Page 69 of Scandal
“Other areas?”
She shrugs. “Pointers.”
“What if I just wanted someone to talk to?”Like a friend?
Her eyes soften just a little. “Get me Sundays off, and you have yourself a deal.”
Chapter Sixteen
ASHER
I wake up to the sound of my watch’s alarm. My arm is crammed under the decorative pillow I’ve confiscated to prop up my head overnight, and the alarm is bloody deafening right next to my ear.
I roll over as best I can. This chaise isn’t meant for sleeping. I hit the button to silence the alarm, then I see the time.
“Shit,” I murmur.
Clearly, it wasn’t loud enough. The damn thing had been beeping for several minutes before I woke up, and now I’m running late.
I get up. The darkness makes it hard to see, but I press on. I rearrange the pillows, fold the blanket I had wrapped around my body, and sprint to the bed just in time to toss it at the foot of the bed and pull the covers back.
The door creaks open just as Mercury turns, her sleepy eyes meeting mine. I’ve barely got the sheet pulled over me, my arm still suspiciously raised in the air, so I do the first thing I can think of—I throw my leg over her hip and drop my arm around her waist.
“Oh!” the maid gasps, catching us in what appears to be a compromising position. “I’m so sorry, my lord!”
I look over my shoulder and pull the covers up as if I’m trying to hide any indecencies. “No apology necessary. We just lost track of time. Come back later?”
Her blush could give Mercury a run for its money. “Of course, my lord,” she says, backing out of the room.
By the time she exits, I’m already out of bed. “Sorry,” I say, running a hand through my disheveled hair. “My alarm didn’t wake me in time, and I had to think of something on the fly.”
She’s sitting up now, arms folded around her knees. Despite all the changes my mother has tried to impose on her out there, in here she’s still the Mercury I remember from the cottage. The one who wears shorts and a hoodie to bed. The one who falls asleep on one side of the bed and wakes up curled against me in the morning.
Or at least she used to. Before I started acting like an ass and sleeping on the chaise.
Before the kiss…
“It’s okay,” she responds. “It was smart thinking. Gotta keep up appearances.”
Keep up appearances…
That’s all we’ve been doing for weeks now. Ever since that moment in the water, when she said she wanted me to be her first, I’ve been doing everything in my power to keep her at arm’s length.
To remind myself that this isn’t real and that it’s just temporary.
Because it’s safer this way.
Although things may feel awkward and strained now, it could be a hundred times worse if we added the complications of a physical relationship.
Despite my promise to her brother, I just don’t see it ending well.
The chances of either of us coming out unscathed are slim to none. One of us is likely to get hurt, and while I believe I’m stepping back to protect her, I worry that the one I’m protecting might be myself.
Because the one word that keeps ringing in my ear since that day in the loch is “first.”
I want you to be myfirst…
Does that mean she plans for there to be others?
