Page 10

10

Cuddle Puddle!

A fter eating, we’d intended to test out some of the incredible amenities our new quarters offered. However, we soon admitted defeat. Even Griffin, the only one not sporting five new scars ringing his chest, was exhausted. Apparently he really meant it when he said he would have preferred to die a hundred deaths than to have witnessed ours. His trauma dragged along his face, drawing his beautiful lips into a constant grimace. His eyes, usually sharp and alert, were often distant, as if he kept catching himself lost in a loop of awful memories.

It was happening to me, too. All those shots echoed through my mind, startling me all over again every time I heard them. Visions of Layla and Hunt dropping to the floor followed. My nerves were fried, and in the absence of all the adrenaline that had flooded my system, even my legs wobbled as I plodded around the unfamiliar house.

By 9:00 p.m., I dragged myself into bed with wet hair, just grateful I’d found the energy to shower. No one wanted to break in their new bed with eau de dead on a school gymnasium floor .

I thought achingly of Bobo, who usually slept at the foot of my bed. On the days I pampered him, which were often, he slept on the bed itself. I wondered how he was faring without me and if he’d already realized I was never coming back. He was a smart boy, very sensitive to his surroundings and to whatever was going on with me. I resolved to retrieve him tomorrow. If we were staying here for a significant length of time, I wouldn’t trust his care to Monica and Reece, whoever they truly were. I’d never trust either of them ever again. In a time when I wasn’t certain of much, I was certain of that.

The intoxicating lull of sleep was already tugging me under when the door opened and closed quietly. The part of me that realized I was now in constant danger tried to jostle me to alertness. But I was still recovering, and the morphine and whatever other drugs still lingered in my system, making me groggy. Besides, my crew was in the house with me. My eyelids fluttered in an attempt to remain open and failed.

“Hmmmmm,” I hummed groggily a moment before I recognized him . His presence was different from anyone else’s—somehow more mine than any of my other friends.

“Griff?” I mumbled into my pillow.

“Yeah, it’s me.” His voice was soft and alluring as a dream. “Do you mind if I sleep in here with you tonight?”

That got my eyes open. He stood at the edge of the bed, gazing down at me. He wore a t-shirt and boxers, his feet already bare.

“I don’t want to be without you right now,” he whispered so gently that I questioned if perhaps I was already dreaming. That was an unusually vulnerable admission for him.

“You wanna sleep in the bed with me?” I asked, unsure whether it was fact gathering or an invitation.

“I do.”

I shifted from my side onto my back to stare up at him. The room was dark, but enough diffuse moonlight filtered through the closed blinds that I could make out the outline of his body.

We’d slept together countless times over the years growing up together. But our other friends had always been there too. There was a room at Hunt’s house we’d dubbed the “sleepover room” since it was large enough to accommodate five twin mattresses.

But the rest of our friends weren’t here this time as a buffer—and Griffin and I had admitted we loved each other.

We’d also all died, and despite our apparent immortality I’d never been so keenly aware of how fleeting life could be. Our resilience didn’t guarantee a tomorrow, especially not with someone like Magnum Chase involved at every turn.

Apparently I was taking too long to answer. Griffin took a step backward.

“Never mind,” he said, his voice gruffer now, “it was a stupid idea.” He turned toward the door, padding away from me on silent footfalls. “You need your rest. I’ll check on you tomorrow.”

I pushed up onto my elbows. “Griff …”

He stopped and turned back toward me. “Yeah?”

My heart squeezed at how hopeful he sounded. Griffin had a soft side but he didn’t often reveal it, not even to me.

“I don’t want to be away from you now either,” I admitted, drawing down the covers in welcome.

Unmoving, he stared at me for so long that I asked, “Is something wrong?”

Slowly, he shook his head and finally stalked toward me. “No. I mean, yeah, a ton of shit’s wrong, obviously. But not between you and me.”

Breathless, I waited for him to continue, hoping he’d confess to more.

He didn’t. He did, however, tug off his shirt and toss it onto a lounge chair that occupied a corner of the room beside a reading lamp.

At the sight of his trim, muscled outline in nothing more than his boxer shorts, I became acutely aware of my own attire. Without the energy to properly explore the many new clothes awaiting me, I’d slipped into a sheer camisole and panties—that was it.

I was still debating whether I should get up to look for something additional to wear when he climbed into the bed and drew the covers up over us. Instantly, like a dumbass, I went rigid—as if we hadn’t touched a million times before—but I was suddenly unsure where any of my body parts were supposed to go.

The heat from all that incredible bare skin of his radiated into me, making him seem too close and not close enough all at once.

His hand brushed against mine, and his fingers threaded through my own across the space between us.

When I still didn’t relax, he tensed, his hand squeezing mine. “Is this too much? I can sleep on the floor if you prefer.”

He tugged his fingers away as if about to get up, but then I finally got my brain to stop reacting so intently to the feel of his naked skin so near my own.

I tightened my hold on his hand. “No,” I said a bit too forcefully. Softer, I added, “No, please stay. I just … it’s weird to have you in my bed now that I … think of you differently. Doesn’t mean I want you to go, though. I just need a minute to adjust.”

It wasn’t as if I hadn’t thought of what it’d be like to have Griffin in bed with me before. I’d fantasized about his hands, mouth, and body all over mine, his body inside mine, enough that I was close to being able to call it a damn hobby lately. But then, before, he hadn’t known I thought about him like that.

I hadn’t known he thought about me like that.

Fuck. Has Griffin jerked off while fantasizing about me?!

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” he said in reaction to … whatever I was doing while fantasizing about him fantasizing about me. Shit . “This is too much for tonight. It’s been a long, fucked-up, crazy day for all of us, and you’re still healing.”

I shook my head, my damp hair rubbing along my pillow, no doubt getting it wet. “No, Griff, stay. I really do want you here. I want to get used to this.”

“Sleeping with me?” he asked with a hint of surprise.

“Well, I mean … yeah?”

What sparse light filtered in through the closed blinds wasn’t enough to illuminate the planes of his face that I knew by heart. I felt his smile more than I saw it.

He rolled onto his side to face me, his pleased grin palpable even in the darkness. “You want to get used to sharing a bed with me?”

The smug bastard was fishing for more admissions. “I just said it, didn’t I?”

He chuckled at my sudden attitude. I wasn’t fond of putting myself out there first. We both knew it.

“Well, good,” he said. “I’d like that too. We have a lot of new things to try out and get used to.”

I wasn’t one to blush or to flush. I was about as much of a shrinking violet as Layla was. But fuck if I wasn’t blushing furiously now and thankful for the cover of darkness.

When a deep, sexy laugh rumbled through Griff’s chest, I knew I wasn’t fooling him.

“We know each other too well,” I grumbled, turning away from him with a pout I didn’t entirely understand.

He slid across the bed so that his body curved around mine, little more than a few inches of air between us. “That’s only going to make everything between us that much more amazing. I know it will.”

I harrumphed without a single good reason I could discover, and he chuckled. Then his fingers alighted on my waist, tracing gentle circles across the skin between my camisole and the lace waist of my cotton bikini panties.

“Are you still hurting?” he asked.

“Mmmmmmm, from what?” His fingers were light as a feather across my skin, but his touch was sending tingles weaving through tissue and muscle till I could feel him all over me.

His fingers paused before starting up again. “Um, from the five fucking bullets you took to the chest just three fucking days ago?”

“Oh, right.” I’d never thought of myself as a dreamy romantic before, and maybe it was the drugs or that I’d been half asleep, but being here with him made all that ugliness seem so far away. As if it were part of someone else’s life, not mine.

“I can barely feel any of that now,” I said. “The scars are shrinking, and the skin doesn’t even tug or itch anymore.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Griffin added, his touch growing even softer, like the brush of a comforting breeze.

“You won’t.”

“I never want to. I’ll never, ever mean to.” He was referring to more than just the physical. “I really meant it when I said it, you know.”

I inched back toward him so that the heat of his body slid across mine. The lengths of our bodies were nearly touching.

“Meant what?” I asked. Now look who was fishing.

“That I love you. That I’m in love with you.”

I sucked in a gasp. To hear him say it again, and like this …

Slowly, so slowly, so that his fingers slid across my stomach as I turned, I faced him. “Say it again,” I breathed, scooting closer so that when he draped his arm over my waist our bodies were flush, my breasts splayed against his chest, nothing but a wisp of cotton separating our bare flesh.

He traced his hand up my back, across my shoulders, and over to my neck. Gently, he pulled my face to his. So we’d fit together better, I hooked a leg over his hip.

Softly, he growled, like he wasn’t ready for that kind of touch, that kind of proximity. Like he’d thought we’d work up to that. And surely we should have. There was so much newness to explore together before we let ourselves have sex. Because once we started having sex, I knew we’d never want to stop. I, at least, would need to remain in this bed with him for at least twelve hours a day, every day. Fuck Magnum Chase and all this immortality business.

His lips resting on mine, he whispered, “I love you, Joss Bryson.” He groaned. “Or whatever the hell your last name really is.”

Not even the fresh reminder that our entire lives were stupid facades could ruin this moment for me.

“And I love you, Griffin Conway—or whatever.”

I giggled. Like we weren’t currently living in the eye of the most massive shitstorm of our lives. I’d never been one to giggle. This man was upending my life already and we were only just getting started.

With his lips still against mine, he said softly, “We need to take this slow.”

“I know.”

“We have to,” he murmured. “I can’t let myself have you all at once, no matter how badly I’ve wanted you. No matter how much I want you, I need to drag it out.”

“Mmmmm-hmmm,” I said, the vibration of the sound tingling our joined lips.

“If it’s too much, too fast, tell me to stop.”

A breathy laugh. “Good luck with that, mister. Since when am I the picture of restraint?”

He groaned, and when I adjusted my hips I discovered him erect, his hard dick pressed against my stomach.

Totally wanton and unabashed, I groaned too.

“Ignore that,” he grumbled. “He can wait. He will wait, dammit.”

“Mmmmmmmm,” slid out of me as I ground my core against him. A part of me wanted to take it snail-level slow with him. But my body clearly had other ideas.

“Joss, don’t—”

I swallowed his protests whole as I kissed him the way I’d dreamed of kissing him in so many of my fantasies. He hesitated for only a millisecond before his tongue slid across mine, and we both moaned together. With my leg, I pulled him more tightly against me and clawed at his shoulder, sliding into his hair, tangling and tugging. I wanted to touch him everywhere at once.

“Holy shit,” he murmured against my mouth. “Fuck …” Then he legit growled before spinning me onto my back, his legs coming to rest between mine. Instantly, I wrapped my thighs around his hips and pulled him against me. His cock throbbed against the rapidly dampening crotch of my underwear.

“Joss, fuck,” he panted, kissing me as if he were a dying man, dragging his lips across my neck. Already, my nipples were hard points, doing their damnedest to lure his mouth to them.

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuuuck,” he chanted down across my collarbones, and I bathed in the delight of so easily bringing him to incoherency.

Knowing it would push him over the edge, with the sultriest voice in my arsenal, I rasped, “Just wait till you feel what it’s like to be inside me.”

I loved living on the edge—and beyond it.

“Ohmyholyfuckingfuckfuck,” he grumbled. “You’re gonna fucking kill me, aren’t you?”

“At least you’ll come back to life,” I said on a chuckle, as if joking about our recent life-and-death issues was completely normal. Then again, I’d never been normal. And hadn’t Griffin admitted to feeling the exact same way just before he drove off the cliff near Raven’s Lagoon?

Neither one of us was normal, and that was before we discovered we were probably immortal.

Roughly, he yanked down the neckline of my camisole and hooked it under a breast. I was expecting—nay, fucking needing —his tongue and teeth on it, like stat , when he pressed up onto a hand just to … stare, apparently.

“I need the lights on,” he grumbled. “I need to see you.” He actually tried to loosen the grip of my legs to get up.

“Unh-unh,” I murmured. “There’ll be plenty of time for that later.”

“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to see you like this.” He pushed up onto his other hand as well. “Wait, fuck, is that a shitty thing to admit to? We were supposed to be just friends all this time, and I went and—”

“I went and fell for you too, you know,” I interjected. “And the others are apparently okay with it.”

“Yeah, they actually are.”

“So then, what are we waiting for?” Though it was dark, he was still staring at my boob. “Do you have nighttime vision you never told me about or something?”

He snorted and laughed a deep rumble, but he didn’t look away from the plump outline of my full breast. “No, I wish—fuck do I ever wish. I’ve just been picturing your titties in my head for so long, and now that they’re right here in front of my face, I need to fucking see them. I need to see if I imagined them just right. I know they’re totally perfect.”

“They totally are.” I wove my hands around his head, threading through his hair, preparing to bring it down to my straining nipple with a snarky comment about him doing his studying later, when—

Knuckles rapped at the door—a quick knock-knock— and the door cracked open.

Griffin scrambled off me so fast it was like our parents had caught us in the act. He was already lying beside me, both our chests heaving, when I quickly jerked my cami back into place and pulled the covers over both of us.

“Hey, Joss?” Layla’s tentative voice called through the gap in the door.

“Yeah?” I said, wanting to kick myself for sounding so breathy.

But Layla only pushed the door open all the way. “Oh good. I was worried you’d be asleep already. Is Griff with you?”

“Yep.” Anything more than monosyllables would give me away.

She turned to speak to Brady or Hunt, whoever was waiting behind her on the other side of the door. “They’re both in here.”

Then she, Brady, and Hunt waltzed into my room. Layla jumped on the other side of the king bed and hollered, “Cuddle puddle!”

While Brady and Hunt were dragging twin mattresses in behind them, Layla bent down to whisper in my ear, “It’s been a lot lately. They don’t want to admit it, but the guys need a sleepover.”

I might love love Griffin, and I might be lying there wet for his hard-on still within easy reach, but I loved Layla, Brady, and Hunt too.

I could all too easily understand their need for the bonding sleepovers we hadn’t shared in too long.

When life was shit, we drew even closer together. Crew forever.

So I did the only thing I could do when Hunt, ever observant, hesitated at the sight of Griffin already beside me in the bed. I echoed Layla’s call and shouted, “Cuddle puddle!”