Page 31 of The Marriage Deal
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"WE'RE SLEEPING IN THE same bedroom!" I said as soon as the door to Levi's chambers, as her mother described it, shut. I had the nightwear and toiletry bag she handed me clutched to my chest. A flimsy shield against the racy thoughts that refused to be purged from my mind at the idea of staying the night in the same room with Levi. Make that the same freaking bed. Because there's only one. There was nothing else that could be counted as a sleeping surface except for the floor, and that must be cold. The chairs in the living area were breakfast chairs. Hardly the sort one would find sleep in.
"You're the one who wanted to stay." Levi did not seem the least bit upset. If anything, he was no longer angry that he hadto spend more time in the same building as his mother and was now enjoying himself.
"And I thought since we were in a freaking castle, I would have a room of my own."
"My mother thinks we're dating. Why would she give us separate rooms?"
I wanted to tell him that some parents do not allow their children's boyfriends or girlfriends to sleep in the same room as their child, but that point seemed moot. I darted my gaze to the four-poster Edwardian bed I had been avoiding. It looked big enough to accommodate four people. A true king-sized bed if there ever was one.
"Dibs on the bed. I'm not sleeping on the floor."
He let out a low chuckle. "Neither am I."
"We can't sleep in the same bed!"
"What are you afraid of? That I will attack you in the middle of the night?"
"No. Yes. I don't trust you."
He laughed out loud this time. He disappeared through a door and came back with three pillows and threw them on the bed. He went away again and came back with two more that he added to the pile.
"Stack those in the middle and voila. Two beds."
He disappeared through another door that opened onto a closet. I quickly changed into the nightdress Levi's mom gave me. By the time Levi returned, I was already tucked into my side of the bed, with pillows as a divider. The bedsheets were clean and smelled of morning dew. That faint Levi-like scent that I was slowly getting used to. I had rested my head on a pillow when he strutted in wearing silk pajamas similar to my dress, which made my heart stutter. There was nothing special about what he wore. But because I had never seen him like this before, in such an intimate way, it was though I was seeing a different side ofLevi. Less stuffy professor and more human being. A hot, sexy human being who was entering the bed and sleeping beside me. Falling asleep was going to be hard, wasn't it? Fuck. Maybe I should have picked the floor.
13
Elvira
"YOU SLEPT WITH HIM!" Jess shouted.
I glanced around the cafeteria. Luckily, everyone else was preoccupied with their food and conversations to care what Jess had screamed out. It had been three days since Levi and I were back from the United Kingdom, and when I arrived, Jess wasn't around. She had gone to an interview, but as soon as she came back, she harassed me about all the details of my trip. However, I got so busy I hadn't been able to talk to her until now.
"Not sleep like that. Actual sleep. Like closing your eyes and going into a semi-coma. Like snoring."
"He snores!"Jess giggled like a teenager.
"No! At least I didn't hear him snore. But we slept in the same bed andnothinghappened."
Jess narrowed her eyes. We were in line for lunch, and when we got to the counter, our conversation froze as we both picked out our food and made our way to the tables.
"It's the truth. Believe it or not," I said as I took my seat on the barely cushioned chair. We chose a small table for four people, and Jess got into the chair opposite mine, slamming her tray on the table as she sank down into her seat.
"It's kinda hard to believe nothing happened, I am sorry. Especially with the way he looks at you."
"Like what?"
She cut her burrito in two like she always did, meat and cheese dripping onto the plate, and picked one half. Before she bit into it, she said, "Like he wants to devour you. Like this." She took a big bite.
I chuckled, my cheeks heating up. "I don't know about that." Although part of me was starting to get what Jess was referring to. The way Levi had stared at my lips while we were in the Redwood Hall library had melted my insides. But it was only in those instances, when he was about to kiss me, did I notice the hunger in his eyes. Any other time though, Levi looked at me as though he wanted nothing to do with me. Sometimes I wondered if he knew I was there.
"You're blind," she said after washing down her burrito with a swig of Diet Coke. "The man gives you a first edition, scratch that, a rare book that you've found out will be extremely helpful to your thesis and you think, he's just being what? A good guy? Sure."
After reading the book Levi gave me, I found out that it had a lot of information regarding Africans in the medieval period. Sir Gregory Watson was quite the amateur historian, obsessed with documenting non-white people in historical records he found throughout his travels. And unlike some amateur historians of the Victorian era, Gregory was meticulous in his references, making it easier to research the truth of his findings. I showed my supervising professor the book and she had been amazed at how invaluable it was. That one book had not only saved me time in my thesis, but it gave me a lot more information that I would otherwise might not have found elsewhere. And when I told Levi I would return the book to him, he had simply said it was mine to keep.
"Do you know how much rare books like that cost?"
