Page 20 of The Hitman
“Why not?” he asks, tilting his head to the left and smiling down at me from a brand-new and unfortunately very attractive angle.
“Because I don’t know you.”
He leans against the doorjamb and shoves his hands into the pockets of his shorts. “Yes. That’s why you should invite me inside. So that we can become acquainted.”
The uncomfortable truth about this moment is that I hear him say these words, and my rational voice thinks he’s whatever the Italian for ‘fuckboy’ is, but my pussy…sigh… She doesn’t give a damn. My pussy hears this man say this cheesy ass pickup line, and she’s absolutely here for it. Like…probably-ruining-this-very-expensive-lingerie here for it. I’m wet beyond belief in couture lingerie in a Not Honeymoon Suite for a man who is not Ryan.
Disconcertingly, I can hear a voice in my head that sounds uncomfortably like Zoe, telling me to “bust it open” for this absolutely random, unknown, deliciously hairy man, and even in my brain, my older sister is very hard to argue with.
“I want you to stop crying,” he says.
I feel… To be honest, I feel all the warm fuzzies when he says these words even though I know I shouldn’t, and so, true to form, I do the thing all my exes have accused me of doing: I deflect. “Fine. Got it. I’ll keep the volume of my quarter-life crisis down. Sorry.”
I try to close the door again. His hand stops me again.
“Who has made you cry?” he asks. I wish he hadn’t.
There’s no chance that I’ll tell him about the farce that is my life, but for a split second, I want to. I want to explain to him how and why Ryan’s betrayal hit all the most tender parts of my soul, but I have no idea why I want to do that. I don’t know this man. “That’s none of your business,” I spit out.
“Not yet,” he says definitively. He leans forward, but he doesn’t move to step inside my hotel room. I notice that, because I know that it matters, even if I want to ignore it and be annoyed at him instead.
I move my hands to my hips. “Why do you care?” I ask again.
“I told you,” he says. “You are too beautiful to cry.”
“Oh,” I breathe in the softest whisper because I can’t think of anything more complex than that single word at the moment.
“You’ve been keeping me awake at night,” he adds. There’s a playful smile on his face, and I don’t need to think too hard or too long to know what he’s insinuating.
And goddammit, keeping him up all night is all I can think about now as well. Dangerous.
“I heard you earlier,” I whisper.
Most men would deflate when a woman they’re shamelessly flirting with tells them they’ve heard them fucking, but this man doesn’t. His eyebrows lift, and that grin widens into a cocky smile. “Did you?” He steps forward, the toes of his bare feet just crossing the threshold into my room. “Did you like what you heard?”
I did.
I swallow before stepping back and to the side, the invitation clear. He doesn’t hesitate to take it.
* * *
I feel more naked than I actually am for some reason.
It could be his presence. He’s not the biggest or tallest man I’ve ever met — Ryan has at least a few inches and a few pounds of muscle on him — but he takes up space in the not small foyer of my room in a way that’s baffling and intoxicating. I swear, as soon as the door closes, I feel smothered by him, and I don’t hate it.
He doesn’t touch me, but I feel as if he’s everywhere when he turns to look at me with dark eyes, lifted eyebrows, and a devilish smirk on his face. I can feel his gaze on me, all over the exposed skin, but also slinking under the lace, teasing me.
“What’s your name, beautiful?” he whispers as his gaze moves down my body.
“You don’t need to know that.”
He chuckles warmly as he raises his eyes to meet mine.
I shiver — violently — at the intensity I see there. I’d let the playful grin fool me into thinking whateverthisis was light, nothing of consequence, but it’s not. When we make eye contact, his eyes bore into mine and pin me in place. There’s nothing light about the way he’s looking at me, and his heavy presence feels very consequential.
“You don’t have to pretend to be cold with me.”
“I’m not pretending,” I say, wishing the words weren’t true. I’m not a full-on ice queen yet, but I’m getting there. I’ve been feeling myself crystallize ever since I saw the footage of Ryan drunkenly stumbling back to his hotel with a casual arm over Candee’s shoulders, and it hasn’t stopped. No matter how much wine I drink or how many tears I cry, I can feel it happening. In a few days, when it’s time to go home to some shitty version of my post-Not Honeymoon life, I know I’ll be someone different. I’ll be some bitter, jaded, wary, mistrustful version of myself. I know that, and I’ve been trying to drown that realization out with all the wine I can get my hands and Ryan’s credit cards on, hoping to stave it off for as long as I can.