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I force a smile. “No worries.”
We storm down the hall simultaneously, wedged close, thanks to its narrowness.
“I’m taking the bathroom,” Kate says, throwing her good shoulder into me, charging ahead.
“You have a bedroom!”
“I have to wash off the beer. I smell like a frat house.”
I stop dead in the hallway, furious. “Fine. I’ll handle my wardrobe change here.”
Kate freezes as I unbutton my dress shirt from work. “What are you doing?”
“You aren’t the only one who doesn’t enjoy being drenched in hefeweizen.”
Her eyes widen as I shake off my button-up, then grip the back of my undershirt. Some small, rational corner of my brain says this is about as far as I could possibly get from keeping my distance and de-escalating tensions with Kate, but a bigger, baser part feasts on her pupils’ dilating, that deep red flush creeping up her throat to her cheeks.
“Take the bathroom,” she croaks.
I wrench off my shirt. “Too late.”
She slaps a hand over her eyes and stumbles back into the wall. “You’re naked.”
“Half-naked.”
A shaky exhale. “What iswrongwith you?”
I step past her, headed toward Juliet’s—now Kate’s—room.
“Why are you going in my room?” she shrieks.
“I keep some casual clothes here. I know you can’t relate, but your sisters actually want me to feel at home when I’m here.”
I riffle through the bottom drawer in Jules’s dresser and find a spare T-shirt, then tug it on.
The room is suspiciously silent. When I drag the collar of my shirt past my head, I see why.
Kate stands with her back to me.
Hernakedback.
“Fucking hell.” I scrunch my eyes shut, turn abruptly for the door, and walk right into the wall.
That hoarse, smoky laugh dances through the air and whispers over my skin. “Don’t enjoy the taste of your own medicine?”
My eyes are closed, but she’s burned into my retinas—the curve of her waist, the line of her vertebrae straight to two soft dimples at the base of her spine. Heat rushes through me, tightens my body, as I picture my hands on her waist, my thumbs tracing those dimples, hoisting her up by the hips and dragging her close so I can bend and spread her wide, drag my tongue—
Shit.Shit.
I can’t stay here. Or see this. Or hear it. Theshushof cotton slipping over her skin, thesnapof a bra being smoothed out. On a pained, frustrated growl, I feel my way toward the door, then storm out, slamming it behind me.
“There you are!” Nick’s right on me in the hallway. “So, did you straighten things out with her?”
“What?” I walk past him, but Nick chases me down.
“With Kate. The one who keeps looking like she wants to castrate me every time I smile at Bianca.”
I laugh emptily. Like anything could ever be that simple with her. “Yeah, Nick. I just told her you’re a nice guy and she said, ‘Swell, Christopher. He has my blessing.’ ”
