Page 21 of Powder
“Jack O’Leary,” I barked at the young lady behind the desk. Her dark eyes flared. Starry elbowed me in the side. Hard. The jab in my ribs soothed the jealousy and pain throbbing in my breast. “Sorry, long flight. We’re checking in. Jack O’Leary and Pete Starkinski.”
He’d found someone else.
I meant nothing to him.
“Yes, sirs, tired is always happening,” the desk clerk replied in English heavily accented with Italian.
Something kept prodding me to turn around. Look again. Maybe that was just some fan being overzealous. Cursing myself for my weakness, I glanced over my shoulder as Pete tried to talk up the reception desk gal as if she hadn’t already dealt with loud Americans all day. I stared at the small fountain, two tall women in Olympic jackets chatting, and unbidden, my gaze fell on Tian. The asshole who had been hanging on him like a wet cape on a hook was sitting down. Tian’s gaze was hot, and not in the I-want-your-body way but in the I-am-pissed-off way, which seemed unfair to me as he was the one with a blond bimbo feeling him up not ten seconds ago. He jerked his head to the left, then stamped off in that direction to slam through a door without even looking back to see if I was following him.
Fuck that. I wasnotgoing after him. He’d found another man. Some twinky shit who didn’t have the manners to know not to be all PDA on him in public. Nope, I was not going after him. He made his twinky bed, let him lie in it.
“Can you get the key cards? I want to go check out the hotel pool,” I said to Starry, then left him to deal with the check-in process. My carry-on was still in my hand. I chugged through the vast lobby, sidestepping luggage and athletes, then bulling through a door that led to what seemed to be meeting rooms. Nothing unusual in that. Hotels held conferences all the time. Probably we’d be in one later in the week to watch videos orhobnob with Olympic VIPs. I had no clue. Maybe we wouldn’t enter one at all.
I paused as I tried to sniff out which way Tian had gone as if I were a damned bloodhound or something. To my right, a shape appeared, gave me a shove around a corner, and then planted his feet to block my escape.
“What the fuck was that?” Tian asked in a sharp but low growl.
“Get off me!”
“Are you too good to even say hello to me?”
Fuck, he looked sexy—his lips swollen and begging to be bitten, thighs taut in those jeans, every line of his lean body screaming to be touched—and it took everything in me not to slam him against the wall and grind into him right there. But I wouldn’t let that derail my righteous anger. “Looked to me like you were too busy letting your new boyfriend climb all over you.”
He blinked. “What?”
“I’m not doing this,” I snapped, and pushed him away, using all my best moves to stop him from touching me, but he was wily and quick and back in front of me in a second.
“Seriously?” He snapped. “That’s what this is all about? You’re jealous?”
My temper flared even brighter. I was sick that I’d built anything in my head with him, and sick that I hadn’t listened to my gut. I was older, stupid, and he was this young kid. Of course, he didn’t want me.
“Fuck that. I am not jealous. I couldn’t care less. What we had was just two weeks of fun and sun, right?”
He stepped back, his face suddenly blank. For a heartbeat, I thought I saw a flicker of shock, something raw and unguarded, but it disappeared in an instant, shuttered behind that fierce mask he was wearing so well right now. “Right. We fucked,” he said in a dead tone. Then he stabbed me with a pointed finger,dead center in the US flag on my chest. “You want to forget it, fine, but at least have the decency to look at me!”
I was speechless. He thought I wanted to forget it. Was he bonkers?
“What? I don’t want to?—”
“Don’t you dare dump your regrets about fucking me all over me now!” Tian shouted, his temper causing his cheeks to flush and his eyes to brighten with emotion. Lord, he was so beautiful, even prettier than I’d recalled. I fisted my hands to keep from reaching for him. Unsure now of how to reply, I sucked in a shaky breath and shook my head. “You have no reply? Nothing?” He seemed unbelieving, but he should know I was a man of few words. “What about you and that tall bastard that you were with when you exited the elevator?”
That snapped me out of my mental fog. “Starry’s a teammate. Not that it matters.”
“Brett is a teammate as well!”
“Yeah, but a little too fucking friendly,” I snapped, the words ripping out of me before I could stop them. My temper was unleashed now. “Not that it matters because we mean nothing to each other, right?” I went for the jugular, and he hissed then stabbed a finger at me again. I caught it and gripped his hand hard, but he yanked it away.
“If you think that, then why are you yelling at me about my teammate?”
That about finished me off, and suddenly, all sense of what I was supposed to say flew out of the window. “I don’t know!” I yelled in his face. “Maybe because I can’t stop thinking about you, and that makes me edgy as fuck!”
His eyes flared. My fingers clenched tighter. The atmosphere in that tiny alcove shifted from red-hot anger to a foggy gray of uncertainty.
“Jack—”
“All I think about is you! Day and night. You’ve never left my mind since we left the cay behind. I dream about being inside you and wake up sweaty and sick with want. From the moment the coach told me I made the team, all I could think of was kissing you again and making love to you. And then when I first see you you’re with some jerk, and I want you so much, so I didn’t want to say anything because it hurt I wasn’t enough for you to want me as well.”
“Stop—”
