Page 89 of Under the Orchard’s Spell

“I know your ideas well enough to take aim in advance,” Logan growls.

“I’ll take the couch!” I say, trying to preempt an argument.

Mason wags a finger like a scolding TV judge. “Absolutely not.”

I fold my arms. “I’m not breakable.”

“No, you are a guest,” Mason says as if I’m checking into his countryside bed-and-breakfast rather than crashing in his apartment with a giant hookah behind the couch. He straightens another few inches. “Besides, I was raised by Logan Wright. Courtesy has been etched into my bones.”

Logan’s lips crack. I want to add that he’s a guest, too, but also my skin is still tingling from his hands and I’m not ready to fully commit to this argument until I know what Mason is planning to propose.

“Anyway,” Mason continues, “as I was saying before my idea was preemptively and indecorously shit up, I will take the couch. Ali can have my bed. I have fresh sheets and everything. My eldest brother will take the top bunk.”

“You have bunk beds?” I ask, even as I have a full-body reaction to the fact that, technically speaking, his brother just suggested Logan and I share a bed. A bunk bed, sure. But still.

Mason straightens the front of his T-shirt. “We got the furniture from the last dudes that rented this place. And it has a double on the bottom,” he adds, as if this makes it a sophisticated bunk bed.

“Okay, fine,” I say, “but I’ll take the top.”

Mason lends me an old T-shirt and a pair of boxers and I do everything in my power not to look at Logan as we take turns in the bathroom with Mason’s surprisingly plentiful array of spare toothbrushes. When I push open the bedroom door, Logan is under a sheet on the bottom bunk.

I tiptoe into the room. The lights are out, but for a patch of warm light filtering through the open window, which casts a willowy shadow across the carpet. As I make my way to the ladder, I watch Logan’s chest rise and fall, and I wonder if he’s asleep.

My feet have only hit the first rung when Logan’s fingers circle my ankle, his thumb on the divot behind my ankle bone.

I slacken, sliding back to the ground and resting my chin on the top rail. “My uncle always said it’s dangerous to play on ladders.”

His eyes darken as he props himself up on an elbow. His other hand finds my hip, fingers pressing just enough to make my breath hitch. “Then you better stay down here where it’s safe.”

He tugs me toward him, and I melt into the curve of his chest, propelled by much more than gravity.

As one, we seamlessly plunge back together like time had paused and is now resuming. Our bodies cinch together from wobbly knees to thumping hearts. Our mouths find each other like magnets in the dark, tongues slipping together like we’ve done this a hundred times and it’s as easy as coming home.

My hands move under Logan’s shirt. He runs his tongue across my jaw. It sends a frizzle of energy over my bare skin, goose-pricked from the open window.

We’re already zippered together, but it’s not anywhere near close enough. It’s too frictionless, too easy. I clutch at Logan’s wide back, my hips trying to gain purchase against one of his quads.

In the sliver of space between our bodies, Logan’s hands travel up the loose fabric of my T-shirt. His fingers trace across the dip of my waist and the curve of my low back. Heat builds, an inferno of desire that grows with every shaky inhale of breath, every swipe of our lips.

I shiver as his fingers push under my bra. His thumb glides over my nipple. The motion draws a wobbling sound from my lips, not even a whimper.

“This time do we have a condom?” I ask into Logan’s mouth.

“Yeah, I—” He lets out a shaky exhale. “Mason palmed me one. Then he tried to wink.”

I want to laugh at that. I want to tear at his clothes and push his shirt over his head and claw at his boxers until they fall around his ankles. I want to feel him slide down my underwear until it’s ringing my knees. I want—

Logan smooths a thumb across my cheek and I hear the word before it falls out of his mouth. “But.”

I have never resented this man’s self-control so much in my life. “But?”

“But this is my brother’s bed,” he says.

Logan lowers his face and his lips trace my collarbone.

I hook an index finger into the top of his pants. “Okay, but hear me out.”

Logan chuckles into my hair. “Do you have an argument this time?”