Page 85 of Stay Toxic

I got out, this time barefoot, and left my shoes in my car.

Once it was locked, I headed toward him, my gaze on his wet hair and the water dripping down his face.

“How did you get here so fast?” I asked.

“I don’t drive like a grandma.” He shrugged. “I passed you before you even got onto the freeway.”

I smiled. “Tickets are expensive, and I barely make fifty thousand dollars a year.”

His eye twitched. “Teachers are severely underpaid.”

“They are,” I confirmed, then hesitantly asked, “What next, Shasha?”

“Next.” He caught my hand. “We see where this goes.”

With that, he pulled me into his body and kissed me.

By the time we were in my apartment, I fully expected him to lose control once again, but this time he was careful.

So careful he even remembered a condom.

And I knew in that moment we’d have to figure something out, because I didn’t want anything else between us ever again.

He made sweet love to me.

So slow, yet so powerful.

When we were done, and I was a replete mess on the bed, he called in a Chinese food order and tugged me into his side.

“Since we’re doing this, I’m going to need to lay some ground rules,” he said after laying the phone down on the bed beside us. “You’re not allowed to be alone with that motherfucker ever again.”

I snorted and rolled, standing up beside the bed. “Which motherfucker? Because there are a lot of them.”

His eyes lazily took me in, and I felt like I was on top of the world.

“Your ex,” he grumbled darkly.

“Trust me when I say that’s the last thing I ever want to do,” answered Brecken.

“Now, let’s go over bodyguards.”

And we did.

I went to the bathroom and cleaned up before coming back out semi-dressed in a tee and sleep shorts, no bra or underwear.

He’d somehow miraculously produced a pair of sweatpants that I hadn’t seen before now, and I felt my heart do a somersault in my chest at the sight of him in that gray lingerie for men.

The Chinese food came.

We ate.

I, of course, ate normally. Because why would I tell him that I had a dairy intolerance that would make me projectile shit in about an hour when I was trying to seem normal?

As we ate, we talked about how, if things progressed further between us, I would be expected to have a bodyguard becausehis life was dangerous and dangerous people liked to lash out at the people that mattered to him the most.

He then told me the story of his young sister, and the way she held back the other day when I’d seen her at the coffee shop made sense.

Kidnapped.

---