Page 5 of The Spice Play

“I’ve been having margaritas,” she said slowly, finally answering my question from before with the slightest hint of a quiver in her voice. “But I like whiskey, too. I’ll have one of whatever you had.”

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It took anhourfor me to convince her to tell me her name. I’d called her everything in my arsenal until that point — sweetie, darling, cutie, princess, kitten. Hell, I’d even thrown inbaby,which wasn’t something I let slip from my tongue easily.

But none of them felt as right between my teeth asPenelope.Or, rather,Nellyfor short.

“Come on,” Nelly grinned, pushing back on the bar and making her stool lean back on two legs. “I told you mine. It’s only fair that you tell me yours.”

She’d sipped at two doubles of whiskey, neat, like a fucking champ, over the time we’d been chatting. Somehow, in that time, we’d learned almost nothing useful about each other.

She’d told me her favorite board games as a child and that her parents lived on opposite sides of the country. She told me that she played soccer in high school and talked endlessly for about twenty minutes straight about some of the wildest college drama I’d ever heard from her time at UCF.

I’d told her about the time I broke my shoulder falling off the monkey bars as a child and I told her about the time we’d buried someone else’s cat in our backyard by mistake when I was ten and how we only realized when Otto came walking intwo weeks later. I also told her about the teacher I’d had in seventh grade, whose last name was Miss and how confusing it had been for everyone trying to call herMs. Miss.

And I didn’t talk about hockey once.

“Have you earned it?” I teased, downing the last of my glass and swallowing past the burn.

Her lower lip jutted out in a pout, andGod, she was so fucking cute. The two legs of the stool that hovered slammed back into the wooden floor. “How have I not?”

She didn’t flinch when my finger hooked under her chin, and I tilted her defiant little face up to me, but that heat in her cheeks came back with a roaring vengeance when the words slipped past my lips. “You haven’t taken mehome, Nelly.”

Chapter 3

Nelly

It was stupid.

Horribly, dangerously, recklessly stupid.

Simplythinkingabout letting him use my vibrator on me had been the lowest I’d imagined I’d go tonight, but somehow, I’d reached new depths among the pebbles of rock bottom.

Part of me was thankful that I’d only moved into my apartment complex about two months ago. I hadn’t spent enough time there to become friendly with any of my neighbors, so I at least didn’t need to worry that one of them would spot us walking through the lobby on the way to the elevator.

But that also meant that no one would think it was out of place for me if this unnamed man did, in fact, decide to murder me.

How the hell had I let Morris’ upcoming wedding affect me to the extent of bringing a full-on stranger whose name I didn’t even know yet to myapartment? Sure, he’d given me three times the amount we needed for the Uber, but thatdidn’t make him trustworthy. I’d kick myself for it tomorrow if I survived this.

Shoving the key in the top lock of my door, I turned it, releasing the latch with aclick. But I didn’t open the door.

“Surely, I’ve earned your name by now,” I said, shooting him a glare. I kept my hand perfectly still against the wood panel of the door.

His lips quirked upward. “You haven’t let me inside yet.”

“Counterpoint — I’m not letting a stranger into my house even if I’m tipsy.”

He chuckled as he leaned against the door frame. “Oh, come on, Nell. I told you about Otto and Ms. Miss. I’m hardly a stranger.”

A warm, wandering hand gently fell on the side of my waist, and it was as if little electric currents radiated from it, making my hair stand on end and goosebumps break out across my skin. “Doesn’t matter. I’m not opening the door,” I said, but his touch undermined the confidence I was trying to exude, and a choked squeak broke through in the middle.This is insane. You are insane, Nelly.

“I’ll give you a hint. It starts with anS.” His hand felt heavier on my waist as his fingers played with the hem of my shirt, lifting it and slipping just barely beneath the fabric. Skin ghosted across skin, and my breath hitched, betraying me further.

His smirk widened, and he leaned down, bringing that impossibly attractive face far too close to mine before changing course and diverting, his lips hovering against the shell of my ear. His scent enveloped me instantly, invading my nostrils with a scent that could only be described as a forest of cedarwood right bythe ocean.

And when he spoke again, the words were raspy, weighted, and so quiet it made his breath fan across my cheek.

“You’d better guess it before I undress you right here in the fucking hallway, Nell. The clock’s ticking.”

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