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She thought about it for a minute. “Okay, very bad for both of us.”
He rubbed his forehead. “Yeah, yeah. I see it from your perspective now.”
“Okay, well, no sex,” she said. “Just maybe it’d be nice to hold each other.”
He let out a breath, his wings sagging. “Oh, yeah, actually, would be.”
Then, it was awkward.
She wasn’t sure if she should take off her clothes or not. If she were alone, she’d sleep in pajamas, so she decided to put those on. But should she change in front of him?
She ended up taking them to the bathroom.
When she got back, he was in his boxers on the bed, stretched out, arms behind his head, staring up at the ceiling. Briars, he looked good there. She could get used to this, to crawling into bed with him every night.
He looked her over. “Okay, well, should I put my shirt back on?”
She shook her head. “If it were up to me, you would never wear a shirt.”
He chuckled. “Okay, then.”
She crawled into bed with him.
“Ditto,” he said in a deep voice, wrapping an arm around her as she pillowed her head on his shoulder.
“Mmm?”
“I like you shirtless, too.”
She snuggled into him, grinning. “Noted.”
He reached over and turned off the lamp by her bed. The room was dark.
She pulled the blanket from the bottom of the bed over both of them.
He hummed his approval.
She sank into him, thinking about how utterly mortifying it was going to be at the office, even if no one said anything. If they did, what was she going to say?
He clutched her, even as she burrowed into him.
She knew what he was thinking. He was beating himself up about it, angry at himself for having lost control. Maybe Decker really wasn’t in control of himself either. Maybe he just needed to believe he was.
She didn’t sleep, not for a long time. She couldn’t shut up her drunken, anxious brain.
But it was nice to feel his warmth against her, his huge and firm body wrapped all around her smaller one.
He fell asleep almost right away, of course.
Men.
4:30 a.m.
AN ALARM WAS going off.
At least that was what Essence thought it was. She had been completely passed out, in that dreamless dead sleep of drunkenness, the kind that doesn’t make you feel as if you even have slept, even if it lasts for some period of time, and it was now—
She checked the clock in her room.
