Cuff Me(32)

He smirked. “Can I help you with something, Henley?”

“Um…”

There was a very satisfying pause, and Vincent felt his grin grow wider.

She pointed to her room. “My TV’s not working.”

Damn. Not what he was hoping she’d say.

“Ah. What room are they moving you to?” he asked, assuming she was stopping by to tell him of her relocation.

“They’re not.”

And then she ducked, slipping under the barricade his arm had made across the doorway and entering his hotel room.

“Um, okay.” He shut the door and turned to face her.

She’d already found the remote on the nightstand and wiggled it at him. “You mind?”

“You’re watching TV here?”

“Why not? If you need to finish your push-ups, I’ll promise not to watch.”

“Really,” he said dryly.

“Nope.” She grinned. “Not really. Seriously, Moretti, that’s an impressive upper body you’ve been hiding from me all this time.”

“I’d be happy to implement shirtless Saturdays if you are.”

“Eh, you’re getting the bad end of the bargain there, my friend. The only exercise I do on a daily basis is lifting beverages to my face. Coffee in the morning, wine in the evenings—”

Vin tuned out her rambling. He was too busy picturing shirtless Jill, and somehow he didn’t think he’d be disappointed.

Jill was slim, yes, and her small breasts were not exactly the type to land the Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover, but Vincent had never been a boobs guy.

He liked his women on the smaller end of the spectrum, liked when he could lift them, hold their tight, perfect ass in his hands as he…

The TV turned on and his dirty thoughts scattered.

“I guess you’re staying then,” he muttered.

“It wasn’t really ever up for negotiation,” she said, her mouth full of M&M’s as she flipped through the stations.

“Thought you ‘couldn’t possibly eat’?” he said.

She shot him a patient look before patting the mattress next to her. “Come watch this stupid movie with me. It’ll help ease your bad mood.”

He glanced at the TV. “Isn’t this Transformers, or something equally awful?”

She wiggled her eyebrows at him. “You know you want to.”

And in spite of himself, he did.

Not the movie so much, but the idea of relaxing beside someone else, even if it was in a shitty little motel room with no clean clothes and a f*cking blizzard outside, held a strange appeal.

Vincent walked around the bed and sat beside her, both of them propped against the headboard. And he realized he was wrong. It wasn’t relaxing beside someone that appealed.

It was relaxing beside Jill.

She glanced over at him, then did a double take before bouncing off the bed and grabbing his undershirt from the chair in the corner where he’d set it.

Jill flung it at him, and he caught it just before it whacked him in the face.

“Put that on,” she ordered.

“I usually go to bed shirtless,” he said, flexing just to mess with her.

“And I usually watch TV pantless,” she shot back.

Vin lifted an eyebrow. “I’m game if you’re game.”

She pointed at him. “Get dressed, Moretti.”

He complied, but only because an annoying thought cropped up. “Did you talk to Tom?”

Jill was in the process of flinging herself on the bed, but she faltered a little at that. “You sure are concerned with the state of my relationship.”

“Just making conversation,” he muttered, turning his attention back to the TV. It was commercials.

“Since when?” she asked, pressing the issue. “Since when have you ‘just made conversation’ with anyone?”

There was a sharper-than-usual edge to her voice, and Vincent scooted down so he was lying on his side of the bed, head propped on his hand, facing her. “What’s going on, Henley? You’re testy.”

She fished out an M&M, started to lift it to her mouth, and then frowned at it.

“Everything okay?” he asked, tongue in his cheek. This disgruntled version of Jill was kind of… cute.

“I don’t like the brown ones,” she said, as though this were completely reasonable.

She held it out to him between two fingers, and Vincent surprised them both by leaning forward and nipping it out of her fingers with his mouth.

The lips-to-fingers contact was brief. A second at most, but he felt it in his gut. Heard it in her intake of breath.

Vin lifted his eyes to hers, but the second he did, she looked back at the M&M’s bag, shaking it violently until she found a blue one.

She rattled the bag again, going at it like a raccoon with a take-out bag, and he reached out, touched her hand. “Jill?”

Abruptly she dropped the bag of candy and scooted down until she was flat on her back on the bed. She flung both arms over her face, the crook of her crossed elbows hiding her eyes.

He didn’t ask her what was up. Didn’t push. Just sat and waited. She was still for several minutes, and then she rolled over onto her side to face him, propping her head on her hand, mimicking his position.