“Why’re you putting my stuff in here?” I asked.
“Figured you’d want it where you’re sleeping. I cleared out space in the closet.
My aching back silently pleaded with me to shut up since his bed looked even more plush than his couch—which was saying something—but I forced the words out. “I can sleep in the living room.”
“Got two bedrooms.”
“Okay, then put me in the other one.”
“No.”
That was it.
No.
And I was too tired to argue.
I’ll make him swap rooms in the morning when we’re not dead on our feet.
After all, there’s no TV in the bedroom, and I have aliens to kill.
I did not,in fact, make him swap rooms with me when I woke up the next morning.
My back wouldn’t allow it.
And the fact it smelled so much like him was beside the point and not a factor.
Just like how that scent was not currently doing things to my body that I couldn’t act on.
Shouldn’tact on.
I blamed Rhys.
We’d spent the day at Rye because Mondays were when he got deliveries. After checking that thepeni-graffitiwas still gone and there’d been no other incidents, I’d helped restock—as much as he would let me, at least. Then we’d grabbed dinner to eat while we watched a movie on a couch that was even more comfortable than it looked.
That had already been a good time. A great time. But then he’d made it even better by offering to hook up my console so we could play a few rounds of wiping out aliens together.
Well, I wiped out aliens.
He mostly got killed.
Or killed himself.
Or killed me—though I wasn’t convinced it was accidental like he’d claimed.
It was easy confirmation that he’d been telling the truth about his lack of gaming.
But he’d tried, and I appreciated that.
It’d been fun. More than that, it’d felt… normal. Like we were just spending a day together that wasn’t about acting or protection. He’d still been bossy, of course. I’d still snarked and rolled my eyes.
Yet in the privacy of not-my-own-bedroom, it was those orders he gave like second nature that teamed up with his smell to do inappropriate things to me.
Because in my imagination, it wasn’t just him telling me not to lift heavy things or to drink water or to sit.
It was him telling me to kneel.
And open wide.
