Page 80 of The Woman in the Hollow
“It will be a cold day in hell that a woman under my protection sleeps a floor below me while I’m safe in my bed.”
Oh.
Well.
That was unexpectedly hot.
Like, you know, everything about Dante Grassi.
I’d never really felt like I needed to be under a man’s protection before. Maybe part of that was because I’d literally been in the situation where a mugger approached me and my boyfriend on the street and he literally turned and ran away without me, leaving me to deal with the bad guy myself.
Now that I had a protective man standing right in front of me acting like it was his sworn duty to make sure no harm ever came to me, though, I finally understood the appeal.
“Sleep here.” I genuinely just meant sleep—I think—but it came out a lot more husky than I’d intended. “We can share the bed,” I added. “It’s big enough for a giant. Which, you know, you kind of are.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
He genuinely looked like he was having some sort of battle with himself. His eyes were tight, his jaw tense enough for a muscle to be ticking.
Whatever he was struggling with, though, he chose not to share with me.
“You’re sure?” he asked with the gravity one might use when asking if someone was sure about cutting their own hair after a bad breakup.
It was just a bed!
We were grown adults.
It was no big deal.
Or maybe that was me trying to convince myself of that fact. While being fully aware that desire was still pinging off every nerve ending.
“Of course,” I said, gesturing toward the empty side of the bed.
It still took him a second to move, like he was still fighting himself.
In the end, though, he gave in, coming over to the other side of the bed, sliding under the covers, then exhaling a slow, deep breath.
Trying to distract myself, I reached for the remote and pretended that finding a show to fall asleep to was of the utmost importance.
When I finally settled on one, I turned off the light, then acted as if my focus was on the show. When I was painfully aware of every shift he made, his steady, even breath, the heat of his body.
I didn’t know exactly how long I lay there awake, staring at the TV as the sitcom went from one episode to the next, but it felt like it took forever for my body to calm down enough to drift off to sleep.
Only to wake up not long after, toasty warm, my head and leg draped over my body pillow.
Only, no.
My body pillow was soft.
The thing I was sprawled all over was hard.
And, you know, last I checked, my body pillow didn’t breathe.
Shit.
Of course.
