Series: Webs We Weave Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 126927 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 635(@200wpm)___ 508(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126927 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 635(@200wpm)___ 508(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
He cocks his head like I shouldn’t be that surprised he caught up to me. His satisfied look begins to boil my blood.
“What are you doing here?” I snap at him. Does he know about our plan? Or is he just here to inform us of our next job out west? In Seattle, to be exact.
“I could ask the same thing of you,” he says with equal bite. I hate his voice. How its deep, sandpaper quality sounds like the personification of sex.
He’s the last man I’d ever fuck.
Just to be clear.
How his rough-around-the-edges demeanor could attract anyone is beyond my comprehension. My similar coarse grit drives more people away than entices them inside.
I clutch the edge of the door. “I’m knitting a sweater.”
His eyes flit to my head, where my hair is piled up with dye. “See, if you were knitting a sweater, I wouldn’t be here.”
“Pretend I am, then.” I go to shut the door.
He grabs the edge, keeping it open, before ramming his loafer in the doorway. And why the hell are his shoes so shiny? I glare. “You’re not invited in, Rocky.”
“And I’m not a fucking vampire. I don’t need an invitation.” He shoves closer, chest against my chest like a showdown between two apex predators in the wild. Our eyes latch.
Aggravation brews in his irises and reflects in mine. I realize he’s not leaving, but I’m not about to make this easy for him.
“Say please,” I demand.
“Fuck you,” he counters.
I don’t move.
His eyes flame. “Please and fuck you.”
My nose flares, but I know when to surrender a battle in order to win a war.
Fine. I step aside.
He slides farther into the motel, enough to shut and lock the door behind him.
Hailey emerges from the bathroom, rubbing a towel against her damp platinum-blonde hair. When she spots her brother, she plasters on a fake smile. “Hey, Rocky. How’s it going?” Her casualness isn’t as manufactured as that smile, and like a fire extinguisher blew at him, Rocky’s anger dissipates around his little sister. She was always the calm to his storm.
Rocky and I, together, are a volcanic eruption. One that’ll never end, not until the whole world is coated in magma.
“Can you give Phoebe and me a second alone?” he asks Hailey.
My whole head is searing. Might just be the dye. “What—you’re just going to ignore her question? How’s it going, Rocky?”
“It’s going.” He’s staring me down.
I’m staring him down, and if anyone is going to win a staring contest, it’s going to be me. Air suctions out of the room the longer silence stretches.
“Alone. You and me,” Rocky repeats.
A conversation alone with Rocky means that Hailey can’t be there to moderate, but maybe I can kick his ass back to wherever he came from faster without her here.
“Phoebe?” Hailey asks for confirmation.
I give her a nod.
Hesitation fills her eyes that are shadowed with heavy black liner. “Okay, but just don’t kill each other. I don’t need to clean up a murder today.” Spike-studded backpack over her shoulder, she pauses at the door. “I’m going to grab some shit from the vending machines. Want anything, Phebs?”
“I’m good.”
She sighs, then reluctantly leaves. Not gracing her brother with the same offer.
I scratch the wet, processing hair at the back of my neck. “I have to wash this out,” I mutter. His intense eyes track me to the bathroom, and he follows like a shadow attached to my heels.
Testing his resolve, I start undressing in front of him. It’s a quick, thoughtless decision.
Annoy him like he annoys you, my gut always tells me. I pull my strawberry tee over my head, revealing a simple pale pink bra. He stares at my eyes, never flinching or looking down. “Seriously, Phoebe?” he asks. “What the fuck?”
“You followed me into the bathroom.” I unbutton my jeans.
A hostile growling noise scratches his throat, but his gaze never abandons mine. Not even as I wiggle my jeans down my hips and step out of them. Mesh sky-blue panties ride high on my hips and reveal more than they hide. I hate that undressing in front of him is easy for me. I hate that it’d be easy in front of anyone. Thoughts intrude in a wave of bitter shame that I try to swallow down.
Use what you’re given, right? Hailey has the brains. I have the body. Dissociating from my tits and ass and the rest of my physical form has become easy. Too easy. And in the next breath, I hate it.
Christ, I hate it.
But I don’t know how to reverse time and unlearn what I was taught.
“I followed you to talk to you,” he says gruffly. “I didn’t sign up for the striptease.”
I grimace. “I’d rather stand in front of a moving train than put on a show for you.”
“Likewise,” he says casually, like it’s known. We would willingly jump into certain death rather than seduce one another.