Free Truth or Dare by Mira Lyn Kelly

into a steamy shower, and then scrubbing every inch of herself. She’d be able to breathe. But until then…
Don’t touch anything!
    Elbowing her way out of the car, she abandoned her scarf and coat within, knowing they’d have to be cleaned. Hell, the whole car was going to need a detail.
    But now, the only thing that mattered was getting inside.
    She hit the lock and—stepped straight into a pothole, stumbling as the keys flew past her fingers.
    Damn it!
Blinking back her tears, she searched the cold ground around her. Got on her hands and knees, trying to see under the car. Nothing.
    More tears she couldn’t afford pushed at her eyelids, welling fast as they tightened her throat. Desperately, she swiped at them with her sleeve, realizing too late what she’d just done.
    Oh. Shit. Dander!
    She’d been able to drive only because she hadn’t touched her eyes. But now…
    The corners went first. And then—
    “Apartment Two?”
    —
    Maggie had called him her hero.
    And sure, he’d happened along at the right time. Carried her practically blind ass upstairs when she kept tripping. And then made an emergency run for Benadryl, or whatever this off-brand stuff was she’d shotgunned like Red Bull when he passed it through the shower curtain to her…
    But as far as white-knight moments went, staring down at his jock, trying to will it into submission, Tyler was fairly confident this wasn’t one of them.
    Stuck outside his bathroom door, he watched the wisps of steam curl between the gaps, listening to the shower run and Maggie alternately groan in misery…and then seconds later when she’d finally succumbed to the itch…moan in ecstasy.
    The latter? She needed to knock it the hell off, and fast.
    “No scratching!” he barked, ready to walk in there and tie up her hands to the shower rod to keep from having to hear that deep pleasured sound echoing out of his bathroom.
    Except,
perfect,
then he had the wet-slicked image of Maggie, miraculously hive free and sans nasty swelling except for maybe her mouth—because,
damn
—dripping wet, water sluicing down the peaks and valleys of a body he’d never been able to ignore, arms overhead—
shit
—with him holding them there.
    Cue the sultry moan.
    Nice.
And this one capped with some kind of gaspy squeak.
    “I said stop scratching!”
    “I can’t. I’m one…giant hive. They’re all connected now. And…
they itch.
”
    At least the wheezing wasn’t quite so bad, but the agonized groan that followed had his head slamming back to the land of guilt and empathy. Only as he probably had less than fifteen seconds before the pendulum swung the other way and Maggie gave in to the itch and inadvertently fired up half a dozen shower-soaked scenarios he didn’t want his head playing with, it was time to put his foot down.
    “Shower’s over, Maggie. Finish up and hop out.”
    After what sounded like some clumsy fumbling, followed by the contents of his shower shelf hitting the tub, the water cut off.
    Leaning into the wall, he closed his eyes and tried not to laugh. But at the quiet “motherfucker” hissed from within, he couldn’t help it.
    “Uhh, Apartment Two? Need some help?”
    Another thud, slip, and fumble, and then a feeble yet pissed, “I can’t see enough to…get the towel and get out…everything in here’s white.”
    He could still hear shades of Vader in the pauses between her words, but the shower and drug chug seemed to have improved it significantly.
    Chin to chest, he walked into the steamy space, resolved not to look.
    Strike that. He had to look if he was going to help. What he wasn’t going to do was leer. He wasn’t going to splash around in the deep end of Salacious Lake just because his favorite flavor of smack-talking good girl happened to be standing naked at the shores. They’d decided to be friends. And for some reason, out of the whole group—hell, the whole city—Maggie was the only one he’d really clicked with. She was the one