All Played Out (Rusk University 3)

I roll my eyes, even though a part of me finds it adorable that he’s still flirting with me even after we’ve already slept together.

Ruled by your mind, Nell. Focus.

I leave to retrieve the medicine and some water. On my way to the kitchen, Dylan catches me, “Is he okay?”

“Hmm?” Crap. What do I tell her? “Oh yeah. He’s just tired from practice, I think. And . . .” Here goes nothing. “Well, I know you told me to stay away from him, but I like him. We’re . . . seeing each other.”

There. Neither of us has really talked yet about telling other people that we’re sleeping together. We’re both so busy with my classes and his football stuff that we didn’t want to have to split our limited free time by answering questions about ourselves. But this is the only explanation, besides the truth, that I have for why he’d show up here and want to go straight to my room. It will justify why we’re spending hours cooped up in my room, and keep people from disturbing us.

“That little bugger, he pulled it off.”

“What?”

“He asked me about you. Wanted to know how to talk to you. I honestly didn’t think he had a chance, or that he was serious enough to wear you down, but he did it.”

Oh, he was plenty good at wearing me down.

She asks, “And you like him? For real like him?”

I have to fight the urge to drag her onto the couch and spill everything I’m feeling, to ask her what love feels like, just so I’ll know that what I’m feeling isn’t it. And if it is . . . damn it, now is not the time.

“Yeah. I like him. Listen, he needs my help with something, can we talk about this later?”

She gives me a smirk, and I’m sure she’s thinking of a very different something that I might help him with, but she says, “Sure. I think I’ll go over to Silas’s. Spend the night there.”

I’m stunned for a moment at how supportive she is of all this. From the way she’d first talked about Mateo, I figured she would think I was crazy. That was a big part of why I hadn’t told her before even though I was dying to talk to someone. But now she’s practically throwing me into his arms, leaving us the apartment all to ourselves.

With a glass of water in hand, I make my way back to my room to find him struggling to stay awake. I close the door behind me and move to his side.

“Hey.” His smile is sleepy and soft, and it makes him look sweeter. Less intimidating. I might want to be ruled by my mind, but there’s a fist around my heart, and the poor little organ seems to struggle to beat against it, to beat against how terrifying it is to want a person this much. I shake out a few pills and hand them to him along with the water. He pops the aspirin into his mouth and then leans his head up far enough to swallow a mouthful of water.

Then I reach down to pull off his sneakers. They’re longer than the length of my forearm, and they look even bigger when I place them on the floor beside my bed.

“Nurse Nell,” he murmurs in his deep, gravelly voice.

“Do you want to be under the covers?” I ask.

“Depends. Will you be under there, too?”

I roll my eyes. “You need to rest.”

“I can multitask.”

And oh, I want him to. But we can’t. He’s ill, and I’m . . . me.

He shifts up to a sitting position, and though he could probably do it by himself, I pull back the covers when he stands. I wait for him to climb back into the bed, but instead he steps closer to me and lifts a hand to my cheek. He leans down at the same time I tip my head up, and he rests his forehead against mine. His eyes are closed, and mine are open. And this close I can see his dark long lashes, and I can see the slightest hint of stubble on his cheeks and jaw. He doesn’t say anything. Nor does he move to do anything more than touch me. He takes a deep breath, and I place a hand on his chest to feel the way it expands and then falls. He breathes again, and it feels like he’s taking a piece of me into his lungs with him, and just when I’m about to close my eyes, he pulls away and crawls into my bed.

That fist squeezes. As if it’s trying to get me to admit it. To think the words that scare me far too much to say.

Something tugs low in my belly at the sight of him there, and somehow those few seconds of being close to him, of breathing with him, feel just as intimate and huge as it felt to have him inside me for the first time.

How is that? In what universe does that make any sense?

In this one, my mind says as I watch his eyes fall closed.

And even though I should let him rest, even though I should use this time to study or read or make one epic pros and cons list, I set an alarm on my phone for two hours from now, and I round the bed to crawl in beside him.

He takes up over half of my full-size bed, so that even if I didn’t want to be touching him, it would be hard to avoid. Not that I try.

He lifts his arm, and I immediately crawl under it, to lean against him. I lay my head on his chest and press my body close to his side. His arm settles down around me, his fingertips brushing along my spine.

We’ve lain like this once before, that first night after we had sex. That was the only time he stayed the night, and it feels different now, to have him hold me like this when it’s still light outside and when we’re both fully clothed, and my mind isn’t numb from pleasure. I’d been so exhausted that night that I fell asleep almost immediately, no time to think or analyze.

“Now, this is what I call full-service medicine.”

“This is the part where I would hit you. If you weren’t already hurt.”

“Go ahead. I can take it. I like a little pain with my pleasure.”

I don’t even think before I ask, “Do you really?”

He sucks in a breath, and his chest lifts beneath my cheek.

“We can talk about what turns me on another time. When I can do something about it.”

“You could make me a list.”

He groans, and pulls me tighter against him, and my heartbeat kicks into high gear. I know nothing is going to happen. Nothing can happen. But my body recognizes his, remembers how good we were together.

“Damn, woman. You’re going to be the death of me.”

“Sorry,” I answer sheepishly. “Go to sleep. I’ll shut up.”

Please, dear Lord, let me shut up.

“We’re having this conversation again later. I like this list idea a lot. But only if we make one for you, too.”