Crazy Stupid Bromance (Bromance Book Club #3) - Lyssa Kay Adams Page 0,28

never asked for it back.

He took it from her. “Thanks.”

She shrugged. “It’s yours.”

Alexis sidestepped him to return to the other side of the bed, a safer distance. She looked at the floor as he pulled the sweatshirt over his head.

“I’m decent,” he said, trying and failing to make a joke out of the sexual tension that made the air sizzle and crack like a fire.

She glanced up through hooded lashes. “Are you . . . Does it hurt?”

“No.”

“I’m sorry about Beefcake. He’s just—”

“I’m fine, Lexa.” The corner of his mouth quirked up in a half smile that sent her heart into a rapid flutter. “But I don’t think he likes the harness.”

She laughed all nervous-like and then cringed at how unnatural it sounded. “Right. No, I think maybe I won’t be using it.”

She met his eyes and then quickly looked away, but her gaze instead fell to the bed, but that suddenly seemed way too intimate, so she looked back at him, and then, oh shit, her cheeks blazed as hot as if she’d just pulled fresh muffins from the oven.

This was ridiculous. She was acting like a teenager with her first crush. “Are you staying?” she blurted.

His expression went blank. “I— Do you want me to?”

“I—I was just asking. I mean, it’s late, so I wouldn’t blame you if you decided to go home, but you can stay if you want. I just—”

Her words became a jumbled run-on sentence as he walked toward her. He stopped inches away, and her breath lodged in her chest.

“Alexis.” His voice was strained again.

She gulped. “What?”

“Do you want me to stay again tonight?”

She noticed everything at once—the low register of his voice, the clean, manly scent of him, his muscled forearms, the overpowering size of him. And heat. It radiated off him in waves as if he generated his own solar power.

Yes. I want you to stay. The words were there, but she couldn’t get them out. Something was wrong with her. She was itchy in her own skin, jumbled in her own thoughts, unsure of her own emotions.

She put a foot of distance between them. “I’m okay,” she whispered. “You can go.”

* * *

* * *

The drive from her house to his had never been so long, and Noah was pretty sure he’d left more than a chunk of his skin behind. He’d obviously left his common sense. Because it was a test of willpower in the entire twenty-minute drive to not turn around, return to her bedroom, drag her into his arms, and beg her to touch him again.

That was pathetic enough. But even worse was that the only thing stopping him was a sliver of uncertainty that he’d imagined the whole thing.

Noah pulled into his driveway and squinted as motion lights flooded the lawn and garage with a yellow glow. Noah turned off his car, dragged his hands down his face, and groaned out loud as he dropped his head against the seat.

No, he hadn’t imagined it. He’d been naked in front of enough women—not a lot, but enough—that he recognized the look on Alexis’s face. Desire. And he had no idea what to do about that, which is why part of him was grateful she’d told him to go home. The other part of him? Noah shook his head. The other part of him needed a cold shower.

He unlocked his front door, punched in the alarm code on the keypad inside, and dropped his keys on the entryway table his mother had insisted he buy. Marsh, of course, had scoffed and said a man should decorate his own damn house.

Noah bypassed the stairs because there was no point even trying to go to bed. So he grabbed a beer from the fridge and wandered to the living room to collapse on his couch. He surfed the channels on his TV for ten minutes before giving up and turning the whole thing off. He could text her, of course. They often did to say good night, but after writing and deleting ten different messages, he gave up and tossed his phone onto the coffee table. It landed next to a plastic bag.

The book.

Great. He should’ve thrown the damn thing away.

Noah flipped it off. He wasn’t going to read that stupid thing. What the hell was it going to teach him that he didn’t already know? Marsh’s voice was a mocking whisper in the back of his mind. What kind of man reads a romance novel to figure out how the