interested in him, but then Kira was just one of those girls.
You know. The slutty ones.
"I'm a mechanic," he said. "For Hershey."
"Oh, that's a good job!" Kira sidled in between Austin and Ethan.
"It is a good job," Ethan agreed and drank from his cup
while his eyes wandered everywhere on Kira's body but
her face.
It was so easy, realy. They wanted to seduce us. We
wanted to be seduced, for a few hours anyway. I knew
what we looked like to them. Two girls in slinky outfits,
sucking back drink after drink and letting the crowd push
us closer and closer. There's no such thing as social
distance in bars. The music makes conversation impossible
unless you lean across to shout in someone's ear. The
crush of people means you have to fight for your own
smal space, and sharing it doesn't seem so bad after a
smal space, and sharing it doesn't seem so bad after a
drink or four.
When Austin's hand ended up on my ass, I didn't even
blink. It felt good there. Heavy, warm. He had strong
fingers to go along with those biceps. He smeled good.
Drakkar Noir. Despite myself and everything that had
happened with us before, I'd missed him.
Austin said into my ear, "Wanna dance?"
Our bodies had always worked just right together,
whether we were dancing or fucking. I was ready for both.
Leaving Ethan and Kira, he took my hand and puled me
up the stairs to the third floor, where the songs ran into one
another without stopping and al sounded the same. We
found a spot in the middle and started dancing.
The booze had made me soft and melty, but the music
wasn't. I wanted to slow dance. Austin wanted to grind.
We compromised with a little hip action that brought us
groin to groin, but when he tried to flip me around and get
up on me in the back end, I pushed away with a smile.
"You don't answer my messages," Austin said.
It was easy to pretend I didn't hear him with the music so
loud. I smiled and shook my head. He took me by the
arm, up high in the soft part that bruises easily. His fingers
closed al the way around it.
He moved in to brush his lips against my ear. "I've realy
missed you."
I inched away from him, but Austin grabbed my wrist just
as a bazilion watts of supernova bright light lit the entire
dance floor. Austin stil looked good. I must not have
looked like Frankenstein, because he reached to brush my
hair from my forehead. He smiled again as the lights went
down and the beat of the music started its rapid thump-
thumping, the same as my heart.
It was different when he kissed me. I felt different. His
mouth opened and I let him inside me. His tongue stroked
mine as his hand came up to curl in my hair. He didn't pul
it, though my body tensed in anticipation.
Austin nuzzled at my earlobe. "You stil taste the same."
Fortunately, I remembered the reasons I'd broken off our
relationship. Unfortunately, I stil remembered al the
reasons we'd ever hooked up. When Austin ran a fingertip
reasons we'd ever hooked up. When Austin ran a fingertip
down my bare arm along the sensitive inside flesh to press
his fingertip just over the pulse at my wrist, I knew he felt
the way my heart sped up at his touch. Time hadn't
changed that. Maybe it never would.
Maybe that was okay.
"Come home with me," Austin said.
"It's too far." Forty minutes I'd have driven in a heartbeat back in the day, just to get in his pants. It wasn't too far.
Just too long.
"Paige," Austin said with a grin like a shark. "I moved to Lemoyne."
Just across the river. Fifteen minutes, tops, if you drove
realy slow or got stuck in traffic. The world fel out from
under my fuck-me pumps, but Austin was there to catch
me. The crowd moved and danced around us, but we
stayed stil. I looked deep into his blue, blue eyes, made
bluer by the strobe lights.
"What the fuck," I said evenly, "did you do that for?"
"New job," he reminded. "Remember?"
"New job," he reminded. "Remember?"
I tried to recal if he'd said where McClaron and Sons
was, and couldn't. He should've told me, I thought, and
hated myself for being irrationaly angry. I tugged my arm
from his grip. "I have to go check on Kira."
"She's fine. She's with Ethan."
I tried to level him with a glare, but I'd never been able to
level Austin. He'd laid me out cold a thousand times with a
look, but though I'd practiced and perfected my steely-
eyed look of cold disdain, it slid off him like oil. I bit my
lower lip and lifted my chin.
"If he's anything like you, I'd better make sure she's okay."
"Paige." Austin's hand snagged my wrist. Puled me close.
"If she's anything like you, she can handle him."
The night it ended between us, we'd fucked up against the
wal of our shitty, third-floor apartment on Cumberland
Street in Lebanon. The red-blue lights of a cop car outside
on the street had painted the ceiling and wal over our
heads. He'd torn away my panties, tossed them to the
side, used his body to pin mine to the wal while his hands
side, used his body to pin mine to the wal while his hands
held my ass.
I bore the marks of that last encounter on my back for a
few weeks where a nail from a falen picture had gouged
me. I hadn't noticed the pain or the blood while we were
going at it. I never had found my panties.
It had ended but wasn't over. The plain truth is, with a few
drinks in me there was little chance of my resisting Austin.
Not drunk. Not sober, either. Why else had I moved so
far away?
"Hel, no," Kira said when I found her downstairs and
brought up the subject. She shook her head and looked
over my shoulder to where I was sure Austin was
watching. "You told me to never, never, never let you fuck
him again!"
I made myself stare at her, not look back at him. "I know.
But that was before."
"Before what?" Kira's lip curled.
"Before you thought it would be fun to invite him out with
us. I haven't talked to him in months. Since before I moved
here. But now here he is."
here. But now here he is."
"And looking utterly fuckable." Kira didn't lose the sneer, but her gaze flickered back and forth to my face and over
my shoulder. "You know, Paige, I've known him as long
as you have. He moved up here, wanted to know where
the good places to go were. I told him we were coming
here. I didn't know you were going to go home with him. I
thought you were over him."
"I am over him!" I looked over my shoulder and caught his
gaze, then turned away with hot cheeks and fast-beating
heart.
"Whatever."
"I'l give you my key." I looked back at Austin, now bent
in conversation with Ethan.
"Fuck, no. I'l get Tony to come pick me up!" Kira shook
her head and stumbled a little bit.
I reached to steady her and she clutched at my hand. "Wil
he come for you?"
"He wil if I fucking tel him to." Kira straightened, then
"He wil if I fucking tel him to." Kira straightened, then
swiped at her hair.
"I'l wait with you until he comes."
"Don't do me any favors," Kira said, then slung her arm
around my shoulder. "Paige. Don't forget what happened."
As if I ever could. "I'l be fine!"
"Don't let your pussy get you into trouble," she continued, warning me off what she'd falen prey to many times
herself. "He made you cry."
"Yeah." I let Austin's gaze catch mine when it turned
toward me and didn't look away. "Wel, he won't make