Page 16 of Forced to Share
“Shit,” I mumbled, quickly getting up to clean it, only to ram my face directly into that chest I’d been admiring.
“Austin, are you okay?”
My face was on fire. “Maybe?” God, the squeak in my voice was pathetic. We needed to go to bed and get the night over with. Maybe once all the initial awkwardness wore off, this wouldn’t be so damn bad.
Chapter 10
Jeremy
Nothing could have prepared me for sleeping in the same bed as Austin Bennett again. We’d started off back to back, and all I could focus on all night was the heat radiating off of him. With the way he kept shifting, there was no way he’d gotten very good sleep either. It was like it became his mission to make sure we never touched, which was impossible given the size of the bed and how big both of us were.
Not to mention that being in such close proximity all night gave me the world’s worst hard-on. I hadn’t been that turned on in God knows how long. All I could do was breathe in his citrusy scent all night. It was everywhere. Soaked into his pillows, blankets, and the air around me.I would have given anything to turn around and bury my nose in his neck, to take deep lungfuls of him until I was dizzy with need.
But now was not the right time.
It may never be the right time ever again. I threw that chance out the window the second I ghosted him three years ago.
“Are you awake yet?”
I snorted, rolling over and bumping shoulders with Austin. “To be fair? I don’t think I ever went to sleep.”
He laughed a little in return. “Okay, so I’m not alone in that.”
It shouldn’t have made me feel better knowing he struggled, but we had to fix this if I was going to keep staying here. It wouldn’t work if neither of us got any sleep.
“Maybe tonight I can sleep on the floor?” I asked cautiously, because last night he’d been adamant that we could handle this. Clearly we couldn’t.
“No. If anyone is sleeping on the floor, it’s me. You’re a guest in this house.”
That had me laughing harder than before. “An unwelcome one at that. You’re only housing me because I’m stuck.”
Austin sat up in bed, causing me to land against the mattress. I stared up at him, and heat rushed to my face.It’s been a minute since I’d been in this position, but I remembered it like it was yesterday.
My mind wandered back to the last time. It’d been a week before I’d pulled my disappearing act, and Austin had invited me over to watch a movie. We all know what that means. There was no movie watching involved. Sure, we’d turned one on, but it was quickly forgotten in the background as we got lost in each other, our kisses growing heated and frantic until we’d stripped each other of our clothes, given each other sloppy hand jobs and then laid there sticky and panting on his couch.
Thinking about those things was a bad idea. Terrible even. Because there I was, lying in his bed, starting to chub up, and there wouldn’t be any way for me to hide it in our current position. Hell, we were both men. It was a natural part of our wake-up procedure, right? Except, there’d been no actual sleeping involved. Maybe some random dozing, but nothing lasting.
“I wouldn’t say you were completely unwelcome...”
My breath caught at the admission. Austin’s eyes softened as he said it, and he hesitantly pushed some hair back from my face. The longer we stayed there, the more I was tempted to pull him on top of me and relive some of our earlier times together.
And then someone was pounding on the door. “Austin! Get your ass up. I want to go get breakfast.”
Leah. That was an issue. She was pissed and had every right to be. Though, it wasn’t fair to make her brother suffer just because he’d been nice to me and let me stay.
Austin groaned as he climbed from the bed, and a small part of me took pride in the fact that I hadn’t been the only one affected by our positions. The front of his pajama pants tented out a bit as he crossed the room and grabbed clean clothes from his luggage.
“Freaking Leah. I love her, but I don’t know why we have to get moving first thing in the morning. It was her own fault for waiting until the last second to go shopping.” Austin continued to mutter as he stripped his t-shirt over his head, which did nothing to settle down my own state of arousal. It didn’t even help when he pulled on the thick navy blue thermal shirt. Nope, because right after that he turned away from me to push down his pajama pants, and my mouth watered at how good his round ass looked in his tight boxer briefs.
But that was enough tempting myself for the morning. I needed to get up, and as much as I knew Leah would hate me tagging along at that point, I couldn’t spend Christmas with her family and not have anything to give people. There was a chance that they wouldn’t appreciateanything at that point, either. I was still thankful for a roof over my head, so I was going to do something nice for the Bennett family no matter what.
I rolled out of bed and found my bag on the other side of the room. As carefully as I could, I shuffled through my belongings until I found something to wear for the day. There was a heavy sweater that I could wear under my thicker jacket, and my jeans were pretty warm. If Austin had been comfortable enough to change in front of me, then I could do it as well. Though I had slept without a shirt, as it was.
My sweater was thick red wool, and it would be itchy, but I’d sacrifice the comfort for the warmth. Maybe while we were out shopping, I could find a few long-sleeved shirts. In retrospect, I should have packed more warm clothes, but I hadn’t expected it to snow like it had last night.
“Do you think it’ll be okay with me tagging along today?” I don’t know what possessed me to ask.
Austin only shrugged when I turned to face him. “I don’t know. We’ll make it work.”
