Sparring Partners [18+]

Chapter Eighteen: Is Wine an Aphrodisiac?

"I'm too tired, and hungry, and I don't want to do any more work," I groaned, slamming my laptop shut with too much enthusiasm. I'd been writing a basic essay draft for the past two hours (and by basic I meant a few hundred words accompanied by a mess of bright red annotations I was certain my module leader would not understand), and now I was absolutely sick of it. "My brain isn't working."

Already slumped into Markus' sofa, I sat so close to him that our thighs were almost touching. When I threw my head back in despair, my cheek grazed against his shoulder. With my cheek pressed against the cool faux-leather of the sofa, I stared blankly at said shoulder. So close to him, the sheer size of the muscled body-part eclipsed my entire vision. And, in my exhausted state, it looked so comfortable that I had to stop myself from leaning towards him and cuddling into his side like a lunatic.

I already knew what it felt like to be tucked snugly into his side; I knew what an excellent feeling it was to awake encased in his arms with my back pressed against his chest. He was an exceedingly comfortable man to cuddle with. Which made it even more difficult to resist my urges. Despite knowing how much more work I had to do and how unlikely I was to do any of it over the weekend, I wanted nothing more than to sink into his arms and fall asleep. I wanted to bury myself in the warmth of him, to breathe in his scent as if it were the air I needed to breathe.

Too much. I wanted too much. Lack of sleep had clearly dragged me into delusion.

"How much more do you have to do?" Markus asked, in a voice low and hoarse from the hours of disuse while we worked.

My eyes closed at the sound, and I breathed deeply, savouring this quiet moment of rest before I had to force myself to open my laptop again. "I'm finished. No more work to do."

Markus hummed, and my breath caught in my throat when I felt something brush against my jaw. My eyes snapped open to find Markus' head stooped towards me, a barely there smile curved on in lips. "How much do you have left?"

"More than half," I grumbled, and without thinking, hid my face in the space between Markus and the sofa. His body was warm against me, and it only encouraged the drooping of my eyes. I didn't know what time it was, but I knew I wanted to be in bed right now. Markus' bed.

Though muffled, I heard his laughter. It was a subdued, deep sound that rumbled up from his chest and shook his whole body. "Come on." A hand pressed to the back of my neck, fingers threading through the messy bun I had tied earlier, and Markus shifted lower so he could see my face. "What do you need to get this done? Caffeine? Food? A ten-minute break?"

"Yes," I breathed, feeling like I might cry at how good that all sounded. "Yes, to everything."

"Okay," Markus' eyes were bright as he stared down at me, "Let's get up first, then."

Neither of us moved, though. It felt as if my limbs had melted into the sofa, and there was no hope of ever separating myself from it. Nor did I want to. I could easily fall asleep like this, and sleep wasn't always an easy thing for me to succumb to.

Markus moved closer, close enough that for a second his nose brushed mine. "You're not getting up," he murmured. "Why aren't you getting up?"

"You're so pretty."

Markus reeled back, just an inch, a frown furrowing across his brow as colour dusted his cheeks. "What?"

Grinning as I surveyed him, I reached out to smooth his frown. He sucked in a sharp breath at my touch. "I like your eyebrows. They're a nice shape."

"My eyebrows?"

"You spend most of your time scowling. It would be hard not to notice them," I sniggered, and dragged my fingers down the length of his nose. "I like this too. I like that it's a little crooked."