He plopped down next to her staring her down, her expression still a little too amused. “Crossing your arms in front of you like you did when you were done with your story is a sure sign of resistance—opposition.”
“I am opposed to being around them,” he said, not arguing her point, “this soon. It’s just weird, but it’s not like I feel jealous or anything. I respect that she belongs to him and—”
“Belongs to him?” Her eyes opened wide, but she still smiled.
He dropped his head back on the sofa. “I meant she’s not just his girlfriend she’s his fiancée now. I was thinking his girlfriend, then I changed my mind, and last second my thoughts switched and—”
“Freudian slip. Interesting. Are you one of those guys, Nathan?” She giggled, chewing the tip of her thumb nail. “Does your brother own her now?”
“No, no, don’t start psychoanalyzing me,” he said, lifting his head up and glancing at her.
She was enjoying this a little too much, but, damn, she really was breathtaking when she smiled like that.
“I’m not one of those guys, alright? All I meant is . . . you know when guys introduce their girlfriends as ‘My girl’—?”
“Because she’s his?”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “And he’s her boyfriend. Goes both ways.”
“So you own each other?”
He stared at the sofa in front of him for a moment and thought about that. “Well, yeah, but not in the caveman way you’re trying to imply.”
“Is there any other way?” She was laughing now and mocking him. It was as annoying as it was amusing to see her enjoy it so much.
“I don’t do the relationship thing anymore,” he explained. “Commitment and all that shit. I think it’s overrated and it’s too much drama. I can have just as much fun with girls, enjoying them, exhaustively so, without the need of complicating things with a relationship. But I’m just saying hypothetically, like both my brothers, if I was to ever have a serious relationship, you best believe I’d make it clear to everyone she was all mine.”
She stared at him for a moment as if he might go on, but he didn’t. “I’m all for a couple being a team, Nathan.” She tilted her head with a sweet smile. “And for two people to belong together but not to each other?”
“But it’s the truth, right?” He turned and rested his arm on the back of the sofa so he could better enjoy watching Aiyanna laugh. “Hypothetically speaking,” he said, wondering if he should go there, but he was enjoying this, so he did. “Say you were mine.” She was still smiling, only he knew that last statement waned the playfulness a bit, and he peered into her eyes. “If you were my girlfriend, you bet your ass everyone would know you belonged to me. It’s why I asked last night if you were sure your boyfriend would be okay with you sharing a bed with another guy, because if you were mine, I wouldn’t be okay with it.”
The smile was nearly gone now, but she still held the eye contact. “Even if it was as innocent as last night was?”
Nathan grinned, feeling bittersweet again as this only further confirmed Aiyanna was not the type of girl he could ever take seriously. If she honestly thought last night was completely innocent—that her friend, who she admitted she’d probably do the same with when he got here, would think it just as innocent—then there was no way Nathan would deal with a girl like that.
“If you were my girlfriend and I found out you did that with your friend Scott or any other guy, there’s no fucking way I’d be okay with it.”
He hadn’t meant for that to sound so abrasive, but a part of him wanted her to know that. Maybe he was one of those guys. If there was even a remote possibility that something might happen between them, then he didn’t care how that last statement sounded. She could interpret it however she wanted, as long as they were clear on where he stood about things like that.
Just in case.
“So you’re saying us sharing the bed last night was wrong?”
“Nothing wrong with sharing the bed with someone else, but I draw the line at any other guy putting his hands on my girl.” He thought about that for a moment then shook his head. “Nah, you know what? Even if you just shared the bed and assured me he hadn’t touched you, I’d probably lose my shit anyway.”
She finally laughed again. “But that’s so hypocritical. You did it with me and it was perfectly innocent.”
“Was it?”
For a moment, she looked confused, but he saw the instant it hit her. The moment she remembered his lips on her delectable neck her face went crimson again and he knew he had her.
Chapter 6: Flaunting It
Aiyanna
One of the things they’d found in the garage was a pile of old wooden unfinished pallets. Nathan said he could break them down and they could use them to add to the fire along with the logs Aiyanna had bought, making them last longer. He’d gone into the garage after their insightful and at times heart-pounding conversation. He said he would start taking the pallets apart. Aiyanna watched more of the news about the approaching new storm for a little bit before going into the bedroom to make their bed and tidy up.
Double-checking her phone to see if, by chance, like the power and the cable, somehow they might have reception now, she came across one of the last text conversations she’d had with Jace. She sat on the bed and scrolled through it. After that last night with him, it had been the only way she’d communicated with him. Even that she’d only done the day afterward and had since stopped responding to him at all. She refused to speak to him ever again.
Reading through all his bullshit excuses about how and why he’d ended up in his ex’s bed, even though he’d been assuring her he didn’t even talk to her, only made her surer all she’d ever felt for him was that he was safe. A good guy. Of all the guys she’d met in the past year, she’d basically handpicked him because everything about him was perfect. There wasn’t a single thing about him that didn’t scream stable future husband. Her sister had even implied her boyfriend was boring.
“He’s just so vanilla, Anna. He doesn’t even eat meat.”
Aiyanna had argued that just because he was a vegetarian who was polite enough not to cuss like a sailor in front of her, didn’t make him vanilla. He was just a gentleman who’d even respected and patiently waited out her ridiculous three-month rule. Of course, they both turned out to be totally off about Jace, the safe and boring gentleman.
How stupid could she have been to think that’s how you pick your first ever lover and possible future husband? That having things in common was all you needed to match up perfectly. She’d thought she was being so smart. What a joke! Not even a full twenty-four hours of being around Nathan and she could already tell what her sister had been saying all along was right. You don’t plan things like the craziness she felt when Nathan gazed at her in that certain way. It just happened.
Aiyanna had called her sister crazy and irresponsible for jumping into her relationship with her boyfriend after knowing him for just one weekend.
“Call me crazy,” Heidi had said. “But I knew after just an hour of talking to him no one had ever made me feel what he did.”
An hour? Aiyanna remembered vividly how crazy that had sounded to her at the time. A week later she tried to explain to Heidi about the three-month rule before sleeping with him. Heidi had laughed, telling her she was too late already. Aiyanna remembered feeling completely appalled.
“You slept with him after only knowing him a week?”
Aiyanna had been so worried about her clearly clueless sister. She thought for sure Heidi was doomed to have her heart broken within weeks if not days. A year later they were still going strong, and it was obvious how crazy Heidi’s boyfriend was about her. Clearly, Aiyanna was the one who was clueless about all this. Even her reaction to Nathan practically admitting that, yes, he was one of those guys was troublesome. Aiyanna always thought there’d be no way she’d put up with one of those guys. Yet she’d had a major case of butterflies in her belly when
she’d been caught in his intense eyes as he referred to her as his girl. The passion with which he said it should’ve had her arguing, at the very least debating his reasons for losing his shit. Instead, it had made her legs weak and her heart rumble with excitement about the very thought of being his.
She gasped when he walked into the bedroom because she’d zoned out staring at her phone while thinking of Nathan. He stopped at the doorway and stared at her. “Your phone’s working?”
“No.” She shook her head. “I was just reading some old texts.”
“From your ex?”
He hadn’t even flinched before asking. How could he know? “One of them.”
“One of your exes?” he asked with a lift of his brow.
“No, I was reading one of the texts from him.”
“But you’re over him, right?”
He didn’t even attempt to mask the sarcasm, and she caught that same roll of his eyes she’d seen him do before as he walked past the bed toward the bathroom. “I am.”
He turned to her with a smirk, not nearly as playful as most of the other ones she’d seen him display so often in the short time she’d been around him. “It’s why you were staring at his text so hard I startled you?”
Before she could respond to that, he let her know he was jumping in the shower and that the pallets were all broken down. “I boarded up the bear’s hole too, just in case.” He stopped at the door of the bathroom and turned to her. “Given any thought to how we’ll be celebrating New Year’s Eve in a few hours?”
That made her smile, despite the discomfort his slight attitude had her feeling. “If the power stays on, we could watch the live shows they’ll have all night.”
“I found a deck of cards in the kitchen,” he said as he removed his shirt in the bathroom, giving her a full show of his incredible tatted and ripped upper body. “We could play poker, using pretzels for chips.
Aiyanna was at a loss for words as she stared at the man’s muscled chest and abs. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. The tattoos were perfectly placed on his arms, chest, and even both his side abs. It was like one of the photos of the hot models her sister often texted her. She finally snapped out of it and looked up at his face. He was smirking again, only this time it was in that playful way she’d gotten used to and turned her insides into mush. Instantly, her face was hot. That was another thing. No man had ever made her blush as much as Nathan had in the short time she’d known him.
She cleared her throat, trying to salvage her composure. “Poker sounds like fun.”
“We could play for fun or you decide what the stakes are.” Again he smirked, staring her down with a purpose. The sultry way he gazed at her warmed not just her face, but her entire insides.
She cleared her throat again, putting her phone down. “I, uh. . .” she said, deciding to ignore his poker stakes comment. “I thought I’d be spending the night out, so I didn’t bring anything special to make for the occasion, but my sister and I have this easy chicken cordon bleu recipe, and I think I might have everything I need to make it.”
“Sounds good to me,” he said, smiling as he kicked his shoes off. “Just remember we’re rationing. I don’t wanna have to resort to hunting that bear down or one of those deer for food.”
Smiling silly as if that were the funniest comment ever, Aiyanna did her best not to zone out again, staring at his naked upper body. He finally closed the door, and Aiyanna fell back on the bed. “Oh my God.” She gasped in a whisper.
How in the world was she supposed to get in bed with that man tonight, knowing there was all that going on under his clothes? She lifted her phone and brought up the selfies she’d taken with him last night. She thought him good-looking before. Now she knew she was dealing with someone as drool-worthy as his brother only minus the fame. After lying there for a few minutes, eyes closed, visualizing what he’d just displayed so nonchalantly—as if he knew he’d leave her stunned—she finally sat up again when she heard the water turn off.
“That was fast,” she said under her breath.
Or maybe she’d been lying there visualizing for a lot longer than she realized. She shook her head, chiding herself for even going there. No way in hell would Nathan, the hot firefighter who was rarely rejected, be interested in walking her through her first time.
Before she could get off the bed, he opened the bathroom door and stood there in nothing but a towel around his waist. Once again Aiyanna felt dazed. With the towel draped just over his waist, she could even see the outline of his equally muscled thighs. He bent over to pick up his clothes on the floor then glanced up, and their eyes met.
Without saying another word, he walked out of the bathroom, threw the clothes he was carrying aside, and walked up to the bed where she sat. She stared at him breathlessly as he stood so close to her she could almost taste his lips. His eyes fell down to his own chest then slowly lifted until they locked on her eyes again with that evil smirk. His expression practically beckoned, Touch me. You know you want to. She began to lift her almost trembling hand to his incredible chest.
“It’s fucking freezing in here.”
Aiyanna felt her entire face instantly heat when she saw he wasn’t anywhere near her. He was still in the bathroom, toweling off his hair and big shoulders with a second towel. Gulping hard, she got off the bed, needing to get out of the room before she fell into another mortifying trance.
“If you’re gonna shower, I’d make it fast. I know you said you took an extra-long shower yesterday, but the hot water didn’t last very long just now.”
She nodded as she walked out the door, refusing to even glance at him again until he was fully dressed. “Yeah, I’ll give it a few minutes, then. I’m gonna go see if I have everything I need for dinner.”
“I was thinking maybe we can have fun and dress up tonight for the occasion,” he said before she could walk all the way out of the room. She stopped at the door but stared straight ahead as he continued. “Might as well make the most of it, right? It is New Year’s Eve. I left the suit I planned on wearing tonight in my bigger suitcase in the rental, but I have a buttoned shirt and a dressier pair of jeans in the smaller suitcase I did bring with me.”
Aiyanna thought about the dress she’d bought to wear tonight when she’d originally planned on wearing it for stupid Jace. It was a little too provocative, but it was the only dressy thing she’d packed. But she did have a couple pair of jeans and some cute-ish sweater tops.
“Sure, why not? I’ll see what I can put together.”
She walked to the kitchen, her insides still aflutter and knowing full well she would not be rid of the visual of Nathan’s incredible body anytime soon. It was almost maddening that he’d done that. He had to know the kind of reaction she’d have to seeing him like that. The smirk on his face when he first stunned her was telling enough. Oh, he knew alright.
Sorting through the things in the fridge, she suddenly had an idea. The more she thought of it, the more certain she was that he’d done that on purpose. Earlier, when he first laid eyes on her in her body-hugging snow gear, she’d shaken the thoughts away that he seemed more than impressed. Aiyanna may not have the killer body he did, and she knew she was severely lacking in comparison to a man like him when it came to any kind of sexual prowess—or even flirting. But she had a few jaw-dropping features of her own. Two of the most prominent had been well hidden all this time under her sweats and snow gear, but with that dress she brought for tonight, not to mention the shoes, she knew she could do some major flaunting of her own.
But should she?
Did she really want to play those kinds of games when she didn’t know how long they’d be stuck here together? Would she be able to handle a guy like Nathan if their games went a little further than she planned? She’d always known she’d never be the kind of girl who could just enjoy a fun romp with a guy and never look back. Just the fact that Nathan was so . . . well, Nathan, it’d be hard enough to get over him. But if she let so
mething happen, he’d be her first. He’d made sure to point out that relationships weren’t his thing. She knew it’d only been a day since she met him, but she could already tell she could easily fall for him. It was too big of a risk to even consider it.
Once she was sure she had everything she’d need for dinner and Nathan was back in the front room, fully dressed—thank God—she decided to make sandwiches for lunch. They ate them, watching the news again. There wasn’t much else to watch. The cable was the kind most of the cheap hotels offered with about thirteen channels tops.
Nathan flipped through the channels once they’d had enough of hearing about the impending storm, stopping finally on an old eighties chick flick, Serendipity, one Nathan immediately declared cheesy but Aiyanna thought romantic.
It could’ve been the turkey in her sandwich or the fact that last night she’d gotten very little sleep with the thrill of Nathan’s arms around her, but she was startled when she woke up on the sofa. She was further startled when she realized her head was on Nathan’s lap and he was staring at her and gently playing with her hair.
A blanket covered her, which meant he’d gotten up to get one for her when she apparently nodded off then laid her head on his lap again. She sat up, trying not to show just how embarrassed she was by this, not to mention secretly thrilled about the way he’d been staring at her and touching her hair. It was silly. She’d slept in his arms last night. Why would sleeping with her head on his lap be any worse?
“How long have I been out?” she asked, bringing her legs off the sofa and turning to him.
“Couple of hours.”
“Couple of hours?” she asked, even more surprised.
“Yeah, and about fifteen minutes ago the power went out again. No TV, and I didn’t want to wake you by getting up. You looked so blissful. So I had no choice but to sit here and watch you instead.”
Once again she felt the heat rise from her neck to her face. He’d been watching her for fifteen minutes? Good God, she hoped she hadn’t snored or, worse, drooled. She was known to do so on occasion when she was extremely tired. Touching the sides of her mouth casually, she was relieved that they were dry, and she sat up a little straighter; though she was still sitting so close to him their thighs touched.