Page 21 of Hex and the City
“Me?” I stared him down as I got under the scratchy covers, angrily trying to get comfortable. “You keep your hands and eyes to yourself, and we won’t have any problems.”
Leon sat upright. “I’ll look wherever I damn want, thank you very much.”
I resisted the compulsion to flex my biceps, to pull up my shirt and show him my stomach and taunt him. Way too childish. Why should I stoop to his level? Instead I settled my head against the pillow and glowered at the ceiling.
The way Leon beat up his pillow to fluff it almost made me laugh. I knew he was imagining my face in its place. “Honestly, I can’t imagine why Vera trusts you so much when you’re such a pain in the ass to deal with.”
I placed my hands behind my head and chuckled. “I can be charming as fuck when I want to be. And I’ve got friends. There’s Johnny and Roscoe. And there’s always Tina. She’s always there for me.”
“Johnny. Roscoe. Sure.” Leon flopped backward onto his pillow. “Oh, and Tina. I can list all the names of my imaginary friends, too.”
“Excuse you? Tina is my very best friend in the world.”
Leon scoffed. “Kind of immature to still think of someone as your bestie, don’t you think?”
“You’reimmature.” I wrinkled my nose. “Prick.”
He rolled onto his side, away from me and toward the window. “Kiss my entire ass, Drake.”
As angry as that last remark made me, I was almost tempted, too.
11
LEON
Hot. How was I supposed to know that this damn hotel room was going to be so hot? I pulled the covers down to my stomach, seeing if that would help. I was already shirtless and still getting sweaty. If I were sleeping alone, I could pull off my boxers, too.
But no. I had to share this horrible bed with bezels and patinas over here, with the guy who was clearly born with a silver spoon up his butt. God, I didn’t think beds could get any worse than the one in my apartment, but this motel mattress could definitely win some kind of award. Hard in some places, lumpy in others.
Still hot. That was the other problem. Max’s body burned hot, the heat of him blazing against mine under the covers. I’d only ever noticed it with fitter people, like their perfect bodies were burning calories as they slept, as their brains subconsciously cooked up more ways for them to be pretentious and insufferable.
And hot.
Snoring softly, his breath warm against the back of my neck — fuck him, but Max was probably the hottest guy I’d seen in a long time. Since I set foot in America, at least.
I’d fooled around with guys back in the Philippines — gorgeous men, all of them, except that I couldn’t consider anything serious, knowing my life would take me to the States eventually. And I’d fooled around with my fair share of American boys, too.
But this grumpy, arrogant, overly serious bore with the supermodel face and porn star body blew them all out of the water. I never knew I could be so attracted to someone I wanted to punch repeatedly in the face.
On some level, I had the nagging feeling that Max felt similarly himself. He’d deny it to death, but I noticed those stolen glances, the sudden softness in his eyes when he thought I wasn’t paying attention. I knew he was looking at my lips, at whatever he could spot through the opening of my shirt.
In that sliver of time between me getting out of the shower and him breaking the bed, I knew that Max was etching the lines of my torso into his memory. I knew that his eyes were following the rivulets of water as they dripped down my chest, my abs.
Maybe if we didn’t butt heads as much, we could be butting our other heads, work on breaking this bed, too.
Not that I blamed him. I didn’t consider myself the buffest guy by any stretch of the imagination, but it was surprising what some pushups, squats, and crunches could do for a growing boy’s body. Who knew what I could look like with a little more discipline and a lot more protein in my diet?
But Max’s body — God, now that was something else.
He wasn’t anything close to a bodybuilder, which was just as well. I could respect the discipline, but huge slabs of beefcake weren’t my jam. Max was — damn it, but Max was exactly my type. Something closer to a swimmer’s build, a body sculpted out of hard work, and designed for hard work.
Whether that was finding or fucking, who could actually say?
Max clearly did well for himself as a finder. Even looking from the outside I figured it was safe to guess that he lived an extremely comfortable life. Admittedly, a part of me was jealous of the hypothetical cushiness.
If I was going to get better at the work of being a finder, I’d need to take the job more seriously. It couldn’t hurt to pick up a few tips from him. It might even help if I stopped antagonizing him so much.
He mumbled something under his breath, too softly for me to understand, except I couldn’t tell whether he was talking to me or dreaming.
