Shredded - Wolff Tracy - Страница 31

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“You don’t have to do that.”

“I kind of do. It seems ungracious to let you freeze to death after you kept me from turning into another statistic.”

“Hey. That asshole wasn’t going to hurt you. I wouldn’t have let him.”

“I know.”

Instead of wrapping up in the blanket I gave him earlier, he reaches for the tangle of blankets on my unmade bed, pulls the top one off, and winds it around himself. Then he buries his face in it and pulls a deep breath in through his nose. My whole body goes hot when I figure out what he’s doing. He picked that blanket so he could smell me on it, so he’d be wrapped in my scent.

The thought does all kinds of crazy things to me, gives me all kinds of feels I just don’t want. It’s all I can do to keep from ripping it off him again. But then I’d be faced with that chest and those abs and all those gorgeous tattoos.

At this point, I don’t know what would be worse.

The smirk on his face tells me he knows exactly what I’m thinking. Of course he does. How could he not when girls drop at his feet wherever he goes?

Forcing my sudden attack of lust back down to wherever it came from, I gather up his clothes and a couple of dollars in quarters and run them down to the employee laundry room. When I get back, he’s standing in front of my bookshelf, my battered copy of Catcher in the Rye in his hands.

Why am I not surprised? Of course he’s a Holden Caulfield fan.

“You like this book?” he asks, his voice so casual that I know he’s really interested in the answer.

“Yeah. Do you?”

He shrugs. “I’ve never read it.”

“Not even junior year in high school?” I ask, surprised. I thought rich boys like him were all about fancy schools.

“I was never much of a student. By the time I was fifteen, I’d been kicked out of every major private school in Park City and Salt Lake City.”

Now that doesn’t surprise me at all. “You’d probably like that book, then.”

He glances at the innocuous red-and-white cover. “Oh, yeah? Why’s that?”

“The main character, Holden Caulfield, gets kicked out of a bunch of schools, too. He’s pretty much one of the best antiheroes ever written.” I move into my tiny little kitchen, which is really just a minifridge, a microwave, and the Keurig Remi bought me for Christmas last year. “You want some coffee or hot chocolate or something?”

“Yeah, sure.”

I gesture to the little carousel I’ve got that holds all the different K-cups, but he’s too interested in the blurb on the back of the book to notice. “You can borrow that if you want,” I tell him.

Immediately he puts it down. “No, that’s okay.”

“You sure? It’s a great story. With that book, Salinger proved—long before U.S. pop culture figured it out—that antiheroes actually make the best heroes.”

Now he looks at the book like it’s a king cobra that’s got him in its sights. “I’m good. I’ve never been much of a reader.”

“I didn’t used to be, either.” I pop my favorite kind of coffee into the Keurig, then hit brew. If he doesn’t like it, he should have told me what he wanted.

“Really? With a name like Ophelia, I kind of thought you’d be all about reading.”

Because I can sense the tension in him, I go with the change of topic. “Nope. Not really.”

“So, what changed?” he asks. At my blank look, he continues, “To get you reading? You’ve got a lot of books here.”

I think about those long weeks in the hospital, the longer weeks lying on the sofa at home, just waiting to get stronger. Just waiting for the pain to go away. It never did.

“It’s a long story.”

His usually cocky smile is gone, and in its place is an intensity that takes my breath away. “Seems like we have a lot of those between us, don’t we?”

“I guess we do.”

He catches my eye, holds my gaze for long seconds. “We going to do anything about that?”

Just the thought has my breath hitching in my throat. “I don’t know. I don’t … think so.”

He nods, like that’s exactly what he expected me to say. Then again, I’m pretty sure it’s what he would say if I asked about his secrets, so why wouldn’t he expect the same from me?

“Tell me something else, then.”

I gaze at him warily. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. Tell me something, anything, about you.”

“Why should I?”

“Because if you do it, so will I.”

I can’t help smiling. “A little I’ll-show-you-mine-if-you-show-me-yours?”

It’s only when he grins that I realize what I said—and what it sounds like. He doesn’t call me on it, though. Instead he smiles innocently and says, “I’m all for quid pro quo.”

But I can see his eyes, can see the way his pupils have dilated and his irises have turned a deep midnight blue. This is a bad idea.

Yet I can’t stop myself from smiling back. Any more than I can stop the words tumbling out of my mouth.

“I hate Brussels sprouts, cold weather, and guys who think they can have whatever they want.”

She’s playing with me. Ophelia’s playing with me, and I don’t know why it matters so much—it’s not like I’ve ever been very big on playing—but it does. It really fucking does.

I pick up my cup of coffee, take a long sip as I contemplate how I’m going to respond to what she said. Then, just as the smile on her face starts to fall—like she thinks I didn’t get what she was doing or something—I say, “I like peaches, fresh powder, and girls who don’t take shit from anybody.”

She laughs. “I like peaches, too.”

“I know.”

“How?” She stops in the middle of brewing herself a cup of coffee to look at me in surprise.

“Because you smell like them. Taste like them.” I hold the blanket out a little in front of me so she can’t see that just the thought of kissing her makes me hard. “When I first met you, I thought you were from Georgia.”

For long seconds she doesn’t answer. When she finally does, her voice is low. Husky. Like she just tumbled out of bed and into conversation with me. I like the sound of it. “Where are you from?”

“Park City, born and bred.”

“Really? I didn’t think any of the boarders were actually from here. I thought you guys moved here to train.”

“Most do. But Ash, Cam, Luc, and I were all raised here. We were boarding practically before we could stand.”

“Really?” She looks fascinated, so I continue.

“Yeah, though my dad put me on skis first. So much classier than snowboarding.”

“Still, he must be proud of you, right? You’re one of the top-ranked snowboarders in the country, about to take a shot at the Olympics.”

Shit. I should have known better than to bring up my dad. I never do, except with my friends, so the fact that he came up so easily with Ophelia kind of shocks me. Because it does, and because I feel like I need a little time to regroup, I take my coffee and head back over to the couch/bed.

Ophelia follows me, and though she sits next to me with no hesitation, there’s an awareness that sparks between us, one that only makes my dick harder—as well as my resolve to keep my hands off her.

“It’s my turn to ask a question,” I tell her, after pulling my attention away from her pink lips and pinker cheeks.

“Go for it.”

“If you hate the cold, what are you doing here? Because it’s obvious you didn’t come for the slopes.”

“I needed a job, and since my aunt and uncle manage Lost Canyon, they—”

“Alex and Penny are your aunt and uncle?”

“Yeah. You look shocked.”

“No, not shocked, just … Why aren’t you living with them instead of over here in the employee lodge?”

“They offered, but I chose to live here. They’re my family, but we’re not close.”

“Why not?”

“You do realize that you’ve asked three questions, right? Not just one?”

“Yes, but you only answered one of the questions, so I don’t think the fact that I asked three counts.”

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