Page 23 of Leah

He chuckled. “My tongue is getting all this attention that I didn’t know about.”

I grinned. “What do you think about up there?”

He ran a hand down his tired face. Then he cracked an eye open and stared at me. “I think about fucking you.”

I went still, shocked by his response. And that feeling right there? That was why I was cracking that chest of memories open. Because that shock morphed to heat and…a feeling of being desired by the man you wanted the most to desire you.

“Do you really?” I wondered in a whisper.

He continued to stare right at me. “Yeah, Leah, I think about you, about doing things to you, an unhealthy amount. I’m shocked that while everyone’s staring at my tongue, they’re not noticing the hard-on I’m strutting around with—”

I burst out laughing, and then he was laughing.

A moment later, I was under him, and he was covering every inch of me with his big body, kissing me so deeply, it was like he wanted to taste my soul.

“You are all I see when I’m up there,” he whispered to me. "If I didn't have you to look at, I don't know what I'd do."

I smiled brilliantly, kissing him back with equal intensity because—fuck—I wanted to taste his soul, too.

*

I was dead.

I could hardly keep my eyes open behind the cash register. My boss, Gary, thought I had an “attitude problem” because I didn’t smile at the customers. I wanted to ask him how he would feel if he had to watch the girl of his dreams singing on-stage, ripping his heart into shreds in the process long after returning home and pondering the what-ifs. But then, looking at his unfriendly face and the way he barked orders like a freaking king atop his mole hill, I wondered if he even had a heart.

Dickhead.

“Smile!” he roared at me after another customer walked out.

“The guy’s gone,” I retorted. “No point smiling now.”

“Then practice!”

“You want me to smile at the air, Gary? Fine, I’ll smile at the air.” I stretched my mouth wide, and the muscles at the corner of my lips were wondering what the fuck was going on as I proved my point. I probably looked like Joker, minus the goddamn make-up. “Happy now?”

He cringed in disgust and then swore under his breath, marching down the aisles of the dollar store he owned. He made a show of straightening cheap products on the shelves that didn’t need straightening, before heading out back for smoke number seventy-seven.

Ugh, the second I found a decent job in an office somewhere, I was out of here.

My phone buzzed in my pocket just then. I discreetly pulled it out and swiped the screen.

Mel:U wanna have a Game of Thrones marathon tonight?

Me:Again?!

Mel:I figure we’ll just watch Jason Momoa on repeat. I need a Dothraki god in my sexless life. By the way, I left my bottle of vodka in your car when I stopped at the bottle shopbefore the concert. Let’s get pathetically drunk tonight. Shots, baby!

Me:That sounds tempting, but I can’t. =( I’m spending tonight at Marlena’s house for their anniversary dinner. Thought they invited you too.

Mel:Nah, I told them I couldn’t make it… It’d just be awkward with the whole hating Rome thing. It’s hard enough I work for them and have to hear about him. Oh well. Just put the bottle in the kitchen right before you leave. It’ll be a night drinking all by my lonesome self. When will you be back?

Me:OK, I’ll put it in the freezer for you. I’ll be spending the night, by the way. So we’ll have a marathon tomorrow night after I’ve come home. I want to see the unclothed Dothraki god on screen the second I step thru that door, and I’d love to get drunk with u too…

Mel:This is why ur my other half

I chuckled and exited the conversation.

I hadn’t seen the Myers in a long while, and since they regarded me like their kid, they invited me over for every occasion. I couldn’t say no, especially because Rome hadn’t showed up at their anniversary last year, stating he was busy instead. A part of me hated him a little for dropping off the radar. Not on me, but on his folks.

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