Unconditional

He’s silent and I briefly wonder if he’s going to tell me no. That I need to go back to my room and stop whatever it is I’m doing.

Stop trying to seduce me, Maddie. I swear I hear his body telling me.

“Yeah, of course, I mean… yes. Let me just run downstairs for a second, okay?”

I don’t say anything because a part of me is a little scared about being up here by myself. I know my fear is irrational and a little childish, but call it what everyone refers to it as my “brush with death” when I was a kid. There were things that went bump in the night and it scared me. Except these bumps were heard from within. The brutalities of my childhood whispered in my ear in the dead of night, making me wonder if I’d eventually meet that same end. The nightmares of physical monsters had stopped haunting my dreams years ago. The nightmares manifest in different ways now. I’m no longer afraid of the monsters under the bed, but the ones that lurk in my brain. The ones that whispered, you’re next. Ones that are only completely silenced when I’m around Cal.

His hands find my face and he strokes my cheek, as if he can hear my thoughts, as if he is lurking there as well, whispering, you’re not next, Mads. “Two minutes, okay? Just stay here. It’s your turn in Words with Friends. I took my turn after you fell asleep.”

My eyes shoot to my phone, opening the game that Cal and I have been nonstop playing since I got an iPhone three years ago. “Okay.”

I’m still trying to figure out how I can put this five-letter word on a triple word score when Cal walks back through the door with something in his hand. I can’t quite make it out when he puts it on the floor. “What are you doing?”

“I got a sleeping bag.”

“What for?”

“Mads…” He trails off.

“You’ve never made me sleep on the floor before.” I frown.

“It’s not for you, Maddie. You think I’d make you sleep on the floor?”

“Oh…why are you sleeping on the floor?”

“I just…I don’t think…I mean…you’re older now and I just…” I hear the implication, and I interrupt.

“Oh my God, Cal. Stop.” I try to sound as dismissive as possible so I don’t alert that I’m gunning for the exact thing he’s trying to avoid.

“No, Madeline. When I’m asleep, my body might still react to…” The room is so quiet I can hear him gulp as he lays out the sleeping bag and grabs a pillow from his bed.

“So, you don’t trust yourself with me, then?” I try to catch the words before they leave my mouth, but I’m too late and I snap my lips shut knowing that he’s going to react to my comment.

“That’s not what I said,” he grits out and I let out a sigh before falling back in his pillows. His entire bed smells like him and it speaks to me on the most primal level. I turn my head into his pillow and quietly inhale his scent. A scent that is so ingrained in my body and soul despite the fact that it isn’t in my DNA.

“You’re being ridiculous,” I tell him as I let my eyes flutter closed.

“I know,” is the last thing I hear before sleep takes me for the second time.

I wake up the next morning to the most delicious warm feeling flooding my entire body and heating my bones. My feet, which are notoriously cold even with the fluffy socks Cal consistently buys me are toasty warm and I feel heat wrap around me like a vine. A tingle licks up and down my spine and it feels like a heater is blowing out air directly on my neck. My eyes flutter open and the first thing I feel is a pain in my shoulder. What the fuck?

The feeling in my shoulder that I realize is due to falling asleep on the floor is immediately erased when I look down and see arms wrapped around me. I’m basically pinned to Cal’s body with the vice grip he has on me, and I briefly wonder how in the hell I got, not only on the floor, but inside his sleeping bag with him.

Holy shit. He’s going to freak. Especially when he realizes that his morning wood is digging into my back like a spear dying to push its way through me.

I have vague memories of climbing off the bed and snuggling against him, but I could have sworn that was just a dream.

Evidently not.

I manage to peek towards the window and I see it’s still storming out. It’s about to be a storm in here as well.

I’m trying to pry myself out of Cal’s arms when the universe decides that now is the time to fuck with me. Cal’s alarm blares through the air with a shrill pierce, serving as an alert that something isn’t right, Cal Grayson. Wake the fuck up and deal with it.

His eyes fly open before I’ve had a chance to untangle myself from him. I’ve sat up slightly, but our legs are still entangled, his arms are still wrapped around me, and his dick—I shift slightly and inadvertently bump into him—yep still hard.

“Maddie?” His eyes are wide and nervous but mostly confused as he lets me go like I’ve burned him. Like he’s been holding onto fire all night and his body is finally reacting to the searing flame.

“I…I don’t remember moving down here.”