Page 29 of The Fix

We aren’t here because of his band.

We’re here because of him.

“You’re right,” I mutter into the frozen tundra, squaring my shoulders. “I’m here. So quit making my job difficult.”

Toby grips my jaw faster than I can back away, his touch searing against the cold. I gasp as he pulls me closer, his face inches from mine, the scent of alcohol strong.

Our noses bump as he walks me backward, and I taste the whiskey on his breath.

My pulse races. My stomach clenches.

“You didn’t have to come,” he growls and crowds in, the heat of him pressing into me until I feel him everywhere.

“But I did,” I fling right back, my hands biting into the railing keeping me from falling right into the mountain terrain at my back.

And yet … Toby pushes until I’m arching over the side of the porch and his hips are digging into mine, my feet barely connected to the wood beneath us.

“Why,” he snarls, “do you give a fuck?”

“It’s my job,” I mutter, the words sounding way too small even to my own ears. Unconvincing.

Breathless.

It is my job.

But it's so much more than that.

It’s too difficult to focus with him this close, the heat and surprising hardness of him battling it out against the cold on my back, my breath racing from me.

It’s what I’m supposed to do.

“Bet this isn’t.”

Before I get a moment to consider a response, Tobias Jeffers slams his mouth against mine and steals all my thoughts through the tongue that slides past my lips and knocks into my teeth.

My body betrays me, and I gasp.

That’s the only reasoning I can come up with when my jaw unclenches and my fingers unhook from the railing.

I want to raise my hands, push him away and put a stop to this, but his tongue touches mine and it takes everything in me not to moan. The taste of whiskey bursts against my tastebuds, and I grip the open zipper of his hoodie, the smattering of hair on his bare chest brushing my thumbs while his beard scrapes against my mouth.

It’s all so much and somehow not eno—

“No.” Popping back, I gasp, desperate for air and distance and the cold that seeps into the space created between my chest and Toby’s. “No.”

“There you go,” Toby mutters, sounding nearly as breathless as I feel, “with that fucking word again.”

My hands don’t release his hoodie. “That … that did not happen.”

He hums, then mutters softly, “It didn’t not happen either.” He dips to catch my gaze, his fingers digging into the backs of my knees, his forehead knocking against mine.

“It can’t happen, Jeffers.”

“Oh, but it already did.” His mustache does nothing to hide the teasing grin pulling up the corners of his lips. “At least in my head, it did.” He lifts me, my feet leaving the ground completely and my butt missing the railing.

I’m in midair before my scrambled brain cells can catch up, my arms reaching up instead of down as I fall.

“Jeffers!”

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