Standing right before me now, he somehow looked even more built and muscular than he had the last time I’d seen him shirtless, which was when he’d caught me eavesdropping outside his room a few weeks ago. Cringing at the embarrassing memory, I opened my mouth to say something, but hardly anything came out.
“Uh…I…”
“There’s a few cuts here and here,” he said, seemingly not noticing the fact that I was practically drooling. He gestured towards his chest and right arm before frowning and looking at his left arm. “One here too. Jesus, that asshole really got me good.”
Not as good as you look, I wanted to say.
“Um…well, he didn’t get you as good as you got him,” I said instead, finally finding my tongue. “Sit down, and I’ll put some antiseptic and bandages on you.”
“Yes, sir,” he said, saluting me.
I rolled my eyes and grabbed a bottle of Betadine antiseptic and some cotton balls from the first aid kit he had retrieved. I looked for some tissues to wipe up the antiseptic once I’d finished with it, but there were none in the kit, so I dug around in my handbag to look for some.
As per my usual bad luck, the Ziploc bag containing the vibrator fell out along with a work notepad as I rummaged around, and my face flamed a bright red; at least I imagined it did.
Tell me again why I’d thought my freaking handbag was a good hiding place for anything?
“Putting a new meaning to mixing work with pleasure, are you?” Finn asked, raising an eyebrow as I stuffed the things back into my bag.
“Uh...no, I was just going to take the thing back to the store today, but I forgot,” I replied, a little too fast. “It…er…I didn’t want it.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, an amused smile quirking the corners of his lips up.
Jeez, I was such a prude sometimes. I couldn’t even say ‘vibrator’ out loud; I’d called it a ‘thing’ instead.
There was an awkward silence for a moment as I doused a cotton ball with Betadine, and I tried my hardest to ignore the growing wetness between my legs as I swiped the cotton over Finn’s small injuries.
“So…I guess you’re kinda like Batman, huh?” I said as I carefully dabbed some of the brown liquid onto a long scratch. Anything to change the subject. “Sneaking around the dark alleys of the city defending helpless innocents. You’re just like him.”
He looked like a superhero, too. All those muscles…damn.
He shrugged. “Not exactly. The holiday season seems to bring out a lot of crazy assholes. Sometimes I just happen to be in the right place in the right time, so I do the right thing.”
“Well, I bet that woman is glad you were there and decided to do the right thing,” I said softly, giving his shoulder a brief squeeze.
He winced slightly as I applied another dab of antiseptic to a cut on his arm. “Yeah, I guess,” he replied. “Shit, that stuff stings.”
“I know,” I said. “Funny how you can take a hundred punches from some random guy in an alleyway, but the Betadine gets you in the end.”
He grinned. “No shit, huh?”
I wet another clean cloth and wiped his chest down, and a spark jolted through my veins as more and more heat blossomed between my legs. God, this was inappropriate. I was helping patch up my stepbrother after he’d beaten the shit out of a guy, and all I could think of was how much I wanted to jump his bones.
Pushing the intrusive thoughts aside, I frowned as I dabbed more antiseptic on another cut.
“You know, like I was saying earlier, most people wouldn’t even bother trying to defend a woman being attacked,” I said. “They’d just think, ‘oh it’s none of my business, and I might get hurt if I try to help,’ and then they’d walk away. I guess I can understand that, but you’re different. You’re brave.”
“Not as brave as some people,” he said, his face darkening.
“What do you mean?” I asked, my forehead creasing inquisitively.
“Nothing,” he muttered. “Don’t worry about it. Hey, are you hungry? We could go grab a burger at Clancy’s. You know, finish off that shitty first date of ours…in a platonic way, of course.”
I wasn’t an idiot; I could tell when someone was trying to change the subject, so I didn’t pursue it anymore. Clearly, there was something he didn’t want to discuss, and I wasn’t going to force it out of him.
“Sure,” I replied with a smile. “Food sounds great.”
It really did. Even if I couldn’t be anything more than a friend and a sister to the guy, that didn’t mean I couldn’t enjoy whatever time I managed to spend with him.
“Oh, by the way…” he said. He reached into his pocket, which was bulging slightly. “You forgot this.”
“Huh?”
I looked down to see him holding my scarf in his hands.
“I figured that’s why you came into the alley in the first place,” he said. “Fucking thing blew right into my face and I almost missed landing a punch. I picked it up just before we left.”
He handed it to me, and as I grabbed it, my fingertips touched his and another jolt of electricity streamed through me.
Scratch what I said about being friends. No matter how much I lied to myself and others, he was never really going to be ‘just a friend’ to me, and as I considered that fact, one glaring thought stood out in the forefront of my mind.
Finn Grayson was the sexiest man I’d ever seen, and if I kept thinking this way, he was damn well going to be the end of me.
So how the hell was I supposed to stop?
Chapter Thirteen
Finn
The Crown was always crazily busy in the weeks leading up to Christmas, and if anyone wanted to have dinner in one of our restaurants or book a room for a conference, they would’ve had to have made a reservation months ago. By now, I knew the round-up of every event we had by heart, and today, I didn’t even need my clipboard to see what was happening. We had an Italian dinner special for room service customers tonight, and all the biggest hotel conference rooms had been booked—one for a meeting for some culinary magazine, the second for a photo shoot and the last one for a pharmaceutical company.
I was just heading downstairs to make sure everything was okay when I had a wicked idea. It was technically my day off, and even though he was generally an incompetent fool, I figured Elijah could handle one damn day of work without me. I was sick of being married to my job when there were other things on my mind.
Well, not things…people.
One person in particular. Yeah, you know who.
As I locked my door, my gaze floated towards Rory’s room, and I pictured her in there, probably all snuggled up in bed reading a book. Right now, I didn’t want to supervise the hotel or do someone else’s job. All I wanted to do was spend time with her. Our little bonding session after my fight in the alley the other night had been nice, and I was quite sure that I’d officially gained her trust and respect once she’d realized that I’d only beaten the shit out of the guy out of a need to defend the girl he’d attacked.
The whole thing had well and truly solidified our new friendship, but honestly, any moment I could get with Rory got my head spinning, and not in a platonic way…
Screw it. I wanted to spend time with her, so I damn well would. Before I could stop myself, I knocked on her door. Once, twice, three times, and then I heard noise on the inside as she approached the door. A goofy smile was already plastered on my face as she opened the door and looked out at me, a blush creeping over her face.
“Morning,” I said.
She rubbed her eyes. “Morning,” she mumbled, her words interrupted by a huge yawn. She was makeup-free and still in her pajamas, a really cute pair which were way too juvenile for her but still looked adorable with the cat print. She was also wearing bunny slippers on her feet, and her hair was in complete disarray.
She was still the cutest fucking thing I’d ever seen.
“Rough night?” I asked, barely able to stifle my laughter, and she giggled.
“Oh, yeah,” she replied with a grin. “Rode a dragon, witnessed a fight in my honor, and almost died when the masses tried to attack me.”
“I see,” I nodded. “So, are you busy today, Khaleesi?”
She seemed pleased that I’d gotten her Game of Thrones reference. I was a bit of a geek when it came to that TV show, plus I’d heard her binge watching the last season through the wall. I’d even repeated some of the words as I heard them through the wall, feeling like a total goofball.
“Depends,” Rory replied. “What did you have in mind?”
“I can’t be fucked working this morning, and I have a really fun idea.” I winked at her. “Promise you’ll like it. Want to join me?”
She hesitated, but it pleased me to see it was only for a short moment. She nodded a second later, and I could see she was excited at the prospect of spending a day with me. “Okay. I’ve actually got some time off work today. Should I get dressed?” she asked.
“Yeah, put on something...” I eyed her ensemble again. Those bunny slippers… seriously? I was grinning by the time my eyes reached her face. “Professional. And by professional, I mean bunnies optional.”
She stuck her tongue out at me and disappeared behind the door to her room. She left the door ajar, and I wasn’t sure whether she wanted me to follow her in or wait outside, so I stepped from one foot to another, feeling like a goddamned fool. When was the last time a girl had made me feel like this?
Never, that’s when.
I peeked through the door, seeing a sliver of Rory’s back as she got changed, and I moved away so fast that I tripped, stumbled forward into the door and hit my head.
“Are you okay out there?” Rory asked in a concerned tone as I mouthed curses and rubbed my sore head.
“Yeah, fine,” I said, cursing myself for being such a dweeb. “Come on, let’s get going.”
“One sec,” she called back.
I wanted to sneak another peek, but I knew better than that. Karma had already gotten back at me with the head-meets-door incident a few seconds ago, and I wasn’t about to tempt the fates again. A moment later, Rory exited her room and gazed up at me with a hesitant expression as she locked the door.
“Do I look okay?” she asked. Thank fuck for that question, because it gave me an excuse to ogle her.
“You look...” I began, drinking her in with my eyes. She’d put on a blouse and pencil skirt which accentuated every line of her curves. I knew I was staring, and by the way she blushed, I figured she did, too.
It felt like the hardest thing in the world to tear my eyes away and clear my throat, but I finally remembered my place, and then for good measure, I pictured Elijah’s face when he got extremely worked up, all puffy and red. That did the trick and subsided the stiffness in my pants.
“Finn?” Rory asked, giving me a questioning look.
“Yeah.” I snapped back to it, feeling my cheeks growing hot. For fuck’s sake, I was actually blushing. Rory was making me act and feel like a fucking ten year old girl. “Yeah, you look great. Shall we?”
We headed for the elevator, and I pressed the button for the lobby. It was fucking tense as we went down, seeing as it was hard to forget the last time we were in an elevator together, and I cleared my throat, trying to make things less goddamned awkward.
“So, what’s this fun plan?” Rory asked, tilting her head sideways.
“Well, you know those conference rooms we have in the hotel?” I said with a mischievous smirk. She nodded. “Well, we rent them out all the time, and today, a bunch of people from the pharmaceutical industry are renting one of them. I have a fun game I wanted to play with you.”
“Oh?” Rory blushed as we locked eyes, and I loved that she didn’t look away. I held her gaze, giving her a cheeky smile.
“Yeah. You’ll get the gist soon enough,” I said. “Just wait.”
She didn’t question me; instead she just nodded and smiled to herself. I loved that she was so easygoing. If I’d ever done anything like this with a girl like Candice, she’d be questioning my every move before we even left the room. Rory, on the other hand, was good-natured and sweet. She trusted me implicitly now that we were friends, and I adored her for that.
She was so special, and she would be so damn easy to fall in love with. Maybe I was already falling...wait, what?
Fuck.
Ding.
The elevator came to a stop in the lobby and Rory went to step outside, but I was stuck to the wall, having an existential crisis as I stared at the floor. The patterns on the marble were making me trip out, dancing and swirling before my eyes.
“Finn?” Rory asked.
I raised my eyes to her. She was standing in the lobby now, a glow surrounding her like she was some sort of magical fucking creature. It was probably just the light from outside, but she looked so goddamned beautiful that I nearly blurted something I would regret a moment later.
“Magic,” I said. She gave me a strange look. “Yeah, I mean, no. I’m coming.”
I stumbled out of the elevator, feeling like the clumsiest fuck in the history of the universe as I followed Rory. She kept giving me strange glances, and I just grinned like an idiot in return. Finally, she stopped in the middle of the lobby.
“So?” she asked me.
I gave her a blank look, and we stared at each other.
“Finn!” She stamped her foot down. “You’re acting super weird right now. Please, focus. What are we doing here?”
“Fuck, yes, sorry,” I said, realizing my eyes had floated down to her tits again. “The game. We’re getting to it.”
She raised an eyebrow, and on an impulse, I grabbed her hand and pulled her after me towards the third conference room. We stopped in front of the pharmaceutical conference poster outside the door, and a woman with a clipboard approached us.
“Name and company, please,” she said in the most monotonous voice I’d ever heard. I was thankful she was someone the pharmaceutical company had hired and not someone from the hotel; otherwise, she would’ve recognized us right away.
I sneaked a look at the table behind her, quickly memorizing two names I saw on the badges lying there.
“Minho Chang and Rosita Perez from Chicago. I’m sure you have our company written down on your list,” I said with a completely straight face.
The woman stared at me with narrowed eyes, trying to discern if I was messing with her. Luckily for us, I had a foolproof poker face.
“Er…okay, Mr. Chang,” she finally said with a confused look, handing the badges to us and checking something off her list. “The conference has already started, so please be quiet when you go inside. And next time, please make sure to be punctual.”
I smiled, but it had no effect on the woman’s hard expression. Rory quickly butted in, thanking her and pulling me towards the main entrance to the hall which was a little way off.
“Finally found someone whose pants you can’t charm off, I see,” she said.
“Well, it’s a pharmaceutical conference. She’s probably on anti-Finn medication,” I replied. “I see no other logical explanation.”
I saw the door lady shooting us suspicious looks again, so I quickly pulled Rory inside the conference room, and the door slammed shut behind us with a loud bang. Every single person in the room turned around to face us, and Rory shot a nervous glance at me.
I nodded curtly to the people glaring at us, trying to be professional. “My apologies. Carry on, please.”
The ruckus of people muttering slowly died down, and Rory and I sat down in one of the back rows. There was some sort of presentation about a new wonder drug for headaches going on in the front, so we both looked ahead, watching the presenter chat animatedly about the low cost of the drug compared to others.
“What are we doing here again?” Rory whispered. “Was sneaking in here the whole joke or what?”
I gave her my cheekiest grin, to which she responded with a groan. “Oh god, I’m not going to like this
, am I?”
“I told, you’ll see soon,” I said.
As if on cue, the main presenter in the front of the room cleared his throat, staring right at us.
“You, in the back. The newest arrivals. I see you have a lot to say. Perhaps you’d like to be the next to give your presentation?”
Here we go…
“Actually, yes, my partner and I have some very interesting views on the latest research on sildenafil citrate. Viagra, for those of you who’ve forgotten the scientific term,” I said, keeping a perfectly straight face. “We’re here on behalf of them.”
Rory’s gaze almost burned a hole in my head as she stared me down, barely holding back laughter. This was by far the most immature thing I’d ever done, but fuck, it was hilarious. Besides, sometimes a break from all the mature, mundane stuff that adult life had to offer was necessary, and sneaking into a drug convention provided the perfect opportunity.
“I’m sure my partner would love for us to give our presentation now,” I continued. “If that’s all right with everyone else, that is.”
Rory stifled a giggle and whispered at me. “Oh my god, Finn, you’re so dead once this is over.”
I shook my head slightly and murmured to her. “Don’t worry,” I said. “We’re not really going to go up there and say anything. It’s not really…”
I was cut off by the presenter speaking again. “Ah, your partner?” he said, suddenly looking delighted. “You must be the husband and wife scientist duo who’ve come to talk about the latest pharmaceutical advances in sexual dysfunction medication. We were all wondering when you’d show up and kick things off here!”
A few people laughed, and I paled with every word coming out of his mouth. Jesus, what had I gotten us into? I hadn’t honestly thought there’d be people here who just so happened to be giving a presentation on Viagra, of all things. I’d just thought it would be funny to sneak in here and have a few silly laughs before being thrown out, but things had taken a shocking turn, and apparently, we were now expected to give a real presentation.
Bad Boy - A Stepbrother Romance Page 11