Wicked Games
Page 22

I took another sip, washing the flavor in my mouth slowly, savoring it, and looked over to see Dean doing the same. Well, sort of. His gulps were twice the size of my sips, but he had the same blissed-out expression. My stomach growled again, and the sight of all the amazing food was too much to wait any longer for—I grabbed one of the thick brown plates and handed him one, taking the other for myself, and began to load it up with food, tasting as I went. There were chicken wings with buffalo sauce, celery sticks with dip, potato chips, pretzels, pizza, hot dogs, chili, and just about everything you could imagine for a tailgate party. Except football, of course. I laughed as I accidentally spilled some of the chili on my fingers and Dean leaned over and licked it off my hand. “Do you think they’re going with a theme here?” I asked.
He nodded, then took enormous bites out of the relish-covered hot dog in his hand. “They’re going to see how sick they can make us,” he said around bites.
I didn’t care—I grinned and took a bite of the pizza and gave a moan of delight at the taste. If I never ate again, I’d still die happy.
Dean glanced over at me and smiled, a boyish look. To my surprise, he reached over and grabbed my left hand as I reached for a beer and examined it with great curiosity, his emphasis on my fingers. Then, he looked over at me, relieved. “Not married?”
He’d been looking for a wedding band. My heart skidded to a stop. “No,” I whispered.
“Boyfriend?” He asked, trying to keep his voice light as he released my hand and reached for another beer. He didn’t look me in the eyes.
“No boyfriend,” I said in a small voice. The world crashed down around me, a little. Okay, a lot. “You?”
His mouth quirked. “No, no boyfriend.”
I threw my napkin at him. “You know what I mean.” Oh god, I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think—I couldn’t see his hand behind that beer bottle—
“Nothing,” he said, shaking his head. “Currently between ex-girlfriends.”
My breath whooshed out of me in a relieved gulp and I choked, coughing on the food in my mouth. Dean thumped me on the back. “You okay?”
When I regained my breath, I gave him a horrified look. “Dean, I just realized… we don’t know each other.” I knew that, and I still wanted to run into the other room with him and throw him down on the bed. How horrible was that? How wrong?
“I know you,” he said, shaking his head. “You make a mean fire, you can’t paint for shit, and you taste like peanut butter.” Dean winked at me, and the mix of playfulness and lust on his face sent a bolt of desire straight through me again. “I know all about you.”
“But you don’t know me… really know me.” My voice raised in a slight panic.
He handed me another beer, twisting the cap off and placing it in my hand as if I were helpless. Then he thought for a moment and clinked the neck of his beer against my own. “Then we get to know each other tonight.” He smiled slowly. “And tomorrow. And the day after. And all the time we have left on this island. Baby, you and me have nothing but time.”
The low, sexy way he said it made me blush, and I took another sip of beer, trying to quell my nervousness. Some women jumped into bed with strange men, lived life as a series of one-night stands. I did not. For me, sex didn’t come without emotional attachments. Stay calm, I told myself. Drink more beer. Everything’s better with beer.
“Why don’t you ask me something, and I’ll ask you something,” Dean offered, munching on pretzels. We’d finished eating the majority of our meal—I imagined that his stomach hurt as much as mine with all the food we’d hastily crammed into it—but there was still the incessant need to snack, to stockpile carbs for when they disappeared again.
I grabbed a celery stick and swirled it in the dip, then bit down. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-eight. You?”
Not a bad age. “Twenty-six.”
“Ever been married?”
“No, never,” I said.
“Me either,” Dean said, reaching for a celery stick of his own. “Came close once.”
“Want to talk about it?”
He laughed. “Not tonight. Wouldn’t do good to talk about my ex-girlfriend in front of my current one.”
So I was his girlfriend? A silly thrill shot through me at that, and I gave him a dopey smile. “I’m from DC. So where are you from?”
“Houston,” he said, cocking his head to the side as he regarded me. “You sounded Southern, I thought.”
“I am,” I amended. “I’m working in DC but I grew up in Amarillo.”
“Texas, too?” Dean grinned. “But not my part of Texas. Next you’ll be telling me that you’re a Cowboys fan.”
I shook my celery stick at him. “They are ‘America’s Team,’ you know.” At his snort of outrage, I laughed and reached for another beer.
Football seemed to break the awkward dam between us, and we launched questions at each other that we’d been too self-absorbed to ask up to this point. Personal questions—like how many sisters Dean had (three), and how many pets I had (a cat). We moved to not-so-personal stuff like sports and karaoke. We both loved the former and hated the latter. Both of us liked the same music, and we’d even hung out at the same bars in Austin during our college years.
At some point, we’d eaten a few bites of everything and had drunk nearly all the beer. As we’d moved down the table, tasting food and chatting about random stuff—none of it game-related—our seating pillows slid closer and closer together until at some point I was leaning on Dean’s corded arm as he fed me another pretzel stick. Or tried to, but I was yawning too hard.
“Sleepy?” he asked, shifting me to an upright position.
I nodded and tried to hide another yawn. “It’s the beer. Always does that.” I was sleepy and more than slightly woozy with the alcohol running through my starved system. How many beers had I drunk? Five? Six? Dean had easily downed as many as me, though he seemed to be handling the effects well. I peered at him. “Does this mean we’re going to get drunk and go make out again, now?”
Dean chuckled, getting to his feet and extending his hands to help me up. “I think one of us is already drunk.”
I slid against him, my legs boneless, and laughed as he reached to catch me, dragging my body against his. His bare chest felt so hot and nice against my own flesh, and I immediately slid my hands from his neck and down his shoulders. Dean had to be the best looking man I’d ever slept with, with the broadest shoulders and the nicest tan, and that sly grin that did crazy things to my knees. I focused on his mouth and realized he was grinning even now, which probably explained why I was having difficulty standing. “Hi,” I said breathlessly.
“Let’s get you to bed,” he said, looping his hand around my waist and making sure that my arm was anchored over his shoulders. I let him lead the way as he half-walked, half-dragged me to the bedroom as the room spun around me.
My stomach heaved uncomfortably.
“You okay?” Dean whispered. “You just got really pale.”
“I don’t feel so well,” I said in a light voice, trying to push away from him.