But regardless of how much I tell myself to take that necessary step back, I can still feel myself slipping deeper into whatever this is between Beaux and me. I mean fuck, I want to have sex with her again – that’s a given – but since that first-time buildup has already happened between us, we have this oddly fascinating connection now. It’s like since we know how explosive the physical side of things is between us that we almost fear igniting that powder keg again unless we figure out if we can actually handle it.

And God how I want to handle it before I handle her, because I know the next time we connect, there will be no turning back. Both physically and where my heart is concerned. I know myself well enough that this feeling I have inside isn’t going to allow me to stay behind the Kevlar for too much longer.

But I’m pulled from my thoughts as a soft smile turns up her lips and reaches her eyes. At the sight a warmth spreads through me. And with the quality time we’ve spent together lately, I feel like even though we are in this room filled with colleagues, we are having our own private conversation without speaking.

She slides her eyes over to the empty pool table, and when I roll my eyes in response, her laugh crosses the distance between us. She knows I detest pool just about as much as she hates Scrabble, but we’ve learned to compromise to pass the time. Shaking my head, I rise from my seat while she walks to the far wall and grabs the cues and the rack for the balls. Out of habit and because, shit, how can I not look, I take in the curve of her hips and the muscles in her shoulders as she grabs the sticks for us.

“Ready to lose, Pulitzer?”

“Someone has to let you win so you don’t pout,” I tease as she picks up a ball and pretends like she’s going to huck it at me despite the smirk playing at the corners of her lips.

“You talk a good game. Too bad you can’t play one.” My laugh comes freely, our banter a reliable form of entertainment as we sit in limbo for the next story on the horizon.

We take our shots, and balls fall in the pockets while she hustles me like usual as we tease and walk that fine line of flirting without flirting: a brush of a hand on a lower back, a lean in with a comment in a lowered voice, eyes hungry for the next look from the other. All the while cautious of the eyes watching around us, ready to make assumptions that don’t need to be made.

“You’d better watch your back, rookie,” I tease as I glance at the table, well aware that there are a lot more of my solids on the table than her stripes. “I’m making a comeback.”

Her laugh rings out above the chatter, echoing off the cheap tile floor in the lobby. “You couldn’t beat me if you tried.” She sits with her hip on the edge of the table, distraction at its finest because who cares about aiming my cue at little solid balls when I could stare at her instead?

“I’m in complete control here,” I murmur as I line up my shot.

“Ha. I’ll let you keep thinking that,” she scoffs, knowing perfectly well that comment will rattle any man.

Our eyes lock, so many words exchanged without speaking as the sexual tension thickens between us. Want and need, desire and lust, reverberate through the air like our own private secret in this room full of people. I force myself to go through the motions, placing the chalked cue in the crease of my thumb and index finger as I prepare to strike the ball, except my eyes are on Beaux because, damn, how could I look away?

Her chuckle distracts me, her body calls to me, her defiance is a challenge. And I blame all three of those things when I completely miss the cue ball like some chump. She jumps off the table, a hiss of “Yes!” falling from her lips as she dances around me with a taunt in her eyes and an arrogance to her swagger from being victorious in her distraction.

Out of the blue, music blasts through the lobby. At first everyone freezes, then turns to where one of Pauly’s crew has plugged portable speakers into his laptop and is standing there looking back at all of us. Gus is his name, I think. I remember him because he always wears the most horrendous Hawaiian shirts that look like paradise got drunk and decided to throw up all over him.

“Let’s liven up this joint! We’re all bored stiff… so let’s loosen the fuck up!” Gus waves his arms out to the side for everyone to get on their feet, and the minute he stops talking, the room erupts in “Hell yeah” and whistling.

The lobby transforms instantly as the music is turned up louder so that the speaker crackles from the volume. The necessity to break up the doldrums takes hold of all of us – even the sticks-in-the-mud get to their feet and bob their heads to the rhythm. I glance over to see Beaux’s body sway to the beat as the familiar chords of a song by the popular band Bent begins to play.

Although I’m not normally one to dance, there’s no stopping me at the chance to feel her body against mine. The next thing I know, she’s walking toward me with her hips swaying and her body moving to the music. She sets down the cue and grabs my hand. We begin to move together in steps that don’t match the beat whatsoever. I spin her out and pull her back in like I used to watch my parents do across the kitchen floor when I was a little boy.

On another spin, we lose our grip on each other. Beaux’s shoulder hits the wall, and we double over in laughter at how horrible we are, but my God the laughter feels good. The smiles remain as we get back into the rhythm again, losing ourselves in the song as we dance in the space around the pool table. She raises her arms over her head and shimmies her hips as she lets the music take over, and hell if watching her body move like this doesn’t make me want to light the fuse to the powder keg.

I try to spin her out one last time as the final chords to the song hit our ears, and even though we are still laughing out of control – welcoming the stress relief from both the hours of waiting and the sexual tension that’s slowly building between us – we actually manage to keep our hands joined. When I pull her back into me, I do it with too much force because she lands against my chest, our bodies connected from shoulders to knees, breaths panting in unison as she looks up at me.

And something happens in the moment when the song fades and a new one starts, because neither of us moves. We remain motionless, but the way she looks at me changes somehow. It’s the craziest thing too, because as we stare at each other, chests heaving, the rest of the makeshift party going on all around us, my mom’s infinite wisdom chooses to flicker through my mind and take residence.

She used to always tell Rylee and me that she fell in love with my dad’s eyes first and foremost and that was how she knew he was going to be the one. According to her, eyes are the one thing on someone that never changes, so if you can look into someone’s eyes and see tomorrow, then you’ve found your forever.

Right here in this random moment with music fueled by spontaneity and the heat of her breath hitting my lips as she gazes into my eyes, I’m momentarily spooked by what I see there. And I think she feels it too, because even though we stay in the suspended state of inexplicable intimacy a beat longer, she pushes away from me seconds later, breaking the moment.

With enough distance between us, I can see the surprise I feel mirrored in her eyes. Right then there are so many things I want to tell her, and yet I have no clue where to start. It’s like we’ve both been stripped of that false bravado we had last week when she said she refused to touch me again and I told her I’d control the reins. It’s almost as if the moment were too raw, too real, and holding too much certainty that once we step over that edge, we won’t be coming back.

Beaux takes a step backward, her head shaking ever so subtly, but her eyes never leave mine. “I’ve got to…” Her voice fades off as she motions with her thumb over her shoulder. “I’ve got some pictures to edit.”

“Beaux?” Concern laces my voice as I ask her if she’s okay.

“I’m gonna go do that.” Her voice is anything but certain as she takes another step backward. “Now. Then bed,” she says as she grabs her camera from the table, turns on her heel, and strides out of the lobby.

I begin to go after her, feeling energized that she just proved to me her emotions are running as haywire as mine are when it comes to us. When I catch Pauly’s eye, my feet falter, and I know there’s no chance in hell I’ll chase her now and let him know that I care. He just nods once in understanding before throwing his head back and laughing over the beat of the music; then he approaches and pats me roughly on the back.

“Good luck with that,” he says as he tilts the neck of his beer in the direction in which she left. “You lucky bastard.”

Chapter 12




The sound of a car’s horn shocks me awake and scares the crap out of me. I reach over to the nightstand and grab my phone with one hand while I place my other arm over my eyes to block out the harsh morning sunlight coming in through the curtains I forgot to close. I peek at the time on my phone and curse the early morning hour after staying up and shooting the shit with Pauly long after the lobby dance party subsided. There will definitely be a lot of hungover journalists in this hotel today, and thank God I’m not one of them.

Between talking with Pauly and the image of Beaux’s face just before she’d gone upstairs, I decided to forgo the drinking. Besides, I had a hunch that if I drank, I’d be knocking on her door when I promised myself I wouldn’t do that again. And Christ how I wanted to do that again. But as I climbed the stairwell to my room last night, I hesitated before opening the door to my floor because every damn nerve in my body was begging me to keep going up a few more flights to her floor.

So now my dick is hard as a rock with thoughts of her on my mind. And they’re all indecent ones. I’m faced with a decision: hot shower and jerk off, or go hit the gym and work out this frustration in the hope that maybe I’ll get the real deal sometime soon. It’s sad that this is my dilemma of the morning, but fuck, I’ll take it.

Maybe jerking off, then the gym and then the hot shower. It definitely doesn’t hit the same pleasure spot, but at least something’s getting hit. Besides, taking one for the team doesn’t mean I can’t still get lucky later.

Thoughts of Beaux are still front and center as I shove up out of bed and get ready to work out. I’m out of my hotel room and in the stairwell within twenty minutes of waking, earbuds in, and muscles tense with my mind running in a million directions, but sexual frustration front and center. When I’m three flights down, I turn on the landing and come face-to-face with Beaux.

Déjà vu hits, and although we’re standing apart this time, I still feel as if my body has slammed into hers. And what knocks the air out of me is not just catching her like this when the images of all of the ways I want to fuck her have owned my thoughts. Not hardly. It’s the look of shocked surprise in her eyes mixed with the realization that I’ve noticed she’s wearing the same clothes as last night, camera slung over her shoulder, hair piled on top of her head.

Again.

Disbelief marries with hurt before it rifles through me. After that moment we shared between us last night, how could she have gone out and spent the night with someone else? I force a swallow to compose myself as I watch her eyes widen and her head shake back and forth rapidly as she realizes she’s been caught. It’s too much; I can’t deal with this, with her, with the disappointment spreading through my system right now. It just doesn’t make sense, and I’d rather feel the anger than the confusion.

And it’s just the briefest of hesitations on my part as I allow myself a moment to feel stupid before I begin to rein my feelings in and turn to walk away. That slight falter gives her the opening she needs to reach out and grab my arm as I start to turn away. “No, Tanner! It’s not what you think!” she shouts in the empty stairwell, the echo of her denials bouncing off the concrete walls and hitting my ears to reinforce her words.

The incredulity I feel at being caught in this same moment again on top of my mistrust toward her right now has me primed for an argument. “What the fuck do you mean, it’s not what I think?” I growl as I turn around to face her, shrugging my arm from her grasp. “Because it looks pretty damn obvious to me. Guess the joke’s on me… or whoever else you were with last night. You sure as hell have a way of making someone feel like you have eyes only for them… when in fact you give everything else instead.”