Bet on It (54)

Walker moved on to her right foot, immediately going to the arch, digging in hard enough to make her moan involuntarily. His eyes were sharp when they cut to her.

“Uhm, sorry.…” Her face heated.

“Don’t worry about it.” The roughness in his tone did nothing to abate her pleasure. “It’s supposed to feel good.”

Aja feared opening her mouth, saying something that would easily give away how much she wanted him—how bad of a job she was doing at dampening her desire. So, she smiled, though it was more of a grimace. More teeth than cheek.

Neither of them said anything else. She could feel him next to her though, so keenly that they might as well have been attached. Nearly an hour later, when the episode was over and Bianca was sent home, Walker still had his thumbs pressing into her soles.





Chapter 17


The bingo hall smelled strongly of disinfectant. Normally the strongest scent inside was an odd mix of frying grease and paper. Walker had heard whispers that the staff shut down early on Tuesday night to scrub the place down after someone had gotten so excited about winning that they’d vomited everywhere. Gram didn’t buy it. When they’d sat down, she’d told him and Aja that they’d probably just cleaned extra hard in preparation for the health inspection coming up. Last time, they’d narrowly scraped by with a B-minus.

He didn’t particularly care why they’d done it, just that the strong mixed scents of Pine-Sol and bleach were incredibly irritating. For the very first time, he found himself sitting next to Aja but eager to leave.

She didn’t look very enthused either. She was all smiles and kind words, but he could tell she was tired. It clung around her sloped shoulders and eyes. She sat with her body hunched over the table more than usual, half laying on it. Walker didn’t know if her period was the cause of her lethargy or something else, but he didn’t like seeing it on her. He found himself wanting to take care of her. To pick her up, take her back to her place, and massage her feet until she was blissed out and rested. But he’d already gotten the chance to do some version of that, and he didn’t want to push his luck. So, he found himself willing the game to finish a little early so she could get herself home and into bed.

Gram was barely paying attention as he played her sheets. She had her back to him completely, carrying on a conversation with the woman on her left. He wasn’t making much headway. Quite a few numbers on his sheets had been called, but he was nowhere close to getting a bingo. Looking over at Aja’s sheets, he saw she wasn’t either.

He had to take his disappointment and push it off to the side. Their pact was very much intact, and the time they’d spent together at Aja’s apartment had only made his desire to win a bingo and have her again more pressing. The more time he spent with her, the more he got to know her, the deeper his desire became. There had been a shift in his feelings. It wasn’t just lust anymore. It wasn’t only that he found her physically attractive and as alluring as an enigma. Every day he felt closer to her.

There was other shit now. There was a comfort with her that he hadn’t experienced with anyone else, not even his best friends. He could be raw and honest with her about the parts of him that he normally kept hidden away. There was also the fact that he saw her. Really saw her. Funny her, anxious her, the her filled with as much hopeless longing as he was.

Those things terrified him, but they also drew him in. They made his want for her even stronger. And they made him want to retreat into his shell.

Walker had never been this eaten up over a woman before. He’d been in love exactly twice. All things considered, the rides had been pretty smooth. When those relationships had started, he’d been giddy and enthusiastic, and when they’d ended, he’d been heartbroken. He hadn’t, at any time, felt this conflicted. He didn’t really know what that meant.

This thing with Aja didn’t feel as easy as the others had been. It felt more intense. Like the stakes were higher somehow. It was thrilling. It was terrifying.

“You doin’ OK?” he asked when he heard her release a shaky breath.

“I think my reproductive system is trying to kill me,” she joked, but he could see little beads of sweat dotting her forehead.

“You want to leave early? I can walk you to your car.”

Aja raised an eyebrow. “Ms. May would kill you if you left her sheets unattended.”

He spared a glance at his grandmother. She was still fully engrossed in her conversation, paying him no mind.

“She’ll live.”

She bit down on her bottom lip, and he could see that she was considering the idea. He’d hate to see her go but he hated to see her in pain even more.

“No.” She shook her head. “I want to finish this game. I can still win.”

His heart thudded. She hadn’t been nearly this concerned with winning before they’d made their pact. It did something to him that she seemed just as eager to win as he did. Against his better judgment, he acknowledged it.

“Sadly, I don’t get the feelin’ that it’s goin’ to happen for me tonight.”

She looked at him, her dark eyes roaming his face. “I thought you’d have a little more faith than that. Unless…” She coughed. “Unless you don’t want to win.”

His hand moved at lightning speed to rest on top of hers. “Trust me, Aja, there ain’t a damned thing I want more right now than for one of us to win this game.” That was a lie; there was probably one thing. But he refused to allow himself to think on that too much. “I just don’t know if it’s in the cards tonight. I’m not feelin’ very lucky.”