Page 51 of Enemies with Benefits
"Liar. Like I said, you could have put a stop to it. But not only did you let me blow you, youfucked my face. And that's going to stick with you until the next time."
"There isn't going to be a next time," I snarled, shoving him back into the shelving before slamming the door behind me and marching back toward the lobby.
I honestly expected him to follow me, but he didn't right away, and it was probably best that I didn't think too hard about what he could be doing. Just like I was not going to be thinking about what had happened, and definitely not about what he'd said as I'd left the room. I didn't care what the fuck he’d said, or how good that had been, or...anything. He was wrong because there was definitely not going to be a next time, and that was that.
Damn it, there was going to be a next time, wasn't there?
Fuck.
MASON
God, I really hated hotel pools.
In all honesty, the pool my parents had put in back in the 90s was pretty nice, especially after some upgrades back when I was a kid. My favorite upgrade was when my mom decided to make half the room, which stuck out at the back of the building, open to the outside. She managed it by taking half the walls and ceiling, and putting in a retractable roof, opening the space up to the fresh air. Screens acted as barriers against bugs and outside debris, and made it seem so much nicer when it could be opened up in nice weather.
So, of course, today, the weather was absolutely garbage as it was too often in this part of the country. The panels were closed, keeping the pool sealed up, which trapped the caustic smell of chlorine and chemicals in the enclosed space, made worse by the fact that the heat was on, so the half-naked swimmers weren't frozen by the air conditioning.
"Why are you wrinkling your nose?" Dominic asked as he reclined in a seat next to me. My brother was clearly immune to the sound of screaming children, content as could be as he relaxed.
"Dude," I said. "It's like being stuck in a sauna, but one that dumps pool water on the rocks."
"Mmm, a sauna requires steam."
"Close the fuck enough if you ask me."
"Something tells me you just want to bitch, and there's little in the world that can stop you."
I rolled my eyes. “Whatever. Whenever one of us ends up with like...cancer of the lungs or whatever because we've breathed in these chemicals for too long, you're not going to be so dismissive."
He eyed me. “Should I remind you that that's in poor taste? Or would you like to remind yourself?"
"Fuck off."
"That's what I thought."
Ugh, sometimes he could be as smug as me, which was fine except that he only did that when he was right...which happened more often than I liked. But only one person could beat Moira when it came to knowing me best and longest, and that was Dominic. He had been adopted by my parents about a year before my father shuffled off the mortal coil. Having a new sibling had been hard enough for us at the time since all we'd known was one another. And no one would have been blamed if they thought things only got harder when, a year later, Moira and I lost our father.
In a way, a rather fucked up way from the right viewpoint, that tragedy made us grow closer to Dom. It certainly hadn't hurt that we were only about a year apart, so it wasn't hard to relate to each other. But what had really done it was that he had been up for adoption because he’d lost his parents a year before. In more ways than one, his loss had become our gain, but for Moira and me especially, it was nice to have someone who understood what it meant to lose a parent at a young age.
Looking at Dominic, you wouldn't know the bastard was actually one of the biggest-hearted people you could know, especially when you took into consideration that he was a professional MMA fighter and was doing damn well in the sport. He was actually a little like Jace, in the sense that he was a big guy, with dark features and a hard expression, but in every way that mattered, he was utterly unlike Jace.
Once, he’d been in a bout against some guy who had talked a lot of shit leading up to it. The match hadn't lasted long, and the other guy had lost miserably. He also had to be taken to the ER because of a few nasty injuries. We'd tried to tell Dom that that was the nature of the sport, pointing out that it was why we worried about him doing it at times. Dom, however, made it his mission to visit the guy, even spending time with the guy's wife and kids, and still maintained a friendship with the family years later.
Hard fists, soft heart, that was Dom for you.
Another childish shriek cut through the air, and I winced. “God save me."
"That's our nephew you're grumbling about," Dom pointed out, staring at the tattoo of a chain winding its way up his forearm and poking it.
"I'm aware," I said with a roll of my eyes. "And I’m thrilled that he's remembered that he's not in fact a geriatric old man ready for the retirement home and that it's okay to have fun like...well, like a kid. That does not, however, mean I'm going to enjoy the sound of him shrieking. Seriously, why do kids do that?"
"Have fun?"
"Shriek like they're being murdered, except they're having fun. I swear, up till puberty, they have this special shriek that feels like it drills directly into your skull, bypassing everything to find the pain center of the brain."
"Sometimes I can't figure out who's more dramatic, you or Milo."
"That hurts, Dom, that really hurts."
