Still Not Over You(30)

I’m half waiting for Landon to shove me away and say no. But he just nods, tight but not forced, and shifts his grip on me to hook his arm around my waist and pull me against him.

My face is so hot I must look like a tomato, my head reeling, but I can’t say I mind the melting feeling when I mold myself against the warmth of his side.

“Over a year now,” he says, looking at Milah pointedly.

She stares at him as if waiting for him to crack, to admit it’s a lie, but when he doesn’t move or change expression she sniffs, lower lip jutting out. “Whatever. Where’s my room?”

He jerks his chin toward the kitchen doorway, arching a brow. “First door off the stairs.”

Milah gives me a foul look. I have to hide a grin by turning my face away and burying it in Landon’s side.

God, he’s so warm – and he smells so good, like driftwood and sun-warmed beach sand and this pure raw masculine smell. I try not to lose myself in it when I know he’s going to thrust me away the second she’s gone.

Even hiding my face, I can track her by her clacking, stomping steps, heels rattling. Once I hear that sound pass through the kitchen archway, I save Landon the trouble of humiliating me by immediately detaching myself.

I clear my throat, patting over my clothing and smoothing my hair, then risk a glance at him from the corner of my eye.

But he’s not looking at me.

His gaze trails after Milah, and only after she’s out of earshot does he mutter sourly, “If the money wasn’t so good, I’d toss her out on her ass. With pleasure.”

I force a shaky smile. “Heh. Yeah.”

Immediately, I wish I hadn’t opened my mouth. His gaze snaps to me, trained like gun sights, penetrating and sharp. “Why did you do that?”

“Huh?” Like I don’t know. My smile freezes in place. “Oh. I mean, I...”

Right. Crap. I clear my throat, then shrug, this nonchalant little thing feeling exaggerated and forced. “It’s just, you know...I saw you were in trouble.” I try for a breezy laugh. It comes out more like a hysterical giggle. I’m making this worse by the second. “I just wanted to help. Nothing else. We’re roommates, right? And you seemed like you needed bailing out.”

“I needed bailing out.” Pointed. Deadpan.

I cock my head. “Don't tell me you wanted to deal with that this early in the morning?”

“Fair point.”

But that’s all he says. I don't know why I keep expecting a thanks.

There’s an expectant silence between us, one in which I can hear the throb of my bloodstream filling the space, turning every sensitive point of my body into this pulsing tremor of need that remembers too well how he felt pressed close.

I can’t stay here, with him looking at me like he knows exactly what’s burning through me with enough heat to crumble my heart to ash.

“I gotta go.” My smile feels like a rictus at this point. I point toward the stairs like he doesn’t know his own house. “Duty calls. The novel. And. Yes. I need to write. Things.”

“Right.”

Still inscrutable. Still expectant.

Still making me want to run like hell.

So I do. Run, that is.

So much for letting him get to me. So much for telling myself I'm not afraid.

With a cheesy little wave, I turn tail and flee for the door.

Landon’s gaze trails me the entire time, and even when he’s out of sight I can feel his eyes drilling between my shoulder blades, touching me as intimately as those huge, earth-splitting hands that held me so tight.





10





It's Sabotage (Landon)





This is officially too fucking much to deal with after just waking up.

My cock hurts, my job is on the line, and I haven’t even had a cup of pitch black coffee.

I don’t think I’ll ever quite shake the soldier in me, even if I was only on deployment in an active combat zone for a few years. Old habits die hard.

You learn to make your environment a part of your body. Learn to extend your senses into the area you’ve claimed as your home turf, until you feel an intruder, clear as if they’d just run their grubby fingers down your spine.

That's almost how having Kenna in my space felt – except, with her, it's someone constantly running soft, caressing fingers across my skin, melting every muscle in my body. Churning awake a deep, forbidden animal part of me that needs her flat against the nearest surface, legs spread, teeth sunk in my shoulder as she tries her damnedest not to scream.

Having Milah Holly here, that's more like scraping your teeth against unglazed porcelain. Intrusive, unwanted, and totally nasty.

And that feeling sure as hell woke me up when the sound of not one, but two women who shouldn’t be in my home drifted up the stairs and dragged me out of bed.

Right into a fucking mess I don’t know how to deal with.

Not when I want to tell Miss Holly to take her presumptuous ass out of here and chase after some easy dick that'd kill to be in her. There must be three billion men on the planet who'd love to fuck her spoiled ass.

I'm the odd man out.

Especially when I can't get the other woman in my house out of my skull. Not when I can't shake this vicious, biting need to throw little Reb over my shoulder, carry her up to my bedroom, and finish what that kiss in the kitchen started, what it promised, what it ignited hot and hard and heavy in my blood.