“Don’t f**k with him,” Matt warns. He’s suddenly very direct. And the intensity in his face is almost scary. “And don’t break his heart.”

“He’d have to love me for that to be an issue.”

Matt snorts. “You’re clueless, aren’t you?” he asks.

“Apparently,” I say.

Matt wraps my head in his arm and squeezes me against him, rubbing my head playfully with his knuckles. He stops and sniffs me. “You smell good,” he says. He laughs. “We don’t have much around here that smells good.”

“Thank you,” I grumble.

He pops me on the tail and points me toward Logan’s room. “Go talk to him,” he says.

I yelp and look back at him over my shoulder. I can’t believe he just did that.

“That was a ‘get your ass in the game’ smack. Not an ‘I want to see you na**d’ smack,” he warns. I didn’t doubt what he meant.

“I don’t mess with Logan’s women,” he says. He told me that the first night.

“It’s a brother thing,” we both say at the same time.

Matt grins. “Exactly,” he says.

When I walk in Logan’s room, he’s laying back on the bed with his arm laid over his eyes. He doesn’t look up when I walk in, so I touch his knee. He uncovers his eyes and lifts his head, looking up at me. His blue eyes blink for a moment, and then he sits up. He tangles his fingers with mine and pulls me closer to him. “Don’t sleep on the couch,” he says.

“Matt says we should wake Paul up and let him sleep on the couch.”

Logan’s eyes get wider and he smiles. “I like that idea. But I would rather sleep with you any day.”

“You could have fooled me,” I spit out.

“What?” he asks. Could he not see my lips? Or did he not understand what I said?

“I was standing stark na**d in front of you, Logan. And you didn’t have any interest in me.” I hold up a hand to stop him when he opens his mouth. “I get it. You don’t have feelings like that for me. It’s all right.”

Suddenly, Logan jerks my hand, rolling me gently onto the bed. His body covers mine, and his face is a breath away from me. “You think I don’t like you that way?” he asks. He’s looking into my face like he’ll find something he’s missing there.

“You laughed at me.”

“I laughed because the one girl I do want to f**k is na**d in my room and I can’t have her!” he growls. “It’s like divine intervention.”

He wiggles a knee between my knees and kicks my legs open wider. He settles there between my thighs and rocks forward so that he presses against my panties. He’s hard. So hard.

“I was na**d and you wouldn’t even look at me,” I start. I close my eyes.

“I didn’t want to disrespect you,” he says.

He rocks his h*ps against me again, and this time the length of him notches against my cleft. My breath catches.

“I want you so bad it hurts.” His voice is quiet, and harder to understand than it normally is.

“You didn’t even look at me,” I protest.

He sits up on his knees and lifts my leg up by his shoulder. He’s not looking at my body. “You have pink toenail polish. And you have a bit of stubble on your legs.” He grins. “You can use my razor if you want.” His hand slides up my calf, toward my knee, leaving a wake of goose bumps behind. “Your thighs are firm, and you have a generous flare to your hips. His hand slips to the front of my panties, where he drags his thumb back and forth for a moment. “You have this tiny dusting of hair, here.” His thumb presses against my cleft and I arch my back to press harder against him. He chuckles. His hands drift up my sides, lifting the shirt. He tugs it up, until it rests just beneath my breasts. He presses a kiss to my belly. My ni**les are hard and standing tall. He licks his lips. “Your ni**les are pink and puffy and perfect. And your br**sts will fit in my hands.” He throws the shirt back down, groaning as he lies back down on top of me, rocking his length against me again. “I saw everything,” he says. “I was just trying to be a gentleman.” He laughs. “You thought I didn’t look.” He kisses the tip of my nose. “Silly woman,” he scolds.

“You looked.” That’s all I can say. And it comes out as a croak. Thank God he can’t hear the quiver in my voice.

“I looked,” he admits. “You were na**d. And so f**king beautiful that I could barely breathe. Of course, I looked.”

“You look at a lot of na**d women?” I don’t want the answer to that question after it’s out of my mouth.

“Not anymore,” he breathes against my lips. His lips touch mine, tentatively, and then he retreats. He’s making me crazy. His h*ps press insistently, pushing him closer and closer to my heat. “I haven’t seen a single na**d woman since the day I met you.”

“Do you want to see any na**d women?” I ask. My voice is still doing that quavery thing. His hand lies on my throat, almost like he’s listening with his fingertips for the sound of my voice.

He shakes his head, looking directly into my eyes. “Just one.”

I reach down to tug his shirt over my head, but he stops me with a grunt.

“What?” I ask.

He looks into my eyes. “What’s your name?” he asks.

This time, it’s me who throws her arm over her eyes. I want to scream. I can’t tell him anything. “I can’t tell you,” I say.

He tugs the shirt back down around my hips. “Then your clothes stay on.” He kisses me, his lips nibbling at mine until I’m breathless. “And so do mine.”

“Your brother said you should f**k me and get it over with.”

He heaves a sigh. “That’s because he thinks I’ll f**k you and not want to see you anymore. But I can assure you, that’s not the case.” He presses against me again, rocking against my cleft, the ridge of his manhood pressing against my softness. “Once I get to be inside you, I’ll never want to give you up.” He kisses the side of my neck, suckling gently as he moves across the front of my throat. His five o’clock shadow abrades my tender skin. But I don’t want him to stop.

I reach down to cup him through his jeans, and he stills.

“Don’t play with me,” he warns. His voice is strong but quiet. “If you want to be my friend, you can be my friend. We can sleep in the same bed, we can have meals together, and we can spend time doing things we both like.”

I lift his head so that he’s looking at me. “I want to be your friend,” I say.

“I want you to be my girlfriend.”

“What does that mean?” I cry, slapping the bed with my open palms in frustration.

He looks confused. “I’m not sure. But I think it’s the same as being my friend, but I get to make you come.” He rocks against me once again. Then he lifts away. I want to scream.

“Where are you going?”

“To get the blanket off the couch. Unless you want me to sleep out there?” He looks unsure.

I want him inside me. But that’s not going to happen. “Go get the blanket,” I grumble. He chuckles and leaves the room.

My panties are wet. Soaked. I reach into my bag and put on a fresh pair. I’m adjusting them over my h*ps when he walks back in the room.

“Fresh panties,” I explain. “All your fault,” I taunt.

He groans, and flops back on the bed. “Why did you have to tell me that?” he asks. He lays there for a minute with his hands clenched. Then he motions me forward and pulls my head down to lie on his chest. He takes a deep breath and hugs me to him tightly, then releases me and relaxes. He picks up a book from beside his night stand and holds it in one hand. He reads quietly to himself.

“What are you reading?” I ask.

He looks down at it and tells me the title. “Will you read it to me?” I ask.

He lifts his head long enough to look at my face and finds that I’m serious. I can learn. And I love books. I just can’t read them. I have an amazing memory.

“Start at the beginning?” I ask.

He turns to page one and begins to read. I settle against him, wrapping my arms around his chest, snuggling as tightly against him as I can. And he reads. His voice is strong and sure, and he reads long into the night, long after he’s yawning, because I don’t want him to stop. When he finally lays the book to the side, I roll toward him and he turns to face me. He tucks me beneath his chin and I can hear his heart beating in his chest. “When you’re ready for what I want,” he says, “let me know.”

I’m ready. I’m ready now. But I’m not ready for the same thing he is. I nod against his chest, and he heaves a sigh. His lips touch the top of my head, soft as a whisper.

***

I wake up the next day and lift my head. Sunlight pours into the room, and I know I’ve slept much later than I normally would. But then again, we were up really late last night reading. My heart clenches inside my chest when I realize that he hasn’t used his voice in eight years, but he spent hours last night reading to me. It makes me feel warm all over, and I look around, wondering where he is. The bed is empty, and there’s not even an impression of his head on the pillow. That’s probably because we shared the same space last night. I draped myself across his chest, and then we adjusted, and I had my head on his belly. All the time he read, his fingers had trailed across one body part of mine or the other. It was a tiny tickle, but it touched the center of me.

I know he wasn’t unaffected by it. He was rock hard, and he had to ball the covers up in his lap more than once. But he ignored it. I ignored it. I wanted to reach over and touch him, but he doesn’t want that from me. He wants all of me. And I’m not free to give it away. I’ll never be free.

I roll over and brush my hair from my eyes. I still can’t get used to the black hair. It’s so different from my natural color. Every time I look at myself in a mirror, I have to do a double-take and try to figure out who I’m looking at. Maybe I’ll never know.

My eyes land on a sketch pad that’s propped against the lamp on Logan’s end table. I crawl closer to it on my hands and knees, and close my eyes tightly, wincing when I see that he’s drawn a na**d woman. She’s drawn in pencil, and he has shaded all the parts of her na**d body. But what immediately grabs my attention is that there’s one streak of color on the whole thing. It’s down the left side of her hair. It’s blue.

Oh, crap. It’s me.

I sit up on the edge of the bed and pick it up. It’s me. Definitely me. My arms are down by my sides, and my fists are clenched tightly. There’s a look of defiance on my face. I’ve never seen an artist capture a look like that. But he’s done it. There’s a towel on the floor beside my toe and my foot is pointed like I just kicked it to the side.

He’s drawn shadowing around my boobs, and my ni**les are standing tall, sticking out like they’ve been kissed tight. My stomach clenches and I have to force myself to take a breath. There’s a small triangle of hair at the vee between my thighs. I close my eyes. It’s almost lifelike. It’s me. He drew me. From memory. At the bottom are some scribbled words. They’re written in all caps and the letters are spaced far apart.

I L O O K E D

Yes, apparently he did. There’s no doubt about it. He saw me na**d. And he remembered every dip, every curve and every strand of hair. Or lack of hair. Yikes. I close the sketch pad so no one else will see it. I’m feeling a bit over-exposed, like he somehow peeled back a layer of me and forced me to look at it as closely as he did.

I can’t believe I accused him of not wanting to look at me. He obviously did. He looked closer than anyone ever has. I take a deep breath and sit there for a minute with my eyes closed.

I slide on a pair of jeans beneath Logan’s t-shirt and put on a bra. I like his brothers, but I’m not one hundred percent sure who’s in the house. And I don’t want to walk out there to get a cup of coffee to find everyone dressed appropriately and for me to be the one who’s not. Padding around in the middle of the night is one thing. This is different.

I let myself out of the room and look around. The apartment is empty. I’m kind of glad that Logan’s not there, since my face is flaming just thinking about how closely he perused my body. If he was there in the flesh, I’d be a puddle on the floor.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen the apartment when it wasn’t full of testosterone and male bodies. It’s a mess, like usual. I pour myself f a cup of coffee and load the dishwasher, and then clean the countertops. I can’t help it. They might not even want me to do it. But I do it anyway. My life is such a mess, and what I want most in the world is to tidy it up. Since I can’t tidy my own life, I’ll tidy their apartment instead. I remove a rubber band from a stack of mail and twist my hair up out of my face. If I’m going to clean, I’m going to do it right.

I start a load of laundry, and fold what’s in the dryer. I don’t know which shirt goes to which man, since they’re all big boys. So, I just make a neat pile of them and stack them on the kitchen table. The pile grows as the day goes on, and by the end of the afternoon, the house is still empty and quiet, and it’s clean from top to bottom. I didn’t clean any of their bedrooms, because that would be an invasion of their privacy, and my cleaning at all might be, now that I think of it. I bite my fingernails and look around. They won’t be mad, will they?

I go into the bathroom and look beneath the sink. There were cleaning supplies there the other day, and it could use refreshing. I lift a bucket of baby toys out of the way and then I stop. I shuffle through them. There are tiny boats, bath crayons, and a rubber ducky. I give it a squeeze and it goes flat, a hiss of air escaping it. Why do they have baby toys?