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Eventually, I hauled myself to my feet and brought us both bowls of fudge and peanut butter ripple ice cream. Taavi had snuggled himself into the fleece blanket I’d had wadded up against the pillows, and when I offered the bowl, he held open the blanket.
“Join me?”
Since I was still very naked, I figured that maybe sharing a blanket with a nice, warm shifter was a good way to counteract the chill of the ice cream.
Taavi scooted over to let me join him on the couch, and I cuddled up against him, half-pulling him into my lap, enjoying the feeling of his skin against mine. He leaned back against the pillows piled on the side of the couch, leaving most of his butt on my lap with his legs slightly bent so that he could put his bowl down, resting it against folds of blanket.
I snuck my hand—still cold from holding the bowl of ice cream—under the blanket and rested it on his hot thigh.
“Val!” He pulled his leg away.
“My hands are cold,” I complained teasingly.
“I noticed,” he replied, giving me a mock glare belied by the smile on his lips.
“And you are very warm,” I told him.
He chuckled. “Shifters are,” he replied.
I deliberately scooted myself so that I squeezed him closer to the pillows. “I like warm.”
He laughed again, then took a bite of his ice cream. “You won’t in the summer,” he warned.
“That’s what AC is for,” I informed him, and he laughed again. I took a bite of my ice cream, letting the rich sweetness roll over my tongue. I was very aware of the warmth of Taavi’s backside on my thighs, the smoothness of his skin, the faint musky scent of him on my hands as I lifted the spoon to my mouth.
I didn’t want him to leave—didn’t want to bundle him back into my Charger to drive him to his shitty little apartment. I wanted him to stay here, to fall asleep in my arms, to wake up in them tomorrow morning…
I told myself to stop being so fucking sentimental and eat my fucking ice cream. Taavi had his own life, his own job, and probably didn’t want to drop everything just to satisfy my emotional mushiness on a Wednesday night.
“Val?”
I looked up, a little guiltily. “Yeah?”
“What’s bothering you?”
Fucking hell. I can’t keep a single goddamn thing from him, apparently.
I sighed. “I—I’m just being… selfish,” I finished.
“Selfish how?” he asked me, his voice soft and his mismatched eyes far too sharp and all-seeing for my liking. My pride could only take being stripped down to the core so much.
I shrugged. “It’s getting late and you work on Thursdays,” I replied. It was true—and it was even related to my current morose wallowing.
Taavi nodded once. “True,” he acknowledged. “But if we go to sleep soon, I’ll still be able to get up early enough to catch the bus down Broad to get there on time tomorrow morning.”
I blinked at him, confused. “What?”
He took my bowl away from me and stacked it on his, then untangled his legs from both me and the blanket to take the bowls to the kitchen. “If we go to bed in the next half hour or so, I can get up early and take the bus,” he repeated, and I heard him putting the bowls into the dishwasher. Then he came back over to where I sat, still confused, and held out his hand. “Assuming, of course, that you want me to stay?”
His expression, which had been relaxed, now seemed vulnerable, and I could have fucking kicked myself for putting that worry there. I reached out and took his fingers in mine.
“Of course I fucking want you to stay,” I blurted, and he rewarded me with a relaxed smile as my ears flushed.
“Okay, then.”
“You’re not taking the fucking bus, though.”
“Val—”
