Bait (Wake, #1)(17)

“Casey?” she asked. Then I heard the thump of her head against the wood. “What are you doing here?”

“Please, let me in.” I wasn't messing around. I wanted in and I saw no point in f*cking around about it.

She said through the door to me, “It's late.”

“I know what time it is. Let me in.”

“Casey, this is a bad idea.”

“You leave tomorrow. Don't you?”

“See? This isn't right. I have a boyfriend and you clearly still have a girlfriend. Last night was—” Then she stopped.

“I don't still have a girlfriend. I don't know why she showed up. And honestly, right now, I don't give a shit about your boyfriend. Open. The. Door.” I walked a thin line. I never talked to women like that usually. To tell you the truth, I‘d never had a reason to. None of the chicks I'd dated ever had this effect on me.

I lightened the mood and clawed my way toward a miracle, I pulled out what I hoped were the big guns. “Betty, please?”

I heard her laugh a little and hiccup. Her fingers fumbled around with the lock. It rattled the door as she tried to get the mechanisms to unlatch. When she got all the way to the top, she huffed and kicked the door.

She was frustrated. I knew the feeling.

“Almost there, Lou,” she sang. When the last lock slid from that bally thing and met the face of the wooden door, I reached and turned the knob myself.

She swayed, stepping backward at the same time. The back of her knees hit the luggage stand and she stopped, flinging her arms out to her sides and carpet surfed the whole way back to her equilibrium.

“Are you okay?” I shut the door gently, not wanting to startle her when she was already having a difficult time standing.

Her flimsy hand washed past her face, narrowly missing her bright red nose. It was so cute. It had gotten like that when she was flushed from sex, but I didn't notice it when she was drinking. A sane person’s brain would say, “Oh, it probably does that when she's drunk.” But I wasn't sane at the moment. I was looking for any reason that I was doing the right thing. I stood there internally debating why the f*cking perfectly pink nose glowed like Rudolph.

“I'm fine,” she said, pinching her lips together like a duck.

A conniving voice in my head said it was pink for another reason.

“Are you drunk?” I walked around her, straight to the couch. I wanted her to come to me. Sure, my intentions weren't the purest when I’d decided to come back to her hotel. But being there, I wasn't as interested in sex as much as I was about getting information out of that mind of hers.

And maybe some sex, too. Sex with her was dynamite. Who wouldn’t want more of that? But that wasn’t what this was about.

“Yes. I am. We should sleep together. At least I could blame this time on the booze.” She laughed at what she was trying to pass off as a joke, but it went flat.

I didn't think it was funny.

“Is that what last night was? Your drunk mistake?”

Again, she picked at her f*cking nails and I fought the impulse to slap them away from her and make her look at me. “Come sit by me, Blake. I won’t bite.”

She looked at me and then her face flushed, coloring her grin.

Dirty girl, I'm on to you.

She relaxed a little and padded over to the couch, around the coffee table, and sat as far away from me as she could. She was still wearing the skirt from earlier, but since returning to her hotel room and her own personal bar, she'd taken her bra off and changed into a tank top. She folded a porcelain white leg under herself and leaned away from me onto the arm of the couch.

“I don't know why I did that last night,” she said as she stared off into the room, still avoiding me. “I had a little to drink, but I wasn't that drunk. I was a little mad at Grant, but I wasn’t trying to get back at him. You know?”

She finally looked at me, genuinely bothered by her admissions.

She added, “Even before you would talk to me, I knew what I wanted. I waited for you to talk to me. I thought about it,” her face grew serious as she paused to collect her thoughts, putting a stop to her rambling. She sucked in a lungful of air. “I made a decision to try...to try to be with you. I didn't think it would go that far, but I thought about that, too. I wanted last night. I wouldn't change a second of it.”

I smiled wide, I probably looked like a f*cking dope, but I couldn't care less. Those words were the coolest words I'd ever heard. She was totally honest. Her nose returned to its creamy natural state and she continued, “That's the part I regret. You know?”

That's where she lost me. Didn't she just tell me she was into me? Stop there. Please, stop there. She saw the puzzle polluting my face.

“What part?” I pulled her hand to make her face me completely and I turned on the cushion to meet her halfway.

“I regret that I don't regret it at all. That's the part that's kicking my ass.” She blew out a silent whistle of air and it went right in my face. She'd drunk tequila. I think I smelled the worm.

“I don't know what to say,” I told her.

“Just say whatever your thinking. One. Two. Three. Say it.” She roughly pointed into my chest.

“Ouch. I think you're pretty and smart and cool. And I know about that feeling last night. I think I know what that's called.”