Page 36 of The One Decent Thing

After such a long day, my filter wasn’t working. “I really don’t.”

His eyes widened. “Oh.” And then he licked his lips. Jesus, he was trying to kill me. I had to go to sleep or I was going to actually die. I had one more night of work before my two days off. “Um, I do need to get up, though. For a minute?”

“Sure,” I mumbled, and rolled over onto my back. My eyelids were trying to close, and getting heavier and heavier. Sebastian slid out of bed. I tried to stay awake so that I’d know when he came back, but I passed out so fast I didn’t even hear him leave the room.

Chapter Eighteen

Sebastian

Aidan was sound asleep by the time I came back from using the bathroom, brushing my teeth, and changing my come-soaked underwear for a new pair. And maybe putting on a little more deodorant, and then brushing my teeth again, even though we’d already been kissing and by the time we woke up it wouldn’t matter anyway.

His bare chest rose and fell evenly, his eyes were closed, and he was snoring. Definitely, totally asleep. And still hot as hell, even letting out those sounds. Even his snoring was sexy. I was so screwed.

I didn’t have the courage to climb in next to him. He probably hadn’t meant it anyway; he was being polite, or he was orgasm-drunk and tired and simply didn’t care one way or the other.

He wasn’t my boyfriend. I shied away from that thought in a hurry. He wasn’t even my hookup, really. My own bed was only a few feet away, so I had no excuse.

When I got to it, my own bed felt cold and too big, but I sucked it up, curled into a ball, and wished I knew what the hell Aidan was thinking.

I was used to waking up early, so I crawled out of bed at nine, even though it was Sunday and I’d only been asleep for a few hours. When I left Aidan’s room the night before I’d shut the door, and it was totally silent. He probably wouldn’t wake up until noon or even later.

That gave me three hours to freak out. Wonderful.

By the time I heard sounds from down the hall, I’d been through a whole pot of coffee and practically worn out the couch springs from getting up to do something, fidgeting for a minute, and then sitting back down again. I was wearing pajama pants, because no pants felt too forward and jeans felt silly on a Sunday morning, and I probably looked so dumb and unsexy.

Aidan was up, though, and I couldn’t do anything about it now. My bare feet weren’t sexy either. I mean, what feet were? But mine looked too pale and long and awkward, and did I actually have a few hairs on my toes? Oh my God. I so did.

The tweezers were in the drawer in the bathroom where Aidan currently was, though. The only thing less sexy than having awkward feet would be bursting into the bathroom while he was trying to wake up and demanding my tweezers, right? He probably wasn’t ready for that level of gay.

Chris would’ve totally understood about the need for emergency tweezers — and everything else on my mind. Not for the first time, my hand twitched toward my phone, wanting to text him and tell him absolutely everything. But I couldn’t. We’d talked a few times since the night he and Lucas had burst in with cell phones blazing, and he’d sort of sheepishly apologized for, in his words, “being all over your hot hunk of man meat roommate person.” Chris was an English major, and sometimes I wondered about that choice. His odd wording aside, he’d made it clear he didn’t have any real interest. I was too embarrassed to ask if he was reassuring me because he thought it was polite or because he’d figured out he’d been making me crazy jealous.

So I knew I wouldn’t be hurting his feelings if I told him what was going on. But I couldn’t. Aidan was straight, as far as the rest of the world was concerned, and it wasn’t my job to spread his business around.

Not to mention. If I told Chris, then Chris would want to know how I felt about it. That was such a no-go.

The bathroom door opened, and there were footsteps. Aidan was right behind me. Aidan was walking around the end of the couch. It took me a second to look up, glancing shyly from under my lashes. He’d gone the boxers route, though he’d put on a shirt, and he looked — perfect. Domestic. Or as domestic as a couple of hundred pounds of brooding muscle could look, anyway, with his glossy black hair sticking up at spiky angles and stubble all over his cheeks and jaw. Like he belonged here, with me, on a lazy Sunday.

His eyebrows were drawn together, though, in an expression that was way too tense for a lazy Sunday. I couldn’t look away. I had his focus right now, all of it, those gleaming amber eyes fixed on me.

“Did I do something wrong last night?” he asked abruptly. “Or do you want to pretend like it didn’t happen? I’ll do whatever you want. But I don’t want to tiptoe around it, either.”

Something wrong? God, he’d done everything right. Everything I dreamed of, from kissing me like he couldn’t get enough to holding me after we’d finished. “I don’t — no. I mean, no, you didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I thought you’d be there when I woke up,” he said, sounding as if the words were being wrenched out of him. He gave a shaky laugh and looked away. “And that doesn’t sound whiny at all.”

“Oh. Really?” I was grinning like an idiot, and his gaze flicked to me for a second before he turned bright red with embarrassment. “No, sorry, like — I thought I was going to be the whiny one.”

A little smile teased the corners of Aidan’s mouth. Oh God, that mouth, the one that had sucked on my nipples and kissed my neck and whispered my name in the dark…I was getting hard. I really hoped the pajama pants were up to the task of preserving my dignity, such as it was.

“Don’t apologize.” He prowled toward me and I leaned back against the couch instinctively. When he put a knee next to my leg and loomed over me, his hands braced on the back of the couch to either side of me, I tipped my head back, and it felt so right. Offering myself up like that. I wanted to jump up and bend over the couch. If going without pants was too forward, that probably wouldn’t fly. “After last night, when you apologize,” he went on in a low, hypnotic rumble, “it makes me think you want something.”

Now I was the one blushing, and Aidan leaned in and nuzzled my burning cheek. And then lower, around the angle of my jaw and down, until he had his face in the curve of my neck, just breathing there. He smelled like mint and man.

Speaking was beyond me, so I gave in to the urge I’d been fighting almost since he moved in: I put my hands on his chest and felt all those muscles, stroking down to his flat stomach and trying to trace the ridges of his abs through his shirt. Aidan shivered under my hands.

And suddenly I had the courage to put together actual words again, and I knew exactly what to say. “I’m sorry, Aidan.” I smiled as he tensed up and pressed his open mouth to my throat, his breaths hot and coming fast. “So, so sorry.”

“You’re about two seconds from getting dragged back to bed, you know that, right?”

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