Pull You In (Rivers Brothers 3)

"That's okay. Dad-bods are all the rage."

"Oh yeah?" I asked. "So my shape isn't the hot thing anymore, huh?"

To that, she snorted. "Six packs never go out of style, Rush," she told me as though she was talking to a very dense child.

"Well, that is what the covers of romance novels tell me," I quipped, getting a sweet, lilting laugh from her.

"Goodnight, Rush," she said, voice so small, I barely heard it.

"Goodnight, Katie."

Except, of course, I didn't sleep. I couldn't sleep. Because this woman beside me, I found out, made the cutest fucking mewling noise as she fell asleep. And that shit? That somehow kept me from being able to fall back to sleep as she shifted in her sleep, curling up on her side facing me, bringing that coconut and pineapple scent closer.

It took a lot more self-control than it should have for me not to lean down and sniff her hair. But being that kind of stalker level of creep kept me on my side of the bed, on my back, gaze on the ceiling as the storm finally started to let up.

Then what did she do?

Decide that she needed even more warmth.

And she found it.

In me.

On that unexpectedly sexy little noise again, she settled up on my chest, hand resting on my chest, leg thrown over my hip.

All that work I'd done to get my cock to realize sex was not on the table went right out the fucking window when I felt her warm breath on me, felt the outline of her through the chunky layers of her clothes.

"Fuck," I hissed to myself, carefully raising my hands up, tucking my arms under my head, trying to resist the temptation to wrap them around her.

Eventually—and this was a long ass fucking time later—I did manage to drift off to sleep."Oh, God. OhGodOhGod," a little voice hissed, pulling me out of sleep early the next morning, the sun not even peeking through the window yet.

Katie was up.

And realizing she'd climbed me like a cat sometime while unconscious.

And, apparently, my stubborn-ass hands refused to stay where I'd put them. They were wrapped around her body, trapping her to me, making it impossible for her to plan her escape.

Hence her dilemma.

I was pretty sure she would rather gnaw off her own arm than wake me by trying to pull out of my grasp. As if she had any control over how she moved around in her sleep.

"Fire burned out," I said, voice sleep-rough. "See why you were looking for another heat source," I added, trying to ease her discomfort.

Even as I said it, though, my arms stayed around her. Like they had any right at all to be there.

"The storm stopped," she observed, wanting a topic change, even if the topic was our bodies still very closely connected. And if she shifted just a little, she would feel the impact that was having on me.

"I'm almost scared to get up and check the damage," I admitted. My arms hadn't moved yet, and I couldn't find the desire to lift them, either.

"I can't claim to have much strength. My arms are more engineered to lift books than tree limbs, but I will help. I can't believe there is no way to contact the owner," she said, shaking her head, making that coconut and pineapple scent meet my nose again. This time, I went ahead and took a deep breath, got more of it, convincing myself that it wasn't creepy to sniff the hair of a woman who was cuddled up on your chest.

"If we have time, I thought I'd show you to the lake. It's nice over there. Then maybe we can try to take a trip to find some reception to make a call to Fee, and see what the hell is going on."

"Yeah, I mean, if everyone was a day later than us, I would understand that."

"Exactly," I agreed.

"Can you imagine if we are in the wrong cabin or something?" she mused.

"And the owners showed up to see we ate a ton of their food and broke into their shed?" I added, getting a chuckle out of her that moved through me.

"I promised you breakfast," she told me, pulling back a bit to look up at me.

"Donuts. I didn't forget. I am probably going to need half a dozen just for myself."

"I don't think whoever shopped for this cabin was prepared for your appetite," she teased.

"Shane is going to run my ass ragged at the gym when I get back home ten pounds heavier," I agreed, one of my arms sliding off of her to pat my stomach.

"Shane Mallick?" Katie asked.

"Yep. My sister's husband's brother. They adopted all of us Rivers when they took Scotti into their fold."

"Big family," Katie observed.

"You have no idea," I agreed, nodding. "What about you?"