No way in Dante’s inferno.
This is Mack. Sworn bachelor. Holland’s brother. Myfriend.
Friends don’t do…this.
Do they?
“Hands are good for lots of things, aren’t they?” I start babbling, taking a play from Rose’s book and listing off items related to the subject in question. “High fives. Crossing the monkey bars. Writing out checks.” No one under the age of sixty writes out checks anymore. Shut up, Poppy. But it’s like my mouth has detached itself from my brain and is running away from me like a mischievous child. “Kneading dough. Tying shoes. Putting on makeup, though I guess that one doesn’t apply to you.”
“No.” Mack stands up straight, and he’s smirking. “But I can think of some other things,” he says.
The flicker in his eyes makes me feel like panting, and I have to physically tell myself to keep my tongue in my mouth. It’s almost as if I can feel the sensation of his hands tangled in my hair. Brushing lightly up and down my sides. Squeezing my hips. Drawing circles on my skin.
“I can imagine,” I whisper and then clamp my hand over my mouth. I did not mean to say that out loud.
Mack’s face breaks into a full-blown grin.
It’s dangerous, and delicious, and one hundred percent sexy. Suddenly, Mack’s side of the duplex feels hotter than ours did, and that has nothing to do with a non-functioning air conditioning unit.
I push back my stool. “I should probably go to bed.”
He doesn’t take his eyes off me. “Right. Make yourself comfortable.”
“Thanks.” I nod. “Night, Big.”
“Sweet dreams, Boo.”
I make the quick walk down the hallway, stop in the bathroom to brush my teeth and splash water on my face, which—surprising no one—is redder than a tomato in September, and then push open the door to the bedroom.
Mack’s bedroom.
Thirty minutes ago, my reservations about sleeping in here had everything to do with inconveniencing my friend. Now, as I stare around the space, a charge of electricity still circling me from my conversation with Mack, I have a bouquet of new hang-ups to contend with.
Front and center is the fact that I’m about to sleep in Mack’s bed. The place where he lays down his tall, broad, muscular body each night. A body that I, all of a sudden, am seeing in a completely different way.
Why haven’t I admired Mack’s forearms, or the stubble along his jawline, or the way his grin crinkles the skin around his eyes before now?
Rose lets out a small snore, and it snaps me out of my daydream. I square my shoulders. I’m being ridiculous. Mack is my friend. He offered up his room out of the goodness of his heart, like any upstanding man would do.
He wants nothing to do with me romantically.
And I want nothing to do with him romantically.
Or I didn’t.
Until he looked at me like that.
No.
I still don’t.
Oh gosh, I don’t know.
Things got confusing out there.
I close my eyes. I’m overtired and overheated and overthinking. Everything will be clearer in the morning.
I blink and walk over to the bed, slipping into the sheets. The cool fabric feels like a hug against my exposed skin. I take a deep breath and am hit with a scent that is so purely Mack—mint and sunshine—I whimper.
