Page 110 of Experiments in Offline Dating

“Finn-oola? Is that her name?” I wheezed. Because everything was funny now.

She attacked, biting Tadhg’s hands, growling, wagging her tail.

“Bad girl, Fionnuala!”

This made me laugh again. “Finn-oola is a terrible name!”

“Rude! It’s a good Irish name.”

“It’s the worst. No one would name their baby Finn-oola!”

“It was my aunt’s name.”

“You named your dog after your aunt?” I couldn’t stop laughing.

“She was a grumpy, sour old thing, and Finn reminded me of her.”

“That’s horrible!” I laughed louder, and then Tadhg laughed, and I suddenly wished they’d left us a second bottle of bubbly.

“Right, girl. Come on down here.” He patted the bottom of the bed until Finn moved. “There. Good girl. Stay.” He covered her up with a blanket and tucked it around her.

This seemed to calm Finn down, then we calmed down. He lay back on his pillow and pulled the blankets up.

“Surely you’re not going to try to sleep like that. In jeans.”

His jaw clenched. “Well, I don’t have much of a choice, do I?”

“Oh, come on. We’re uncomfortable enough as it is. You can’t add jeans to the mix as well. You’ll never get to sleep. And you’ll flip around and keep me up. Besides, you have to drive tomorrow, need I remind you.”

“That’s not. A good. Idea.” He said this very slowly, as if I needed it spelled out for me.

I laughed. “Don’t be such a prude. You can take them off. I won’t attack you, I promise.”

“What about your goddamn rules?” he ground out.

“They’re our rules. And if we’re going to be pedantic, we didn’t actually write a rule about you taking your pants off.”

“Well, we should have.” He let out a low rumble of annoyance. “Fine, goddammit. Fine. If it’ll shut you up. Why not? What could possibly go wrong?”

I laughed right in his angry face.

“Thank fuck you’ve got a three-inch-thick layer of ridiculous pajamas on, at least.” He flung the covers aside and tried to stand up, which we both discovered quickly—much to his infinite irritation and my utter delight—was not easy for him to do from an air mattress. He cursed. Finn and I went bouncing and rolling over to his side.

Finally, he managed it. In a fury, he locked angry eyes with mine while he unbuckled his belt, unbuttoned and unzipped his fly, and then—God help me—took his jeans off.

I wasn’t laughing anymore. My mouth went entirely dry. Other parts did the opposite.

I had never actually seen this much of him before. Sure, we’d had sex, but his jeans had been hastily unzipped—by me, I remembered with a flush of longing—and we’d had sex with almost all of his clothes on, except for the long stretch of his hard-on that I couldn’t stop thinking about.

But now he was in black boxer briefs that were snug in all the best places. I could see his legs. Thick muscles corded them, they were dusted with hair that looked soft enough for me to want to touch, and then he turned around and threw his jeans on top of his shoes in the corner, and sweet holy Moses, that ass. I believed in heaven now. I sucked in a breath.

Those few steps back to the bed—the one bed that we were going to have to sleep in, together, with him looking like that—I was treated to a close-up, a reminder of what I’d seen only a few short, painful eternities ago.

He was right. This was a huge mistake.

“I hope you’re happy, you she-devil.”

I bit my lip and tried very hard not to say anything. “Maybe a little too happy.”