For Authentication Purposes (16 page)

“Yeah, why? Those exist.” I shrugged and looked down, all of a sudden remembering how butt naked I was.

“Uh-huh.” His eyes were trained on my nipples, and I felt my hands start to move to cover them and then stopped, letting my arms fall to my sides instead. Warner’s lips pursed in approval, and he let out another chuckle before dragging his hands down his face and getting out from beneath the covers, too. Standing up, he stretched, his lean frame extending and showing off every one of his taut muscles.

And his massive boner.

Staring at me in some sort of raunchy showdown. Almost like it was waving a red flag at me, convinced I was a bull that was going to start running at it. It only had one eye, but I was pretty sure that bastard winked at me.

“I’m gonna make breakfast.” Warner’s voice snapped me out of my one-sided staring contest.

“Yeah, okay.” Tearing my eyes away from him, I moved across the room to where he had dropped my bag the night before. I looked over my shoulder to see him staring, arms crossed and that expression on his face again like I was the funniest and most awkward woman he’d ever encountered. “Do you mind?” I motioned toward the bag. “I’m pretty sure that squatting or bending over to get into this bag in front of you would be considered one of those ‘ugly naked’ times. Can you just turn around or something?”

He was by my side in a matter of seconds. Careful to keep his mouth at my ear, he laid one hand on my shoulder and let it start trailing its way lower until his pinky caressed my nipple. “I already promised you that I’d be seeing you in a lot of positions this weekend, Bunny. No need to be shy now.” But instead of taunting me further, he bent and picked up my bag for me, letting it drop into my shaking hands. His breath was warm on my shoulder as he sighed, and I felt him smile against my skin. “Just one more thing.”

“Yeah?”

“I have a detachable shower head.”

My stomach tightened at the reference. “Awesome.”

He interrupted my thoughts. “Don’t use it.”

I whipped my head around to look into his eyes. “What? Why the hell not? I’m leaking like a busted dam and you’re playing mind games. Why would I not?”

His hand pressed to the soft spot above my pubic bone. “You save those for me.”

The hell? Like my orgasms were little coins in a piggy bank?

With one gentle touch, he applied pressure there and I was shuddering and reminded that I had to pee. “God, I really do hate you sometimes.” I sprinted for the bathroom door. And sprinting made me realize how jiggly certain bits of my body were.
 

By the time I got into the shower, I kind of wanted to use his shower head to get myself off out of spite, but the effort wasn’t there when I realized that it was just so much better when Warner was involved.

After brushing my teeth, I wrapped my body in a towel and my hair in another before opening the bathroom door to let the steam out, which was when I noticed Warner sitting back in the bed with just the sheet over his lap and bowls of food surrounding his knees. He smiled at me and made a gesture to the spread as if to imply without words that the food was for me as well.

“What’s this?”

He looked down at the bed. “Looks like fruit. And Nutella. Some croissants.”

“That’s a pretty impressive spread.” I walked over to the bed and started to sit down when he held up his hand and wagged one finger in my direction.

“This bed is a clothing-free zone, I’m afraid.”

“Towels aren’t clothes,” I told him.

His eyes held playfulness in them. “They are when you’re in my room.”

Rolling my eyes, I dropped the towel and pulled the one off my head, feeling goose bumps erupt all over as my wet hair hit my spine. “Can I get under the sheets?”

He shook his head.

“Fine.” Taking my seat next to him, I laid my back into the pillow and let my legs settle as I crossed my ankles in front of me. He had a small fruit knife in his hand, and I watched as he sliced the top off a strawberry, the juice trickling over his thumb before he brought it to his mouth and cleaned it off. My staring must have been a little more obvious than I thought because he licked his lips slow and deliberate, making me shift around a little against the pillow. “What kind of lesson is this?” I asked, dropping my eyes from his mouth to my bare stomach.

“Who said this was a lesson? I just want to eat breakfast off of your delicious body.”

I laughed, letting my eyes squeeze closed and my head fall backward against the headboard. “I should have known.” Shaking my head, I opened my eyes to see him staring at me, smiling as he placed a sliver of strawberry on his tongue, the shiny metal of the knife bringing a memory to mind. “You know, I always thought your room . . . when we were growing up I thought your walls were made of carpet.”

“Why?” The laughter started up again.

I flailed my hands in front of my face, embarrassed. “We were on the phone, and you were throwing knives or something. I asked what you were doing, and you said you had carpet on your walls.”

He placed a piece of the red fruit between his fingers and brought it to my lips. “I had a dart board thing that I put carpet on. I can’t believe you thought my room was padded.”

My mouth opened to take his tiny offering, and I noticed his finger lingered on my tongue just a second longer than necessary. Wrapping my lips around his digit, I sucked on it a little, pleased at how erotic it felt. He must have been, too, because he shifted me over until I was straddling him above the sheets. My knees tucked into his sides as his hands roamed behind me into the bowls.

“What else did you think of me?” He brought a finger covered in Nutella around to the front of my face. His eyes never left mine as he applied the sticky spread to my collarbone. I closed my eyes as he dipped his head forward and licked his way along the chocolate. One long stroke of his tongue. Sucking pressure from his mouth. A small nip of his teeth.

My breath was getting shallow, and I struggled to clear my head as my body was starting to respond to him again. “Mmm, should we be talking about this right now?” I was breathless and turned on.

“I wanna know.” He kissed me on the neck. His hips shifted, and I could feel him, hard and aroused beneath the sheet.

He placed a slice of strawberry on my nipple, and I pressed my lips together when he looked up at me, his mouth level with it.
 

“You know I always thought you were cute.” The confession made me feel so stupid for telling this man those things. His tongue darted out, and he laved it around the underside of the nipple before sweeping it over the fruit and letting his lips suckle for a second, causing my back to bow inward a little.

“You did, huh?” Another well-placed sliver of fruit was nibbled off the other nipple. “Hmm.”

My hips were shaking from sitting so rigid, and I settled my lower half as much as I could against him. “Did you ever think we’d end up here?” I nudged his forehead with my nose until he looked up at me. His eyes were intense, and he licked chocolate off his lower lip before responding.

“Yeah, I hoped we would someday.” There was truth in his words.

“Really? I never in a million years thought I’d be in Warner Green’s bed.” My defenses were down as I continued, kissing his eyebrow and lower to skim my lips over the bridge of his nose. “Though, I have to wonder if we’d ended up hooking up in high school how very different the experience would have been.” I chuckled. “Like, if we’d actually had a good time on prom night.”

His spine stiffened a little at the remark. “Well, I guarantee it wouldn’t have been as extensive as this.” With a shift of his hips, he rolled me off him and moved to the edge of the bed, placing his elbows on his knees as he cradled his face in his hands. With eyes closed, he took a deep breath and held it for a moment.

“Warner? What’s wrong? Did I say something?” I was trying my damnedest but couldn’t figure out what I could have said to make him react that way.

Warner let out a long sigh and turned to look at me over his shoulder, his eyes tired and drawn as though they were filled with defeat. “You should clean up and get dressed. I have to tell you something, and I’m going to be a huge pansy about it.”

“What do you mean?”

He turned away again. “I have to tell you something about my past. And I’m going to need to do it in front of my friends.”

Wardo

I was hyperaware that my plan to take Dawn to Gary’s was a dick move on my part. But I didn’t have any other option. What I was about to tell her, tell them all, was something that could change the way she saw me forever. And after she made that damn reference to prom night, I just couldn’t take it anymore.

See, if I told her at my apartment about Mandie, then she could run. She could flip out and scream or lose her mind, and the entire thing would be called off before I’d even been given the chance to have sex with her. I’d spent the past couple of weeks working up to it for many reasons, but if I was being honest, it was because once we had sex, it could very well be over.

I didn’t want it to be over.

So maybe if she heard the news around my friends and didn’t react immediately but had the opportunity to see how they handled it, she’d be more likely to listen.

It was a long shot, but I was willing to take the risk. Because, I hated to say it, but Dawn Sims had me pussy-whipped.
 

She sat in the passenger seat of my car, her arms folded across her chest, palms twisted up in the sleeves of her sweatshirt. It was her signal that she was anxious and rightfully a little upset about my abrupt end to the breakfast foreplay. Not like I wasn’t suffering, too, mind you. Not only had she alluded to the fact that she had always kind of liked me, but I also was getting a distinct feeling from her that she was into me now.

Instead of talking about it, I smoked the entire way over to Gary’s. Knowing that Jemma and Declan would be there kind of set my mind at ease. I was just glad I’d skipped over inviting Candace and Nolan to the confessional. I couldn’t imagine us all in one room together like that again. I was there when Candace and Nolan had met Declan and Jemma once before. It was freaky, to be honest. If I thought Nolan was crazy about fruit flies, he was even more enamored with Declan.

That was a bromance I didn’t want to take part in today.

Gary’s house appeared much too fast, and my nerves ambushed me as I parked the car and jumped out to open Dawn’s door. She didn’t look at me as I held the door open and I reached out to grab her hand, but she kind of shrugged me off. I couldn’t say I blamed her at all. It just made the dread in my stomach knot up even more as I pushed Gary’s door open.

Jemma was standing in the kitchen, eating a bowl of cereal, in just a T-shirt, a blond wig, and a headband that had cat ears on the top.

“Hey, Wardo.” She greeted me as she waved the spoon in my direction like she was still half asleep. Her eyes grew wide, and I was afraid milk would come pouring out of her nose when Dawn appeared behind me. “Holy shit. The Bunny is back.”

Dawn leaned her head around me to acknowledge Jemma with a small wave. “Hey, Jemma. I like your hair.”

Jemma’s spoon hand shot up to her head. “Yeah? I mean, I think it’s pretty cute.”

“You’d look stellar as a blonde.” Dawn stepped around me and walked over to stand in front of Jemma. “Your eyes and skin tone? Please. I’d think you were born that way.”

Jemma spooned some cereal into her mouth with a grin, rubbing her toes along her opposite calf. “See, Declan kinda has this thing. He likes it when I put the cat ears on and purr. Or lick him.” She grinned at Dawn.

“That’s sounds about right. Does he dress up, too?” Dawn leaned over Jemma’s bowl to see what was in it.

“Sometimes he puts on these floppy dog ears and a collar.”

“So you’re furries.”

“Oh my God.” Jemma reared her head back and snatched the wig off before pushing her bowl across the countertop and stomping into Declan’s room. “You turned me into a furry?”

Hearing the commotion, Gary’s head eased out of his room, his reddened eyes roaming over me and landing on Dawn. “Bunneh.” He exhaled with a plume of smoke from his lips.

Dawn gave him a thumbs-up.

“Circle up.” I gave my instruction and went into the kitchen to raid the pantry for the donuts I knew they kept there. “I gotta tell you guys something. So put pants on and I’ll get your breakfast ready.”

Within five minutes all four were sitting on the couch, looking at me expectantly. I stood in my spot between the sofas as I shifted from side to side, gathering my courage to speak. I’d never felt so unsure of myself in front of my friends before. I hated it.

Pressing my palms to my eyes, I listened as Gary passed a bowl to Jemma, and after she exhaled I dropped my hands and looked at the ceiling. “So you guys know that book that came out last week about the professor and student who had an affair and it’s all over the news because it’s scandalous and raunchy and not suitable for the public to read?” I took a breath and waited for a response.

Declan leaned forward and scratched his cheek slowly. “Yeah?”

With closed eyes, I opened my mouth and blurted out, “The book is about me.”