Page 22 of The Outsider

She turned around and went back to her bedroom.

She closed the door firmly behind her and locked it.

Lord Almighty. She had not needed that. She didn’t need her head filled up with images of his chest. His stomach.

He should warn people about that.

That he was a snack and a half.

Good thing she was immune to men. Really. Because she was.

Also, a good thing she’d stuffed herself at dinner because she needed no snacks.

“Can’t afford it,” she repeated to herself over and over again as she went into the bathroom and started to run some water in the bathtub. She’d just had a shower a few hours ago, but access to warm water was a luxury. And being this close to a bath meant she simply couldn’t resist.

And taking further advantage of her hospitality seemed like it might make her feel better.

So, she started running the water, and took her clothes off, but then tried to ignore the way that the fabric brushed against her body. While that image of him half-naked still lingered in her mind. What the hell was wrong with her?

She grimaced and stood outside the tub, tapping her foot. Waiting. She got in and sighed when the water closed in over her shoulders. It was an amazing tub. A deep one. Probably special order because he was so tall.

And big and broad.

She felt an arrow of desire lance her.Unexpectedly.Weirdly. It was such a foreign experience for her.

Always theoretical.

She squeezed her legs together and did her best to ignore it. She had to keep herself safe. Nobody else cared as much about her own safety as she did. He might be helping her, but it would only be to a point. What she’d said to him earlier was true. She couldn’t afford to go getting sentimental. She couldn’t afford to get comfortable.

She soaked in the tub until she turned into a prune, then got out and dried herself off. She put the sweats back on and looked at the bed.

He slept in this bed normally. It was also big. She felt slightly like Goldilocks in that moment. But the bed was definitely Papa Bear’s. And it was big. Not just right. It was disconcerting. And his.

She pulled back the blankets and slipped between the sheets. She was immediately enveloped by thatscent she’d noticed earlier. It made her heart jump. It was weird. She didn’t like it.

She shifted, and rolled over onto her stomach, but that didn’t help, because that just put her face in his pillow. Which also smelled like him.

She huffed and moved closer to his nightstand. There was nothing on it. Nothing but an alarm clock. There was no art in the room. The bedspread was plain. If she had a house, she would actually put nice things in it. She opened up the nightstand drawer, feeling nosy.

It was empty.

Except for a box of condoms.

That hit her strangely in the chest.

She took the box out and saw that it was open. She pulled a strip of condoms out and ran her finger along the packets. “Who do you use these with, Sheriff?”

It was incredibly invasive and nosy, and she knew it. But... it was interesting. These windows into him as a human. As a man. Not just this strange kind of savior-like figure.

She shoved the condoms back into the drawer and decided she didn’t need to know about it.

And she sure as hell didn’t need to think about it.

It was... it was crazy. And it was dumb. So there. She didn’t care about his condoms. She just wanted some sleep. And this was the first bed that she had actually been in in a while. Other than the cramped little mattress in her van. So, this was nice for a while. It was a stopover. She refused to think of it as anything else. She was too smart to believe that this would last. That was a good thing. It was a damned good thing.

Chapter Five

When she woke up in the morning, she had no sense of what time it was. And that was weird. More than a little weird. She was also warm. And comfortable. She didn’t have a single ache on her body, and she wasn’t contorted into a strange shape. Quite the contrary, she was sprawled out in the center of a king-size bed.

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