man in the master suite’s bathroom. He wouldn’t have let anyone else walk into the bedroom. My mouth drops open. He walked past me, sleeping, to get to the en suite. Who does that? He does, obviously. Which means he doesn’t really care that I’m sleeping in his bed. At the same time, he’s ordered me to sleep in his bed. It doesn’t add up.
When I came out of the dream, I was still tired. It took forever for me to fall asleep last night, yet again. Each time I woke up, the cycle started all over again.
Now I’m wide awake but frozen in the bed. He’s in the shower.
I launch myself out of bed just to break the spell, then run my hands over my hair. I don’t toss and turn much in my sleep. Years of ingrained habit. But what do I do now? Waltz into the bathroom and act like this is my home, too? I still haven’t figured this part out. Josh would deserve it. He’s the one who wouldn’t stand for my apartment. The shower in the master suite is all modern tile with a big glass front. It takes up one entire wall of the bathroom. There’s just no earthly way I can enter that space and not look in his direction. His naked, wet direction.
This isn’t how I thought this would go. For one thing, I have class in a matter of hours. How many, I’m not sure. Where is my phone? I find it exactly where I left it on the bedside table, only it’s been plugged into a charger.
He didn’t want me out and about with a dead phone. At some point he came in here to plug it in so I wouldn’t have to go without it. I’m not one of those people who spends a lot of time on my phone. Dancing takes up most of my waking hours.
What the hell is happening?
The other piece to this equation is that I suddenly and desperately have to pee. I probably could have held it off if I’d stayed in bed, but I’m upright, and gravity is a cruel mistress. Leaving this bedroom means I run the risk of Josh thinking I’ve disappeared. Staying means I run the risk of seeing him get out of the shower. Did he take all his clothes in there with him, or will he come out with a towel around his waist? Or no towel at all?
The phone tumbles onto the bed. I bury my face in my hands.
I’m not sixteen anymore.
I should not be acting like the man who’s kicked down the door into my life and left it hanging from its hinges is anyone to get excited about. No. The only possible way forward is to carry on with what we now call our normal routine. This is the suite he’s assigned me to, so that’s the bathroom I’ll use. I’ll brush my teeth. I’ll get dressed. I’ll go to class. Noah, I’m sure, will be waiting to drive me.
Shoulders back, head up. This is not a dilemma.
I’ve just stepped around the first corner of the king-size bed when the water shuts off. The abrupt silence freezes me in place. Shit. Shit. The average time it takes a man to dry off his hard, muscled body is going to be nothing like the time it takes me to hastily scrub off excess water in a disgusting shared bathroom. I weigh the options—get caught as a living statue at the foot of the bed or the floor of the bathroom?
The deliberations have taken too much time.
Footsteps on bathroom tile. I lurch into motion and make it around to the other side of the bed. The bathroom door cracks open, tendrils of steam reaching out and brushing against my cheek. His eyes flare when he sees me. No smile graces his lips. “You’re awake,” he comments. “Good. Noah will be waiting out front to take you to the theater.”
I’d expected a rush of heat after how long I spent pressing my thighs together underneath Josh’s sheets last night. Instead he brushes by me surrounded by a deep freeze. A thick white towel only serves to highlight his nakedness. The muscles, the hair, the maleness of him.
“Fresh towels are in the linen closet, as always,” he says over his shoulder on his way through the bedroom. I can’t help but watch him go. He must know I’m looking. He walks with his shoulders set. Every step