Page 44 of Make Me Mean It

Theo goes quiet, his mouth twitching up.

Another hard knock of Marcus’s headboard comes through the wall behind me, my shoulders drawing up.

I’m never coming here again.

“Well, Reid,” Theo says, one hand sliding lazily down his stomach.

His fingers skim over bare skin, following the hard lines of muscle lower, until they disappear beneath the waistband of his joggers. A dark trail of hair runs down his stomach between the sharp lines of his hips, disappearing beneath fabric sitting far too low, and it takes an embarrassingly long moment for the heat climbing my neck to convince me to look somewhere else.

I make the mistake of choosing his face.

Theo is already looking at me, the corner of his mouth pulling slowly upwards, his eyes drop pointedly to where mine just were.

I straighten, but whatever suitably irritated response I should have disappears beneath the alcohol still clouding my head. A muscle in Theo’s jaw jumps, his attention dropping to his phone, thumb moving lazily across the screen.

“Looks like you’re my problem tonight,” he hums, turning it towards me.

I squint at the message, having to read through the typos twice before it makes any sense.

Marcus

tag ur it im bsy

I press the heel of my hand against my forehead and push it through my hair, trying to force my thoughts into some kind of order.

“Asshole.”

Theo shrugs, completely unfazed. “Yeah,” he says absently. “Pretty much.”

He stretches then, arms reaching above his head with a low groan. His body lengthens with it, ribs lifting beneath bare skin, his joggers slipping lower on his hips, and this time I don’t have the excuse of my eyes wandering somewhere they shouldn’t.

I’m just watching him.

The realisation comes somewhere around Theo lowering his arms again and my mouth going dry, and I swallow before turning back towards Marcus’s door.

Fucking alcohol.

Theo rolls his shoulders, apparently completely unaware of what he’s just done to my ability to think properly. Or maybe not. With him, I can never tell.

He steps aside and tips his head towards the open doorway. “Well, come on then,” he sighs, already turning as though my answer is a foregone conclusion.

I shift backwards instead, folding my arms across my chest. “Not a fucking chance.”

Theo raises a brow, my refusal apparently doing nothing except make this more entertaining for him.

“That scared you won’t be able to control yourself?” he drawls.

Heat floods my face, made worse by the fact he’s spent the last five minutes giving me plenty of reason to doubt exactly that.

I scoff. “I’m more worried about you,” I shoot back. “You’re not exactly Mr Morality.”

Whatever warmth was sitting in his eyes shuts off so completely that my next breath catches, the alcohol fogging my head nowhere near enough to dull the cold that replaces it.

I don’t know what I’ve hit, but I’ve hit it.

Then Theo blinks it away so cleanly, I’m almost sure I imagined it.

He pushes away from the doorway and comes towards me.