Price of a Kiss (Forbidden Men, #1)(25)

“Ooh, chili cheese fries. Good choice. Better than the rabbit food you had yesterday.” He stole one off my plate and popped it into his mouth.

“Well, look who’s come to visit Miss Deluded,” I snarked back, hiding my intense reaction of all things excitable to his presence. “Do you ever eat your own food? Or do you just get a perverse pleasure out of eating mine?”

“That’s for me to know and you to find out.” He sent me a grin full of promise and hidden meaning. I fell into a mini trance, watching his lips purse and move as he chewed. Then my attention fell to his tanned throat as he swallowed.

Seriously. Eating a chili cheese fry should not look that sinful.

“Umm. Can we help you? Mason?” Eva asked pointedly, glaring daggers at him.

He sent her a strained smile. “Nope. Just eating my lunch.”

“My lunch,” I cut in right before he pulled a plastic-wrapped sub sandwich from his bag. He waved it tauntingly, letting me know he had brought his own food.

I scowled back because, really, I hated being bested.

Watching him unwrap his meal and take a bite, Eva muttered, “Do you seriously have to eat here? With us?”

“Eva!” I gasped. What was her deal? Earlier in Brit Lit, she’d acted as if being in his presence was the bomb. Now, she was just…a bitch.

“Jesus, Mercer.” Mason scowled as he lowered the hoagie. “I’m not contagious.”

“Are you sure about that? I mean, who knows what kind of nasty STD—”

“Okay, okay, okay,” I broke in, lifting my hands and waving them in the universal white-flag gesture. “I’m sensing a disturbance in the Force between you two. Is there some kind of history here I’m not aware of?” Then I gasped. “Oh, my God. You two have slept together. Haven’t you?”

Eva huffed out an aggravated sound and wrote something in her planner vigorously enough to make the fuzzy tassel on the end of her pen bob sporadically.

Mason merely stared at me in awe as he shook his head. “Wow, your curiosity has no filter whatsoever, does it?”

I scowled back because he was purposely avoiding my question. Glancing at my cousin, I said, “E.?”

“It’s nothing,” she muttered, suddenly very interested in turning the page and checking future dates.

With a roll of my eyes, I whirled to face Mason with a pointed look.

“What?” he asked, pulling back with an overly innocent expression. He cast a questioning glance at Eva before focusing on me. “She said it was nothing.”

I opened my mouth, but Eva must’ve had a change of heart.

“Nothing?” she repeated in an offended voice. Slamming her planner shut, she narrowed her eyes. “Okay, fine.” She finally gave me her attention. “One night at a party about, oh, a year ago, I’d had a little too much to drink and I ended up throwing myself at him.” Her gaze pierced Mason with hateful shards. “And he turned me down. Flat.”

I frowned, confused. Umm…wasn’t that kind of what a guy was supposed to do when a drunk girl came onto him?

“And she proceeded to call me a pretentious bastard for it,” Mason added, glaring right back at Eva.

“Well, you are,” she hissed.

“…who had no right to act so self-righteous because I’m nothing but a high-priced whore with a pretty face, who’ll end up an overweight, broke, balding no one by the time I’m forty.” His jaw tightened. “Isn’t that how you worded it?”

I gasped and pinned my cousin with an incredulous glance. “You called him a whore?”

She shrugged. “He is a whore.”

“So that’s what I get for trying to be a gentleman and not take advantage of the stumbling, slurring drunk girl.” Looking pissed and a trifle hurt, Mason reached across the table and picked up my cup as if he needed it to console himself. But after taking a deep drink through the straw, he winced and pulled back. “What is this?”

I wrinkled my nose at him and pushed my hair out of my face. My drink didn’t taste that bad. “It’s a diet cola.”

Okay, maybe it did taste that bad.

He set it back in front of me, looking deceived. “So…you eat chili cheese fries loaded with grease, calories, and carbs. Then get a diet cola?” He gave an amused laugh. “You’re such a girl.”

I tossed my hair again and leveled him with a fake scowl. “Maybe I just ordered a nasty-tasting drink because I knew you’d try to steal it. This could’ve been the only way to protect what’s mine.”

“A,” he said with a smile. “That won’t work on me. I’ll always steal whatever food or beverage you have. And B.” He fluttered his lashes. The feminine move should’ve looked ridiculous on him. Which, okay, it kind of did. But it also looked drop-dead sexy and somehow masculine. “I’m flattered you took the time to think of me at all.”

“Oh, gag me,” Eva howled. “If you two are done eye-humping each other, I’d like to go throw up now.”

I sent her a glower, promising a good strangulation later. I even opened my mouth to tell her in no uncertain terms that Mason and I were not flirting.

But he ignored her and said to me, “Are you watching Sarah tonight?”

I gave him some major brownie points for being able to totally blow off Eva’s rude comment. But the tightening around his mouth told me her words hadn’t left him unaffected.