Free Truth or Dare by Mira Lyn Kelly Page A

who got what he was saying. The one who made him laugh first. She made him feel something other than shitty, and after the way he’d pushed everyone else away for so long, the last thing he wanted to do was screw things up with her.
    Keeping his eyes on the opposite wall and his thoughts to the clinical, he grabbed a towel and stuck his hand past the shower curtain. “Here. Wrap it around you and then I’ll help you out.”
    “Okay, I’m ready—no, wait…take your shirt off first. It’s contaminated from when you carried me. And wash your hands.”
    “Right.” He grabbed a handful of the back of his oxford and pulled it over his head. Did a quick hand wash and turned back to the shower, where Maggie had wrapped the towel around her and pulled open the curtain.
    Even without looking directly at her, his damned peripheral vision was doing a bang-up job offering details he didn’t want to have. And it only got worse when he pulled her in tight to lift her out of the tub, because the smell of his soap on her skin, coupled with the soft press of her breasts against his chest, was the last thing he needed.
    Make that the last thing right after the little bite of her fingers gripping his shoulders as the warm puffs of her breath washed over his neck.
    He should let her go, step back. Only it had been so long since he’d had anyone in his arms that way. Since he felt the light brush of a woman’s hands on his bare skin. Add to that the woman was Maggie…and she hadn’t let go of him either?
    Not. Good. At. All.
    A desperate-times, drastic-measures moment if ever there was one.
    Bracing, he looked into her face. And yeah, that did it with the down-boy. Because she was a mess. The girl looked like she’d just gone a few rounds in the Octagon.
    “I thought the shower was going to—” He waved an open hand around in front of his face, then wondered if she could even see that far. Figured he’d test it out.
    “What, are you giving me…the finger?”
    Check that.
She could see, at least a little. “No. How long before your eyes look normal again?”
    Her free hand came halfway up to her face, then stalled out and reversed its path until it fisted at her side. “Day or so, maybe. Depends if I touch them.”
    “For God’s sake, don’t touch them, then.”
    She let out one of her soft laughs, and he wondered how it was possible that sound still hit him in the chest like a blow he hadn’t seen coming. “That good, huh?”
    The laugh? Yeah. But he rubbed at the spot, trying to erase the feel of it, because he knew better. All he had to do was think about the way he’d woken the night before. Two a.m., Charlie’s lost cries echoing through the silent apartment. Frustration clawing at his gut.
    “Turn around, Two.” Hands on her shoulders, he held her a stiff arm’s-length ahead of him as he pushed her out the bathroom door into his bedroom and sat her at the edge of his bed.
    “I’ve got a T-shirt and some sweats you can wear,” he said, setting them beside her. “You get dressed while I go down to look for your keys.”
    Twenty-five minutes later Ty walked back into the apartment, swinging Maggie’s key ring around his index finger.
    “You found them!” Maggie called from the couch, swimming in his borrowed clothes as she struggled to get up.
    And struggled some more.
    A low giggle had his focus snapping to the bottle of allergy stuff he’d left on the counter in the kitchen—a bottle now located on the coffee table in front of the couch and looking significantly lighter than it had last he’d seen it.
    He gaped. “How much did you drink?”
    Maggie shrugged, waving his question away like an annoying gnat.
    “I needed more. But it’s working now. I can feel it.”
    And yeah, the way that hive-riddled face pulled back in a swerve said she was feeling it a lot. There was no way he could drop her back in her apartment like this. Not alone.
    “Maggie? Any idea what Ava and the guys are up to