Page 32 of By His Side
He shook his head. “That was a compromise. She would have gone for something far more fussy if I’d left her to it, so you should be grateful for that.”
“I like gray.”
“It matches your eyes.”
I saw the moment Darien wished he could take the words back, a rosy flush appearing on his cheeks. It made me want to drag him closer and kiss him. I didn’t, exerting a willpower I hadn’t known I was capable of and smoothing an invisible crease on the pillow instead.
Darien cleared his throat and took a step back. “I don’t know what you want to do now… whether you want to watch some TV? Or…?”
“I’ll probably just go to bed. It’s been a long day.”
There was no telling whether that was the correct answer from Darien’s nod. Before I could analyze it to death and consider changing my mind, he flashed a smile. “Well… I’ll leave you to it. If you wake up hungry, help yourself to anything in the kitchen.”
“Even your best silver?”
He laughed. “If you can find any, it’s yours. You’ll be lucky to get away with a chipped mug and a fork with only three tines, though.” He headed for the door, pausing in the doorway. “I’ll need to go to work in the morning, but don’t feel you have to be up. I’ll leave the spare key on the kitchen table and then, when I get home from work, we can talk. Come up with a plan of action.”
“Sounds good.” It sounded better than good. I nearly hadn’t called him earlier, life having administered enough blows today without having to suffer another rejection. But I should have known that Darien was better than that, that he’d put aside any personal feelings to go above and beyond what his job entailed. I doubted Katherine would have rescued me from a park bench.
I pondered that while I unpacked the few belongings I had before stripping to my underwear and climbing beneath the sheets. I lay on my back and stared up at the ceiling. What was Darien doing? Had he gone to bed? I resisted the urge to find out. He’d probably had enough of me for one day.
Chapter Fourteen
Darien
I let the string of realizations wash over me as I stood over the sink I’d just filled with soapy water. Felix Church was in my spare room. I’d brought a client home. And not just any client, but one I’d been sleeping with. I tried to think logically about what other options I’d had. Leave him in the park? If I had, he’d have been homeless and soaked to the skin by now. Drop him off at a hotel knowing full well that it was only a matter of time before that too went to shit?
I did the dishes, hoping the mundane task would help to center me. It didn’t have to be a big deal unless I turned it into one. He was sleeping in my spare room for one night. So what? It wasn’t exactly a hanging offence.
Dishes done, I gave the living room a quick tidy and then placed the spare key on the table, just as I’d promised. I reached for a pieceof paper and a pen, but stalled over what I was supposed to write. Here’s the key? Pretty damn unnecessary. Felix had eyes; he could see it was a key. Should I warn him about keeping a low profile with my neighbors? If he hadn’t learned that from today’s events, then there was no hope for him. I settled for leaving the key on a blank piece of paper and signing my name beneath it.
The thin band of light under the spare room door told me he was still awake when I reached the top of the stairs. My new houseguest stayed in the back of my mind as I got ready for bed. I kept him there, refusing to think about the thin wall separating us. After an hour in bed without sleep, I gave up on not thinking about him. Was he asleep? Did he sleep naked? What if he was just as awake as I was and lying there thinking about me?
Heaving myself to a seated position, I switched the lamp on and stared at the wall. Since I didn’t have x-ray vision, I couldn’t see anything except for the usual plaster and the magnolia paint I’d applied with Hayden’s help. There was no denying it any longer. I wanted to go in there. I wanted to feel that same dizzying desire that I’d felt the other times we’d been intimate. Wanted it. Needed it. Could almost taste it. Taste him.
It was a matter of seconds to swing my feet out of bed. A few more had me standing outside the spare room, lamplight still spilling from under the door. My breathing was rapid, reminiscent of a naughty child sneaking downstairs to feel the Christmas presents when they know they shouldn’t. I hadn’t done anything yet. There was still time to reverse my steps, to return to bed.You already had sex twice. What’s one more time? What does it matter where it takes place? His mother’s house. Your house. There are no levels of wrong, just wrong. And you’ve already overstepped that mark.
As if to prove I didn’t need to listen to the devil on my shoulder, I took a step back. That’s when the door opened, Felix’s broad shoulders filling the doorway and my mind short-circuiting at all the bare skin on offer, clad as he was in just a pair of white briefs. Bare skin. Muscle. Everything about him so masculine it hurt. Fucking him suddenly seemed like an adolescent dream I’d conjured up rather than something that had actually happened.
“I heard you outside the door,” Felix said.
“I was…” I could hardly say I was heading to the bathroom. Not when that door lay between my bedroom and this room and I’d already passed it.
“You don’t have to explain yourself in your own house.”
No, I didn’t. But neither did I want to come across as some sort of creeper who invited people to stay in my spare room and then hung about outside it in the dead of night. “Did I wake you?”
Felix shook his head. “No. I was awake. I was lying there thinking about you.”
“Yeah?” My voice sounded throaty, like someone had filled my esophagus with gravel.
“I was trying to pluck up the courage to come and knock on your door.”
“You’ve never struck me as a man who lacks courage.”
Felix gave a little laugh. “It seemed a very complicated thing.”
“Why?”
