at his place, walking around like it belonged to me too. Doing laundry. Making coffee. Stealing his extra razor. Ordering things delivered to his address.

We were playing house.

And a part of me was terrified that it would come to a point where I wouldn’t just want to play anymore.

“Spill something?” Dav asked, coming out as he slid in cufflinks, finding me staring at the couch.

“No. I’m taking the couch tonight,” I told him.

I didn’t feel guilty sleeping in his bed when I was a walking bruise. But it was time to let the man get a decent night of rest in his own bed. And I figured it was a step toward going back to my place.

Even if the idea of that filled me with dread in a way that both confused and terrified me.

Confused because, well, I never spent any time there anyway, save for sleeping and showering.

Terrified because the fear was starting to take root and grow. Like the time I’d drawn a gun on Dav when he’d been coming home, a knee-jerk reaction. Because I was afraid of being attacked again.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’d never welcomed being attacked. But I’d always accepted that it was a part of my work, that it was the life I chose. And I’d never been fearful of it.

It was not good that this attack was having this lasting of an impact.

I needed to force myself back out there on the streets, into the thick of things. Get my confidence back.

“Absolutely not,” Dav said as he made his way into the kitchen.

I wasn’t going to argue with the man. I was just going to do it. Clearly, he was on his way out. By the time he got back, I would be on the couch.

“Where are you heading?” I asked, glancing at the clock, then having an immediate stab of irrational jealousy at noting how late it was. Was he going on a date?

“Renzo’s,” he explained.

The boss of the Lombardi family had a pretty open door policy at his place. All his capos came to hang out, to eat, drink, play pool, catch up with one another, and maybe talk a little business.

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