Page 22 of My Super Sexy Spy
He looked at me a little perplexed. “I am sorry. I don’t think I know this saying. It is an American idiom?”
“It basically means I would like to have another drink instead. Is that going to be a problem? I’m not normally someone who rushes into stuff like this. Sorry if I seem a little backward. You probably do this all the time.”
He reached out and took my hand from where it was resting on the bar and just held it ever so gently in his. Then he bent down and brushed a kiss across my knuckles.
Holy shit! That has never happened to me before.
“Would I surprise you if I said I didn’t? That you were unique, Beth? Like a snowflake.”
Seriously? Like a snowflake?
I squashed my inner snarky voice and smiled instead. Ivan bought me another drink, and I turned to give Ted a smug glance. He thought playing footsies with the chick in the red dress was next -level? Well, I just got my knuckles kissed.
Only when I moved to glance over at the table where he’d been sitting, he was gone. I saw the back of him leaving the bar, the woman in the dress in front of him.
They were leaving. He was leaving with C-cups. He was probably going to do to her what Ivan wanted to do to me. Which was totally fair. We both agreed we were nothing more than travel pals.
“It just surprises me,” I said out loud.
“What surprises you? That I think you are unique?”
No, that Ted scored the hot chick in a couple of minutes. He was the safety guy. He was the dorky looking sportswriter with the baseball cap and glasses. If anything, I belonged with him and the hot chick belonged with Ivan.
That universe made sense. The one I was living in did not.
“Uh, yeah. I’m not used to being thought of that way,” I said, trying to recover from thinking about Ted.
Ivan ordered me another martini and I forced myself to put Ted and C-cups firmly from my mind.
* * *
“Well, this is it,” I said, pointing to my hotel room door.
“It is a door, Beth. Not a room. I want to see inside your room,” Ivan said from behind me even as he dipped his head and kissed my neck. I definitely shivered. Because it tickled a little bit from the scruff on his chin.
But not sure if it was in a good way.
Was I really going to do this? Take this Bulgarian stranger to bed? As a way to prove to myself… Wait, what was I trying to prove again?
Suddenly, the decision was taken out of my hands when a loud and apparently very drunk Ted turned the corner.
“Hey! It’s Beth! I need you. I’m a little lost and you’re better at maps than me.”
Ted bounced toward me using the walls to keep himself upright as if he were a pinball. Finally, he leaned against the door of my room and looked up at Ivan blinking slowly.
“I know you,” he said, lifting a finger to wag at him. “You’re the douchebag.”
“Ted!” I huffed. I wasn’t sure ifdouchebagtranslated in Bulgarian, but I needed to shut him up.
“Ted, is it?” Ivan asked him. “You’re interrupting our evening.”
“Sorry ’bout that. But I found her first. She’s mine.”
“Ted!” I shouted, now exasperated with him. He’d basically ruined my night of stranger sex. There would be no reclaiming the mood with Ivan after this.
I shouldn’t have felt so relieved, but I did.
I offered Ivan a sheepish smile. “We sort of bonded in Venice today. I feel like I should…help him out.”
