Awk-Weird (Ice Knights, #2)(20)
“Shit.”
The last thing she wanted was to have to explain to Cole why there were jam paw prints all over his scary-mommy-level clean house.
She scrambled out of the room, her rainbow unicorn fuzzy slipper socks sending her sliding across the pristine and ultra-shiny hardwood floor as she tried to turn left into the hallway a little too fast. Hurrying to catch up with Kahn before he shredded the curtains or went to town on a toilet paper roll, she followed the paw prints. The purple splotches disappeared through the barely there opening of a door on the other end of the hall. Rushing forward, she pushed open the door and half slid, half speed walked inside before coming to a dead stop in the middle of Cole’s bedroom.
Double fuck.
She hadn’t realized this was his room. Last night, she’d been so exhausted after carrying in her stuff that she’d crashed almost immediately after he’d shown her the guest room. She hadn’t even gotten a full tour of the house, just a nod that the kitchen was that way and the living room just past it. Now she was standing in the middle of a bedroom that was all white—seriously, the whole thing was like the inside of a jar of mayo—except for Cole and the purple imprints of Kahn’s paws leaving a trail across the snowy expanse of the bedspread.
The paws led to Kahn, who’d made a little bed for himself in Cole’s jaw-length blond hair that allowed the little fur ball to be curled up right next to Cole’s face.
This was bad. This was really bad.
“Kahn,” she said, her voice as loud as possible while still maybe not waking up the half-naked man she was most definitely not checking out. “Come here, kitty, kitty.”
Neither cat nor man moved.
Triple to infinity shit.
She had to get Kahn out of here. And the paw prints? She’d figure out a way to fix that. Where there was a will, there was a Magic Eraser and a plan.
Tess tiptoed across the room, avoiding the paw prints on the floor so she wouldn’t spread the jam, and made her way over to the side of the bed. The trick was going to be picking up the kitten without waking up Cole. She was gonna need a lot of luck and more than a little help from above to keep Kahn’s kitten mouth closed.
Heart hammering in her chest, she did her best to pretend she was the heroine in some action-adventure spy movie having to avoid red laser lights and delicately reached out for the kitten. Her fingertips were just brushing fur when everything went to hell.
Kahn let out a meow of surprise and launched himself straight up in the air in that way only cats can do. He landed, no doubt claws extended, right in the middle of Cole’s bare chest. That sent Cole jackknifing into a sitting position while letting out a yowl of pain, the motion dislodging the kitten, who did a midair flip and landed softly, paws first, on the floor. Kahn sent a hiss of disapproval at her—her!—and then zipped out of the room, leaving only a couple of purple paw prints in his wake.
Cole rubbed the red spot on his chest. “Why are you in my room?”
“Kitten retrieval.” Did that sound breathy? She felt breathy. Her lungs had stopped working the moment her gaze locked onto his long, strong fingers massaging his muscular chest right over his pecs. Was it hot in here? It felt hot. “Kahn was purring.”
He lifted a blond eyebrow, one side of his mouth quirking up before smoothing back into a line as if he was fighting back a smile. “Is that what the buzzing in my ear was?”
Okay, she might not have the best people skills—okay, any people skills—but she knew when someone was giving her shit, and Cole was most certainly doing that. She was about to call him on it and let him know exactly what she thought about it when he tossed back the covers, revealing that he slept only in a pair of black boxer briefs.
Deep breath, Tess. You will not look below the waistband. Doesn’t matter if you’ve seen it before—and licked it and kissed it and sucked it and…
“Most scientists think purring starts in the cat’s brain when a signal is sent to the laryngeal muscles,” she blurted out, sounding every bit as panicked and totally awk-weird as she felt because the voice in her head that was supposed to be her conscience had gone total horndog on her. “They vibrate as much as one hundred and fifty vibrations per second. That makes the cat’s vocal cords separate as the cat breathes, which is the purr we hear.”
Cole stood up and stretched, his arms reaching outward, every muscle straining. “Fascinating.”
“Are you mocking me?” Embarrassment burned its way across her skin for what she was saying about purring and what she was thinking about how forearms were really overrated and trying to remember what that V thing by a guy’s hips was called.
“I’d never tease a woman in my bedroom like that.” He gave her a slow up and down. “Especially not when she was only wearing an oversize T-shirt and nothing else.”
“How can you tell I’m not wearing anything else?” Her brain processed her words the second after they left her mouth because of course that couldn’t happen before she said it. Nope. Not always-says-the-wrong-thing her. “Never mind! Don’t answer that.”
One side of his mouth went up in a cocky grin, but it flatlined out when he looked down at his bed, his gaze following Kahn’s bright tracks across the white comforter and out the door. Belly sinking, she knew what he was about to ask before he opened his mouth. If only she had a better answer.