Page 35 of The Exception

She seemed completely clueless as to how any of the things she was saying could be taken by a man lying next to her.

She made a sleepy sound and it went straight to his groin. He swallowed again. What was it he’d said to Mike? This was some sort of past life punishment? He was sure of it now.

Though, her hatred toward him had dimmed to a mild annoyance over the last few weeks. They’d become friends, which, looking at her now, might be worse torture than the animosity they’d started with.

These days she smiled more frequently at him and they, apparently, shopped for furniture together. He watched her press her fingers into the pillow-top and thought, not for the first time, that she was made of perfect contradictions. Nerdy and sexy. Fierce but kind. Soft curves and athletic limbs…

“Do you want to try another position?” she said.

Jesus.Okay, he was out. He sat up quickly, running a hand through his hair.

Sonya raised an eyebrow. “Or we can start over with another bed.”

“No,” he almost shouted.How about we not climb into another bed together in this public space?“Uh. This one’s good. I like this one.”

“Perfect,” she said, rolling gracefully off of the mattress and straightening her shirt.

Perfect indeed.

She tossed a smile over her shoulder that looked completely unaffected, and she headed toward the showroom. “On to the living room.”

Sixteen

The problem wasn’t that Sonya was thinking about Trav outside of work. Mentoring a student was a big responsibility and she would have been derelict in her duties if she didn’t spend some mental time planning his day before they arrived at work and got caught up in the rush.

The problem was she wasnotthinking about Trav’s progression as a student, or the schedule she needed to make. She was thinking about something else.

She sat up in bed and pressed her fingers to her eyes, trying to rub away the lingering images from the dream she’d just woken from in a flop sweat. She plucked at her tank. She probably didn’t even need to hit the treadmill today.

Ugh. It was all because she’d been stupid enough to climb into bed with him.

A display bed! she reminded herself. It wasn’t real. There were people all around them. But it was weird.

He’d realized it too, the situation they’d accidentally put themselves in, and noticing him notice was the worst part. She’d been embarrassed so she’d forced her expression neutral, pretending it was all normal to be lying in bed with her intern.

Display. Bed.

But the way he’d looked beside her on that pillow—his eyes hooded, hair a mess—it was such a vulnerable moment. Exactly how he must look right before drifting off at night, she’d thought. Or first thing in the morning.

And that was what had seeped into her dream: Trav, sleepy-eyed and bed-headed, rolling over with just the weak, early dawn light that she knew they both saw on a regular basis. Instead of smacking her alarm and hopping in the shower, she’d stayed, stretching her arms over her head.

And he’d given her that smirk-smile, the one she used to hate but now… didn’t. And then, still sprawled out on his belly, he’d reached a hand out and tugged her to him. She’d gone willingly and she hadn’t hated herself for it one bit when his hand skimmed her hip and slipped between her legs.

She threw herself onto her stomach and let out a frustrated growl into her pillow. “Dreams are the processing and sorting of stimuli you take in during the day,” she recited. “They’re not our secret desires. Sorry, Freud (and Emma). And they’re certainly not prophetic. I saw Trav in a bed. I dreamed him in a bed. I haven’t touched a man in a long time and so my brain put him inmybed. That’s it.”

She sat up, feeling slightly better. Except for the part about not touching a man. That might have been a buried secret spilling, at least the way she felt about it. Marcus had been gone for weeks before their planned elopement. And they certainly hadn’t touched that day. That was weeks ago now. A couple months wasn’t a huge long time, especially given the emotional fallout she was dealing with, but it wasn’t recent either.

She glanced at the clock. Seven minutes past her usual shower schedule. Enough of this. She wasn’t going to let a dirty dream make her late, or start questioning whether she needed to add “vaguely horny” to the list of physical symptoms of this breakup.

And she wasn’t going to give another thought to the smile that had been stretched across her face when she woke up from said dream.

* * *

“Come on in. You don’t need a reservation.” Trav stared down at his textbook, eyes blurred as he acknowledged the warm body who’d been behind him for the last five minutes.

Sonya must have thought her Chuck Taylors made her undetectable when she’d come up behind him and hovered in the doorway. Maybe to someone else, but he’d developed a pretty keen ear for an approaching attack. And he’d been hoping she’d show up.

He’d spent the afternoon trying to gage whether or not she felt any awkwardness after their accidental mattress-sharing. She hadn’t seemed fazed at all, and he wasn’t sure if he was glad for it or a little dejected.

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