Riveted

He grunted at me. “Fun doesn’t have anything to do with it.” He didn’t sound bitter about the fact, just matter-of-fact and resigned. It was the way it had always been for him and he didn’t expect it to be any different no matter where he was. “If you don’t plan for the worst and you’re caught with your ass hanging out in a bad situation there is no one to blame but yourself. Especially if you know firsthand how bad it can get.”

I lifted an eyebrow at him and licked my lips. “What about plan for the worst but expect the best? Why can’t you have a plan for if it goes bad but go into a situation ready to experience all the good things it may have to offer?”

He made a noise low in his throat and picked up his drink so that it covered his lickable lips. “I know my way around bad like the back of my hand, good not so much.”

I ordered another round of shots and glared at him as he lifted his eyebrows questioningly at me. “Are you having a liquid dinner tonight?”

He smoothly changed the subject and I noticed that his attention was now squarely on me and not on searching out hidden danger. I pointed a finger at him and realized it was less than steady. “We’re sharing a bed and that means I’m drinking enough that I’ll be too hammered to do anything inappropriate in my sleep and if I do get clingy I’ll be too drunk to remember it in the morning.”

There it went again, that little lip twitch that was trying so hard to be a smile. “You don’t have to share the bed if you don’t want to. I can sleep on the floor. Believe me, I’ve laid my head down in worse places.”

I groaned and put my face in my hands. “I do want … that’s the problem.”

He chuckled at me and pulled the shot I still hadn’t taken out of my hand. “How about we play a game and if you win then I’ll give you back your shot.”

I pouted at him and crossed my arms over my chest. “What kind of game?” I worked in a bar and had for a long time. If he thought he could beat me at pool, darts, quarters, or any of the other common barfly games I was constantly surrounded by he had another thing coming, even if I was well on my way to a pleasant buzz.

“Let’s play two truths and a lie. You tell me three things, two that are true and one that’s a lie and I have to pick the lie out. If you win you get your drink and if I pick the lie, then we get to go.” He sure did seem like he was in a big hurry to get back to the room we had to share but my brain was a little bit too fuzzy to pick up on the heat in his eyes and the sexy twist of his lips.

“Fine, I’ll play.” I was a terrible liar, so there wasn’t a chance in hell he wasn’t going to win. I tapped my fingers on the table in front of me and narrowed my eyes on his in concentration. Two truths were easy, it was the lie I was struggling with. I held up a finger and smirked at him. “Number one, is the first boy that I ever kissed ended up being gay. He was beautiful and it broke my heart when I found out. Number two, I am not a real redhead, all of this—” I picked up one of my poofy pigtails and let it fall “—is fake.” His eyebrows danced up and I saw his gaze sharpen on me in the dim light offered up by the neon glow surrounding us. I could tell he was trying to see if I had roots showing or not but I just smiled at him and held up a third finger. “Third, I’ve been calling my vibrator Church for the last six months. It never had a name before but since I’ve practically burned the thing out since

you came to town it only seemed fitting I named it after you.”

He almost dropped his glass.

His eyes flared to life in a way I had never seen before and those lips that were made to kiss and to whisper dirty, sexy things in the dark parted as a breath wheezed out of him.

“Jesus, Dixie.” My name sounded like the direst word he could think of and at the same time like something decadent and sweet he wanted to indulge in.

It was my turn to lift eyebrows and smirk. I pointed at the shot he was still holding captive. “You were the one that wanted to play.”

His eyes burned with colors that there weren’t words to describe. “I don’t want to play anymore.” His words were nothing more than a guttural growl. “Are you ready to go?”

Was I? A day ago I would never have considered bed-breaking sex with him because I knew it would lead to nothing but heartache considering I was way more into him than he was into me. I wanted the whole fantasy, the entirety of my own version of perfect, but after a few drinks and long minutes lost in that multicolored gaze, having something instead of nothing didn’t seem quite so bad. Maybe I wasn’t the girl meant for happy-ever-after. Maybe I was the girl that was going to have to take happy for now because that’s what was on the table. It wasn’t what my parents had, it wasn’t what Kallie had thrown away with Wheeler, but I wasn’t them and Church didn’t know what I knew.

This wasn’t the dream. This was reality.

I leaned across the table so I could get my fingers around the glass. I pulled it back to me and let the tequila burn its way down my throat.

Liquid courage.

Tequila really did make me do it, but it wasn’t like I’d stood a chance against him and the way I wanted him from the start. My body was all for making decisions my heart was going to pay for later on down the road. I wondered if he realized the danger sitting right across from him. I had a feeling that if he knew how into him I really was, beyond the physical, beyond the fact that I knew he would rock my world, that he would back off because he was compelled to protect me and he had the power to hurt me. I knew without a doubt hurting me would hurt him far worse than facing the silent judgment of strangers did. Even with that I still whispered, “Let’s go.” Because I always expected the best and refused to think about the worst.