Page 29 of Want Me
“You seen Nate?”
I froze, and there was a brief pause before Eric replied, “At the thing last night, yeah. He was still there when I left, though.”
Mark made a disgruntled noise. “Weird. His door’s cracked and—dude, can you leash that thing or something? I feel like I need to salute it back.”
“You interrupted my morning briefing.” Eric laughed, and the husky sound of it slid across the room like a shaft of light and pooled in my stomach. I shifted around as my dick got hard at the mere suggestion that his was, too. Great, my Pavlovian instincts had reached even creepier heights. If Eric popped wood in the middle of a forest and no one was around to see it…
I must have made some noise, because Eric shot a look over his shoulder, and I tried to stave off the snicker that was bubbling up in my chest by pressing my mouth to my forearm.
Mark snorted, then continued. “Anyway, he came home with me last night… Guess he could have gotten up really early. Whatever. If you see him, will you remind him that we have chapter today? He’s been flaky as fuck lately, and it’s weirding me out. You think he’s up to something?”
“Like what?” I could hear the skepticism in Eric’s voice and was duly impressed by his acting abilities. I’d have been stuttering.
Mark hedged for a second, trying to come up with something, I guess, and completely clueless that his answer to what I was “up to” was standing in front of him sporting morning wood that I was very interested in giving a happy ending. “I dunno. Maybe banging some chick he doesn’t want us to find out about?”
Eric broke into loud laughter, probably because his thoughts were running along the same track mine were.
Mark joined in. “Like that butterface from Kappa?”
Eric’s laughter trailed off. “I have no idea who you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, guess you wouldn’t. Speaking of chicks, that redhead you’re always hanging out with, Amelia?”
“Amanda,” Eric corrected.
“You hitting that? Because daaaaamn.”
“Nope.” There was a long pause, and I knew Mark well enough to know he was waiting for more. An offer for a hookup or some further explanation. Eric’s tight-lipped game was stronger, though, and for whatever reason, he apparently didn’t want to give anything else up to Mark. After a moment, Mark must have relented with a gesture or something, because the next thing I heard was a quiet “Yeah, cool. I’m out,” and then Eric shut the door again.
I heard the lock click and dropped my forehead on my arm in relief. I had a singular moment of wondering what the fuck I was even doing—on so many counts—before a billow of air puffed over me when Eric flopped back on the bed and peered down at me as I rolled onto my back to stare up at him. The residual adrenaline running through me made me antsy.
“Don’t need coffee anymore this morning—maybe a tranquilizer instead.”
Eric gave me a tight smile as he eyed me. “This is like a scenario out of a bad after-school special.”
“Jesus, what kind of after-school specials did you watch growing up?”
He flipped some hair from his eyes and folded his forearms over the edge of the bed, resting his chin on top. He looked…nice in the morning. A little softer, and it wasn’t like I was intimidated by him—not physically, at least—but his presence seemed so vivid and commanding in the places we got off together that just the ordinariness of being with him in his room somehow felt weirdly intimate. I kinda wished we hadn’t had such a rude awakening, that…
“None, actually. My parents didn’t believe in TV.”
“How can you not believe in TV?”
“The old ‘it rots your brain’ argument.” He shrugged one shoulder lazily. “So I was left to my own devices.”
“And look how you turned out, getting guys off in libraries and at fund-raisers.”
“I think you were there, too, so not exactly an equal argument in favor of TV either.”
“Point.” I laughed and rubbed a hand over the scruff on my jaw. I ached for a shower, and I really needed to go to the gym, but damn, Eric’s mouth was right there, silently telling me what I needed instead was to fill it with my cock. I licked my lips and pushed the heel of my hand against my boxers as I met his eyes and I saw it, that shadow passing through the olive-green tones, the darkening ofwantmaking its presence known.
He took a quiet breath, gaze drifting down to my boxers, then back up again. “You threw me for a loop last night.”
“Yeah, well, you’ve been throwing me for about a month now.” I could have worded it better, but it came out as a blurted confession.
He touched the corner of his mouth with his tongue, gaze raking over my body again. It really was a raking, too, like he had the power to drag furrows down my body, leave welt marks behind, hot and pink. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I nodded and swallowed hard, hoping like fuck I wasn’t blushing, even though I felt the creep of heat over my neck and my cheeks. What was it about the way he looked at me that could turn me from tepid to hellfire blaze in seconds? Eric scraped his teeth over his lower lip, making it pop out all shiny and slick, reminding me what he looked like when he was sucking my dick.