Page 65 of Snake

Another question with a true, direct answer. “I remembered we’re in a bathroom.” True and direct, but harder to say with her hands pushing under his t-shirt, around to his back.

“May I be forthright?” she asked, watching his t-shirt shift as her hands moved from his back to play through the hair on his chest.

He closed her hands in one of his, the t-shirt between them, before all those feathery caresses had him shaking. “Don’t be any other way.”

Her eyes flashed up to his and held for a beat before she said, “This is wildly unexpected. Which makes it confusing and a little scary. But it’s not ... unwelcome.” Sudden light seemed to emanate from her face as she smiled and freed one hand from under his shirt. She brought it to his mouth, brushing the tips of her fingers over his bottom lip. “My God, Cox. What a smile you have.”

As usual, he hadn’t realized he was smiling. More reflex than intention, he rocked his head back, away from her touch.

“Don’t,” she said. “I like that I can make you smile.”

Unexpectedly, confusingly, he liked it, too. What the fuck was happening?

A blast of thunder filled the room as somebody pounded on the door, making them both flinch. “Jesus, Cox!” Saxon shouted. “You been in there half an hour!”

Cox’s spine went taut, and he glared back at the door.

Before he could yell back, another voice, from much farther away—Cox thought it was Mel—said, He ain’t alone, bro.

“Oh!” Saxon said, more quietly. He knocked on the door again, lightly. “Sorry, man. Carry on. I’ll piss in the warehouse can.”

Cox turned back to Autumn, whose face had gone so red she almost glowed.

The moment was truly destroyed. Cox girded himself, ready for sanity to storm back into his head and show him how fucked up this interlude had been, how wrong it was for him to get close to Autumn, how emphatically he did not want anyone in his life like that, even though a door seemed to have opened for her.

“Sorry,” he said. “I don’t—”

She covered his mouth with her hand. “Please don’t take this back.”

With a kiss to her palm, he lifted her hand away. “Autumn—” he began, but no words appeared to finish the sentence.

She took the opportunity to create some of her own. “This feels like it came out of nowhere, but it also ... kinda doesn’t. I’ve been thinking of you since the spring, and I’ve just realized—or maybe I mean accepted—what that means. I know there’s nothing really deep that can happen between us, our lives are too far apart, in more than just geography. But right now, this feels good, and it’s been an epically shitty day. It feels good to feel good. When we leave this bathroom, I’m going to have to deal with Chase and the aftermath of that scene—”

“No, you won’t. He’s neutralized. At least for today.” Their plan for Chase was club business, so he couldn’t tell her about that, at least not yet. But he could tell her this much: “They’ll clean him up, and Izzy’s there to make him feel better. By now, he’s even drunker, and he’s probably dick-deep in Iz. He won’t be trouble ‘til he sleeps it all off, and that’ll probably be tomorrow.”

She regarded him with a troubled, almost wary expression, and Cox wondered if she was suspicious. Already she’d observed that they were getting her boss drunk on purpose.

“How much choice does Izzy have in that?” she asked.

Cox almost took offense, but he cut the impulse off before it settled in. “I could take that question bad, but instead I’ll say: you did plenty of research on us. You tell me if we make our girls do anything they don’t want to do.”

She studied him, her eyes shifting focus between his. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked that.”

“That’s right.” He brushed the worry lines from her forehead and made a decision. He was not ready for this moment, whatever it was, to end. “If you want to keep feeling good, my room is just down the hall. The guys out there’ll probably make a lot of noise about it, ‘cuz they’re all immature shitheads, but they won’t get in our way.”

Autumn looked away. She seemed to study the mess of the first-aid kit they’d upended. Then she met his gaze again. “Since we’re being forthright, I’ll say that there are alarm bells going off in my head like I’m a disabled spaceship about to self-destruct, but I can’t bring myself to care. I just want to keep doing this.”

It eased Cox considerably to hear that her head was as loud as his. “We can make out all night if you want. But I’d like to do more.”

She grinned and hopped down from the counter. “Where’s your room?”

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~oOo~

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The animals he called brothers made some noise about it, but Cox flipped them off and led Autumn to his room. He ushered her inside, then shut and locked the door, leaving the fool’s circus out there to its revels.

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