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Epilogue

~~11:55 pm ~~

My parents retired to bed as soon as we got home, asking Dante if it would be all right if he slept in my room for the night, since we did not have a guest room. My boyfriend said he would be all right with that. It made me happier to believe that my parents approved of and trusted Dante enough to let him sleep in my bedroom, on my bed, beside me, no less.

After I had changed into a comfortable nightshirt and pajamas, Dante came into my room with a shirt in hand – one of Kristoffer’s, who had lent it to him for the night. Yes, even my brother seemed to be getting along well with my boyfriend.

I noticed that he had already pulled on a pair of blue track pants that he had borrowed from my father. He was still wearing his formal clothes from the waist up.

He closed the door behind him and abruptly said, “Your parents must really like me to even think about letting me sleep here.”

“You don’t think that’s a nice thing to know?” I raised my eyebrows at him, wiping the last traces of my pink lipstick from my lips.

“I think it’s great, really, but I never expected I’d gain this much… approval.”

I shrugged. “Maybe you’re just right for me, that’s all. And they seem to think so too.”

Dante’s expression turned from neutral to assured. “I second that. Don’t mean to brag.”

I laughed, and he turned his back to me and in a moment, I noticed his tie fall to the floor.

Within a minute, he had shrugged out of his coat and was in the process of unbuttoning his long-sleeved button-down when I began absently looking at him peculiarly.

Forcing myself to look down initially at my reflection in the mirror instead, I started to brush my hair, only to be distracted by Dante’s button-down plummeting to the floor.

Innocently, I looked up at him. He couldn’t see me staring because he had his back turned to me, but I was almost practically speechless at the sight of him.

This was the first time I had seen him without a shirt on and in the one or two occasions when I found myself wondering, I had subconsciously formulated predictions of how his body frame looked like this close.

Well, my predictions weren’t far from the actual thing.

His arms were lean but muscular – something that I already knew, but seeing them this vividly made my eyes bulge slightly. I could see his biceps curling as he picked up Kristoffer’s shirt and began doing a few neck rotations. The slightest flex and curl made his biceps more pronounced. His shoulders were broad. His back was toned, and I could easily imagine how much so his stomach would be. I watched his shoulder blades surface a few times just before Dante began to pull the nightshirt over his head. He looked much stronger than I had usually envisioned him.

Dante turned to me rather slowly and casually, but being the idiot I was, I only managed to tear my eyes away from him a second after our eyes met. He did not seem to notice that I was in a trance just looking at his package, though. Thank goodness.

“Right, let’s hit the hay,” he said eagerly, putting his folded clothes on the top of my dresser.

“Sure,” I said somewhat sluggishly, “Flick off the light, please.”

Dante strode over to the far wall and hit the light switch. The room was bathed in nearly total darkness.

We climbed into my bed. Dante laid his head on my pillow while I put mine on his chest.