Thank God.
I found my underwear and jeans but tripped over Hank’s boot on the way to my shirt.
“Fuck!” I snapped and gave up, feeling like a fool, rooting around naked in the dark. Much better to root around in the dark partial y dressed.
I put on my underwear and Shamus lost patience with waiting and walked over to me. He leaned his furry body into my legs and I could feel it undulating with the force of his tail wags.
“Sit Shamus. Be good,” I mumbled, doing another head scratch while Shamus settled on my feet.
I was straightening from the dog, jeans stil in my hand when the light came on.
My head snapped up and I looked at the bed.
Hank came back from stretching to reach the light and sat up on an elbow, his eyes settling on me. He looked sleepy, hair tousled, chest bared and my breath caught. He might look handsome normal y, kickass handsome angry and melt-in-your-mouth handsome when he casual y drove his car but sleepy he was a knockout.
“What’re you doin’?” he asked.
“You’re awake,” I pointed out the obvious.
“The neighbors are awake with al your racket. What’re you doin’?”
“I’m leaving.”
Uh… not good.
One second, he looked sleepy, the next second, he looked pissed off.
“What did you say?” he asked.
I looked down, anything not to look at Hank, and pul ed my feet out from under Shamus.
“I’m gonna cal a cab and I’m leaving.”
Deprived of my feet, Shamus got up and pressed his body against my legs again. This was unfortunate as I was trying to put on my jeans, thus hopping around on one leg and avoiding Shamus at the same time. Not exactly graceful but I had nothing left to lose.
I shouldn’t have looked down. Without warning, Hank was there. He jerked my arm pul ing me off balance. I dropped the jeans and col ided with him and Shamus.
Shamus scooted out from between us, then pressed against both of us.
Hank was naked. I hadn’t had a chance to get a good look at him, what with being entirely too tuned into how turned on he was making me. I knew he had a great chest but my quick glance showed me he pretty much had a great everything else as wel .
I ignored his great everything else and snapped. “Hey!” trying to pul my arm away but Hank held on tight. In fact, his free hand came up and grabbed my other arm.
“Get back into bed,” he said, looking down at me.
“I’m going,” I told him.
“You’re not going.”
I was stil trying to pul away. I was stil not succeeding.
“I am.”
“Why?”
“Does it matter?”
“Why?”
Jeez, there was just no shaking this guy.
“Let go,” I was getting kind of desperate. I dropped my gaze to his chest, raised my hands there and began to push.
He shook me gently to get my attention. It worked. I looked back up.
“Tel me why you’re sneakin’ out of my bed in the middle of the night.”
“Hank –”
“Answer me, goddammit!”
Holy cow.
He wasn’t pissed off anymore, he was angry. I couldn’t only see it on his face; I could feel it emanating from his body. For some reason, it didn’t scare me. He had it in check. It was entirely control ed. I knew that like I knew there were no other jeans in the world as good as Lucky jeans.
It did make me talk, however. I didn’t like that he was angry, not at me.
“I’m not a slut,” I blurted out.
His hands on my arms relaxed but didn’t go away and he blinked one of his slow blinks. “Sorry?” he asked.
“I’m not a slut.”
God, I sounded like an idiot. Now, I had to explain. “I’m not a slut. Never have I slept with a guy on a first date.
Never. Never. Never.”
“Roxanne –” he started to say but I forged ahead.
“Bil… the last guy, it took, like, three weeks to get to third base and at least a month before we did it. I swear.”
“Roxie –” Hank began again but I kept talking.
“Before him, there was Derek, and we were dating, like, forever before we did it and it was unfortunate when we did because he wasn’t very good at it. Then there was Kenny and I don’t even remember how long it took before we did it. He was a jerk; once we did, he dumped me.”
“Roxie –” Hank said again and started to pul me against his body but I had my arms up between us and, like the total idiot I was, I was counting down my ex-lovers on my fingers.
“Then there was Troy, he was a good kisser, like you, but it stil took, I don’t know, at least two weeks before I let him get his hands up my shirt. Wait, Troy doesn’t count because we never did it in the end. I saw him making out with my friend Kim and I broke up with him. What a bitch. I forgot about her.”