Bait: The Wake Series, Book One(21)

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.”

Like I’d witnessed her do before when I had her full attention, she leaned forward eager for more information.

“It's a hook and a fish,” I said.

Her laugh bellowed and she quickly shut it off, re-masking her face with rapt interest.

I said, “See a fish doesn't want a hook. They'd probably rather not meet one and they're a bitch to get rid of. You follow?”

She bobbed her head with rapt attention. “And a hook, well it's only a hunk of metal. It doesn't know anything. Right?”

“Yeah.”

“You have to add something special to these two to bring them together. Something that one can't shake and the other can't resist.” I wrapped my hands around her low on her hips so I could pull her to me. I wanted her closer. “It's the bait, Blake. The bait is this outside force that brings these two totally different, foreign, objects together. Neither the hook nor the fish have a choice. We have something like that. We have the bait.”

“The bait,” she repeated, almost in a daze. Her brow furrowed. “So am I the hook or the fish? Or am I the bait? Sorry, I'm a little drunk, remember?”

She was adorably lost and I chuckled at her confused expression. “You're the fish.”

“I'm the fish? I'm the fish.” I saw a little light pop on behind her eyes. “I couldn't resist you because of the bait,” she said slowly.

“Right. And I didn't have a choice in the whole f*cking thing because I'm just scrap metal.” I wasn’t sure where it was coming from, but it was true. I had never felt the lesser in a relationship, but with Blake, I was simply the hook. Not in control, and certainly dependent on the bait, or whatever the f*ck it was, to attract the alluring woman before me.

She laughed and for some reason, I felt better.

“Okay. I'll buy some of that, but the hook doesn't want the fish or the bait.”

“See that's where you’re wrong.” I pulled her even closer, placing them over mine, and she wrapped her arms around my shoulders, like we’d sat that way all the time. “The hook's sole purpose is to get the fish. That's what it was meant to do.”

“Okay. That's a little weak, but I'll let it slide because you're cute.” I liked drunk Blake.