the last person was being sliced and diced while some girl screamed in the background. “What’d I miss?” he muttered to his best friend, and I hid my grin as he looked over with the Cheeto sticking out of his nostril like a big orange booger.
Mom snickered beside me but didn’t give it away as she recanted the death of the last few people.
Then he scrubbed a hand over his face tiredly and felt what shouldn’t be there. “Damn,” he muttered and tossed the Cheeto into his bowl disgustedly. “I’m more tired than I realized if I’m feeding my nose in my sleep.”
“Yeah,” Dad agreed, his face completely serious even though he’d been silently cracking up while I’d put food up my brother’s nose only moments before. “Maybe you should head to bed, bud.”
“I think I will.” Yawning, he stood. “Night.”
“Goodnight,” I murmured, giving him a beaming smile that he rolled his eyes at and climbed the stairs to everyone else telling him goodnight.
I heard his bedroom door shut, and then we all burst out laughing. Tears of mirth in my eyes, I didn’t even care that I had to clean up his mess. Mom and Dad went to bed a few minutes later while I was still cleaning up the pieces of popcorn Cannon had spilled during the movie, leaving me alone with Jagger for the first time in forever.
Suddenly feeling nervous, I carried the mostly empty bowls into the kitchen and put them in the dishwasher. Grabbing us each a drink on the way back, I asked Jagger if he wanted to watch another movie.
“Sure. I’m not even a little tired.” He took the diet soda I offered before patting the spot beside him that my brother had occupied earlier. “Sit here and share the blanket.”
Tugging on the throw, I pulled it across us and happily snuggled in beside him. His arm casually went around my shoulders, pulling me closer as he flipped through the newest releases to see what our options were. “I know you don’t want another scary movie,” he said as he scrolled down the movie titles. “How about this action flick? Think you can handle it?”
I read the blurb and nodded. “Seems okay, I guess.”
As the movie started, Jagger’s hand slid from my shoulder down my arm. Goose bumps popped up in its wake before his hand came to rest at my waist, right above the top of my sleep shorts. I bit my lip, holding on to the moan that wanted to escape when his fingers skimmed over the skin as he smoothly tugged my hoodie out of the way.
When I chanced a glance up at him as the movie started to see his reaction to touching me like that, his gaze was on the TV, his jaw relaxed as if he didn’t even realize the effect he had on me. All he was doing was holding me, the same way he’d done my entire life. There was nothing sexual about it, except for the fact that just his touch was enough to make me ache.
I wanted to climb onto his lap and rub myself against him. I wanted him to pull my ponytail free and wrap my hair around his wrist and kiss me like he couldn’t get enough of my taste. I wanted to know if his cock was as big as I suspected it was after having felt it against me a few times in the past.
“Fuck,” he muttered, his hand on my waist clenching into a fist for a moment before relaxing again. “Shaw, please stop squirming.”
His tortured plea was the only thing alerting me to the fact that I had been squeezing my thighs together and shifting from side to side in an effort to find some measure of relief from the ache throbbing between my legs.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, half embarrassed, half pissed that he didn’t just grab me and put me out of my misery. There was no way he didn’t know how I felt, and I thought maybe—just maybe—he felt what I did. It wasn’t possible for there to be this kind of tension between us if we didn’t have at least a little shared chemistry.
Right?
He brushed his nose over the top of my head. I heard him inhale deeply and couldn’t contain my shiver. “What are you thinking about, Dimples?” he rasped close to my ear.
“I was wondering if kissing you would be life-changing or if maybe I’ve just built it up in my head,”