Take a Hint, Dani Brown (The Brown Sisters #2)(42)

The pain didn’t help; it just reminded him of that tattoo. He’d bite her all right, if she wanted it. He’d kneel at her feet, put his hands on her hips—soft, she’d be so soft—and turn her around. Slowly. Drag down those shorts to expose the full, fat curve of her arse, and sink his teeth so fucking gently into all that ripe flesh, until every inch of her was marked by him.

Then, obviously, he’d stand up, push her against the wall, free his greedy cock and spread her pussy open. Cram her full of him and rut until he couldn’t see, burying his face against her neck, all that lovely skin so bare and vulnerable for him and, holy fuck, his dick was thick and leaking in his jeans and he really needed to stop this or they’d never get to the fucking radio station.

Slow and deliberate, he breathed in through his nose, then out through his mouth, a twisted smile curving his lips. He was officially using his old anxiety tactics to deal with an erection. His brother’s laughter rang in his head, so real he almost turned around to see if Zain Bhai was there. But he didn’t turn, in the end. Because Zain was never there.

“Nope,” he muttered under his breath. “What we’re not going to do is swing straight from horny to depressed.” He rubbed a hand over his freshly trimmed beard—what? Every guy wanted to go out looking his best—and turned away from the window, since Dani wasn’t around to spot the fucking baseball bat stuffed down his jeans. “Distraction. That’s all I need, a distraction.” He had a feeling he was going to spend this entire fake relationship looking for distractions, because Danika got impossibly prettier and sweeter and smarter and sexier every time he saw her, like a very sophisticated torture device.

But he wasn’t going to think about that, not when he couldn’t do anything about it just yet. He was going to think about . . . about all the things in this huge studio apartment he’d never seen before. Like the books and statues and the pink sticky notes on the wall. Like the countless plants packed onto windowsills and counters, standing tall in ceramic pots, hanging from the ceiling, even. He ran his fingers over the fine prickles of a nearby cactus, and when that didn’t help, he wandered across the room to the bookshelf. It was made of some glossy wood, taller than Zaf and twice as wide, taking up the whole sunshine-yellow wall by the front door. He squinted at the titles, failed to find any he’d heard of, and gave up when he saw something called Summa Theologica, which didn’t sound like English, Punjabi, or Arabic, and was therefore none of his business. Some of the shelves held glass jars, too, like fishbowls—but instead of water, they were filled with cut leaves and dried flowers and random crystals. He recognized lavender in one of the jars. Another held a teardrop stone that gleamed like the moon.

When Zaf and Zain were kids, their dad used to tell them stories about the moon, just before bed. Zaf should’ve flinched away from the memory, but he didn’t. And nothing bad happened. Instead, for a moment, he thought about sharing it with Danika, and how she’d probably say something weird and wonderful like “Moons are eminently important. Your father sounds a very sensible man.”

Or maybe that was wishful thinking. Maybe she’d be like everyone else, and say, “Your father and brother died at the same time, and then your mental health plummeted and your life spun out of control? Sounds awful. Tell me all about it, every gory detail.”

That didn’t seem likely. But it hadn’t seemed likely with anyone else, either.

Zaf left the strange little bowls and moved on to the coffee table in the center of the room. It was small and sturdy and polished, with a golden statue of a woman planted dead center. The woman had a head full of curls, bees on her wrists and collarbones like tame pets, and a mirror in one hand. There was a marble cup of water in front of her, along with a little dish of orange slices. There were candles all around her, solemn white things with wax dripping at their edges and burnt-black wicks. It took him a moment to realize this was probably an altar, and he was gawking at it like it was a circus sideshow. Oops.

He turned away, moving on to the last oddity in the room: a wall of pink sticky notes beside Danika’s desk. He studied them for a few moments, taking in the scrawled words and phrases, most of which he’d only ever heard from her mouth. Then he realized what he was looking at. This wall of sticky notes was Danika’s brain.

Well, part of it. Probably a tiny part, considering how smart she was. Once, a few months back, she’d come into Echo looking kind of annoyed, and when he’d asked her what was up, she’d launched into a speech about thesis statements, specificity, and cissexist understandings of gender and family in an essay about something called Creolization. He was awed, not because he didn’t understand most of the words—although, no, he didn’t—but because he understood just enough to realize how quickly she was jumping from point to point. How many logical steps she didn’t even feel the need to say out loud because, apparently, they were obvious to her. Kind of like how, if he were going to do a spin pass, he wouldn’t consciously think about his sight or his hands or his wrists, because he wouldn’t have to. He’d just know how to do it, and that would make him faster and sharper than someone who didn’t.

Danika Brown was faster and sharper than a whole lot of people. And by the time he’d read all of her haphazard, sticky, pink thoughts, Zaf was grinning.

“Good Lord. I’ve never seen you so cheerful.” Dani’s voice came from the doorway she’d disappeared through. He looked up and found her standing there, transformed in a way he could only call impressive. The pajamas had been replaced by painted-on black jeans and some kind of tight, sleeveless top that did gravity-defying things to her chest—which he really could’ve done without. Especially since she was still wearing her usual black leather necklaces, and they disappeared between her epic cleavage like arrows to paradise. Her makeup was the glossy, shiny, heavy kind that made a woman’s entire bone structure look different, the kind his niece had attempted last Eid before Kiran had seen her, frowned, and said, “Really, Fatima? Go upstairs and wash your face.”