Page 7 of Feast

His scowl hadn’t faded at all—in fact, she thought it might have gotten even scowlier. “Kidnap, assault, and/or murder you?”

“A girl can’t be too careful,” she told him somberly.

“Agreed,” he said, still scowling. “But if you were worried about it, why didn’t you just get your own cab?”

“Well, for one, taxis are expensive.” She glanced at the driver. “No offense.”

He just shrugged, so she assumed if he was offended, he was dealing with it. She turned back to 3A. “We’re going to the same hotel, so splitting the fare makes good financial sense. Plus, fewer cars on the road means less fossil fuels burning, and less pollution. Don’t you care about the planet?”

“Deeply,” he replied deadpan, and though he was still wearing a scowl, it was more thoughtful now than menacing. Not as sexy as the menacing scowl, she mused, but still pretty hot. “Is that all?”

“No.”

One dark eyebrow arched. “Are you going to share with the class?”

“Not yet,” she said, intrigued by the way the raised eyebrow transformed his face. “You know, when you do that thing with your eyebrow, you look very villainous. Especially with the mustache.”

“You planning to rob me?” he asked, eyebrow still raised.

She laughed out loud at the idea. “Nothing like that, I promise.”

He just stared at her, scowling with his eyebrow climbing his forehead, which now that she thought about it was a pretty neat trick. A scowl by definition needed a scrunched forehead, and his was definitely scrunched, but his eyebrow was also halfway to his hairline.

“How do you do that?” she wondered and reached out to poke at his eyebrow.

He grabbed her hand before she could touch him, long fingers wrapped firmly around her wrist in an implacable hold. She tried to jerk back, an automatic reaction to being held, and his grip tightened. Not painfully so, but she sure wasn’t going anywhere unless he decided to let her.

“Oh, my,” she breathed and wondered if he could feel her pulse hammering under his fingers.

She had no idea how long they would’ve sat there, him scowling and her trying not to melt into a puddle all over the seat, but then the cab suddenly stopped and she looked past him out the window at the grand entrance of the Hotel Wynn.

“That wasn’t ten minutes,” she managed.

The cabbie climbed out of the car, presumably to get her roller bag and 3A’s leather duffle out of the trunk, but when she tried to take her hand back, his grip held firm.

“You have to let me go so I can get my wallet to pay the driver,” she told him, reasonably calm for a woman trying not to melt into a puddle all over the back of a taxi. The callouses on his fingers were rubbing against her skin, and she had to actively block herself from imagining those callouses on other parts of her, or that puddle thing was definitely happening.

“Tell me why first,” he said, and it wasn’t a request.

She heaved a sigh, attempting to convey via the expulsion of breath that he was being thoroughly unreasonable and completely ridiculous, but that she, the sensible human in this scenario, would answer his question anyway.

“Spill it, 3B,” he said, and she took a moment to be amused that while she’d been mentally referring to him as his seat number, he’d apparently been doing the same.

Then she widened her eyes in a display of innocence, blinked twice into his scowling face, and said, “I’m trying to decide if I’m going to sleep with you, of course.”

His expression didn’t change by so much as a twitch, but she felt his shock in the slackening of his fingers on her wrist. Moving quickly—because she had the feeling the shock was going to wear off fast—she twisted her wrist out of his grip, gathered her backpack, and with a smile and a wink, shoved open the door and stepped out of the cab.

Complications,Spence reminded himself as he followed 3B into the hotel, his eyes on the sway and bounce of her bubble butt. He hadn’t had sex in six weeks, not since Thanksgiving, and while that fact hadn’t particularly bothered him before, it was bothering him now.

He wanted his hands on that ass.

He hadn’t thought about fucking her, at least not in a focused, purposeful way. He’d had what he considered a knee-jerk, heterosexual male appreciation for her considerable physical assets, and her personality didn’t make him want to gargle bleach. Thoughts of sex had occurred, also knee-jerk. But when she’d dropped her little bomb in the cab he’d begun to seriously consider the possibility.

He followed her to the check-in desk, which thankfully wasn’t too busy, got in line behind her, and tried to think of something to say.

She beat him to it.

“Want to get some dinner?” she asked, aiming a look over her shoulder.

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