Player(96)

I took another breath and straightened my spine, stretching me to the extent that my five-foot-one frame would allow. When she moved out of the way, I almost went out like a candle.

His eyes switched from the parting girl to fix on me, and the air left my lungs in a vacuum that would have snuffed an entire room full of candles.

They were dark as midnight, the iris indistinguishable from his pupil, his lashes thick and long and absolutely ridiculous. Ridiculous, every inch of him. The cut of his jaw, covered in a dark shadow from his mildly kept beard. His nose, strong and long and masculine. Those cursed eyes, which had to be brown, but I couldn’t make out anything but bottomless black. His hair, long enough to fall over his shoulders, waving and so thick, I bet his ponytail was at least seven times the diameter of mine.

But the most ridiculous part of his utterly ridiculous face were his lips, wide and full, the bottom in a constant pout, the top a little bit thicker, angled at a ridiculous angle that had me wondering what it’d be like to suck on it.

Which was ridiculous in and of itself. I’d never even been kissed.

But whenever I was, God grant me lips like those.

Hands planted themselves on my shoulderblades and shoved.

Thomas Bane laughed, and I was unsurprised to find that his smile was ridiculous, too. What utterly unfair bullshit that a man should be that gorgeous.

I wondered if he went by Thomas and brushed the thought away. He was like Celine Dion, but with even better hair. No one called Celine Dion just plain old Celine. I imagined bet even her kids called her Celine Dion, yelling through their multi-zillion dollar home, ‘Celine Dion, come wipe my butt!’ I also imagined that on Sundays, she wore a ballroom gown and tiara to lay around on the couch and watch Netflix.

I cleared my throat and unloaded the books the paper had sent with me for him to sign. I couldn’t meet his eyes again.

“Hi…” He paused, probably looking for the name tag sticker on my tiny boob. “Amelia. It’s good to see you,” he said as if we’d met a hundred times.

Say hi. Say hello. Say hi, Amelia, goddammit.

I made the mistake of looking up, and my tongue tripled in size.

Don’t look at him, you idiot!

My eyes darted back down to my hands. I swallowed.

“H-hi,” I whispered.

God, I could feel him watching me. I could feel him smirking.

He took a book as I set it down, his hand entering my line of vision like a giant, manly, long-fingered version of my tiny pale one.

“Who should I personalize this to?” he asked.

“No personalization,” I answered before I lost my nerve.

Another soft chuckle as I added to the stack. “No problem.” The sound of a sharpie scratching the page filled the silence.

Say something! You are a mess, Amelia Hall. You have to tell him who you are. Janessa will shit a brick if you don’t.

I swallowed the sticky lump in my throat, arranging the book pile without purpose. “I…I’m Amelia Hall. W-with the U-USA Times.”

The book closed with a soft thump. “Amelia Hall? As in the blogger for Halls of Books?” The question was thick with meaning.

All of the blood in my body rushed from every extremity and up my neck in a blush so hard, I could feel the tingling crawl of it as my vision shimmered.

I looked up like a dummy anyway. An affirmative word was on my stupid, fat tongue, stuck there in my mouth like a gum ball in a water hose. So I nodded instead.

He was smirking, lips together, a tilted smile that set a glimmer of amusement in his eyes. “You’re the blogger who hates me so much.”

I frowned. “I don’t hate you. I just hold issue with your idea of romance.”

The words left me without thought or attempt or desire to reel them back in. I might not have been able to order a pizza over the phone, but I could stand up for a little old lady who someone cut in front of or the kid who was getting picked on. And my ideals. I could stand up for those too, especially when questioned.

The corner of his sardonic mouth climbed. “Well, lucky for me, I don’t write romance.”

A derisive sound left me. Lucky for all of us. “I don’t hate your books at all, Mr. Bane.”

He shrugged and took the next book off the pile to sign. “Wouldn’t guess so from your reviews. My least favorite phrase on the planet is unforgivable sin, thanks to you.”

The heat in my cheeks flared again, this time in defense. “Your world building is incredible. Your imagery is so brilliant, sometimes I have to set my book down and stare at a wall just to absorb it. But every hero you write is, frankly, a—” An asshole, that was what I was going to say, but landed on, “—an unkind man.”

He nodded at the title page as he scrawled his name. “Viggo?”

“He left Djuna because she was pregnant with his half-breed baby. And she took him back, even though he wouldn’t even commit to her for good.”

“Blaze?”

I rolled my eyes. “He didn’t come for Luna because he was more worried about himself. He could have saved her from the Liath!” My hand rose in the universal sign for What the hell? and lowered to slap my thigh with a snap.

“Even Zavon? He’s everyone’s favorite.”

My face flattened. “He cheated on her out of spite. That, sir, is the ultimate unforgivable sin. And if that wasn’t bad enough, she took him back for no reason. He didn’t even apologize.” I said the words as if it had been me who he’d cheated on. Honestly it felt that way.