9. RAE
9
M e and my damn big mouth.
Frantically, my hand slams against the hotel room door as I curse myself.
I freaked out when the dipshit threw his ghost stories at my face, but I figured I’d be fine.
I was.
But after whatever happened between us tonight, I kept staring at the ceiling, feeling something happening between my legs that wasn’t going to get settled anytime soon while my mind kept going back to his piercing gaze trained on my body.
In other words, he fucked with my head, making it extremely difficult to fall asleep because his eyes were haunting me to stay awake. Add my annoying ex-boyfriend who keeps calling me, and slipping into an alcohol fueled coma has become impossible. And even that was all cool and fine, until it wasn’t, when I heard a noise echoing through the entire room, turning my horny mood into a horrified one.
Took me ten minutes of frantic listening, and I was done.
This shithead is going to fix it.
I don’t know how.
But he is.
“Jensen, open the door!”
When nothing happens, I knock again, hitting the red wooden door harder, wondering if the Phantom Bellboy is lurking over my shoulder.
“Goddammit, Jensen. Open. The. Goddamn. Door!” I practically growl against the wood.
I don’t care how long I have to stand here. It’s his fault .
Shit, I hope he’s not passed out like he vowed he would be. I quickly count the number of drinks he drank in my head. Definitely two scotch at dinner. A shit ton of shots at the bar. And a few beers in between.
My heart drops to the floor, and I let out a shriek when he abruptly opens the door.
“What’s wrong?” His eyes are wide, a grimace sitting on his lips, and his face is washed with worry.
Oh, damn.
My eyes roam over his toned inked chest that is missing a shirt, and his jeans are replaced by the sweat shorts he quickly purchased down the street. For the first time I can see his tattoos up close and I’m drawn to the Egyptian god inked in his side.
He looks strong, imposing and wise, a falcon head peering back at me. The whole art piece is fascinating, bringing out his abs in all it’s glory and I can’t resist looking down.
Swallowing, my eyes notice the happy trail that is disappearing into his pants, that hangs loosely on his hips, and I lick my lips without thinking. When my focus moves back up, he’s looking at me with a sleepy, yet amused grin, my mind doing a backflip in embarrassment.
Shit.
I storm past him as a decoy, ignoring his smirk.
One of the beds is directly next to the door, and the room is small, not giving me a lot of space to pace angrily, so instead, I spin on my heels to face him.
“You!” I shove my finger toward his chest. “It’s all your fault!’’.
“Will you hush?” he hisses with a deep frown that’s way too sexy for the middle of the night. “Bodi is asleep!”
He looks at me confused, blinking, then runs a hand through his messy brown hair. Jensen’s out of bed look might be my favorite so far. He shouldn’t be doing that.
In fact, it should be forbidden for a man as sexy as him to do that without a shirt. With that ghost of a smile on his face.
He shuts the door, pressing his back against it, then crosses his arms in front of his chest.
“Okay, little hellcat, what the fuck are you talking about?” he rasps, the gruff sound of it humming through my heating core.
“You messed with my head!” I stalk toward him with an angry whisper and press a pissed finger into his torso. “ You got all these ghost stories in my head. You freaked me out. I was fine not knowing shit. I slept here three times before today, but no, you felt the need to fill my head with stupid stories about phantom bell boys and freaking dead women! You fucked it up for me. Thanks to you , I can’t sleep.” I stick my finger back into his chest with every ‘ you ’ I say.
I don’t know why I’m as pissed at him as I am, and I’m not sure I’m really pissed either. More like annoyed, and maybe a little scared.
Oh, who am I kidding? I’m terrified.
And I sure as hell am not going to sleep in that room all by my fucking self. If he’s such a big shot, he can go sleep there, and I’ll sleep here with Bodi, taking his bed.
“Rae Stafford, you are not seriously scared of a few ghosts, are you?” He cocks his head and puts on a mocking voice, totally throwing my own words in my face.
I want to strangle him, but getting any closer to him would be playing with fire considering my panties are totally damp just by looking at him. I can play it tough and just punch his face; it would be a dream come true, but that doesn’t give me a place to sleep. No sleep means not being able to drive.
That means this dipshit will totally be claiming my car. My ego can’t have that, so I decide to go with the truth, totally pulling the damsel in distress card.
“Fuck you, Jensen. I’m scared as hell.” I pout, putting every ounce of cuteness I have into the battle. “With every crack I hear, my heart is pounding in my chest, thinking that fucking bell boy is going to knock on my door or that old lady is going to make that rocking chair in my room move. I have a fucking rocking chair! What if someone really died there?”
I freak out a little more from just talking about it, and goosebumps trickle down my arms, picturing that rocking chair in my head.
I look up at him. His face softens, and he looks at me with care. It’s a look I haven’t seen before, and a tingly feeling goes through my belly. I itch to reach out for him. To wrap my arms around him, embracing the comfort of his body that is matching his face right now.
Not now, Rae. Focus.
Like he feels my need for affection, he places his hand on the back of my neck, locking our gazes. The warmth of his hand on my body both calms my heart and makes it pound harder at the same time.
“Hey, calm down. You’ll be fine,” he soothes.
“No, I won’t. Not being by myself in that freaking ugly ass motherfucking room. With those weird baroque black sheets and those ugly ass pieces of furniture. Seriously, I don’t know why you would want to haunt that place because it’s nothing anyone would want to stay in. Have you seen my room? It really is fucking ugly. I’m not going back there. You go sleep there,” I ramble.
He snickers. “Yeah, this room is ugly enough for me. No need to switch it up now.”
He glances around the room over my head with a serious look as he slowly starts massaging the nape of my neck. It feels electrifying, and I tilt my head a little, leaning into his touch.
That feels too good.
“I’m not going back,” I whisper, trying to hide the rasp in my voice.
“Well, I’m not going to send you back, but I don’t have many options for you.”
I turn around, his hand disconnecting from my skin, and look at the two queens next to each other. I can feel the warmth of his chest radiating against my back while he stands directly behind me, and it’s taking everything inside of me to not lean back against his body.
The room is just as ugly as mine with Bordeaux flowery sheets and a dirty-looking carpet on the floor. Bodi is sleeping in the bed next to the bathroom.
“Damn, he always sleeps like that?” I tilt my head at his sleeping position with a frown. He’s all over the place, looking like he was spit out by a hurricane.
“Yup, sometimes he even wakes up backwards.”
I cock my eyebrow at him in disbelief.
“I’m not joking.” A sweet smile forms on his lips before his eyes darken again. “I’m also not going to give up my bed,” he announces with that annoying hint of amusement visible in his eyes. “But you’re welcome to join me.”
That bastard .
“You’ve been waiting for this, haven’t you?” I glare, my fear suddenly completely gone.
“No, no,” he says, chuckling, “don’t turn this around. I’ve been waiting to go to the Marriott down the street, but you basically told me to suck it up. I did .”
“You’ve not once mentioned the Marriott down the street! There is a Marriott down the street?”
“Only because you were all like ‘you’re not afraid of ghosts now, are you Jensen?’ ” He puts on a whining voice.
“Argh!”
“What’s wrong, Rae?”
“I hate you.”
“You can hate me while I protect you from the old lady haunting you with her rocking chair. Come on, get in. We need to get up early.”
He gets in the bed, holding the sheets up as he waits for me. I stand statue-still, conflicted about what to do. My ego doesn’t want to give in, refusing to admit he played me, but I also really, really don’t want to go back to my room. Just thinking about it makes me shiver, while getting in bed with him makes me shiver for a whole different reason.
I narrow my eyes at his smug grin, my arms crossed in front of my body like a mad toddler. “Don’t you dare pull anything, Jensen.”
“I’m gonna sleep on my side, with my back to you. I swear I’ll behave. Scout’s honor.” He puts three fingers in the air.
“You were a boy scout?” I cock an eyebrow, calling bullshit.
“Until they kicked me out, yeah.”
I chuckle, moving my feet to the edge of the bed before I slowly get in. The warmth of his body comforts me in a soothing way, and I instantly relax.
“Why did they kick you out?”
“Because I kept harassing Mrs. Robins to make sure I got kicked out.”
“Really?”
He turns his head to face me, a relaxed, lopsided grin on his face. “I didn’t want to be a boy scout. My dad forced my brother and me. I wanted to play hockey. I had to be creative. He didn’t talk to me for a month after they kicked me out.”
“A month?” I hiss, incredulous.
Seems a little harsh for not wanting to play in the woods.
“Hmm,” he muses.
“Then what?”
“He realized I wasn’t going to be the perfect boy they wanted me to be if he wouldn’t give me something he could hold against me. I’ve been playing hockey ever since. You know the rest.”
We stay quiet, looking around the room before he kills the bedside light, letting out a deep sigh. The same sadness I saw earlier tonight creeps over his body, radiating against me.
“Why did your dad force you to be a boy scout?” I whisper after a while.
He stays silent, as if he’s thinking carefully about his next words, while I turn on my side to look at him. I can make out his silhouette in the dark, while his blue eyes shine bright as they reflect the moonlight coming through the window.
“There are a lot of things my brother and I have to do.” The tone of his voice is flat, clearly etched with something that lays heavy on his heart.
“Oh.”
His body rapidly turns on his side, our faces now only a few inches apart.
“I’m sorry,” I offer, not knowing what it is I am sorry about, but realizing his life might be more gloomy than he shows to the world.
“Don’t be.”
Our eyes lock, connecting in the shimmering light pouring through the darkness of the room, a feeling of comfort washing over me at the same time my heart starts to beat louder.
“Rae?” he finally hums, a gruffness laced in his voice.
“Yeah?”
“If you don’t want me to touch you, you should turn around and go to sleep.” The words are pushed out of his lips, as if he has a hard time voicing them, and for a minute, the boldness tucked inside of me seeps through, dying to tell him to go for it.
What would it be like to be ravished by Jared James Jensen?
But instead, I nod. “Yeah, sure.”
We both switch sides, our backs now only a few inches apart as we lay beside each other in the queen-sized bed.
“Goodnight, babe.”
The corner of my mouth curls, loving the flirty tone in his voice.
“Goodnight, Jensen.”