removed while we’re at school tomorrow.” Coop gave a little wave. “Poof. Last vestiges gone.”
“We can decide what you want to do with the room after,” Jake tacked on.
“If you want to do anything at all with it,” Ian suggested from where he sat on the floor right in front of me. He had pulled one of my legs over his shoulder and he gave my foot a squeeze.
“Well, my vote is bigger bed,” Archie drawled. “We can put it in there or…” He pressed on, even with me making a face. “We can shift stuff so that we can make like, a study room or something, and put your old bed in there and the bigger bed in your room.”
“A bigger bed in your room would be a tight fit,” Coop mused. “You thinking queen or California king?”
“Actually,” Archie said as he leaned forward from where he sprawled on the sofa and held up his phone. “I was thinking this.”
Jake burst out laughing when he saw it, and Coop’s eyebrows climbed. By the time he passed the phone to Ian, I was curious and leaned forward. Then I just stared. “That’s not a bed, that’s a football field.”
“Hardly,” Archie said with a grin. “But there’s more than enough room for all of us and your cats.”
Heat flooded my face. “Okay, before we discuss new beds and sleeping arrangements.” Because yeah, the thought of all of them sleeping there regularly and not just spread around the room with two in bed with me was insanely hot and distracting. “We still need to do rules.”
“Rules?”
“We got no bean burrito rule,” Coop teased, and I flipped him off. Unrepentant, he continued, “What rules specifically do you want to make? The rules on our screaming orgasm competition?”
Yeah, okay. My face caught on fire as both Jake and Archie chuckled.
“He kind of has a point. Angel.” Ian shocked the shit out of me when he tipped his head back to eye me. He had an ice pack held to his face at my insistence. “You will, of course, be the final judge of that contest.”
“Et tu, Brute?”
He grinned. “I know I’m behind, I’ll take any advantage I can get.” I didn’t think my face could flame any hotter. Particularly with our recent make-out session punctuated by little bites of pain or not. “Not that I’m rushing anything. I’m just a big believer in how thorough you like to be in your research.”
“Fuck me, that is the nerdiest flirting ever,” Jake said. “I don’t know whether to be disgusted or impressed.”
Archie snorted. “She’s red as a beet. I think impressed, because he’s definitely getting to her.”
“I hate you all,” I muttered.
“No you don’t,” Coop chuckled. “Not even a little bit.”
Asses.
“Rules,” I said, ignoring that last bit. “We need rules because I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings or, you know, run into what we did before.”
“That was my fault,” Ian reminded me as he squeezed my calf as though an apology.
I stopped petting Tiddles for a moment and ran my fingers through Ian’s hair. “You had rules before, right?”
“Yes,” Archie admitted. “Not sure those are the kind of rules you’re talking about.”
“What are they?”
The fact that no one answered right away and they looked at each other only served to make me more curious.
“C’mon, spill. You made rules about me. What were they?”
Jake made a face. “Only if you promise to not get pissed if you don’t like what the rules were.”
I stared at him, and he didn’t back down for an instant. “Fine,” I conceded, more curious than irritated. “I will not get pissed if I don’t like what the rules were, emphasis on the word were. If we’re establishing new rules that get my input, that means I can veto an old rule and toss it out so it no longer applies. Fair?”
They did another one of those long looks at each other, and I didn’t even have to see Ian’s face to know he was in agreement with me right now. Maybe we were both going to be trying too hard for a while, and I was okay with that. I was just damn happy to have him back. I didn’t want to screw it up, and neither did he.
“Fair,” Archie said as both Jake and Coop nodded. “They didn’t start out as more than some loose guidelines,” he admitted. “Rule number one—don’t text us when on a date. Whoever was with you deserved to have your undivided attention.”