Hail Mary: An Enemies-to-Lovers Roommate Sports Romance(49)

“Uh, maybe I should go get Giana.” The words burned my throat as I said them.

“Noooo,” she whined, letting her head fall back against my chest. “She’ll make me stay down there and I just wanna go to sleep. You do it,” she insisted, and then she reached around in an effort to show me the zipper of her skirt, but ended up just dragging her hand over my cock, instead.

Jesus fucking hell.

I stifled a moan at the feel of her palming me, and she was so oblivious that she just let her hand fall back to her thigh with a slap, one of those horse-like exhales leaving her again.

I couldn’t help but laugh at that.

“Thought you didn’t drink much,” I said as I unfastened her skirt and tried to think of road kill and politics and anything else but the fact that I was undressing Mary, that she asked me to do it.

“Welp, you are a bad influence.”

“Me?”

When the skirts loosened around her hips and fell to a puddle at her feet, she sighed with relief, and I dragged my eyes up to the back of her head so I wouldn’t stare at her ass in the little thong she was wearing.

She spun around and nearly fell into me again, her hands pressing against my chest. “Yes, you.”

I sipped a fiery breath with her half-naked and in my arms, and then she slowly slipped away, flopping down onto her bed.

No.

My bed.

She struggled with the covers for a moment before she was buried underneath them, and I watched her thrash around for a minute until suddenly her bra went flying over my shoulder.

Fuck. Me.

Now, Mary was topless, in nothing but a lacy scrap of underwear, wrapped up in my sheets with her emerald, glazed eyes and lazy smile peeking over the covers.

I forced a slow inhale, an equally slow exhale, and shoved my hands into my pockets to keep from doing anything stupid.

“C’mere,” she said, reaching a hand out long enough to pat the bed.

I swallowed. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Mary kept her eyes on me as she maneuvered under the covers again, and then she peeled her thong out from under them, letting them dangle off a finger for one second before they dropped to the floor.

She all but purred as she cozied into the sheets even more. “So much better.”

Each breath was more ragged than the last from my aching chest. I needed to leave. I needed to turn out the light and close the door and take my ass downstairs right fucking now.

But I was rooted in place.

Mary pulled the covers up to her face, inhaling a deep, dramatic breath before she flopped around and sighed just as deeply. “Ugh,” she groaned. “Why do you have to smell so good?”

I arched a brow.

“Your sheets,” she said when I didn’t answer, tugging them up farther and wrapping herself up like a burrito. “God, they smell so good. And your sweaters, too.”

“You’ve been wearing my sweaters?”

She shot a hand out from under the covers with her index finger pointed up. “Technically, you gave me one to wear first, so it’s in the rules that it’s okay to wear them whenever I want to now.”

“Is it now?”

“Uh-huh.” She nodded up and then down sharply, matter-of-factly, her eyes closing like she was going to pass out right then and there.

“I didn’t realize we had a rulebook.”

She peered at me over the covers. “We do, but you keep breaking all the rules.”

“How so?”

“Buying me candles, giving me your jacket.” She thrust her hand toward me. “And why do you have to look at me like that?”

“I’m just listening.”

“No, you’re standing there all stoic, but I see it.”

I swallowed. “What do you see?”

Mary watched me for a long moment before she sat up, weight on the palms of her hands, the covers just barely catching on the swells of her breasts and keeping her nipples hidden from view. Her long hair spilled over those swells, over the sheets, her eyes heavy and dazed.

“I see that you’d devour me,” she whispered. “If I said the word.”

My cock jolted in my sweatpants, every muscle in my body straining with the effort to restrain myself from doing what she’d just assessed. She was naked in my fucking bed. Even God Himself would give in.

“You should get some sleep,” I managed to croak out, turning before I said fuck it and went against the rational voice in my head reminding me she was drunk and had no idea what she was doing.

I heard her flop back into the mattress, and I flicked out the light, turning back just in time to watch her roll onto her side. I opened the door and Palico bounced in, skipping past me and bounding onto the bed. Mary smiled, eyes closed as she ran her fingernails over the cat’s neck while it kneaded the covers before curling in next to her.

I let myself watch her only a second longer before I turned out the lights.

“I wish you remembered.”

I froze at the words, frowning in confusion as something sharp and hot zapped through my spine.

I turned slowly. “What?”

But Mary was already asleep.

Her mouth had fallen open in a little o, soft snores coming from her chest, hair fanning over her face.

After quietly shutting the door, I took a few steps before standing still in the hallway, one hand finding the wall as if I’d teeter off-balance and spiral down the stairs without holding myself steady.