Dear Roomie (Rookie Rebels #5) - Kate Meader Page 0,50
She grasped his arm. The bicep was calling and this was the perfect excuse. “Are you actually laughing at something I said? Let me capture this moment.” She closed her eyes, and though ostensibly she was joking, she found herself snapping a mental image and storing it away.
“It wasn’t even that funny,” he muttered.
“Is this one of those can’t cry for laughing situations?”
“Sure it is, Coffee Shop Girl.”
“Really? Two can play at that game, Hot Jerk.”
“You said that in the lake! I thought I was hearing things.” He cocked his head, which was so damn sexy. “You think I’m hot?”
“It’s a modifying word, a what do you call it? Adjective!” She squeezed his arm, not wanting to let go of all that heat and because, yes, the man was smokin’. “Meaning that it modifies, and in this case, emphasizes the primary word in the compound phrase which is jerk. Did you hear that part?”
“Just heard hot.” He bent down, bringing him close enough to kiss again.
Could she push him? Should she? “I don’t mind admitting it. In fact, I think you’re really hot and when we kissed yesterday, you knew that. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I’ll continue to think you’re hot, you’ll continue to be mildly attracted to me, and you’ll also continue be a self-denying-can’t-have-sex-gotta-jerk-off-in-my-room-now idiot.”
His eyes went wide. “Mildly attracted to you?”
“That’s the part you zeroed in on?”
He stared at her, then after a long, heated beat, straightened and said … nothing. Which was hot in itself and made her rush to fill the pause.
“We’re healthy, reasonably attractive adults who aren’t yet friends so we can’t use that as an excuse. But you’ve got your standards and I don’t want to mess with your game prep.”
“Yet, you throw it out there. The notion that if I wasn’t so hard on myself, we’d be going at it like bunnies.”
Not having hang-ups about sex often meant she was more honest about it than people expected. She wasn’t a nymphomaniac, but she had needs.
She’d seen Reid looking at her. She’d felt his lips, his tongue, his attraction wrapped in a hot, hard package. He had kissed her with both tenderness and abandon, and then threw out some Walt Whitman as if it was nothing.
Walt. Whitman.
In any other situation, with any other guy, this would be a done deal.
Now it was out there—the knowing about how he kissed and tasted and felt. The bullet had been released from the barrel and was hovering midair in slo-mo, waiting to be either slapped from existence like a Wonder Woman move, dodged a la Keanu in the Matrix, or embedded deep into her sensitive, receptive flesh.
She knew which option she’d rather have.
The bullet was waiting. Her body was ready.
“I admire your restraint,” she said with a whole lot of fucking restraint.
“It hasn’t occurred to you I might not be all that into you.”
“Not in the slightest.”
He laughed, a deep boom of a sound that shocked both her and Bucky, who ran around in a tight circle and started barking.
Reid pointed at him. “Quiet, you.”
Bucky stopped immediately. He was definitely improving in his relations with humans.
Reid squatted and petted his friend, getting a face lick in return. Looking up, he snagged Kennedy with another shocker of a grin. Someone else was also improving in his relations with humans.
She could be in big ass trouble here.
“It must be great to go through life with such confidence,” he said. “I’m envious.”
“I’m not confident about everything. Neither am I blind. It’s okay that you can’t act on this but there’s no need to pretend there’s nothing happening here, oui?”
“Oui?”
“What do I have to do make you speak hot, dirty French to me, roomie?”
As he drew up from his crouch, his gaze seemed to coast up her body, incinerating her skin inch by inch. He inclined his head so his eyes were close to hers. All that deep, sink-into-sex blue.
“D'accord, vous gagnez.”
Her breath caught. “What does that mean?”
“It means, you win. When the season ends, I’ll break my fast with you.”
Oh, wow. Break my fast. That was a thigh-clenching statement if ever she’d heard one. The thought of being on the receiving end of Reid’s first time in forever …
Except that would be months away and she wasn’t a slow burn kind of girl. Hit it fast, early and maybe often, then move on. That was her MO. She wouldn’t be waiting around for Reid Durand to grace her with the favor of his penis.