Hesitantly, I knocked on my own bedroom door.
It was quiet inside, and after a bit without response, I slowly cracked the door open to find the room dark and vacant. I slipped inside, shutting the door behind me and making a beeline for the bathroom.
I groaned with relief when I finally started pissing, and then I looked around, a smile curling on my lips as I took in the disaster my bathroom had become. There was makeup on the counter and in the sink, hair products still plugged in with the cords strewn everywhere, about a million hair and face products that I couldn’t begin to guess the purpose of, body spray, jewelry, and more.
A little Mary Bomb had gone off, and I couldn’t even pretend like I didn’t enjoy sitting in the rubble.
I washed my hands and pulled out a fresh hand towel to dry them, and then slipped back into my room, ready to head downstairs.
I stopped dead in my tracks at the sight of Mary with her shirt half-yanked over her head.
The fabric trapped her arms and head as she struggled against it, little grunts of frustration popping out of her. When she finally got it off, she threw it to the ground like it had greatly offended her, letting out a horse-neigh of an exhale.
In just a thin bra and her lacey, layered skirts, she looked up to find me staring at her.
She didn’t scream, didn’t jump in surprise, didn’t throw things at me in an effort to banish me from the room. It was almost like she expected me, like she hoped to see me there. I held her gaze in an effort to not devour her body, to not treat myself to the sight of the metal piercing her nipples or the freckles on her abdomen or the ink across her chest and shoulders and arms.
With a lazy tilt of her lips, she shrugged. “Don’t tell anyone I pulled an Irish goodbye.”
The words were a slur of consonants and vowels I could barely make out, and a laugh bubbled out of me, softening the tension. “Your secret is safe with me.”
Mary pouted then, her impossibly plump lip poking out as she reached behind her for what I presumed was for the zipper of her skirt.
“Can you help me? I gotta get outta this,” she said, and then she spun around with the skirts flaring and backed up until she hit me.
I caught her and my balance before we both tumbled back onto the bed, my hands finding her now-bare waist.
I swallowed, running my knuckles down the smooth skin of her back on a groan I hoped she didn’t hear.
“Uh, maybe I should go get Giana.” The words burned my throat as I said them.
“Noooo,” she whined, letting her head fall back against my chest. “She’ll make me stay down there and I just wanna go to sleep. You do it,” she insisted, and then she reached around in an effort to show me the zipper of her skirt, but ended up just dragging her hand over my cock, instead.
Jesus fucking hell.
I stifled a moan at the feel of her palming me, and she was so oblivious that she just let her hand fall back to her thigh with a slap, one of those horse-like exhales leaving her again.
I couldn’t help but laugh at that.
“Thought you didn’t drink much,” I said as I unfastened her skirt and tried to think of road kill and politics and anything else but the fact that I was undressing Mary, that she asked me to do it.
“Welp, you are a bad influence.”
“Me?”
When the skirts loosened around her hips and fell to a puddle at her feet, she sighed with relief, and I dragged my eyes up to the back of her head so I wouldn’t stare at her ass in the little thong she was wearing.
She spun around and nearly fell into me again, her hands pressing against my chest. “Yes, you.”
I sipped a fiery breath with her half-naked and in my arms, and then she slowly slipped away, flopping down onto her bed.
No.
My bed.
She struggled with the covers for a moment before she was buried underneath them, and I watched her thrash around for a minute until suddenly her bra went flying over my shoulder.
Fuck. Me.
Now, Mary was topless, in nothing but a lacy scrap of underwear, wrapped up in my sheets with her emerald, glazed eyes and lazy smile peeking over the covers.
I forced a slow inhale, an equally slow exhale, and shoved my hands into my pockets to keep from doing anything stupid.
“C’mere,” she said, reaching a hand out long enough to pat the bed.
I swallowed. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Mary kept her eyes on me as she maneuvered under the covers again, and then she peeled her thong out from under them, letting them dangle off a finger for one second before they dropped to the floor.
She all but purred as she cozied into the sheets even more. “So much better.”
Each breath was more ragged than the last from my aching chest. I needed to leave. I needed to turn out the light and close the door and take my ass downstairs right fucking now.
But I was rooted in place.
Mary pulled the covers up to her face, inhaling a deep, dramatic breath before she flopped around and sighed just as deeply. “Ugh,” she groaned. “Why do you have to smell so good?”
I arched a brow.
“Your sheets,” she said when I didn’t answer, tugging them up farther and wrapping herself up like a burrito. “God, they smell so good. And your sweaters, too.”
“You’ve been wearing my sweaters?”
She shot a hand out from under the covers with her index finger pointed up. “Technically, you gave me one to wear first, so it’s in the rules that it’s okay to wear them whenever I want to now.”
“Is it now?”
“Uh-huh.” She nodded up and then down sharply, matter-of-factly, her eyes closing like she was going to pass out right then and there.
“I didn’t realize we had a rulebook.”
She peered at me over the covers. “We do, but you keep breaking all the rules.”
“How so?”
“Buying me candles, giving me your jacket.” She thrust her hand toward me. “And why do you have to look at me like that?”
“I’m just listening.”
“No, you’re standing there all stoic, but I see it.”
I swallowed. “What do you see?”
Mary watched me for a long moment before she sat up, weight on the palms of her hands, the covers just barely catching on the swells of her breasts and keeping her nipples hidden from view. Her long hair spilled over those swells, over the sheets, her eyes heavy and dazed.
“I see that you’d devour me,” she whispered. “If I said the word.”
My cock jolted in my sweatpants, every muscle in my body straining with the effort to restrain myself from doing what she’d just assessed. She was naked in my fucking bed. Even God Himself would give in.
“You should get some sleep,” I managed to croak out, turning before I said fuck it and went against the rational voice in my head reminding me she was drunk and had no idea what she was doing.
I heard her flop back into the mattress, and I flicked out the light, turning back just in time to watch her roll onto her side. I opened the door and Palico bounced in, skipping past me and bounding onto the bed. Mary smiled, eyes closed as she ran her fingernails over the cat’s neck while it kneaded the covers before curling in next to her.
I let myself watch her only a second longer before I turned out the lights.