Staying On Top (Whitman University) (12 page)

What began as a kiss, maybe to thank me for trying to protect her, maybe born of the relief of surviving a harrowing incident, turned into something animalistic inside ten seconds. Her chest pressed against mine as her fingers dug into my scalp and our tongues tangled with far more urgency than was appropriate for a very public place.

I didn’t care.

It was as though my hands had minds of their own. They explored until they found the hem of her sweatshirt, then the tank top underneath, reveling in the softness of the skin on her back.

Blair gasped against my lips, the tiny, incredible admission of pleasure bringing me back to the present. As much as I didn’t want to let her slip away, we had to stop or end up being the second horrifying thing our poor fellow passengers would witness today.

I didn’t remove my hands, though. Now that she’d touched me, now that she’d proven that her body felt the same pull as mine, going back was off the table. She laid her forehead against mine, eyes closed, until both of us could breathe normally.

“I knew you were hot for me, Blair Paddington,” I whispered with a smile.

She sat up and crossed her arms, avoiding my gaze. “Whatever. I just thought it was sweet that you tried to protect me. Even if it came a little late.”

“Don’t do that.” Her eyes snapped to mine, and I held on to her gaze, refusing to let her look away again. “There was nothing sweet about that kiss, and I never come late. I’m a right-on-time kind of guy.”

That made her smile, even if she didn’t seem to want to. “Fine. I might be attracted to you, but that’s it. I don’t
like
you or anything, so go ahead and unswell your head accordingly.”

“I don’t like you, either. You’re a pain in my ass, you do crazy shit like stand up in front of men holding guns, and I’m considering the idea that you could be the Antichrist.” I ran my hands over the bare skin of her back, then trailed my fingers around front, skimming the softness under her bra. The way her eyes fluttered made me ache to pull her against me, but dammit, we were still on the bus. “But you’re a fucking sexy devil.”

“You really are an idiot.”

“But I’m hot?”

She rolled her eyes and climbed off my lap, turning to check out the scene that had started all of this. I almost wanted to thank the psycho with the weapon for helping me break down the emotional barriers Blair had spent who knows how long erecting. Even though she’d kissed me as though she wanted to fuck me right here, even though she’d acknowledged the crackling attraction that felt as natural as breathing, I had an inkling that getting her to admit to any feelings would be harder than pulling teeth out of a rabid raccoon. 

Instead of pressing—and also to give me time to deep-breathe away my boner—I followed her gaze. The bus driver had pulled over at some point during our make-out session, which must have gone on a little longer than it had seemed to, and the two burly men who had corralled the gun-wielder had escorted him off the bus.

One of them was talking to him, a hand on his shoulder, and the previously frightening crazy person now looked to be sobbing on the side of the road. The woman who had sparked such passion sat in silence, knitting something lumpy and purple. She didn’t look up when the two men boarded the bus without her boyfriend or whatever he was, and said nothing when the driver pulled away, leaving him behind in the frigid night.

We were close enough to Belgrade that he wouldn’t have to walk far to get a ride, find shelter, or call someone, so it was hard to feel badly for him. Especially since he could have killed us.

Blair said nothing as the bus puffed and puttered the remaining ten minutes to the bus station. She sat carefully next to me, near enough that we shared heat but far enough to keep us from touching, with a faint smile on her lips. I realized my own mouth sported a matching one and shook it away. Goofiness would never help me into the bed of a girl such as Blair Paddington.

It still surprised me that even after the kiss—which I could not stop thinking about—I was still more curious about what was going on in her head than between her legs. 

And that helped me stop smiling for good.

Chapter 9

Blair

I could not stop thinking about that kiss. It had been an impulse, a result of high adrenaline and base wonder that he had tried to protect me. Or, that’s what I’d thought before my lips touched his.

I could barely recall what happened after that. It was a haze of lust and heat and tongues, of his hands on my skin, of the frustrating desire to be closer to him. The reaction had been instinctual, coded into my DNA, and the force of it left my head in a fog. Scooting away from Sam had done nothing to dim the electric current of desire humming underneath my skin.

We needed more space from each other than a bus could provide, and by the time we pulled into the Belgrade station, I was happier to see Serbia than anyone had a right to be.

That is, until the sight of the all-too-perfect Marija Peronovic greeted me inside the dingy terminal.

After five days of nonstop travel, wrinkled clothes, and no shower, Sam and I fit in with the rest of our bedraggled travel companions a little too seamlessly. Marija freaking glowed, from the shiny ebony hair that hung to the middle of her back to the long inky lashes framing her bright blue eyes and the tanned legs that were completely out of place in the Serbian winter. She must have had a dress or skirt on, but it wasn’t visible under the soft blue of her wool coat.

She smiled at Sam, happiness and welcome lighting her beautiful face, and opened her arms for a hug. The girl had been one of my favorites to watch for years, and her spunky attitude with the press always planted me in her camp, but when her manicured fingers locked around Sam’s back, I wanted to claw her eyes out.

Which was stupid. Sam wasn’t mine, and I didn’t want him to be. No matter what I’d told the woman on the train, we were not lovers exploring Europe on Thanksgiving break. I was here to get access to his bank accounts by whatever means necessary, and kissing him couldn’t change that.
Wouldn’t
change that, even if I wanted it to. 

Which I didn’t.

Sam and Marija had spent months and months on the road together for years. If they’d wanted to have sex or date, they’d had plenty of opportunity already—and who’s to say they hadn’t? The familiarity and ease between them as they caught up in soft voices suggested a level of comfort that could be more than friendship. 

I touched my lips, then snatched my hand away when I realized what I was doing. So, Sam was a good kisser. So, it felt as though his lips were made of magnets perfectly tuned to a frequency in mine. All it meant was that, if this job did come to getting naked with him, I might actually enjoy it.

The tingle between my thighs at the thought said I would
definitely
enjoy it—or even want it—but as hard as it was to admit that to myself, I couldn’t do it like this. Lying to him.

I needed to stop dripping with lust and focus on the task at hand. Earn Sam’s trust. Make him believe I was on his side by pretending to ferret out my father’s current location. When we “failed,” talk him out of his bank account information so that I could continue the “search” on my own. End of story.

Still, would it be so bad to enjoy myself while doing my due diligence?

“Hello, earth to Blair . . .”

Sam’s voice knocked me out of a frustrating loop of not-logic. “Sorry, what?”

“What were you thinking about just then? Your face looked exactly like the one on a possum treed by a dog.”

“That’s flattering.”

Silence hung in the air between the three of us until he accepted there wouldn’t be any more information forthcoming about my state of mind. 

“I was introducing you to Marija.” He nodded toward her as though he were speaking to some kind of daft child, or a recluse who didn’t own a television. “Marija, this is Blair Paddington, a friend of Quinn’s.”

“Any friend of Sam and Quinn’s is a friend of mine,” she replied in perfect, perky English. Even though she played for Serbia, she’d trained in the United States since she was ten years old. Common enough knowledge. “Would you like to go?”

“Wait, where are we going?” I turned to Sam. “I thought we were just borrowing a car.”

“Calm down, devil girl. We are borrowing a car; it’s at Marija’s house. And since it’s almost midnight, I was thinking we could grab a shower and catch a few hours of horizontal sleep.”

Agreeing meant going against everything I had been telling him since we set out on this misguided field trip, but the mere mention of a hot shower brought tears to my eyes. I stunk like four-day-old body odor, and even though it wouldn’t have stopped me from making out with him for another twenty minutes, Sam didn’t smell so hot, either.

In fact, I was pretty sure Marija had taken a few steps back after hugging him. Using her house didn’t make much of a difference to me, but with the omniscient picture I had painted of my father, it could send up imaginary warning flags for Sam.

Still, it was midnight. We would leave first thing in the morning. It would be okay.

I nodded. “Okay. But we need to be out of there early.”

Sam groaned, then reached over to slide my backpack off my shoulders. 

I grabbed for it. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to be nice. It’s heavy.”

“And it will be lighter if you carry it? I’m fine.” My shoulders ached, my back wrenched every time I moved, and the balls of my feet were as sore as if I’d hiked Michigan Avenue in stilettos, but letting him carry my bag felt like an admission of something. Weakness, maybe.

I didn’t want to go there. I’d already gone enough places today that frightened me—in front of a gun and onto Sam Bradford’s lap—and it was hard to say which was more terrifying.

“Fine. Whatever.”

He turned and strode toward the bus terminal door, skirting a couple of men in dingy business suits and a family with five kids, all of whom were running in different directions. Marija looked at me as though she wanted to say something but couldn’t figure out what. She gave up after a minute and shrugged, then followed Sam. I trailed after them both, taking a six-year-old elbow to the ass on the way. The girl babbled something that appeared to be an apology, an endearing, half-toothless grin easing my irritation.

I smiled back and patted her arm, then stepped out into the blustery night.

*

Marija’s house lived up to the image in my mind and then some, even if it was ugly as sin. The tan and chocolate stucco and wooden beams stretched four stories high and resembled an especially grand vision of how I imagined the cabin in the woods that belonged to the seven dwarves.

I kept my opinion to myself, largely because I was too tired to even think about opening my mouth and also because now that the idea of a shower and bed were within reach, doing anything to screw that up seemed like a particularly bad idea.

“Are you two hungry?”

Sam’s eyes wandered toward me, waiting on my answer. I wished he would stop playing the gentleman; we all knew he was nothing more than an overgrown man-child who had never wanted for a damn thing.

“A little, but I don’t want food as much as I want a shower. Or sleep,” I admitted.

Marija nodded. “I’ll have the servants bring a little something up to your rooms. You can get ready for bed and have a snack before you crash.”

“Thank you, Mari.” Sam kissed her cheek, then headed toward the giant winding staircase.

It climbed out of the center of the great room, which had too much brown and ivory furniture, an abundance of rugs, end tables, and antiques, and
way
too much velvet. The floor was slate, or made to look like slate, and my lack of sleep made me slip a few times.

“Yes, thank you,” I echoed.

“You know,” she said, her voice taking on the same tone she used when someone in the press had talked to her as if she were a dumb blonde. “I haven’t asked exactly what’s going on here, or why the two of you showed up in Belgrade needing to borrow a car in the middle of the night, and quite frankly, I’m not sure it’s in my best interest to know.”

When neither of us offered a negative or affirmative response, she crossed her arms, stuck out her hip, and fixed Sam with a look that I swear made him shift to cover his balls.

“My family has a lot of respect in this city, and we’ve been consistently aboveboard with all of our business dealings. I run a successful charity involving orphans. If helping you and your surly little friend here fucks that up, I am not going to be happy.”

Sam sighed. “Trust me, Mari. No one wants you to be unhappy, least of all anyone who has ever seen it happen—which includes me. I’ve had a small issue in my personal life that Blair is helping me rectify, but we’re not doing anything illegal or anything that could affect your family in any way. Right, Blair?”

It was true that no harm would come to Marija or her family’s reputation by us being here, but the image of my father as an international force needed to be maintained. “I’m sure everything will work out fine. Really.”

I left enough of an ambiguous trail in the words to make Marija squint her eyes and Sam roll his, but she didn’t stop us this time when we started up the stairs.

A maid waited at the top, a silent woman who probably didn’t speak much English, and she showed us to a pair of guest rooms connected by an all-white bathroom. Even the fluffy towels were white. And monogrammed. It was like Texas in there.

“You want the girly room, or does that offend your feminist sensibilities as badly as my trying to carry your bag did?” Sam’s voice had a gravelly twist that was new to me, and the expression of annoyance in his eyes surprised me, too.

“Are you mad at me because I wouldn’t let you carry my bag?”

“No.” He ran a hand through his longish hair, which mussed it more than usual given the amount of grease that had built up during our travels. “I don’t know. It’s not just that, it’s . . . you scared me today, Blair. I got distracted when you kissed me, because holy hell, but now that you’re standing a good four feet away, all I feel is angry. You can’t go around risking your life like that. Like it doesn’t matter.”