No Interest in Love

  Her hair’s wet, pulled back, ends of her ponytail dripping onto the shoulder of the souvenir shirt she’s wearing. I can’t help but scope her out, eyes drawn to her bare, skinny legs in very loose-fitting souvenir boxer shorts. She shaved. But even if she hadn’t, I’d probably still be checking her out.

  I hold the fast-food bag up by my face. “You like your meat, right?”

  She bites her bottom lip, eyebrows pulling in slightly as she slowly takes the hand hidden behind her back out in front for me to see. She’s got a half-eaten drumstick, skin and grease covering her thumb and forefinger. I laugh and hang my head.

  “That answers that question.” I push off the doorframe I’m leaning against. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Did you get me a burger?”

  “Well, yeah…”

  She pulls on my sleeve and tugs me inside, letting the door swing shut behind me. “I still want it.”

  I watch her cute little ass as she walks in front of me, past the large assortment tray of room service food.

  “You definitely like your meat,” I say, eyeing the chicken wings and cocktail wienies.

  “I have a week’s worth of meals to catch up on.” She grabs the bag from my hand and flops down against the pillows on her bed. “No salads this time.”

  “I’m joining you.”

  The paper around the burgers crinkles as she breaks into them. “Just keep your paws off the cookies.”

  “I’m not gonna agree to that.” I grin and yank my hoodie over my head, the black T-shirt I have underneath rising a bit with it. The crinkling stops, and I figure she dove mouth-first into that burger, but when I catch her eyes, she’s only halfway through opening the wrapping, her gaze on my torso. It’s a small achievement, and hell, I don’t even know if she’s checking out the goods or not, but I’m gonna take it. I make my pecs dance, which pulls her out of her daze.

  “Bring over the chicken,” she says, eyes darting down to her burger. I toss my hoodie in the closet, wrap my hand around the cart, and just roll the whole thing next to the bed. Then I flop down next to her, kicking my shoes and socks off.

  “You know I’m hungry when even your smelly feet can’t deter me,” she says, then takes a heaping bite from her burger.

  “You know I’m hungry when that doesn’t deter me.” I nod to her filled cheeks, and she slowly opens her mouth to show me what’s in there. I groan and laugh, and I feel her shaking with laughter too, and it doesn’t gross me out or turn me off but hits a satisfying spot I’ve never experienced before.

  And suddenly, my hunger is replaced with nerves.

  1:32 A.M.

  Shay’s burger is gone in less than five minutes. And she’s not stopping, because she reaches over me, baggy shirt loose in my face as she grabs the chicken wings and places them in front of her. She moans right after every bite.

  “I can leave you two alone if you want,” I tease. She moans in response. Chuckling, I go for one of those wings only to get batted in the back of the hand.

  “Mine,” she says. I try again only to get growled at.

  “I’ll eat all the cookies if you don’t share.”

  “Bluff.”

  She’s right, but I take the large sugar cookie and shove half of it in my mouth. She gasps, inhaling a piece of chicken, which I have to smack out of her.

  “You okay?” I ask as she waves for a drink. My hand flattens on her back even though she doesn’t need me to give her any more pats, and I pass her a sparkling water. “Yeah, time to slow down, carnivore.”

  As carefully as I can, I remove the plate of chicken from her reach. Her bottom lip slowly pulls into a frown. It’s damn adorable. Of course.

  “I still get cookies,” she says.

  “Just one.”

  “Five.”

  “One.”

  “Four.”

  “One.”

  “You do not know how to negotiate.”

  “Zero.”

  She tosses her head back, hitting it on the headboard. “Fine, one. But it’s the double chocolate chunk.”

  I pick it up from the plate, knowing that if I hold the entire plate out to her she’ll steal two or three more. She takes a bite, moans, then leans back with her eyes closed.

  “So, food warden, did you stop by just to feed me?”

  I lean back with her, letting our arms touch. “Yep.” Lie. “And to watch you stuff yourself.”

  “I’m still hungry.”

  I laugh. “Where the hell is it going?”

  Her fingers dance along the bottom of her shirt, then she pulls it up a little. It’s enough for me to see a glimpse of that wicked tattoo…and her puffed-out stomach, which looks like one poke and it’ll explode a live chicken.

  “Uh, I think I’m pregnant,” she says, then prods at her belly button. She has a belly button ring. A small piece of metal that’s driving me crazy and putting me into a daze. I have to clear my throat and dart my eyes somewhere less attractive.

  “Who’s the father? The chicken or the beef?”

  “It was either burger number two or chicken wing number five.”

  “You already had a burger?”

  She smiles wide at me and shrugs, pulling her shirt back down.

  “Yeah, you’re cut off.” I push the cart away with my foot. “All that food’s gonna bark at you in the morning.”

  “Worth it.” She sighs and relaxes into the pillow under the small of her back. My hand twitches next to hers, and I want to take her palm, tangle our fingers, kiss her knuckles…

  “I’m serious, though,” she says, and I glance up at her eyes behind her bright red frames.

  “Huh?”

  “Is that the only reason you’re here?” She looks down at our almost-touching hands. “Because…I thought for sure you’d be in Carletta’s room tonight.”

  “Hmm.” It’s not really an answer. I’ve never done this before—tell a woman she’s End Game. Or at least, I want her to be. Shay’s eyes flick back up to mine and like a coward I look at the ceiling.

  “Hey, so, hypothetically—”

  “You know, when people say ‘hypothetically’ they usually mean ‘literally.’ ”

  I shake my head. “Okay then…literally…if I told Carletta I wasn’t going to sleep with her, do you think I still have a shot at the part?”

  She sits up. “You did what now?”

  “Shit. You think I botched it, huh?”

  “What, no. No, I’m just…” She pulls her ponytail over her shoulder, dragging her nails through the damp black strands. “Isn’t she…I mean…Isn’t that the opportunity you wanted?”

  “Can you answer my question first?”

  Her shoulders relax and she lets out a tiny laugh. “Um, yes. I think you’ve got the part. They’d be idiots not to cast you.”

  And my heart, which I thought had been ripped to shreds with her words from last night, fuses back together in my chest, making me sit up to get my face closer to hers.

  “Can you answer my question now?” she asks, and it’s not her typical demanding tone that I find equal parts comical and sexy but a small, whispered request, as if she’s unsure if she really wants to hear the answer. I’m not sure if I want to hear her reaction. I suppose that if she rejected me it would be karmically balanced for all the shit I’ve done. But that doesn’t make it any less nerve-racking.

  “I don’t want that opportunity anymore.”

  “Why not?” Her voice has lowered. Her eyes are narrowing. I scoot back a little and shrug, and she points a finger at me. “No. Not this.” She does a dorky impression of my shrug, pulling a chortle out of me. “Tell me what changed from between now and three days ago.”

  “Yeah, I think we both know what happened.” I wasn’t alone in the ice room.

  “Do you feel guilty or obligated or something?” She waves her hand around my face. “There, you are pardoned from all guilt.”

  And when she softly laughs, my eyes fall from hers. She
has cookie crumbs all over her lips. Chocolate tucked in the corner of her mouth.

  “I’m so into you,” I blurt out. Her laughter gets chased away by her confusion.

  “Huh?”

  I grab her suspended hand and pull it down, shaking my head at our fingers, which I’ve finally twined together. “I’m pretty sure you heard me,” I say with a lift of my eyebrow.

  “Why?” she says, eyes incredulous. “We fight all the time. Even during our ‘nonarguing week’ we fought.”

  “Because you bite that pinkie nail. Because you wears those insane glasses. Because we do fight, but I have fun fighting with you. I’m happy around you, and I wasn’t sure what happy felt like before. Because you keep a to-do list in an actual notebook. Because you still carry a pen in a world of smartphones. Because you look good in mud, in my shirt, and you can make my heart race even when you smell like shit. Because you can manage to eat your weight in chicken wings and still turn me on my head.”

  I throw my arm out at the room service cart, gesture at the cookie crumbs on her face, which she furiously starts wiping away. I can’t help but grab her hand back, shaking my head with a grin on my face.

  “Because you’re adorable as hell.” My thumb runs over that gnawed-up nail, which I can tell she wants to bring to her mouth. So she chews on her lip instead. “Shay…You know practically everything about me. Even the stuff I don’t want people to know. And I…I don’t mind you knowing. I like that you know.”

  Her eyes flick up and meet mine. The silence around us eats at me. I thought she’d have some witty comeback, since she’s never been one to let me have the last word. And more of the embarrassing speech starts playing in my head, even though I swore to myself I’d never let a woman get deep enough under my skin to make me want to give an embarrassing speech. I’m about to blurt out every last sentence of it. Maybe get up and spout off a sonnet. If I could play an instrument I would. Romance isn’t my forte, obviously. I gotta watch more Nicholas Sparks.

  “It’s 2:01,” Shay says. I look at the alarm clock behind me.

  “2:02.”

  She lets out a half laugh. “Always an argument.”

  I point at the clock, because it clearly says 2:02. She shakes her head. I can’t tell if she’s smiling or if she’s holding one back. Her hand sort of twitches in mine like she’s unsure if she wants it there, and then it hits.

  “You don’t believe me.”

  “It’s…it’s after two.”

  I let go of her hand and ease off the bed. “Okay. I’ll come back in the morning and say it all again, then.”

  A tiny laugh shakes through her as she brings her knees up to her chest. “I won’t hold my breath.”

  I know it’s my own damn fault that she’s skeptical, but I can feel the frustration burning up the back of my neck. My knuckles sink into the comforter by her hips as I lean in.

  “Why is it so hard for you to believe that I’ve fallen for you?”

  She’s a breath away, but neither of us are breathing. Someone’s lit a fire between us, sucking out all the oxygen. A piece of jet black hair falls in front of Shay’s eyes as she holds my gaze.

  “You’re…you’re not supposed to fall for me,” she whispers, snuffing out the flames between us. “I’m not the love interest.”

  “Really?” I tuck the strand behind her ear. “Because I’m sure interested in you.”

  “What changed, then?” she asks. “You didn’t want any of these feelings. Ever. You’ve been salivating over another woman all week.”

  I break away, knowing her stubbornness (totally justified stubbornness) will not let me get past this argument tonight.

  “Not all week,” I mutter. Where did I put my shoes? I bend down and search under the bed, finding only one.

  “Come on…” She snorts. “A good portion of it.”

  “You know what happened?” I say, swinging my shoe around like a lunatic. “You got soaked by a giant mud puddle. You turned around, and I…I lost it.”

  “I know. I heard the laughter.”

  “No. I lost my mind.” I shake my head, realizing that mud puddle was the moment I tripped over the love hill. My ass has been tumbling ever since. “Everything I thought I wanted didn’t make sense anymore, not even when I tried to explain it. All I could think was how damn cute you looked and how I wanted to see more of that. More of…of this…” I wave my shoe between our bodies. “I like fighting with you. I like how tough you are. I like being the person who makes you laugh. Maybe I found you so painfully annoying when we first met because you are the one for me. And I didn’t want that…but now, damn it, you are all I want.”

  There’s the embarrassing speech. I’m only met with silence, and I don’t really feel like sitting here in the horrifying quiet, so I stuff my foot into my shoe and locate the other one by the room service cart. I make sure to step over the pieces of my squished-up heart, which had finally found a reason to beat for someone else again.

  “I know you don’t believe me,” I ramble, looking around the room for lost items, patting my pockets to make sure I’ve got everything I came in with. “But I’ll be back tomorrow morning to tell you the same thing if I have to.”

  I wait for her to say something, but she doesn’t, so I head to the closet to grab my hoodie. The creak of the bed tells me she’s at least going to walk me out. Maybe it wasn’t all for nothing.

  “Um, Jace…?” she says, coming up beside me. I meet her eyes, watch as her mind fights for words to say. When I can tell she can’t figure it out, I run a hand over my head.

  “It’s okay. We can talk tomorrow.”

  I turn to leave, but her fingers lock around the sleeve of my shirt. Her hand lightly tugs on my arm, pulling my face down to her level. Her lips press softly against my mouth, picking up pieces of my squashed heart. They zip back into place in my chest, awakening me from the initial shock of her kiss and letting me respond in the appropriate way. My hands find her warm cheeks.

  “Stay right here,” I say in a husky voice between our lips. “I want you to stay right here.”

  Her lips turn into a small smile before they move faster and harder against mine. Her hands grip my shirt, and I can feel her body bumping up against me in sudden aggressive attempts to get closer.

  She jumps on my hips, knocking me back into the door with a bang! And what started as a gradual build of passion leaps forward. I grapple for her knees, trying to hold both of us up, but her lips are making it hard. Making a lot of things hard. I adjust her on my waist, smirking against her mouth, loving the aggressive side of her. A smack against the wall above my head tells me she’s locked the latch on the door.

  I pull on her shirt, uncovering her shoulder, and I playfully bite down. Her whole body trembles.

  “Blazing hell…” she mutters. “I like that.”

  “Told you I had mad skills,” I whisper along her collarbone.

  A small laugh tumbles from her lips, and she pushes a finger up against my mouth so I stop with the arrogance. I kiss it, bite at it, and she presses her hands on my cheeks, nails digging into my hair and leaving chills up and down my spine. Her teeth take hold of my bottom lip, and then she sucks on it, messing up my equilibrium. My legs give out, and I slide us down the door, groaning until my ass hits the carpet. Her knees automatically touch the floor on either side of my hips, and her butt rests against my thighs. She releases my lip and her tongue swipes over her own, and she closes her eyes and sighs. Her face is higher than mine for the first time ever, and I like the view. I like her messed-up hair, the flush of her neck, the ragged rise and fall of her chest.

  I’m absolutely…

  …gone.

  Words are no longer a priority, but they come out anyway, like always.

  “I liked that.”

  “It’s my mad skills,” she says in a horrible impression of my voice. I grin and gently coax her face back to me. Her tongue prods my lips, trying to pry my mouth open, and it works because I’m laughi
ng.

  “Demanding even in bed,” I say, then meet her tongue before it retreats behind her teeth.

  “We’re not in bed.”

  “Always an argument.”

  Her eyes narrow in that adorably frustrated way, and she takes the hand I have pressed against her cheek and forces it under the hem of her shirt.

  “Touch me, damn it,” she says, and gives me one hard kiss on the mouth. “And shush.”

  I laugh again before setting my other hand on her waist and pulling her hips to line up just right with mine. Her nails run through my hair, grip the strands, and keep my face close. Her tongue gets my lips open without a laugh this time, and she pushes herself tight up against me, knocking my head against the door, making my hands drift down to her killer ass.

  These shorts are my new best friends.

  “Dayum,” I say, letting my palms cup this ass made from heaven itself.

  “Mmm…Yeah. I wouldn’t need a butt double,” she teases. I pinch it once, making her squirm. But then I squeeze it hard when her lips drop back to mine, and she lets out a sound I’ve never heard from her. And this adorable woman has now taken my heart that I just got back and put it in her pocket.

  Her tongue snakes out and she drags it up my neck to my ear. I’m gone again. Like some kind of acid trip. She has me tasting colors. Soft blues and greens, then she hits me with scorching reds and yellows. My hands have somehow left her heaven-sent ass and are now gripping her ribs, trying to get her to slide up onto my lap, even though the first contact through jeans will probably have the Smurfs jumping the gun and I’ll do something I haven’t since I was a teenager. But…I need relief.

  After I silently argue with her for twenty very long seconds, she finally relents and presses down. Her hips start moving in the same rhythm as our tongues, and I thought I’d be helping her, encouraging her, because hell, it feels so damn good, but the Smurfs are locked and loaded, and their finger’s on the trigger, and I swear one more thrust is gonna be the last.

  Where’s my brain? I have to start thinking of dead puppies, hairy dudes in Speedos, liver and onions, but no visual can penetrate the feel of Shay’s body and the bright red color I taste.