I nod.

“Which question are you answering? The shirt? Or the washer?”

“Both,” I say. She smiles at me. I’d talk to this girl all day long if it means she’ll smile at me like that. I take a shirt from a hanger and toss it to her. She catches it and pulls it over her head. After she tugs it down toward her knees, she tugs the towel and jerks it from beneath the shirt. She sits down on the side of my bed and removes a pair of pink panties from her bag.

“Can you turn around?” she asks.

I do, and the fact that I did makes me grin like a kid in a candy store. I hope she can’t see me.

I feel her hand on my shoulder and I turn back around. She’s wearing my AC/DC shirt, and it hangs down around her knees. Damn she’s pretty.

“Can I throw some things in your washing machine?” she asks.

“I can do it for you,” I offer.

She shakes her head. “You are not fondling my panties, perv,” she says, grinning. “Next thing I know, you’ll be sniffing them.” She laughs. I wish I could hear it, because it’s probably the most beautiful sound in the world. It’s not often I wish I could hear, because I can do almost anything I want. But right now, I wish I could hear the sound of her laughter.

I motion to her and she walks out with me to the hallway, where I open the door to the laundry closet. I take what’s in the dryer out, and put it on top. Look like Sam and Pete’s stuff and they can handle their own clothes. I flip what’s in the washer to the dryer, and ask her for her things by holding out my hands. She shakes her head. I step to the side and she starts to take a few things from her bag. She doesn’t have much – just a few shirts, some shorts, a pair of jeans, and what she was wearing today. And the throws in a few pairs of panties. There’s more Betty Boop and I grin at her and shake my head.

I dump in some laundry soap and she starts it, and then she walks back toward my bedroom. “Do you have a blanket I can put on the floor?” she asks.

What the hell? “Why?” I ask.

She looks at me like I’ve grown two heads. “To sleep on?”

“You are not sleeping on the floor,” I tell her. “You take the bed. I’ll sleep on the couch.”

“The couch is about five feet long. You’re too tall. I can sleep on the couch.” She nods like she’s made up her mind.

I grab her arm gently as she goes to walk by me. “No,” I say. “You take the bed.”

The bed is full size, so it’s not the biggest bed in the world. She draws her lower lip between her teeth and nibbles it. That has to be one of the most erotic things I’ve ever seen. I reach out and touch her lower lip with my thumb, gently pulling it from between her teeth. She licks her lips and looks everywhere but at me.

“Are you sure this is all right with you?” she asks.

I lean close to her and pull her into my chest. I don’t know why I feel the need to do that, but I do. She hesitates briefly and then wraps her arms around my waist. I kiss her gently on the forehead. She looks up at me and she looks almost lost. The color is high in her cheeks and she steps back. “Thank you,” she says. She stands up on tiptoe and kisses my cheek almost like it’s an afterthought.

That kiss touches me like the deepest tongue kiss never has. It’s like my breath is trapped in my throat and I can’t draw it in or out.

“Are you all right?” she asks.

“Fine,” I say. But I’m anything but fine. She raises her arms to lift her wet hair from her neck and her boobs shift beneath her shirt. I’m instantly hard. “Let me know if you need anything?” I say. But I’m not looking at her anymore. I’m walking toward the door as fast as I can, before she notices that I’m getting hard just thinking about the fact that she doesn’t have a bra on.

She touches my arm and says, “Logan, please don’t tell anyone that I can’t read, ok?” She looks worried and I hate it for her. I hate that she even has to worry about things like this.

“That was between me and you,” I tell her. I like that it’s our secret. Kind of like my talking is.

She closes the door behind me and I hear the thumb lock on the door click. She just locked me out of my own room. I can’t say I blame her really. She’s in a strange place. And she’s surrounded by strange men. But there’s a piece of me that’s glad she locked the door.

I walk back to the living room, taking a blanket with me from the linen closet.

“I still can’t believe you’re going to sleep on the couch,” Paul says.

I can’t believe it either. But I am.

Emily

I’ve been lying in Logan’s bed for what feels like hours, but I can’t sleep. I heard Pete when he came home, and I heard Paul tell him to go to bed. Then the apartment got quiet. No one has made a sound for hours, until now. I think it’s Matthew, because it sounds like quick, muffled footsteps and then an awful gagging noise.

I open the door and look out, the bathroom door is open about an inch, and I’m pretty sure that’s Matthew in there getting sick. He’s miserable, and I want to help him, but I also don’t want to intrude. I tiptoe into the kitchen because I’m thirsty, and I look over at the sofa, where Logan is sleeping. His feet are hanging off the edge by about a foot, and he’s flat on his back, his head bolstered by the arm of the couch. He doesn’t even have a pillow.

I open the fridge and bend over see what they have to drink, and when I stand up, Matthew is looking at me over the top of the door. “What are you doing?” he asks. His eyes are rimmed in red and bloodshot, and his face is pale.

“Getting something to drink,” I whisper. “Can I get you anything?”

He shakes his head. His gaze darts down to my bare legs, and I tug on the hem of Logan shirt. “Nice shirt,” he says. He jerks a thumb toward Logan. “Did you two have a fight?”

I look over at Logan too. He’s sleeping soundly, his mouth hanging open. “No,” I whisper. “Why would you think that?”

“Wait.” He stops like he’s thinking about something. “Why are you still here? Are you spending the night?”

I nod, lifting a bottle of water to my lips.

“Logan’s girls never spend the night.” He looks amused. But I don’t understand why.

“He insisted,” I whisper.

“Why are you whispering?” he whispers loudly and dramatically.

“Logan’s asleep,” I reply.

“He’s deaf.” He grins.

Oh, yeah. I forgot. It’s so easy to forget that he can’t hear. I laugh and shrug.

Suddenly, he turns on his heel and runs back to the bathroom. He’s sick again, but it sounds like his stomach is empty. I open drawers beside the sink until I find a drawer with towels in it. I wet one with some cool water, and I meet him when he’s coming out of the bathroom with it. He takes it from me with a heavy sigh and dabs his face with it. “Do you need anything?” I ask.

“Ginger ale,” he says. “There’s some in the fridge.”

I nod and go back in that direction. While I’m there, I grab an empty margarita mix bucket off the counter. I start down the hallway, and assume his door is the one with the open doorway. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands. I put the bucket in front of him. “For later,” I say.

“Thanks,” he says as he takes a sip of the ginger ale. I take the towel from his hands and go back to the bathroom, getting it cold again. When I go back in the room, he’s laying down, so I gently put the towel on his forehead and turn to walk out. “Don’t break his heart,” he says.

He’s puking his guts out and all he’s worried about is me breaking Logan’s heart.

“I’m just here for the night,” I say.

He snorts. It comes out more like a snuffle. But I get it. He doesn’t believe me. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says.

I turn out his light as I leave the room, and close the door behind me.

The washer has stopped quite some time before, and I take what’s in the dryer out and see that the pile on top of the washer is growing. I can’t see letting their things get all wrinkled, so I stand there and fold them, and I fold what’s coming out of the dryer, too. I flip my laundry into the dryer, and then I remember the huge pile of laundry in the hallway, so I start a load of their things. Might as well. I’m not doing anything else.

I walk back to the kitchen, and Logan is snoring. His hair hangs all tousled over his forehead, and I wonder if his mother ever used to watch him sleep like this.

The kitchen is a mess, so I grab a trash bag from the pantry and start packing pizza boxes away. Then I put up all the food that’s on the counter, and give it a good scrub. The kitchen is all nice and sparkly before I go back to bed.

I yawn and close the bedroom door behind me. But this time, I don’t feel the need to lock it.

***

The bed dips in the middle of the night, and I startle awake. My heart starts pounding like a jackhammer and I scoot to the edge of the bed. “What are you doing?” I ask.

It’s Logan, and the room is dark, so he can’t see my face or hear my voice. He rolls to his side, away from me, snuggling deeply into the pillow. He makes this adorable smacking noise with his mouth as he settles. He reaches back and jerks the blankets off of me, tugging them onto him.

He doesn’t really think he’s going to sleep in here, does he? I could go and get on the couch, but he’s already snoring. He’s sound asleep. I lean up and look into his face. He doesn’t stir. He’s not going to try to put the moves on me. He’s just going to sleep.

I roll over, curling into myself, because it’s chilly without a blanket. I could go and get the one from the couch, I guess. I know he had one out there. But I’m afraid I’ll wake him if I get up. I grab the edge of the blanket he just stole from me and pull it back over to my side, just enough to cover half of me. He doesn’t move. So, it must be all right.

Logan

I wake up slowly, immediately aware there’s a warm body pressed against mine. I raise my head and look down at the leg thrown across my thighs. There’s a delicate arm wrapped across my chest, and a black head of hair with a blue streak tucked under my chin, right beside my heart.

Her thigh is na**d and it feels so f**king good that I don’t want to move. Her shampoo tickles my nose and I wonder how I ended up in bed with her. I know all we did was sleep. My guess is that I got up to pee in the middle of the night and came back to my bed by accident. How she got wrapped around me is another story.

I lay my head back against the pillow and look up at my cracked ceiling. I didn’t mean for this to happen. And I don’t want her to think that I just want her in my bed. That I only want to sleep with her. But I do want to sleep with her. Right now, I want to roll her over and slide the pink panties she made me turn around for last night slowly down her legs. I want to kiss her from the soles of her feet to the insides of her thighs. I look down at her thigh again. I can’t resist it. I reach out and lay my hand on it. She wiggles and presses harder against me, her br**sts cushioned by my chest.

I’m so freaking hard that all the blood in my body is pulsing in my dick. Shit.

The sun is coming up, so my brothers will be moving around soon. They’ll never let me hear the end of it if they find me in here. I started off on the couch, and swore I would stay there.

Shit.

I just wanted to keep her safe and now she’s in bed with me. Or I’m in bed with her.

Involuntarily, I clench her thigh in my grasp. I turn onto my side to face her, and hitch her thigh up higher over my hip. I need to slide out from under her arm. But then her brown eyes blink open. We’re face to face. She doesn’t seem startled. “You stole the covers,” she says.

She has morning breath, and I’ve never wanted to kiss someone so bad in my life. “Why are you in my arms?” I ask.

She looks around like she’s not quite sure, and she bites her lower lip between her teeth again. I pull it out very gently with my thumb and she licks her lips, just like she did last night. “I was cold. And you were warm.”

“I started out on the couch,” I say.

She nods, leaning close to me, burying her face in my chest. She inhales deeply, her breath moving through the thin material of my t-shirt when she exhales. Did she just sniff me?

“You smell good,” she mouths, looking up at me so I can see her lips.

She did just sniff me. I can’t help it. I palm her ass and draw her closer to me. “Do you always wake up so sweet?” I ask. She’s like cotton candy in my arms. She smells soft and clean and she’s not shoving me away.

“I’m not awake yet,” she mouths. She spins over in my arms, facing away from me. My forearm is under her head and her bottom is tucked against my groin. Her head is beneath my chin, and I can’t see her face anymore. But I doubt she’s talking. She’s soft in my arms, and her breath rushes out of her open mouth with every exhale, searing my forearm with her every breath.

The bottoms of her feet are cold against the tops of mine, so I unfurl the blanket over us both, tucking it around her, throwing it over our feet.

I don’t want to let her go. But I know I need to get up. I need to go back to the couch. I close my eyes and brush her hair down between us.

She lets me wrap around her, and by her own admissions she’s still asleep. Will it hurt to stay there? I keep holding her. I’ve never had a girl sleep the whole night in my bed before. Ever. I’ve never woken up with someone. I’ve never wanted to. Until now.