garrett graham ❄︎ mountain lion.
pairing – garrett graham x kitty!reader summary – garrett graham doesn’t do girlfriends. unfortunately for him, the entire hockey house has ears, opinions, and very strong evidence to the contrary. warnings – suggestive content, implied smut, post-sex intimacy, arguing, strong language notes from me – oh to have make up sex with garrett graham. based on this request! thank u anon xx word count – 5.1k
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The downstairs of the hockey house had entered that specific late-night stage of male occupancy where every surface had acquired either a controller, an open bag of chips, a damp ring from a beer bottle, or a sock that absolutely did not belong in a shared living space and yet had been accepted by the ecosystem.
The TV threw blue-white light over the room in sharp, violent flashes while some first-person shooter none of them were pretending to understand strategically anymore barked gunfire through the speakers. Logan was sunk so low into the couch he was practically part of it, one socked foot hooked under the coffee table, thumbs moving on instinct and jaw working around the last of a slice of cold pizza.
Tucker had claimed the armchair like a man with enough common sense to keep his spine functional past twenty-five, one ankle crossed over his knee, controller balanced comfortably in his hands, expression calm in the way that made it ten times more annoying when he killed everyone else. Dean was sprawled half sideways on the rug with his back against the couch, beer loose in one hand, controller in the other, looking like someone had designed a rich boy in a lab and then forgotten to install shame.
Garrett was upstairs. Which, in itself, was not strange. Garrett being upstairs with her was also not strange, not anymore, no matter how many times he said, with the full stubborn confidence of a man lying directly to everyone’s faces, that it wasn’t like that. It was casual. They were hooking up.
He was busy. Hockey, classes, captain shit, the usual revolving door of women who used to come and go before she’d started appearing in the kitchen in his sweatshirts and stealing the last banana off the counter with the lazy comfort of someone who knew exactly which drawer the forks were in.
Garrett denied all of it. Continually. Aggressively, even. Like if he said the words she’s not my girlfriend often enough, the universe would stop presenting evidence to the contrary.
Unfortunately for him, the universe was a petty bitch, and so were his friends. Dean had been killed by Tucker for the third time in under two minutes and was halfway through an appeal to basic human decency when the first noise came from upstairs.
Not a bed thump. Not laughter. Not the usual muffled, morally concerning sounds that made Tucker reach for the remote and Logan yell, “Bro, volume,” without looking away from the screen.
This was a voice, her voice. And it was furious. “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME, GARRETT?”
Every thumb in the living room stopped moving at once. Onscreen, Dean’s character was immediately shot in the head.
Nobody cared.
There was a half-second where the whole downstairs seemed to hold its breath around the TV static and the low hum of the fridge from the kitchen. Logan lifted his head first, slow and delighted. Tucker’s brows went up. Dean turned, beer paused halfway to his mouth, eyes brightening with the reverent attention of a man who had just heard the opening note of live theatre.
Upstairs, something moved hard enough to creak through the ceiling. A footstep. Maybe two. Then Garrett’s voice came down, rough and defensive and very much not using his captain voice. “What? Jesus Christ, I looked at my phone.”
“You were snapping a puck bunny right before you fucked me!”
Dean’s mouth fell open. Logan’s eyes went huge. Tucker closed his eyes once, like a man hearing a disaster he could have warned someone about if anyone in this house respected wisdom.
“Oh, rookie error,” Logan said solemnly, pointing one finger toward the ceiling without taking his eyes off the stairs. “That’s a rookie error.”
Dean nodded, gravely, as if Garrett had failed a sacred code. “Yeah, no. You can’t do that.”
Tucker set his controller down on his knee. “You absolutely cannot do that.”
From upstairs, Garrett snapped, “I wasn’t snapping a puck bunny.”
“Oh, fuck you, Garrett!”
“Oh, fuck me?” Garrett shot back, voice rising now, indignant in that very particular Garrett Graham way where he sounded personally offended that reality had chosen to disagree with him. “Fuck me? Are you shitting me? I go on my phone for, like, two seconds and you freak out?”
“I was straddling you, you asshole!”
Dean made a strangled sound and pressed his fist to his mouth, eyes shining. “God, she’s good.”
Logan leaned forward, elbows on his knees, fully abandoning the game now. His abandoned character stood motionless on screen while someone named xXSlayerBoiXx unloaded an entire magazine into his chest. “Yeah, no, I’m with her on that. That’s insane. You don’t check messages mid-straddle.”
“It’s about respect,” Dean said, sudden and earnest, like the spirit of an Italian grandmother had entered his body. “You gotta keep that shit separate, man. Girls know when you’re mentally in the room. They can feel it.”
Tucker looked at him.
Dean looked back. “What?”
“No, I agree,” Tucker said after a beat, which somehow made it funnier. “I just didn’t expect you to be the one bringing emotional literacy into this house tonight.”
Dean lifted his beer in salute.
Upstairs, her voice came again, closer this time like she’d moved toward the door or maybe toward Garrett, which somehow made the whole thing worse and better. “You literally smiled at your phone.”
“I smile at shit!”
“You smiled like a slut!”
Logan lost it. He folded forward, laughter punching out of him so hard he had to slap one hand over his mouth. Tucker’s mouth twitched. Dean pointed up at the ceiling with the beer bottle, triumphant.
“That,” Dean said, “is a woman with language.”
Garrett barked something they couldn’t quite catch, then louder, “It was a team thing.”
“Oh my God, don’t lie to me with hockey. That’s so insulting.”
“I’m not lying with hockey!”
“You’re always lying with hockey. It’s your little emotional support sport.”
Dean wheezed. “Oh, she’s killing him.”
“She’s not wrong,” Tucker said, and picked up his controller again only to realise no one else was playing. He set it down with the soft resignation of a man accepting that the night had changed shape. “He does use hockey as a legal defence.”
Logan wiped under one eye with his thumb. “Your Honor, I couldn’t text back because we had a power play.”
“Exactly,” Dean said. “And the jury’s like, damn, compelling.”
The argument upstairs hit a sharper pitch then, the words overlapping enough that downstairs only fragments came through: Garrett saying her name in that strained, warning way; her cutting over him with something about half the campus knowing exactly what your stupid little smirk means; Garrett snapping back that she didn’t get to act like he’d done something when he hadn’t done anything; her laugh, sharp and humourless enough to slice through the floorboards.
The thing was, from downstairs, it was hilarious. It was the kind of fight you listened to with one hand over your mouth and the other hovering near your beer because you didn’t want to miss a word.
But even through the ceiling, even with Dean’s face lit up like Christmas, there was something hot and real in it. Garrett could say casual until his voice gave out. The guys had seen him check every time the front door opened on a Friday night in case it was her. They had seen him turn down girls without making a production of it and then act like he didn’t know he’d done it. They had seen him stand in the kitchen at nine in the morning holding two mugs of coffee, one black and one with the stupid oat milk she liked, and still somehow insist he was not, under any circumstances, doing relationship shit.
Upstairs, something thudded, like someone had shoved a door or dropped a shoe or Garrett had knocked into his own dresser while gesturing too aggressively for a man who claimed to be calm.
“Don’t walk away from me,” Garrett said, clearer now.
“Oh, now you care where I am?”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“That– that thing where you make it sound like I don’t give a shit.”
There was a pause after that. Barely a pause. Downstairs, all three of them went quieter without meaning to.
Then she said, voice still furious but lower now, scraped around the edges, “You were smiling at another girl with my thighs around your waist, Garrett.”
Logan’s face changed first. The grin softened out of it by a fraction. Tucker looked down at his beer. Dean, for all his many sins, at least had the sense to stop laughing for a second.
Garrett didn’t answer right away. When he did, his voice had lost some of the heat. “It wasn’t like that.”
“Then what was it like?”
“Baby–”
“Oh, do not baby me right now.”
Dean inhaled through his teeth. “Tough room.”
“Deserved,” Tucker murmured.
Garrett said something too low for them to make out, then louder when she clearly answered over him, “I’m not trying to make you look stupid!”
“You don’t have to try, you’re doing great.”
Logan made a tiny, appreciative noise. “Goddamn.”
Dean leaned back against the couch, eyes narrowed in thought now, as if evaluating odds at a racetrack. “I got ten bucks on Kitty.”
Tucker turned his head slowly. “Kitty?”
“Yeah.” Dean said it like this was obvious, like the naming of women based on their probable combat style was an established household tradition. “Kitty.”
Logan frowned. “Why Kitty?”
Dean looked offended by the lack of memory. “Because she scratches the shit out of him. You didn’t see his back last week?”
“Oh shit,” Logan said immediately, pointing at Dean. “That’s right. In the locker room. I thought he got attacked by a raccoon.”
“Exactly.” Dean spread one hand, pleased with his own case. “Kitty.”
Tucker’s brows drew together. “Nah. She’s hotter than a housecat.”
Dean tipped his head, considering. “I didn’t say housecat.”
“You said kitty. That implies housecat.”
“She’s not a housecat,” Dean said seriously.
Logan leaned back, very invested. “Cheetah?”
“No,” Tucker said. “Cheetahs are too sleek. She’s got more… attitude.”
“Mountain lion,” Dean said, snapping his fingers.
The room went quiet in collective consideration.
Logan nodded first. “Mountain lion works.”
Tucker lifted his beer. “Yeah. Respectfully.”
Dean tipped his bottle toward the ceiling. “Ten bucks on Mountain Lion.”
Upstairs, Garrett’s voice rose again, but not in the same way now. “You think I’m sitting there trying to get with somebody else while you’re literally in my room?”
“I don’t know what you’re doing, Garrett, because you keep telling me this is nothing.”
That hit the downstairs like somebody had turned down the TV and let the actual room in. Logan’s mouth went a little flat. Dean’s eyes flicked toward Tucker, then away. Tucker exhaled through his nose and leaned back in the chair.
Garrett said nothing. She laughed again, quieter this time, and it was worse than the yelling. “Right. Yeah. Exactly.”
A door creaked upstairs. A floorboard shifted.
Garrett’s voice came out rough. “That’s not fair.”
“No, what’s not fair is you acting like I’m insane for being embarrassed when you keep making sure I know I’m not allowed to be anything else.”
“Jesus. That’s not–” Garrett stopped, frustrated enough that they could almost see him dragging a hand through his hair. “That’s not what I meant.”
“What did you mean?”
Another silence. Dean, who had somehow turned from smug spectator into anxious civilian in under thirty seconds, whispered, “Say something good, dumbass.”
Tucker shot him a look. “You whispering isn’t helping him.”
“I know, but, like, he can sense my spirit.”
Garrett finally spoke, lower. They couldn’t catch the first part. Only the end. “…don’t want you thinking I’m messing around with other girls.”
“But you are.”
“I’m not.”
“You were.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You were smiling at your phone like–”
“I was smiling because Logan sent me a video of Dean eating shit in the driveway.”
Tucker stared at both of Dean and Logan, disgusted. “This house is an ecosystem of idiots.”
Upstairs, there was a beat of silence. Then her voice, much flatter now. “What?”
Garrett said, louder, with the rushed relief of a man finally locating evidence in his own defence, “It was Dean. It was the video of Dean slipping on the ice by the cars. I was laughing at that.”
Dean pointed to himself, touched. “I saved his situationship.”
Logan leaned over and slapped his shoulder. “Your pain had purpose.”
“I told you I’m important to this team.”
The floorboards creaked again. Upstairs, she said something too low for them to catch. Garrett answered, also too low, his voice doing that thing it did when he was trying not to sound soft and failing just enough for people who knew him to notice.
Then she snapped, suddenly audible again, “That still doesn’t fix the fact that you’re weird about me.”
Garrett’s answer came immediate and defensive. “I’m not weird about you.”
All three guys downstairs went still. Then, as one, they looked at each other. Dean’s face went blank with disbelief. Logan’s mouth opened. Tucker’s eyebrows lifted toward his hairline.
“He’s so weird about her,” Logan whispered.
“Incredibly,” Dean agreed.
“He once made me Venmo her for mozzarella sticks because I ate the ones she left in the fridge,” Tucker said.
Logan turned to him. “He made you Venmo her?”
“She didn’t even ask. She was asleep.”
Dean nodded solemnly. “That’s husband behaviour.”
Upstairs, she said, “You got mad at Tucker for eating my leftovers.”
Tucker lifted both hands as if personally vindicated by God.
Garrett shouted, “Because he knew they weren’t his!”
“They were in a communal fridge!”
Dean clutched his chest. “Oh my God.”
Logan dropped his head back against the couch. “He’s cooked.”
“Burnt,” Tucker said.
Upstairs, the argument blurred again into movement, voices crossing, Garrett’s frustration and her hurt colliding in the messy, intimate rhythm of two people who knew each other well enough to know exactly where to press and not enough to stop themselves from pressing there anyway.
There was another thud, softer this time. Something fabric-heavy hitting the floor. Maybe the edge of a comforter. Maybe one of Garrett’s hoodies being launched with intent.
Then she said, sharp but trembling around it, “I’m not asking you to marry me, Garrett. I’m asking you not to make me feel stupid for liking you!”
The living room went dead silent. Even Dean didn’t joke.
For a second, there was only the muted TV, the distant rush of heat through the vents, the soft electrical buzz of the lamp beside the couch. Tucker looked away first, because there were some things a man wasn’t supposed to witness even through drywall. Logan rubbed a hand over his mouth. Dean’s face did something strange, caught between sympathy and the reflexive horror of sincerity arriving without warning.
Garrett’s voice came low enough that they had to strain for it. “I don’t think you’re stupid.”
She answered, quieter too. “You act like I am.”
“I don’t mean to.”
“Yeah, well.” Her voice wavered, barely. “You’re really good at it anyway.”
There was another pause, longer this time. Then Garrett said her name, and it sounded so unlike the way he said it when he was teasing her downstairs, so stripped of performance, that even Logan stopped breathing loudly.
“I’m busy,” Garrett said, and immediately Dean made a face like he wanted to climb through the ceiling and tackle him. But then Garrett kept going, rougher, faster, like if he didn’t get it out in one rush he’d lose the nerve. “And I’m not– I don’t do this shit. I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“I want you to stop hiding behind that.”
“I’m not hiding.”
“Garrett.”
Silence. Then, quieter, from him: “Maybe a little.”
Dean’s eyes widened.
Logan whispered, “Progress.”
Tucker nodded once. “Huge.”
Whatever she said next didn’t reach them. It was softer, swallowed by the ceiling and the old pipes and the house settling around all of them. Garrett answered in the same register. For a minute, the boys could hear only the shape of it: his voice low and trying; hers still hurt but no longer slicing; a murmur, a footstep, another smaller sound that might have been a laugh or might have been her telling him he was an idiot in a tone that had lost most of its blade.
Dean leaned slowly toward the ceiling, listening so hard his beer tilted dangerously in his hand.
“Are they making up?” Logan whispered.
Tucker held up one finger. “Wait.”
The upstairs went very, very quiet. A bedframe creaked once. All three of them froze.
Then, clear enough to cut through the entire house, came a high, breathless little squeal that immediately dissolved into a muffled laugh and Garrett saying something low that none of them could make out but absolutely did not sound like an apology anymore.
Dean nodded once, satisfied. “Yup.”
Logan picked up his controller. “They’re fucking.”
Tucker reached for the remote and turned the TV volume up three notches with the resigned precision of a man who had lived in this house too long. “Good for them.”
Dean lifted his beer toward the ceiling. “Mountain Lion won.”
“You don’t win a fight by sleeping with Garrett after,” Tucker said.
Dean considered this. “Depends on the fight.”
Logan unpaused the game and immediately got shot. “I still think Garrett lost.”
“Oh, he definitely lost,” Tucker said.
Dean grinned, settling back against the couch as the game roared back to life and the upstairs became, blessedly, a problem the TV volume could mostly handle. “Yeah, but he’s not gonna know that until morning.”
From above them came another muffled thump, followed by Garrett’s laugh, low and pleased and stupidly gone.
Logan shook his head, respawning. “He’s so fucked.”
Tucker’s mouth curved faintly as he lifted his controller again. “Yeah.”
Dean, eyes on the screen now, smile still wide, said, “But in his defence, did you guys see her in that little skirt earlier?”
Tucker killed him instantly in the game.
Dean stared at the screen. “Wow.”
“Respect women,” Tucker said pointing at Dean, calm as anything.
Logan laughed so hard he missed his next shot, and upstairs, Garrett Graham continued very loudly pretending he didn’t have a girlfriend.
The room has gone quiet in the aftermath, the sort of quiet that arrives after a small, localised weather event has torn through and left evidence everywhere for later people to pretend not to see.
Garrett’s comforter is half on the bed and half dragged toward the floor, one corner caught under her knee. A pillow has somehow ended up near the closet. Her shirt is inside out beside the desk chair. One of Garrett’s socks is on the nightstand, which makes absolutely no sense, but the whole room has taken on that loose, wrecked, airless quality of a place where nothing had been put down so much as flung away in the service of more urgent priorities.
The lamp throws soft gold over the wall and across the pile of clothes at the foot of the bed, and under it all the house is still making noise downstairs: gunfire from the TV, somebody laughing too loud, a dull male groan of defeat that is probably Dean dying in the game again.
She’s sprawled on her stomach across Garrett’s chest, bare skin warm against bare skin, one leg tangled in the sheet and the other hooked lazily over his thigh like she has no intention of giving his body back to him anytime soon.
Her chin rests over his sternum, and she traces nonsense patterns over his chest with the tip of one finger, slow little loops through the faint sheen still drying there, feeling the hard, steady thud of his heart under her cheek when she tilts down.
It’s stupid, really, how quickly the fight has gone soft at the edges now that they’ve burned through it. Her throat still feels a little raw from yelling. Her body feels heavy and loose and humming in places she’s absolutely not going to name out loud. Garrett’s hand sits at the base of her spine, thumb moving every now and then like he keeps forgetting he’s doing it.
For a while neither of them says anything. Which is probably for the best, because words have been historically risky in this room tonight. Then the floorboards creak somewhere downstairs and Logan’s voice carries faintly up, followed by Dean’s laugh, bright and stupid and unmistakably delighted by his own existence.
She stills. Garrett’s hand pauses on her back.
Her eyes lift to his face. “Do you think the guys heard us?”
Garrett looks down at her for half a second, mouth already fighting the kind of grin that means he’s decided honesty will be funniest if delivered without mercy. His hair’s a mess from her hands, curls pushed in every wrong direction, face flushed in that warm, post-sex way that makes him look softer and smugger at once, which should be illegal on a man who already has enough advantages.
“Think the whole campus heard us,” he says.
She lets out an offended little laugh and drops her forehead against his chest. “Shut up.”
“No, seriously.” His voice is lazy now, rough around the edges, pleased with himself in a way that makes her want to bite him. Again. “Pretty sure the women’s soccer team knows you’re mad at me. And now... not so mad at me.”
“Oh my God.” She presses her face harder into his chest, but she’s giggling now, because the alternative is imagining Logan, Tucker, and Dean downstairs, all three of them going dead silent and absolutely listening like the worst little creeps in Massachusetts. “I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I literally do.”
“You’re naked on top of me.”
She grins into his chest. “That’s unrelated.”
“Feels related.”
She lifts her head just enough to glare at him, which doesn’t work at all because he’s grinning at her like she’s the funniest, most inconvenient thing that has ever happened to him.
That look gets under her skin in a way she hates. The part where his amusement goes warm and stupid around the eyes because he’s not just entertained. He’s happy she’s there. Happy she’s still touching him. Happy in the middle of a room that looks like a crime scene made of laundry and bad decisions.
His hand slides up her back, slow and broad, then comes around the side of her neck with the kind of easy confidence that makes her body go annoyingly still. His fingers resting lightly beneath her jaw, thumb brushing once along the side of her throat while he tips her face up.
“C’mere,” he murmurs, and kisses her before she can say something defensive.
It’s quick, technically. Barely more than a press of his mouth to hers, warm and lazy and smug at the corner because he can probably feel the way she melts by half an inch the second his hand settles there.
But it does something ridiculous inside her anyway. Something bright and helpless and fluttering low in her stomach. She kisses him back without meaning to make anything of it, but he smiles against her mouth, and that’s somehow worse.
When he lets her go, she blinks down at him. “You’re very annoying after sex.”
“Before too.”
“True.”
“During, though?”
She pauses, letting her eyes move over his face with theatrical consideration. “Tolerable.”
Garrett’s eyebrows lift. “Tolerable?”
“Mhm.”
“That’s crazy, considering the volume you were using ten minutes ago.”
She gasps and shoves at his chest, but he catches her wrist before she gets far, laughing low in his throat, the sound moving under her palm. “Garrett.”
“What?”
“You’re so full of yourself.”
“Evidence-based confidence, baby.”
She rolls her eyes, but the baby lands anyway, soft and warm and stupidly effective in the middle of all that cocky shit. Which is exactly the problem. Garrett could say something that made her want to smother him with his own pillow and then two seconds later say baby like it belonged in his mouth, like he hadn’t even had to think about it.
He gives her ass a lazy pat and exhales, long and reluctant, glancing toward the clock on the nightstand. “I gotta get up.”
Her brows draw together. “Why?”
“Because I told Coach I’d be at the rink early.”
“It’s nighttime.”
“I'm captain.” He shifts under her, and she makes a small noise of protest before she can stop herself, which makes his mouth twitch again. “Don’t start.”
She pouts. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You made a sound.”
“I’m allowed to make sounds.”
“Clearly.”
She narrows her eyes at him, but Garrett’s already moving, careful and slightly awkward with the sheet and her limbs and the fact that she has absolutely no interest in helping.
He sits up, easing her off his chest and onto the mattress, and she flops onto her back with the kind of boneless indignation only a girl who has just been thoroughly ruined and then abandoned for hockey can really commit to.
The air cools instantly where his body was, and she hates that too. Hates the little absence of heat along her side. Hates, more than anything, the fact that she notices.
Garrett gets out of bed naked, completely unbothered by the fact that he looks like that in lamplight and has the audacity to walk away from her with broad shoulders and hockey-built thighs and his back scratched to hell.
She hadn’t realised she’d done quite that much damage. There are red marks dragged down over the muscle beside his spine and along one shoulder blade, bright against his skin, some already fading, some very much not. The sight sends a hot little pulse through her, equal parts pride and embarrassment and something so pleased it probably needs to be medically reviewed. She bites her bottom lip to stop the grin. It doesn’t work.
Garrett bends to grab his boxers from the floor and pulls them on, then glances back over his shoulder because he feels her looking. “What?”
She shrugs against the pillow, still grinning. “Nothing.”
His eyes narrow slightly. “That face is obviously not nothing.”
“It’s nothing.”
“You look way too proud of yourself for nothing.”
“I’m just lying here.”
“Yeah,” he says, turning enough that she gets the full benefit of his expression now: amused, suspicious, a little too aware of his own effect on her and absolutely not above using it. “That’s the problem.”
She lets her gaze drag over him again on purpose this time, slow enough to be rude, from the messy curls to the bare chest to the low waistband of his boxers, then back to his face. Garrett watches her do it.
His mouth parts like he’s about to say something, then closes again. His jaw shifts. He looks briefly toward the ceiling, as if appealing to God, Coach, or whatever patron saint governs self-control in sexually compromised hockey players.
She giggles. “What?”
Garrett exhales through his nose. “Nothing.”
“No, what?” She props herself lazily up on one elbow, sheet slipping down just enough that his eyes drop despite his clear attempt to be a disciplined athlete with somewhere to be. “What did I do?”
He gives her a look.
She widens her eyes, all fake innocence and bare shoulders and hair messy around her face in ways she knows are not helping him. “I’m not doing anything!”
“You look like that,” Garrett says, accusingly.
She glances down at herself like this is new information. “Like what?”
“Like that.” His hand moves vaguely in her direction because apparently language has left him. “All…” He stops. Swallows. Drags a hand over his mouth. “Fuck.”
The grin takes over her whole face now, slow and delighted. “Garrett Graham. Are you objectifying me?”
“I’m trying very hard not to.”
“How noble.”
“I’m a good guy.”
“You’re currently staring at my boobs.”
His eyes snap up. “I’m flawed.”
She laughs, and the sound loosens something in his face. For one second he just looks at her, standing there beside the bed in his boxers with scratches down his back and his hair wrecked by her fingers, caught between leaving and crawling right back over her.
The room feels warmer for it. Smaller. The mess of it suddenly not messy so much as lived-in for one strange little slice of time – her clothes with his, her phone on his nightstand, his handprint still warm somewhere on her hip, the argument hanging around but no longer sharp enough to cut.
Then he sighs like she’s personally ruined his life. “I’m gonna be late.”
She frowns immediately, because the words take a second to land in the right order. “No, you’re not.” She rolls onto her side and reaches for her phone on the bedside table, fingers searching blindly until they close around it. The screen lights her face blue for a second. “You have plenty of– oh.”
The oh comes out because Garrett’s moved while she was checking the time. Fast. Smooth. Infuriatingly athletic, even in boxers, which feels unfair given the circumstances.
One second she’s looking at the screen. The next his hands are around her thighs, warm and sure, tugging her down the mattress until her hips slide to the edge of the bed and the phone slips from her hand. She drops it with a soft thump into the sheet, breath catching in a little startled laugh as he steps between her knees.
“Garrett.”
“Yeah?”
“What are you doing?”
He lifts one of her ankles first, then the other, setting them over his shoulders like he has all the time in the world and not a single intention of using it responsibly. His hands settle against her thighs, thumbs pressing in just enough to make her stomach flip.
The lamplight catches on his grin when he looks down at her, all cocky mouth and dark, focused eyes and the kind of heat that makes every smart thing she might have said disappear before it reaches her tongue.
“I’m gonna be late,” he says.
For a second she just stares at him. Then her smile spreads, helpless and bright and already half-breathless. She lets her head fall back against the mattress, laughter spilling out of her as her fingers curl into the rumpled comforter. “You’re gonna be late.”
Garrett’s mouth curves, pleased, and his hands slide a little higher on her thighs.
“Yeah,” he says, like this is simply what the night has decided and who is he to argue with circumstances. “Definitely.”
❄︎ ❄︎ ❄︎
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