by M. J. Duncan
Dana yawned and sat up, running a hand through her hair as she looked at Gwen. “You okay with that plan? I can go make some coffee to try and wake up a bit if you’d rather go home.”
Gwen shook her head. Storm had plenty of water, and her food was in an automatic timed dispenser so that her schedule wouldn’t be changed whenever Gwen’s work schedule fluctuated. “There’s no reason to do that. Besides, if you’re as beat as I am, even a full pot wouldn’t be enough.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right.” Dana blinked twice and shook her head, a low groan escaping her as she pushed herself to her feet. She looked at Regan and Luke. “If you guys want to keep playing, I can point Jay in the right direction.”
“I’ll do it,” Brooke said through a yawn as she swung her feet onto the floor.
“Thanks, babe,” Regan said, settling back into position to resume their game.
Brooke muttered something unintelligible and nodded as she pushed herself out of her chair and made her way toward Jay.
“Okay.” Dana held out her hands to Gwen, an adorably sleepy smile tugging weakly at her lips. “You ready?”
Gwen nodded and allowed Dana to pull her to her feet, a jaw-popping yawn covering the small frown of disappointment that she had been unable to mask when Dana’s hands slipped from her own. She left her heels underneath the coffee table where she had kicked them off earlier as she followed Dana out of the den and down the hall. Like the den and every other room she had seen so far, the hallway looked like it belonged in a magazine with its bright white wainscoting, the walls above covered with the same off-white paint tinted with the barest hint of gray as the rest of the home—a perfect neutral background for splashes of color to personalize each space. She glanced at the formal dining room that had a table large enough to seat sixteen and the palatial kitchen with its bright white cabinets, marble countertops, and gleaming professional grade stainless appliances as they passed, too tired to truly appreciate their beauty, and groaned softly as they turned up the stairs.
“You gonna make it?” Dana teased.
Gwen shrugged and shook her head as she yawned again. She eventually did make it to the top, though it took far more effort to climb to the second floor than it should have, and she sighed with relief when the floor leveled out in front of them.
“Second door on the left,” Dana said, pointing down the hall. “I’ll go grab you something to sleep in. Do you prefer shorts or yoga pants or…”
“Honestly, at this point I really don’t care. I’m good with whatever.”
“Right. I’ll be right back, then.”
Gwen nodded and made her way toward the guest room Dana had pointed out. The room was larger than her master bedroom, its walls painted the same warm whitish-gray as the rest of the home, and crisp white linens on the king-sized bed that matched the drapes on the window. It looked like it had been ripped from the pages of a Pottery Barn catalogue, and she huffed a quiet laugh of disbelief as her sleepy brain finally grasped her situation.
“You sure you’re okay with this?” Dana asked as she returned with a folded pair of black yoga pants and a cardinal red tee with USC stamped across the front in gold. “If sharing makes you uncomfortable, I can always go back downstairs and sleep on the couch. Or I can crash with Regan and Brooke—it wouldn’t be the first time either of those happened.”
It was a tempting offer, but Dana’s normally bright blue eyes were dulled with exhaustion and Gwen didn’t have the heart to ask her to sleep on a couch or shoehorn herself into Regan’s bed when she would sleep so much better here. “No, you don’t have to do that. This is fine.”
“If you’re sure.” When Gwen nodded, Dana handed her the clothes. “Okay. You can go change in the bathroom”—she pointed at a dark doorway on the far side of the room—“if you’d like. Extra towels and toothbrushes and all that kind of stuff are in the linen cabinet next to the sink if you need anything.”
“Yeah. Okay.” Gwen clutched the pants and shirt to her chest, her bare feet sinking into the plush carpet as she shuffled across the room. The bathroom was light and bright, with white cabinets topped with gorgeous veined marble, white hexagonal tile floors, and warm, dove gray paint on the walls, and she was able to breathe a little easier once the bathroom door clicked shut behind her.
She took a slow, deep breath as she laid the clothes Dana had given her on the vanity counter. She knew that she was doing the best she could given the situation—it was just, like everything else that had happened since she first laid eyes on Dana Ryan, not an ideal one. It didn’t take long at all for her to change and, because the last thing she needed to do before sharing a bed with Dana was accidentally walk in on her in the middle of changing, she dug through the linen cabinet Dana had said held little bathroom extras and found a package of wipes she could use to remove her makeup. She took her time cleaning her face and, when there was nothing she could do to to stall any longer, she left her folded dress on the counter and turned off the light as she made her way back into the bedroom.
Though the lights were still on, the bed had been turned down and Dana was already stretched out on her stomach beneath the sheets on the far side, the pristine white linens bunched at her waist contrasting nicely with the worn heather gray shirt she wore. “I didn’t know if you’d want the door open or closed, so I figured I’d leave it to you. It might get a little noisy when everyone else comes up in a bit because Regan doesn’t really do anything quietly, but if you’d be more comfortable with it open…”
Gwen smiled, touched by Dana’s thoughtfulness. “We can close it, then,” she said as she crossed the room to the door. Because, really, at this point… She closed her eyes as she pushed the bedroom door shut, and swallowed thickly as she flipped off the lights. Here we go.
The dim glow of a nightlight plugged into an outlet near the bathroom door provided just enough light for her to see what she was doing as she climbed into bed. She was careful to keep from touching Dana as she settled onto her side with her back to Dana, and tucked her left hand under her pillow as she pulled her knees up in a small bend. She half wanted to explain that this was how she almost always slept so Dana wouldn’t feel like she was shutting her out, but she also knew that by doing so, she would be making this already awkward situation even more awkward. So she said nothing and just sighed softly as her right fist rested lightly on the pillow beside her head.
“Good night, Gwen,” Dana mumbled, sleep so heavy in her tone that Gwen knew she would be out soon.
“Good night,” Gwen whispered, certain that she would not sleep a wink with Dana there beside her.
She had never been more wrong.
For the first time in longer than she could remember, she fell hard and fast into a deep, dreamless sleep. When she woke up just before ten the next morning, she was surprised to find that she was in the exact same position she had fallen asleep in. She knew from Luke’s teasing and Mallory’s decidedly less playful remarks that she tended to move around a lot in her sleep, but apparently she had been too tired to anything more than just sleep.
Of course, for as surprised as she was to find that she had apparently not moved an inch during the night, that shock was overshadowed by the fact that Dana was most certainly not where she had been when they had said goodnight in the wee hours of the morning.
Sometime during the night, Dana had drifted over to Gwen’s side of the bed, and she was now curled around her back, trim hips cradling the curve of her ass and a heavy arm draped over her waist. Of course, both of those developments—as wonderful as they were in their own right—were barely noticeable compared to the hand cupping her breast and the thumb that was drifting lightly back and forth across her nipple, sending delicate shocks through her body. Really, though, she should have expected it, she had read enough romance stories to know that this was always, always what happened when the would-be-should-be-lovers shared a bed, but she had—foolishly, it turned out—hoped that real life would be different from
fiction.
Now that she was aware of the way Dana was wrapped around her, it was all she could focus on. Her heart beat heavily in her throat, blocking the moan that so desperately wanted to escape her as each slow swipe of Dana’s thumb over her nipple made her clit twitch. She had no idea how long this had been going on, had no idea how much exquisite torture she had survived to this point, but she was certain that if she stayed in this position for too much longer that she would throw away what little self-control she had left, roll over, and kiss Dana like she had been dreaming about ever since she’d run out on her in Hawaii.
Oh god, she thought as Dana shifted behind her, pulling her closer and nuzzling the back of her neck as she mumbled incoherently in her sleep. The hand on her breast tightened, thumb and a newly added forefinger pinching her nipple hard enough to make her hips jerk, and she clenched her jaw as she squeezed eyes shut.
If she didn’t get the hell out of this bed before Dana did that again, she would most definitely do something that she really, really shouldn’t.
She somehow managed to slip free from Dana’s hold without waking her, and she didn’t dare look back at the bed as she hurried into the bathroom, her borrowed shirt dragging over her straining nipples with every tortuous step. Her hands trembled with the force of her pounding pulse, her traitorous gaze finding Dana as she carefully and quietly shut the door, sealing herself off from the adorably rumpled woman sprawled across the bed.
Gwen blew out a soft, shaky breath and ran a hand through her hair as she spun away from the door, just barely resisting the urge to open it again. She yanked on the tap in the shower and stripped off her clothes as the water warmed up, and the soft groan that escaped her as she stepped beneath the beating spray was thankfully muffled by the sound of water rushing through the pipes and beating against the tile floor.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
It would have been a hell of a lot easier for her to get control of herself if the feeling of warm water sliding over her hyper-sensitive skin wasn’t so damned arousing. What self-control she had managed until this point crumbled as she turned just enough that a stream of water hit the nipple Dana had been playing with, and she closed her eyes as she succumbed to the need pulsing between her thighs, her left hand drifting up over her stomach to the breast Dana had been fondling as her right drifted down along the curve of her hip, fingertips combing through short, soft curls before sinking into slick warmth.
It was wrong, so wrong, for her to do this as a guest in someone else’s home, but she was only human and she just wasn’t strong enough to fight everything.
She moaned softly as her fingers found her clit, already slick and swollen from Dana’s sleepy touch, and she bit her lip as she began rubbing in slow, firm circles. Her hips twitched against her fingers as her other hand closed around her breast, her thumb and forefinger capturing her nipple in a hard, slow squeeze. She bit her lip as she leaned back against the wall of the shower, spreading her legs wider as she slipped two fingers inside herself and began pumping them in and out slowly, her mind conjuring the image of Dana’s smiling face and her memory supplying the roughly whispered words of encouragement that had been husked against her ear that night in Maui.
It was wrong, so, so wrong to allow herself to think of her like that, but here, now, she couldn’t deny herself what she wanted; couldn’t refuse herself this stolen moment of release that she had been denying herself for far too long.
She would have been embarrassed by how little time it took her to work herself up to the point of breaking if it didn’t feel so goddamn good. Her mouth fell open as she tumbled into bliss, Dana’s name escaping her in that moment of abandon on a trembling breath.
She swallowed thickly as she came back to herself, the sound of the water hitting the tile floor in a steady crescendo that matched the thundering beat of her pulse in her ears, and blew out a long, shaky breath as she turned and lifted her face into the spray. She shouldn’t have allowed herself this moment of weakness, but she could not deny that she felt so much lighter now because of it. And, for that, she felt guilty, because she had no right to find such release at Dana’s imagined touch.
A low groan rumbled in her throat as she pondered the mess her life had become, and she shook her head as she consoled herself with the knowledge that in eleven days the London Audition would be over and she would finally be able to move on from the purgatory she had been trapped in from the moment she decided to support Mallory through her audition process. What would happen after that was anyone’s guess but, as she reached for the shampoo resting on a ledge in the back wall of the shower, she couldn’t deny that she hoped she might be able to find the happiness she so desired in Dana’s arms.
THIRTY-FOUR
A small cloud of lingering steam spilled into the bedroom when Gwen opened the bathroom door sometime later, and in the dim light that seeped through the drapes that Dana had pulled over the window the night before, she could see that Dana was still fast asleep, her arms wrapped around the pillow Gwen had abandoned in her rush to escape. She was an adorable disaster with her hair sticking up every which way despite the laws of gravity and a small, serene smile curling her lips, and Gwen selfishly allowed herself a few moments to just look at her. To let her gaze travel appreciatively over the curve of Dana’s cheek and the line of her neck, to linger on the definition in her arms and the tight swell of her ass—things she couldn’t possibly do while Dana was awake because she wasn’t free to want her the way she did.
She shook her head, chasing away the whisper of a thought the devil on her shoulder was murmuring in her ear, telling her to climb back into bed and try and take the pillow’s place in Dana’s embrace, and instead made her way to the door to find somewhere else in the house to pass the time until Dana finally woke up.
The house was quiet as she made her way toward the stairs, not entirely sure where she was going. The first floor of the house was as quiet as the upper level but brightly lit by the mid-morning sun that poured through the uncovered windows, and she briefly considered rummaging through the kitchen to make herself a cup of coffee before she nixed the idea because she didn’t know Regan and Brooke nearly well enough to just invade their kitchen like that.
She was in the middle of debating running out to Dana’s car to retrieve her phone so she would have something to keep herself occupied until the rest of the house woke up when a quiet voice called out from behind her, “Good morning.”
Gwen smiled as she turned toward Brooke. “Oh. Hi. Good morning.” She waved a hand at the borrowed clothes she had put back on after her shower. “I hope Regan won’t mind, but I just couldn’t find the willpower to put my dress back on this morning.”
Brooke waved her off. “Please, it’s more than fine. I wouldn’t want to, either, to be honest. But it was a pretty great dress,” she added with a wink, and laughed when Gwen blushed and looked down at her feet. “I’m going to go make some coffee—you want any?”
“I would love some,” Gwen admitted with a grateful sigh.
Brooke chuckled as she led the way down the hall toward the kitchen. “Did Dana keep you up all night with her cuddle monster routine?”
“I…no.” Gwen shook her head as her stomach rippled at the memory of waking up wrapped in Dana’s arms, that pleasant fluttery feeling replaced a half-second later with embarrassment about how she had handled the situation. “I was so tired that I slept like the dead, to be honest. I can’t remember the last time I slept so well.”
That much, at least, was true.
“Well, good. We aim to please here at Casa de Waterman.” Brooke grinned as they wandered into the kitchen. She waved a hand at the barstools pushed up to the large island as she powered on the Keurig and opened the cabinet above the machine to retrieve a couple mugs. “Make yourself comfortable; I’ll go grab the paper while the coffee’s doing it’s thing. We’ve got regular, hazelnut, and a caramel coffee. Any of those sound good?”
“Hazelnut, thank you.”
“Of course.” Brooke pulled two pods from a box and set them on the counter beside the coffee machine. She wiped her hands on her thighs and smiled. “Are you a breakfast person? I can make waffles or pancakes or omelets…”
Gwen shook her head. “You don’t need to go to that kind of effort for me.” She bit her lip as her stomach growled loudly. “I can get something later. It’s fine, really. I don’t want to impose on you any more than I already have.”
“Yeah, because it’s been just a bitch of a hardship for us.” Brooke rolled her eyes. “I’m starving and need to eat anyway, so I may as well make enough for both of us. What sounds good to you?”
“Can I help? I make a pretty good omelet.”
Brooke nodded. “Sure. I’ll go grab the paper and then make us some toast to go with it,” she said as she pulled a glass mixing bowl from a lower cabinet near the coffee machine and set it on the island. “How good are you? Can you work two pans at once?” she asked as she pulled identical frying pans from a cabinet under the island.
“I don’t see why I couldn’t,” Gwen assured her with a smile.
“Nice. Eggs and shit are in the fridge. Spice cupboard is to the right of the stove. I eat anything, so just make me whatever you’re having.” Brooke glanced over at the coffee machine that was still warming up and shook her head. “I’ll go grab the paper. I’ll be back in a few.”
“Sounds good.” Gwen nodded and made her way to the massive glass door fridge that looked like it had been plucked from an upscale commercial kitchen somewhere. She pulled a large carton of eggs and some butter from the fridge and set them on the island beside the mixing bowl before she began rummaging through the drawers, looking for some kind of filling. The fridge was a chef’s dream, stocked with anything and everything Gwen could imagine wanting, and she smiled as she grabbed a package of sliced pepper jack from one of the middle shelves along with a green bell pepper from a crisping drawer and topped off the collection with a package of prosciutto. Not quite the ingredients for a traditional Denver omelet, but close enough. The kitchen was, thankfully, rather intuitively laid out so she didn’t have to open every cupboard to find what she was looking for. She plucked a knife from the block beside the stove and set it on the island, and laughed softly when she found a stash of cutting boards in a narrow cabinet next to the hideaway trash and recycle cans in the island. She was in the middle of dicing up the bell pepper after having already whisked up a half-dozen eggs when Brooke returned with the Sunday Times.