DONOVAN (Gray Wolf Security, #1)(15)

Joshua shoved the remote into my hand and ran toward the stairs, taking them two at a time. I laughed as I settled down in the bag, moving the character on the screen as expertly as Joshua would have. What he didn’t know was that I sometimes played this game when he and Donovan were out finding trouble.

“Good move,” Donovan said, his character rushing toward mine as we worked together against the same monsters. It was an intense few minutes, but we managed to clear the level and move to the next.

“Yes!” Donovan yelled, turning to me with his hand raised, waiting for a high five.

I slapped his palm.

“You wouldn’t have been able to do that without me.”

“You think so?”

“I’m good at this game.”

Donovan laughed. “And so modest about it.”

I shrugged. “Why should I be modest?” Then I reached past him and grabbed his bottle of soda. “And I deserve a reward.”

I started to get up, but he grabbed my arm, pulling me back down.

“That’s the last one.”

“I know. And now it’s mine.”

“No, it’s not.”

He reached for it, but I moved it out of his reach. I started up out of the beanbag again, but he grabbed me around the waist and pinned me to the bag. We started to wrestle, hands gong where they probably shouldn’t have. But we’d played like this since we were seven years old. Yet, there was something different about it, something about the way he looked at me when he finally had my shoulders pinned. I stopped fighting and looked up at him, my heart pounding as I focused on his lips and wondered what they would feel like on mine.

And he seemed more out of breath than he should have been…but it must have been my imagination.

Joshua came pounding back down the stairs calling to me.

“You better have not lost me my last life!”

Donovan let me go and settled back in his own beanbag.

“Here,” I said, handing him the soda. “You can have it.”

“No, you take it. You earned it.”

I could almost feel his hands on me as I slowly woke and realized I was dreaming, but the dream was most definitely a memory. That was the day I knew there was something between Donovan and I… something that shouldn’t have been there, but had somehow snuck up on the both of us. By graduation…

A scream reverberated through the house. I sat up, my heart pounding.

That must be what woke me.

It came again, a little muted this time.

I reached over to my nightstand, to the knife I kept hidden in there. But when the scream came a third time, I realized that it wasn’t an intruder. It was coming from the spare bedroom.

It was Donovan.

I went out into the hallway and knocked on his door, but he didn’t respond. I pushed the door open. I couldn’t see him at first because the room was so dark. But as my eyes adjusted, the lump on the bed became mused hair against the white pillowcase, a muscular back and heavy thighs uncovered by the sheets that had been kicked to the foot of the bed. He was dressed in just a pair of boxer briefs, the kind of underwear that hugged a guy’s thighs and ass like a pair of spandex workout shorts. And Donovan filled his out quite well.

He cried out again, mumbling something I couldn’t quite make out, tugging his pillow harder under his head.

“Donovan?” I called from the doorway. But it had no effect on him. “Donny,” I said softly, crossing the room and laying my hand lightly on his shoulder.

He responded immediately this time, grabbing my wrist and yanking me over his body and onto the thick queen-sized mattress. I cried out as he climbed over me, pinning me with his hands on both shoulders.

“Let me go!”

He stared at me in the dark for a second, then reached over and flipped on the bedside lamp.

“What the hell are you doing in here?” he demanded, as he came back to pin me down, his eyes narrowed as he studied my face.

“You were screaming in your sleep.”

“I was…” He hesitated, clearly aware that this was something he did. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

“Will you let me go now?”

The confusion and sleep left his eyes as he studied my face. And then his eyes moved further down, taking in the fact that I was still only dressed in a thin t-shirt. Memory made my cheeks burn, my mind going right back to that dream—to that relieved memory—I’d just woken from. How I’d wanted his touch back then, how I wanted to feel his hands on my skin. My body still remembered that need and the fact that we were lying in his unmade bed, both of us nearly naked, made that need come back tenfold.

I crossed my ankles, pulling my thighs tightly together.

“Let me go, Donovan.”

“Why are you always blushing when I look at you? I don’t remember you blushing this much back then.”

“Must be the head injury.”

“You think so?”

“What else could it be?”

“Oh,” he said, releasing one of my shoulders to move his fingers slowly along the curve of my jaw, “I could think of a few things.”

“Think about them on your own time,” I said, pushing his hand away and pulling myself away from his hold. I climbed off the bed and headed to the door. “Remind me not to wake you up ever again.”