Cuddle bear, p.8
Cuddle Bear, page 8
“Lovely. I should get out in our fair city more often.” He waggled his eyebrows at me, and I groaned. “Why don’t you take the first shower? I have to wait for clothing, and you’re set.” He lifted the duffel, and I took it from him.
“Thanks,” I murmured. “You’re sure you don’t mind being in the bathroom after me?”
He shook his head and interest glinted in his eyes.
I sucked in a breath.
“Certainly not.” His smile had my belly heating.
I had no idea how he made those two words sound filthy—almost like he would be thinking about the fact that I’d been naked in the room before him—but he did it. I backed away from him, then turned and fled. I closed the door behind me and sighed.
The bathroom was as nice as the room outside, and the green theme had extended in here. The tiles were bright emerald jewels that gleamed in the lights surrounding the large mirror over the sink. There was a tub and shower to choose from, but with the way I was feeling I would end up falling asleep if I soaked rather than scrubbing down, so I dropped my duffel on the counter next to the sink and started stripping off my damp, muddy clothing. As I removed my squelching boots, I was happy I had my dress shoes from earlier to wear, even though they wouldn’t go with my workout gear.
“Why can’t I ever just look good and act sane around Wick?” I asked the universe quietly as I opened my bag. I took the clothes out and laid them on the counter, then grabbed the shower essentials, and less than fifteen minutes later I stepped into the bedroom clean and dressed with damp hair. I adjusted my glasses on my nose as Wick breezed past me into the bathroom, cradling a stack of clothes and towels.
“We need to do something nice for your friend. Can you remember to send him a thank-you card and gift?” Wick asked, then the door closed behind him.
“Yes, sir!” I called, and his answering chuckle sent tingles skittering across my skin.
Flopping on the bed, I pulled my T-shirt down when it tried to creep over my stomach and closed my eyes. The next thing I knew, someone was shaking my shoulder and calling my name.
“Maurice, wake up,” Wick said, and that soft, low tone was delicious. I hummed, and a familiar chuckle made me crack my eyes open. I sat up fast and my head did a little spinny thing that wasn’t great.
“You okay?” Wick sat down beside me, and I stared and stared. He was beyond tasty. His silver hair flopped over his forehead, and his gray eyes were bright and interested. “What?”
“I’ve just never seen you in jeans,” I said, blinking at him. “You only wear suits in the office, and once I saw you in cargo pants when you came in to get a contract after visiting a work site.” He didn’t look bad at all. The green V-neck T-shirt tugged wonderfully across his firm chest, and the jeans molded to his muscled thighs. I swallowed hard. “You look better than I do, though. That isn’t fair. You started with zero clothes.”
He grinned. “The old Guidry luck at play.”
“Must be nice,” I grumbled.
“Maybe if you get closer it’ll rub off on you.” He smirked and leaned in, and I wasn’t prepared for the softness of his lips as they danced over mine before he sat back and studied my face. I did something I’d wanted to do for a long time and traced my fingertip over the curve of his top lip, then shivered at the smile that spread across his face.
“Dinner?” he asked, voice raspy.
I nodded because I was having trouble doing anything else.
Feeling awkward as hell, I stood, then caught him sneaking a glance down my body. I pushed my glasses up and fought back an internal wince. I tried to dress nicely to offset the way I looked, and right now nothing made me feel good about myself, except maybe the fact that Wick’s smile never dimmed.
“Okay,” I said and gestured at the door, and he laughed and went out ahead of me.
“So,” he said as we walked toward the staircase, and he shoved his hands in his pockets, then puffed out a breath. Was he nervous?
“What about that weather,” I replied in my blandest imitation of my grandfather, and he chuckled. We were halfway down the staircase when the lights cut out, and he gasped. The power flickered back on, and we rushed the rest of the way to the bottom, but by the time we had our feet firmly planted on the red marble floor in the lobby, the electricity cut out again—and this time it stayed out.
“No one panic! We assumed this would happen!” Hyeon called, rushing into the lobby. No one appeared to be doing any such thing, but it was good of him to worry. He flipped on an LED lamp and passed it to me, and he had at least five others hanging off his arm. “We’re fully prepared for this mess.” He gave a lamp to the girl at the desk, then took off to our right into the restaurant, which was still full of people.
“So much for getting away from the problems,” Wick murmured.
“They might have a generator.”
“I’m not worried about it,” he said, and we strolled into the restaurant together.
“You aren’t? Why?” I touched his arm and his muscles tensed under my fingertips.
He shrugged and grinned at me. “Because I’m here with you, and you’ve proven once already that you won’t let anything happen to me.”
I had no idea what to say, but when he draped his arm across my shoulders again, I leaned against his side.
The restaurant was busy, and the lack of electricity didn’t make anyone stop having a good time. In the center of the tables, flames from candles in white holders wavered and reminded me of something for weddings—maybe they were normally used for events. Silverware clinked and laughter and chatter burbled around the room, rising and falling in a natural rhythm. We found an empty table and sat, and the plump woman who rushed to our side grinned at us. She was dressed casually in jeans and a band T-shirt. Maybe she’d been called in last minute.
“Hello, sirs. If you don’t have cash, this will be charged to your room, and we’ll run your card as soon as we’re able to do it. Is that okay?”
“Of course. What—”
“We cooked up a bunch of barbecue earlier today because we thought this might happen.” She gestured at the dark lights above us. “So, you have a choice of baked potato, salad, and pulled-pork sandwiches. We’ll serve them until they’re gone. Or burgers, but they’re already cooked, so you can’t order them any other way than how they already are.”
“Pulled pork,” Wick and I said at the same time, and she laughed.
“Got it, boys. Cold drinks?”
“Just water. We were working earlier,” I said, and Wick looked at me, then shrugged and nodded.
With a twiddle of her fingers, she hustled away from us toward the kitchen.
Wick leaned his elbows on the table and stared up at the dark crystal chandelier in the middle of the ceiling as lightning flashed in the windows, and I slid my chair closer to his. He smiled at me.
“If this is our date, I’m sorry I look this way,” I said, plucking at my ratty, old gym shirt. The comment was the first thing that entered my mind. I wanted to talk and keep him distracted. Even though he’d said he was fine, I could tell he was far more on edge than usual.
“We might not look fancy, but I like what I see.” He smiled and turned toward me until our knees bumped.
“You’d be one of the few.”
“I don’t like it when you say things like that.” His knee bumped mine again, and he did it a third time before I realized he was nudging me on purpose.
“It’s true.” I shrugged.
“It’s not. You’re a good-looking man.” He pursed his lips. “You know, it took me a lot of years, and quite a few. . . encounters before I finally realized I’d outgrown my awkward phase.” He stared, and embarrassment had me glancing away.
“I can’t imagine what you’d call an awkward phase. Did you have pimples?”
He hummed. “Acne, braces, the works. I also weighed close to a hundred pounds more than this at one point, and I didn’t look the way I do now when I started sleeping with men.”
My mind spun and I glanced at him. He was so handsome; I couldn’t imagine him ever having looked any other way. “Well, I probably won’t lose weight if it hasn’t happened by this point.”
He knocked his elbow against mine. “I wasn’t suggesting you should. I mean, if you want to, I’ll be here to cheer you on, but you don’t need to do that. I was just trying to say I understand what it’s like not to be friends with the mirror. That little voice in your head spouts nasty things, even when they’re not true and everyone is telling you something else.”
“Everyone isn’t telling me something else.”
He tilted his chin down and stared into my eyes. “I am. I like you, Maurice.”
Our argument was interrupted by the waitress bringing back a tray with everything we’d ordered. She hadn’t been kidding when she’d said they had the food ready to go, and I supposed if they were expected to feed a hotel full of people, this was probably the easiest thing to do. I wasn’t about to complain, because the sandwiches looked great, and my stomach growled after all the work we’d done. “If you want seconds, give a shout. We can’t store this stuff properly, so it’s better if it’s eaten than wasted.”
“Thank you,” Wick and I said at the same time, and she laughed, swatting at us with her tray before she went to the next table over to ask if they needed anything. I had the feeling a lot of people would be walking away from the restaurant stuffed to the gills. Wick grabbed a bottle of hot sauce from the center of the table and doused his sandwich and potato, and when he was done, I did the same.
“I don’t want to have that conversation. Discussing the way I look is about my least favorite topic. Can we talk about something else?”
He hummed. “Only if I get to say you’re handsome without you fighting me.”
“Handsome?” I huffed.
He leaned closer, and I shivered when he pressed a kiss behind my ear. In the low light it felt like we might as well be alone in a bedroom. “What do you need to hear to believe me? I’m willing to be honest—I rubbed off this morning thinking about you.”
I choked on nothing—the air—and he rushed to hand me my glass of water. The thunder crashed again, and Wick’s knee nudged mine, but I didn’t think it was on purpose. After I could breathe, I rested my hand on his thigh.
“Okay, please don’t say anything like that. You’ll kill me next time.”
He chuckled. “Should we talk about work?”
“No. This is a date.”
He harumphed. “That’s all I do.”
Laughing, I rubbed my thumb against his leg before taking my hand back. “Don’t you have any hobbies?”
He shrugged. “I like to go to the horse races and those sorts of events. Unwind. See something interesting.”
I nodded and took a bite of my sandwich. The spices were good and the pork melted in my mouth. “I have a boat. I don’t do much with it other than putter around on Lake Émeraude, but occasionally I go fishing.”
“Really?” He blinked at me.
“You should go sometime. It’s nice to get up early and see the sunrise from the water.”
He hummed and his expression took on that bedroom heat again as his eyelids lowered. “I would need to be at your house very early for that. Or maybe stay the night.”
I nodded. “That’s true.”
We seemed to come to some unspoken agreement, and for several minutes we talked about people at the office who were having issues, even though we’d said we would discuss literally anything else.
“That’s enough of that,” I said, as we wrapped up a conversation about Tony’s tendency to pilfer other people’s lunches from the break room. “If he hasn’t been caught yet, he’s too stealthy, and I don’t want a camera in there. People deserve privacy.”
Wick laughed and nodded. “Yes, I assume Tony will get what’s coming to him eventually, and I won’t hear any whining about how he ingested something nasty, either. It will be in one ear and out the other.”
Smiling, I shook my head.
As we finished our meal the storm raged on outside, and it was different from Escape Adventure where everything had been fake. The building rumbled and other people kept on talking and laughing—it was an odd disparity. Wick dragged the lamp Hyeon had given me across the table and set it on the other side of his plate, taking possession of it.
I rubbed his shoulder. He grunted, leaning into my touch, and I laughed because I’d felt the same way when he’d given my back a tiny massage. We’d done a lot of work.
“Do you want to go out to the patio and tell your fans all about what you did today?” I asked him. “You’re one of the heroes.”
He grunted. “You were there, too.”
“I was your sidekick.”
He grinned at me, then sighed and glanced toward the door of the restaurant. “I can’t believe they’re not coming in from outside.”
“They will if the rain starts pelting them,” I pointed out with a chuckle.
He pursed his lips.
“We don’t have to do that. We could go upstairs to our room.”
He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. “I’m not sure why this bothers me. I was outside in it.”
“You were busy when you were out there. You have time to focus on it now.” I shrugged because it made sense to me, but a frustrated pout settled onto his lips.
“Fuck.”
I tried to stifle my laugh, but he only winked at me and didn’t seem too upset. His hand snuck across the table to mine. “I would love to go upstairs with you.”
Something about his words and how serious they were had my heart racing a little faster. The room was shadowed but not dark, and I tensed as he leaned closer. His lips settled on mine, and I wanted his touch far more than I needed to hang on to propriety. I moaned into his mouth and my skin tingled.
“Yes, upstairs,” he said with a grin as he stood, then lifted the lantern and offered his hand. What choice did I have except to take it? I would rather run out into the pouring rain wearing a lightning-rod hat than do anything to ruin his happiness.
7
WICK
Maurice was watching his feet like we were on ice rather than tiles. I rubbed my thumb along the back of his hand until he smiled at me as we walked upstairs together. Everything in the hotel was too quiet without the small hum of the air-conditioning system, and it wouldn’t take long before things got unpleasant if the power didn’t kick back on, but for now it was fine. I clutched the bright lantern in my hand as excitement made the hair on the back of my arms stand on end, and Maurice meandered along at my side. We got to the room door, and I took out my key card, only to stare at it.
“Do you think it will work?” I asked.
“Absolutely.”
I hesitated.
He took the card from me, stuck it in the reader, and the lock opened with a click, letting us into the room. He smirked. “Guess I’m right.”
I rolled my eyes. “You didn’t know if it would work or not.”
“I did.”
“How?”
“I know everything.” He shoved the key card back into my hand, and I put it in my pocket. Anyone else in the world would’ve irritated me with something that sounded so arrogant, but he had a self-deprecating smile stuck on his face.
“It’s difficult to argue with a man who can tie an Eldredge knot.” I nudged him with my elbow.
“It’s really not hard once you take the time to learn it. I’m not magic.”
I sighed. “But who has the time for that? Besides, I’m not convinced that you aren’t.”
He shook his head and grinned, sneaking into the room in front of me. I followed, and once the door closed, the snick of the lock seemed insanely loud. I turned to the right to set the lantern on the dresser and hissed at a sharp stab of agony in my shoulder. I rushed to put the light down and rolled my shoulder, but the pain didn’t let up.
“Are you all right?” Maurice hustled to my side with sweet concern on his face.
“Yeah, just didn’t stretch out after the mess earlier, like a smart person.”
He snorted. “I didn’t bother, either. We’re probably too old to ignore that.”
“I was too old to skip stretching at twenty,” I shot back with a snort. The pain didn’t fucking quit, and he moved around behind me. I sucked in a breath at the first tickle of his fingers along the back of my neck, and then he gained more confidence and used his firm hands to knead down along both sides of my spine. “Where’s the knot?”
“Higher. Right shoulder.” I gritted my teeth as he rubbed around, then landed on the source of my pain. “Fuck.”
The weight of his palm shifted and softened, but he didn’t back away from the horrible spot. “Shh, let me help. I can feel it. That is tense.”
He pressed hard on the knot, which ached like a motherfucker, and for a moment white sparks danced in my vision. I swore I could feel the nightmare-level muscle spasm directly in the middle of my brain and all the way down to my asshole. The pain got worse, and he didn’t let go when I tried to shuffle forward.
“I don’t think I can stand it.”
“Hold on, I promise it’ll help.”
I shook my head, but after a second my muscles seemed to give up and loosened around the painful lump.
Maurice ran his thumbs over my back. “Is that any better?”
I nodded, and he kept going until I let out a long breath. “It’s a good thing you’re here or I might’ve died just now.”
A warm gust of air landed on the nape of my neck and gave me a pleasant shiver as he chuckled. “Dramatic. I don’t think it was that bad,” he said, tone dry.
“I disagree.” I glanced over my shoulder with a grin, then turned to face him. I liked that I had to look down, and he seemed as if he would fit perfectly in my arms.
Maurice’s gaze skipped around my face—he didn’t look me in the eye. “You seem too happy for someone who just had a nasty muscle cramp.”
