Page 68 of Loverboy
Her body goes still. And even if nothing has been settled, I feel more at peace than I have in years.
21
Posy
When my phoneblares a Green Day tune into the darkness at four-forty-five a.m., I’m confused about several things at once.
Where am I?
Is there really a hard-bodied man stretched against my back?
Why does my body feel so well used?
Then I open my eyes and realize I’m in Gunnar’s bedroom, not mine. And it all comes rushing back to me. The hotel. The threatening man on the sixteenth floor. The van. The spying.
The sex.
Whoa. That last thing is almost more unbelievable than the rest.
Gunnar groans beside me. “What time is it?”
“Quarter ‘til five.” I sit up, slide sleepily off the bed and fetch my bag where I dropped it in Gunnar’s living room. I shut off my alarm and then go back into the bedroom. “Can I borrow your shower?”
“Anytime,” he mumbles into the pillow.
I cross the cool floorboards toward his bathroom. When I flip on the light, I find the room to be even more impressive than I remember it from my hasty visit here at midnight.
Seriously. What the fuck, Gunnar? I’m still angry about his lies.I really need this job, he’d said. It tugged at my heartstrings.
And I hate feeling gullible. Why is it always men who make me feel that way? My father was the first asshole to make me feel like a fool. And then came Spalding.
My track record is terrible. Just introduce me to an asshole. Any asshole. I’ll believe him.
So here I stand in Gunnar’s bathroom, which would fit right in at the Playboy Mansion. There’s a bamboo floor and elegant glass tiles on the walls. Big fluffy towels wait on a gleaming towel bar outside the walk-in shower.
I’m so annoyed. But I’m going to shower like a queen anyway.
After taking care of business, I turn the water on full blast and wait for it to heat up. And then I slip out of the T-shirt Gunnar lent me to sleep in, and step beneath the warm spray.
Oh, this is heaven, even if it belongs to a liar.
He didn’t do it for a bad reason, my hormones weigh in.
“Shut up. You don’t know,” I whisper.
But then I zip my lip, because the bathroom door opens. And Gunnar walks right up to the shower, opens the door and slips inside.
“Morning,” he says gruffly. Then he leans down and kisses the juncture of my neck and shoulder.
And I am shook. “Morning,” I squeak. “What are you doing out of bed? It’s your day off.”
“It’s never my day off,” he says, grabbing the soap. He lathers up his hands and then begins washing my back.
I want to argue, but it feelsreallynice. So nice that I let out a groan as he begins to massage my lower back.
“Too much?” he asks quietly.
“No way. But I don’t know why you’re up, and I don’t know why you’re doing that. I can’t go back to bed with you. Someone has to make the pies.”
