Page 55 of Designed for Disaster

I hummed, thinking back to the last woman I’d slept with. “I honestly can’t even remember the name of the last woman I brought home.”

“Oh,” she said.

“Not because there’s been so many of them,” I corrected, not wanting to give her the wrong impression. “Or because I don’t care to learn their names. I just mean…I haven’t been with anyone for a while. Relationships are a low priority for me.”

She hummed quietly. I wasn’t sure I’d explained it right, but who cared about the last woman I’d brought home?

They didn’t matter.

None of them had ever made me feel the way Natasha did.

16

NATASHA

“Don’t get up yet,” Trent whispered against the back of my neck, his breath warm and his voice thick with sleep. His arms snaked around me, holding me flush against his broad chest. His body radiated warmth, and I leaned into it, basking in the feeling of being cuddled. “I just want to hold you for a minute.”

It had been too long since I’d been held like this. So long, in fact, that it made my chest ache just thinking about it. All my memories of Fisher had been tainted ever since I’d realized the kind of person he really was, so I didn’t even bother trying to remember him like this. I dated some since that breakup, but with all the jobs I’d been juggling, I hadn’t had time for much more than a couple of flings. It was easy to forget how nice it was to be wanted by another person.

“What time is it?” I asked. My phone had disappeared somewhere—in the living room probably—but sunlight peeked in through Trent’s dark curtains, so I knew it must be morning.

“Don’t worry about that just now,” he said, snuggling against me.

I sighed contentedly. I did my best to fill my life with work and Stacy and furniture, but no matter how much I crammed into my day, nothing came close to replicating this kind of intimate connection with another person. I was still cautious about getting close to people, about giving them the ability to let me down, to hurt me, but I’d forgotten how badly I needed this connection until I’d spent the night in Trent’s arms—his deliciously toned arms.

“This is a really long minute,” I teased, kissing the forearm that dangled over my shoulder.

He let out a grumble, nipping at my neck. “Did I say a minute? I meant five,” he countered. I felt the scruff of his facial hair brushing against my back and squirmed.

“You okay?”

“Tickles,” I whispered.

“Oh. I need to shave.”

He was usually clean shaven, but there was the occasional morning in the office where he turned up with some scruff, and frankly, it was sexy as hell. Distracting, but sexy. “Don’t shave,” I said. “I like it.”

“Dee says I look unprofessional when I’m scruffy.”

I turned over in his arms. “I think it makes you ruggedly handsome.”

He rubbed his scruffy cheek against mine. “I’ll direct Dee right to you when she complains, then.”

“I’ll make a complaint box just for her.” I lay there in his arms, right in that space between awake and asleep, and I knew if I let it, Trent’s deep, even breathing would be enough to lull me back to sleep. Was I actually awake at all? Was this all some kind of super-vivid dream? How had I gone from hating this Coffeezilla of a man to sleeping in his bed? Stacy was going to shriek her head off when I next saw her. In between rounds last night, I’d managed to send off a quick text so she wouldn’t worry about the fact I hadn’t come home. I knew she would have waited up with a glass of wine to hear all about it.

Spending the night,I’d written. Better than we imagined.

She’d replied with about forty emojis that I hadn’t had the energy to decipher in the middle of the night.

“What are you thinking?” Trent asked, his fingers moving up and down my arm before dancing across my breasts, over my ribs, down around my belly button. They were gentle little caresses. I knew he wasn’t trying to start anything, but he could easily get me going like this. I didn’t want to say Trent Saunders made me needy, but damn if the man didn’t know how to use those hands, and I was already a little desperate for the next time I would be at their mercy.

“I was thinking about the fact I have to tell Stacy I was still wearing her dress while you fucked me.”

He hummed in amusement. “I’ll pay for dry cleaning.”

“She probably won’t even care. She’ll be proud or something equally as ridiculous.” My stomach growled loud enough for us both to hear.

“Hungry?” Trent asked.

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