The Bromance Book Club (Bromance Book Club, #1)(34)

“We never specified which shower I’d use, Thea. But I can use the girls’ shower, if that’s another one of your conditions.”

“Oh, stop with the innocent act. You did this on purpose.”

“Yes, I purposely took a shower. I don’t normally accidentally take one.”

“You know what I mean! You’re doing this”—she waved in the general direction of his chest and abs and, dear God, the towel was starting to loosen—“on purpose.”

He raised his eyebrows and glanced down at himself. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’re walking around half naked just to tempt me!”

“I swear that wasn’t my intention, but if that’s the outcome, I’ll take it.” He waggled his eyebrows and turned away from her. He used his strong, thick forearm to clear a circle in the cloudy mirror. She watched as he picked up his electric razor and began to trim the edges of his beard. He tilted his head to the side and tackled the soft whiskers below his jawline.

Oh, that was—that was just plain dirty. He wasn’t even trying to play fair.

Gavin had called this little proposition a competition.

No. This wasn’t competition.

This was war.

And she could play dirty too. Without thinking it through, because impulsivity seemed to be her worst enemy, Thea grabbed the hem of her sleep tank and whipped it over her head.

Gavin stilled. The razor hovered just above the skin of his throat. His eyes darted from his mirror image to hers. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat as he stared at her outraged half-nakedness. Meeting his eyes in the mirror, she smiled and yanked down her sleep shorts and panties.

Gavin’s eyes darkened, and he did that slow-swallow thing again. His eyes did a long walk down her naked body and then meandered back up a different path, stopping on parts of her that reacted to his perusal with hot and heavy immediacy.

She planted her hands on her hips. “There. How do you like it?”

“Remind me,” he said, his gaze settling on her breasts. “Which part of seeing you naked is supposed to be punishment?”

Then he winked, and boom, her nipples hardened. What the . . . ? Thea looked down at her round, pink areolas, now tight and pebbled. Jesus. Her tits were like Pavlov’s dog around him.

And he knew it too. His lips curled up at the corners. “If you think I mind this game, you’re wrong. Because I definitely just won this round.”

Thea jerked the shower on, yelped when scalding water beat down on her skin, and skidded backward. “Why do you take such hot showers?” she grumbled, yanking the faucet handle in the other direction.

He returned to his beard trimming. “I had no idea my shower habits would be the cause of our first argument.”

Thea grabbed the bottle of body wash. She was going to make him pay for this. She was going to soap herself up head to toe and make him watch. “It’s not our first argument,” she said casually, squeezing a large dollop of pink scented goo into her hand. “We argued last night.”

“That wasn’t an argument.”

“What do you call it?”

“A negotiation.”

“And what do you call this?” Thea spread the body wash on her stomach in a slow circle. She was rewarded with a strangled noise from the other side of the shower door.

Thea looked up and met his gaze in the mirror once again. She tilted her head innocently as she slid her hands higher to lather her breasts. “You were saying?”

His eyes no longer held hers. His gaze was firmly on her hands as she twirled suds around her nipples. “I missed that last thing you said,” she mused, pinching her nipples.

Gavin’s jaw popped and clenched with a deep swallow. He lowered the razor again and turned around. Through the steam on the glass, she could see him just enough to watch his eyes once again travel the length of her. Her hands moved with him, sliding down to the underswell of her breasts, to the indentation of her belly button, and lower.

The door suddenly swung open, and Gavin walked into the shower, towel and all. He backed her against the shower wall and planted his hands on opposite sides of her. His chest rose and fell as if he’d just finished a round of push-ups. “How far you going to take this, Thea?” he rasped.

“Take what? I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He clenched his jaw again. “Give me one w-w-word, and I will replace your hands with mine.”

Thea didn’t bother to hide her smugness as she pushed his arms aside and leaned into the water to rinse the suds away. “Sorry, that’s not on the table.” She leveled a glance at Gavin over her shoulder. There was a muscle jumping in his tight jaw, and it made her smirk. “But don’t worry. I’m a big girl. I know how to take care of myself.”

Gavin’s eyebrow twitched, and the desire in his eyes dissipated into something else. Something that looked a lot like the same flash of hurt she’d seen the night when she admitted that she’d been faking it in bed.

He turned and stormed out, not even bothering to shut the shower door.

Thea sank back against the slick, wet wall. This didn’t feel like a victory.

Thea stood under the water until her skin chilled. Then she dressed quickly and opened her bedroom door to listen for the girls. Their giggles combined with Liv’s voice assured her that at least one Thanksgiving tradition would not be destroyed today. Liv was sneaking them an early piece of pumpkin pie. She heard nothing that indicated Gavin had gone downstairs to join them, and the guest room door was closed.