by Lynn, J
Kyler, whispered an evil, bitchy voice.
That evil voice wasn’t helping.
Pulling off my jeans, I left them on the floor and tugged the bulky sweater off, letting it join the messy heap. Standing on the tips of my toes, I held up a pair of dark skinny jeans. These could be cute with a turtleneck. Not that the evil, bitchy voice in my head was right or anything. There could be a hot ski instructor at the lodge for all I knew and maybe my bedroom would turn into a train station instead of a bus stop and I—
The bedroom door suddenly opened. “Tanner just called. He said…”
My heart stopped and the jeans fell from my suddenly boneless fingers. Oh, my God…I couldn’t even think. I just stared at Kyler. There I was, standing in my bra and panties. Couldn’t forget the knee-high snowman socks, because they provided oh-so much coverage.
Both of us were frozen, struck absolutely immobile by my nakedness. Time stopped, and kyler…he kept staring at me. I couldn’t remember the last time he saw me naked or at least half-naked. Not since I’d developed breasts, probably, and they weren’t much to stare at. Someone once said more than a mouthful was a waste, but I sincerely believed that saying was made up by girls with small breasts like me just to make ourselves feel—oh dear God, my brain needed to shut up.
Heat infused my cheeks and traveled down my neck and then even further south, to the edges of the white lace, because Jesus H. Christ, I couldn’t have been wearing something sexier than a white bra and striped boy shorts.
Fuck. Me.
And those were the worst two words to even think, because now I was thinking about that, and Kyler was still staring at me like he’d never seen a chick in bra and panties before, which I knew was so not the case. But he was staring at me in a way I had to be completely imagining after years of hopeless wishing, because there was a heat in his eyes, an intensity that felt like a caress against my flushed skin. My lips parted as my pulse sped up, pounding through every point in my body.
He stared like the way he’d said Paul stared at me.
Kyler had never looked at me like that.
The muscles in my tummy tightened and there was sharp sensation snaking down my spine. My knees felt wobbly.
“Jesus.”
His voice was a hard explosion that jarred common sense into me. I dove toward the bed, yanking an oversize sweater off it and holding it to my front. “Don’t you know how to knock?”
He thrust his fingers through his hair. “Shit.”
I stared at him, my entire body burning for two different reasons. Shit? That’s all he had to say? Not ‘Baby, I want to lick your body’ or ‘Ew, cover that shit up.’ At least with that last one, the word ‘shit’ became a viable part of a sentence.
And then Kyler laughed—laughed so hard I thought he was going to physically hurt himself. “I’m sorry,” he gasped out. “But you should see the look on your face.”
My mouth dropped open. “Get out.”
His laughter went up a notch, deep laughs that sent shivers skating over my skin. I grabbed the first thing off the bed and threw it at him.
Kyler’s hand shot out and he snatched my projectile out of the air. His brows went up, and my stomach hit my toes. Something red and lacy and bulky hung from his fingertips.
Oh, sweet baby Jesus on a merry-go-round.
It was my bra—my Victoria’s Secret push-up bra. The kind that had so much padding in the cups that it added five pounds once I put it on.
I clamped my mouth shut to stop the scream building up in my throat.
Kyler’s gaze flicked from the bra to me, and then back to the bra. “Do you wear this thing?”
Unable to answer, because I was pretty sure my response would be all stabby-stabby, I said nothing.
He walked it over to the bed and lay it down like it was some kind of wild animal about to wrap itself around his face. His lashes swept up, his gaze meeting mine. Humor danced in his eyes. “No wonder your suitcase was so heavy.”
“Get out!” I yelled.
Laughing under his breath, he backed away slowly. “Don’t you want to know what Tanner called about?”
I shifted my weight from one foot to the next. “And if I say no?”
“I’m still going to tell you.” He flashed a grin. “They’ve met up with the rest of the group, but they’re staying the rest of the night in Frederick. It’s snowing really bad down there.”
At this point, I expected anything and everything to go wrong. “Crap. Do you think it’s going to get bad here?”
“Don’t know. Guess I’ll go check the news while you put some clothes on.” Kyler started toward the door and added, “Floozy.”
“Shut up, you non-door-knocking-peeper.”
“Nice undies by the way,” he said, dipping his head back in the room. “I like the color scheme. Does it have the day of the week on them?”
I screamed.
Kyler
Closing the bedroom door behind me, I tipped my head back against it and stared at the exposed beams in the ceiling. Mom was into the whole rustic look. I thought it made the house look unfinished.
I focused on the deep oak beams, desperately trying to get the image of an almost naked Syd out of my mind. Wasn’t working. The beams morphed into hips and breasts.
Jesus. H. Christ.
Holy Mother of God, that was not what I’d expected when I’d opened that door. I also hadn’t expected Syd to be so… curvy under her clothes. She was a tiny thing, barely reaching my chest, and I’d assumed she was all straight lines and little else since the last time I’d seen her so damn close-to-naked was in junior high school. Since then, I hadn’t even seen her in a bathing suit.
Boy, was my assumption so far off it was ridiculous.
The girl had hips on her, sweetly flaring out from a narrow waist. For someone so short, her legs looked a mile long when there was nothing covering them. And those breasts?
I scrubbed my palm across my jaw and closed my eyes.
They were small, but the size fit her perfectly, and I bet they were perky as hell under that chaste white bra, and the tips would be a sweet dusky pink—whoa. What in the hell? I needed to stop thinking about her breasts. Totally off-limits.
But because I was a dude and once that image took hold, I pictured them in my hands and her back arching into my touch—
“Shit,” I growled. Lust stirred with a vengeance—that heated, almost-crazed kind of lust that never amounted to anything good.
And the way she’d been looking at me? No. No way. I had to be imagining that shit, because this was Syd, for chrissakes. She was my Syd, but never in that way. And there was no way she could be looking at me with those damn baby blue eyes of hers filled with want. Like she had wanted me to do something about the fact she’d been standing there with barely anything on.
Like she had wanted me to see her.
Aw, hell, I had seen her.
And there was a good chance I was losing my damn mind, because Syd had never looked at me like that. She just simply didn’t think of me that way, or—as far as I knew—any guy that way. Not since that punk-ass Nate had screwed her over. Ever since then, she just didn’t date. And I was okay with that, because I hadn’t met one guy who was good enough for her, and especially not me, not after what she’d said in the car on the way up here.
I pushed off the door and crossed the bedroom. Yanking my hoodie over my head, I tossed that and the shirt underneath onto the bed.
I headed into the shower, not because I really needed one, but because I just had to do something before I really did do something stupid.
And there was a lot of stupid in me—a whole lot.
I was still rocking the hard-on of my life, which I told myself had nothing to do with Syd, when I stepped into the hot spray of water. Probably had more to do with the fact that I hadn’t gotten laid last night. Yeah, that sounded good. There was only one way to fix this without a cold shower. Resting my head against the slick tile, I reache
d down and closed my eyes.
It was fast. It was hard. And I thought about the wrong person the whole time.
Sydney
I stared at the back of the bar, eyeing the bottles of liquor like they were the only things that could cure my humiliation. And they could, because if I drank enough, I probably wouldn’t care that Kyler had seen me in my undies and laughed.
He had laughed.
The bar was packed, everyone talking about the snowstorm that was now apparently going to make West Virginia its own personal snow-bitch. It was too late to leave. All we could do was hope it wasn’t as bad as they were predicting.
Spying an opening, I squeezed myself between a girl with a lot of blonde hair and some dude in a flannel jacket. I glanced over my shoulder and sighed. Kyler was where I’d left him, attention riveted on the statuesque brunette he apparently knew from waaay back. Her name was Sasha. She looked like a Sasha.
Ah, listen to me. I was being such a bitter bitch.
I watched her place a hand on his shoulder and lean in, so that her breasts—much bigger than mine—pressed against his arm. She said something and he smiled. Not the full smile that showed off those dimples, but more like the cat that was about to eat an entire cage of canaries.
Kyler looked up at the moment, his gaze finding me across the crowded tables. I turned away and found myself staring at the bartender’s slim black tie. Fancy.
He smiled. “What can I get you, honey?”
Since ‘a brain’ wasn’t provided in a bottle, I went with the next best thing. “A shot of Jose.”
The bartender’s brows rose a little. “ID?”
I dug out my license and handed it over.
He checked it out, and then handed it back. “Barely twenty-one.” Surprise colored his voice. “I would’ve pegged you for eighteen.”
“Story of my life.” I leaned against the bar, handing over my credit card to open a tab.
The bartender laughed as he turned, grabbing a bottle off the racks. I never knew what to do at bars. It was like an awkward experience in how not to stand out and look like I didn’t belong. It didn’t help that apparently I looked like jail-bait.
“Tequila?” said a voice from behind me. “A girl after my own heart.”
I turned and looked up, and up. An honest-to-goodness guy stood behind me, one not wearing a lumberman jacket. Dark brown hair curled along his forehead and temples. He looked nothing like Kyler—stockier and broader.
Perfect.
“You’re a fan of tequila?” I asked, finally finding my voice. An easy smile appeared. “Nothing warms you quite as fast as tequila. You need that around here.”
“You’re a local?”
He nodded. “I work here during the winters.”
“Ski instructor?”
“How’d you guess?”
Thinking about my desire to hook up with a ski instructor earlier, I almost laughed. The shot of tequila landed on the bar top and I took it. I might not be a total lush like everyone else, but I knew how to take a shot. Tipping my head back, I put the small glass to my lips. What I hadn’t expected was for my throat to catch fire.
The tequila coursed down my throat like gasoline and spilled into my insides. Eyes watering, I turned back to the bar, dragging in deep gulps of air, desperately trying to stop my gag reflex. “Holy shit…”
Mr. Ski Instructor laughed as he patted my back. “You okay? The first shot is usually brutal.”
“Yeah,” I gasped, blinking the tears out of my eyes. Once I was sure I wasn’t going to hurl it back up on him, I turned around. “Wow.”
He grinned. “It’s not that bad.”
“Oh no, not at all.” I think I was already flammable.
“I haven’t introduced myself,” he said, sticking out a free hand. A bottle of beer occupied the other. “My name is Zach.”
“Sydney.” I shook his hand. His palm was slightly calloused.
He held onto my hand for a little longer than necessary. When he finally did let go, he propped a hip against the bar. “So, you’re obviously not a local.”
“No.” I tucked my hair back and smiled.
“You with him?” He gestured over his shoulder toward Kyler with a jerk of his chin. When I nodded, he cocked his head to the side. “Friends, or…?”
“Friends,” I answered automatically, and the burn of tequila seemed to lessen the sting of saying that.
Zach’s brows rose. “I don’t think I’ve known Kyler to be just friends with a pretty girl before.”
His compliment was lost in the reality of his statement. “Well, I’ve known Kyler for all my life.” I took a breath and let it slowly. “So you know Kyler?”
He nodded. “I don’t know him very well, just from the times he comes up here. So… is it just you two?”
“We’re up here for a couple of days with some friends. Well, most of them haven’t made it up here yet. I’m from Hagerstown.”
“Oh. Pretty cool town.” He took a sip of his beer. “Where are your friends at?”
“Outside of Frederick,” I told him as I glanced over my shoulder. I couldn’t see Kyler through the mess of people. Not that I was looking for him. “They hit the snow so they’re going to try to come up tomorrow.”
Zach shook his head. “Ah, I don’t know if they’re going to make it. The snow is supposed to move in here overnight and they’re saying it’s going to be a huge storm.”
I was so not trying to think about that.
His easy smile spread, and I realized that he was really good looking. “Think it’s time for a second shot? It’s on me.”
My gaze flicked past Zach, to where Kyler was, still with Sexy Sasha. He wasn’t paying any attention to her now, though. Instead he was staring at me like he was seconds away from getting up and storming across the bar and telling me I was up past my bedtime.
He wouldn’t dare.
Kyler’s eyes narrowed.
He would.
A couple of months ago, while out celebrating my birthday and during one of the very rare times I did drink, he’d made me go home before I even got to the second Sex on the Beach, citing something along the lines that the crowd at the club was getting too rowdy.
Anger and frustration swirled, mixing with the shot of tequila. Kyler said I didn’t know how to have fun. I was apparently as interesting as a statistics formula on a Monday. Maybe that was kind of true. At that moment, part of me wanted to go back to the house and pick up the book I was reading. Maybe eat some buttery popcorn, too. Oh, and I’d brought that pair of fuzzy socks that were so toasty and—
“Sydney?”
Out of all the crazy moments to think about Nathan Balers, he popped into my head right then. I hadn’t really thought about him in over a year. He’d been my only real boyfriend, the guy I’d dated for two years in high school and most of my freshman year in college.
Looking back, I couldn’t say if I’d been in love with him or not. At the time, it’d seemed like it. The only guy I’d been interested in other than Nate had been off-limits—still was—and Nate had been it for me. Patient. Funny. Smart. Cute. While we’d done other things—namely me doing other things so I didn’t feel like the crappiest girlfriend in the world—we’d waited until our freshman year in college to have actual sex.
It hadn’t been something to write home about. And apparently it hadn’t been for him either. The sex hurt, and when it stopped hurting and had started to almost feel good, it was over. Nate had broken up with me a week later.
Over text message.
A few days after the text, Kyler had overheard Nate running his mouth at a frat party. He’d supposedly been telling the guys that I was so frigid he could barely keep it hard.
And that was the fight that ended with Kyler having a broken nose and Nate with a broken jaw and a severe limp that lasted several weeks.
Nathan Balers could go screw himself.
I knew how to have fun. I knew how to lose control. And I wasn’t fri
gid.
Smiling, I turned back to Zach and said, “Another shot would be great.”
Chapter 6
Sydney
Another shot turned into several more and I honestly lost track of them. At some point, I learned that Zach was the most hilarious person on the face of this Earth, or at least it seemed that way, because I couldn’t stop laughing. Then again, I’m pretty sure I would’ve laughed at a massive car pileup on the interstate.
When someone kicked on the jukebox and “County Roads” started playing, I had no idea what the lyrics were, but I sang along anyway. And when Zachie Boy caught my hand and started to pull me toward a little dance floor near the hall leading to the restrooms, I didn’t protest.
Though the bartender did. “You might want to sit this one out, honey.”
“I’m fine.” A big old smile was plastered on my face.
Zach tugged on my hand. “You heard her. She’s fine.”
The bartender’s gaze moved from me to him. “She’s not a local, Zach.”
“He knows that,” I pointed out.
“Keep that in mind, Zach.” The words sounded like a warning to me, but that didn’t make sense, and Zach was pulling me over to the square patch of floor anyway.
We started dancing, and our legs brushed. When I turned around, his hands landed on my hips. I didn’t mind. I don’t think I cared about anything. Music thrummed through my veins. Or maybe it was the tequila. Either way, it didn’t matter. Within minutes, sweat dotted my brow and I lifted my hair off my neck. The movement tugged my shirt up, exposing a slice of skin.
Fingers whispered along my stomach, startling me. “You’re so incredibly hot,” Zach said, his palm flattening against my belly, fingers climbing further up my stomach. “Seriously.”
My brows rose at that statement. Then again, besides Sasha, there weren’t a lot of prime pickings, and I did feel hot as I swayed my hips to the beat of the music.