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When I found the corner of the mattress, I hiked my knee up and planted it into the soft sheets and started to climb up, only to realize once I was hovering half on, half off, that the side I was getting into was where Saint was already laying.
Shit!
“Move over,” I urged, not wanting to move for fear that I’d fall flat on top of him.
“No,” came his rumbled reply.
I growled. “Why not?”
“Door’s on this side,” he said, sounding gruff. “Sorry, honey, but I’ll be sleeping on this side. Even if you have to walk farther to the bathroom. Just climb over.”
His ‘just climb over’ was punctuated with him reaching down and wrapping his arm around my waist, dragging me up his body, and then easily rolling me over onto the unoccupied part of the bed.
I sat there, breathlessly, as I tried to process what just happened.
For a single instant in time, I’d been lying on top of him.
I also could’ve sworn that I’d felt something distinctly erect while I’d been there.
Biting my lip and feeling what felt like a band of heat along my back where his arm had been for a few short seconds, I slowly crawled under the covers and tried to settle.
It was only as I was wiggling for the fourth time that I realized that there were too many pillows around me.
Slowly I started to pull them off one by one.
Once each was gone, I’d try to settle in. When that didn’t happen, I’d get rid of another one.
It went on like that for a minute at least before I finally found the perfect number—two.
Only, as I got settled, I realized I was missing something.
I sighed.
“What?” he asked, sensing the change in my mood.
“Nothing,” I grumbled.
It wouldn’t do to tell the man that I slept with the same stuffed animal every night since I was old enough to steal it from my brother.
He moved, re-situating himself in the bed, and I felt him facing me.
“Tell me,” he ordered.
He was so close I could practically feel the heat rolling off of him.
Even though I knew that he was on top of the covers using a blanket he’d pulled out of the linen closet, I still felt it.
“I sleep with a stuffed animal,” I admitted. “Have for a very, very long time. I’m just… I use it to prop my head up at night. It’s weird, I know.”
There was a long moment of silence and then he said, “Not weird.”
I felt a little bit better about his easy, no-nonsense words.
“’Night, Saint.” I paused. “Oh, and I snore.”CHAPTER 5Indoorsy.-Wine glassCAROLINADay One of QuarantineI woke practically wrapped around Saint Nicholson.
He was as far as he could be away from me, yet, even then I was still wrapped around him.
Or, more accurately, his arm.
I had his arm in a death grip and I was using it as I would my stuffed animal.
I lifted my head from his arm that was out away from his body, and then slowly let it go, trying really hard not to wake him in the process.
Only, he was already awake.
He moved, his eyes coming to me, and he said, “You don’t just snore.”
I blinked.
“I don’t?”
He shook his head. “You sound like a chainsaw being started.”
My mouth fell open.
“I don’t snore that bad!” I countered.
I didn’t, did I?
My family said I snore.
I didn’t know if I actually did or not, but I wouldn’t doubt it.
I’d had nose problems since I was a young kid. When my nose wasn’t bleeding over nothing, it was stuffed up—even if I wasn’t sick. When I was sick, it was even worse.
I’d had surgery to correct a few things, but even then it’d only managed to fix a small amount of the problem. Leaving me to wonder if I’d ever breathe normally through my nose.
But, I guessed, it was pretty normal for me.
“You do snore that bad, and you did it right up against my body the entire night. I think if I could’ve just detached my arm and given it to you, it would’ve been better,” he teased as he got up out of bed, reached down, and slowly pulled sweatpants on over his black boxers.
Since the blinds were still closed on the windows, I only got the vaguest of outlines of his body, but it was enough for me to see that he had a tattoo on his back.
I gasped.
“You have another tattoo!” I crowed.
He grunted something unintelligible and went to the bathroom to relieve himself.
“You pee really loud,” I found myself saying.
There was a long pause then, “I guess we both have our faults.”
Grinning at his quip, I walked to the blinds and yanked them open, realizing that it was just now around seven in the morning.
We woke up too early.
Now what the hell were we supposed to do for the rest of the day?
