Later on, I’d tried to give Kansas—Beau’s old best friend—a hug. Only, that’d ended in such an intense anxiety attack that I’d had to be hospitalized.
I’d learned after that just to completely avoid any and all touching with the members of the male persuasion until I could get myself under control.
Something that didn’t come all that easily at first.
Luckily, I’d had some really great friends that had some really great husbands, that would let me try out a hug on them any time I needed to.
Eventually, I got to the point where I could hug Beckham’s husband, Trouper and Kansas if I was mentally prepared. I could hug most of my brothers if they waited until I came to them.
But, saying that, I hadn’t been able to do that with any other man that I knew, at least, until a certain man with a police badge came into my life.
I fully expected myself to be freaking the fuck out at this point. However, the more I lay there in the quiet peace of Will’s arms, the more I realized that that always present feeling of impending doom, the one where I would have to run for my life at any second, wasn’t there.
I shifted in Will’s arms, my eyes falling closed all over again on their own volition.
The next time I woke, it was with the urgent need to pee.
I got up, used the facilities, brushed my teeth with my finger—because there was just no way I would ever share anything with a man again, even a sexy one—and came back out into the bedroom.
I found Will on his belly in the bed, his arm around my pillow that I’d recently used.
My gaze tracked down the large breadth of his back, taking in the multitude of muscles, tattoos—he had a rather large gray and black shield on his back that looked like it was the type that knights used back in the medieval days—to his backside that was covered in a pair of plain black boxer briefs.
He had little dimples above his shapely ass, and I couldn’t help my fingers twitching from wanting to trace those indents.
“I’ll give you thirty bucks if you start the coffee,” Will groaned.
I snickered. “I guess I could do that. But I don’t want thirty dollars for it.”
He opened one eye barely a crack and stared at me. “What do you want?”
My lips quirked. “I’ll let you know after I start it.”
I followed the path to his kitchen—it wasn’t hard to find seeing as his cabin was all of two bedrooms, a living room, and a bathroom—and walked straight to the coffee pot.
There I found a Mr. Coffee that I didn’t realize anyone used anymore since K-Cups became a thing.
Hell, when I reached for the coffee can—Folger’s—it was to find one of the metal spoons that used to come in the old metal coffee cans.
Searching through the cabinets that were closest to the coffee pot, I finally gave up and screamed, “Where are your coffee filters?”
I hadn’t had to make coffee like this in years.
Damn, I was spoiled.
And probably ruining the planet with the K-Cup obsession.
“Bottom drawer underneath the sink.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Could you have made it any farther from the coffee pot?” I called out, my lips tipping up in a smirk.
“Sure,” he called back, sounding a little more muffled. “But I thought the bathroom might’ve been a little gross seeing as I shit in there.”
I rolled my eyes, not offended in the least by his bathroom humor.
I was a nurse.
Nurses dealt with shit on a daily basis.
Hell, if a shift passed that I didn’t have to clean someone’s shit up, I called it a good day.
After getting the coffee pot started, I went in search of the cups, finding them above the fridge, which I had to get a stool to access.
Rolling my eyes at the man’s ability to make things difficult, I pulled the pot out and replaced it with one of the cups before filling his cup up.
I did the same with mine, and then replaced the pot, barely spilling a drop from the machine.
After I had two steaming cups in my hands, I walked back to the bedroom to find his face still buried in my pillow.
Walking into the room, I headed to his side of the bed and placed his cup on the nightstand before taking the small space that he left behind his ass and at the edge of the bed.
Bringing the cup to my mouth, I took a small sip, then gasped when he jolted and turned, causing me to spill.
“Ouch!” I cried out, pulling the shirt away from my chest so it couldn’t burn me anymore. “I think you burned my nipple!”
He rumbled out a laugh as he said, “Do you want me to check?”
There was a long, silent pause as I considered his offer.
“I think I’m the one more qualified here,” I admitted sagely. “But if there’s ever an issue with my body that a police officer has more information on… then that’s all yours.”
He snorted and reached for his cup, pulling it around my body and to his mouth before taking a large sip.
Only after he’d made the ‘ahhh’ sound did he look toward me and my shirt.
“I have a shirt on the floor there you can take,” he offered.
I sat my coffee cup down and shucked my t-shirt, reaching for the one on the floor, not once thinking about the fact that I was halfway naked in front of him—panties and a sports bra was half naked, right?
He was silent as he watched me bring the shirt to my face and inhale.
It smelled divine.
However, the large, crusty white stain on the front after I righted it right side out had me discarding it. “Sorry, but I don’t do jizz stains.”
He snorted. “It’s not a jizz stain,” he grumbled. “My cat is just a douchebag and likes to throw up his hairballs on my clothes.” He paused. “You can go get another one of mine off the top of the dryer. They should be clean because he only seems to like my dirty ones to puke on.”
Smiling, I hurried toward his dryer, which I hadn’t seen before, but ended up having no problem finding.
It was in the kitchen in what I thought was the pantry.
It wasn’t a pantry. It was a small closet that was just big enough to fit a small washer and dryer and no more.
I was so focused on finding a shirt since they weren’t on top of the dryer that I didn’t hear the front door open.
I did, for sure, hear it shut, though.
Backing up with a t-shirt in my hand—one straight from the dryer, though that dryer was ice cold—I stared at the door in worry.
Had Will left…
I blinked when I found myself staring at his partner.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she all but barked.
Will came out of the room with my coffee and his in his hands, and only a low-slung pair of sweatpants covering his lower half.
He froze when Brianna made the complete wrong connection.
Brianna’s eyes went from me, with his t-shirt covering the front half of my body, to Will, then down the length of his body, then back to me.
I looked to Will who was all but glaring at Brianna and took in what he was looking like.
He was in those gray sweatpants that were so low that you could see almost the entire waistband of his underwear. His almost curly black hair was messy and wild, as if I’d done nothing but run my fingers through it all night—when I hadn’t even gotten close to it. And his mouth was puffy, but not because I’d been kissing those edible lips, but because he’d been biting them to keep himself from bursting out laughing when I’d spilled my coffee down my front at his abrupt movement earlier.