“But why isthisthe dealbreaker?”
He straightened then. Exited the elevator on their floor in a calm and together sort of manner. Like he was trying to seem more reasonable. He just didn’tsayanything reasonable, once they were by the hotel room door of doom. “Listen,” he whispered, in this dark and desperate sort of way. “Iknowwhat happens when there’s only one bed.”
At which point she felt so thrown it took her three attempts to open the door. She practically stumbled inside, mind reeling from all the horrors he had just unleashed. And the horrors only got worse when she saw he hadn’t followed her. He was still standing in the doorway, expression near haunted by the thought of what she was going to do to him in there.
Because apparently it had to be whatshewas going to do.
“Oh, so you think this is me trapping you into some gross sex I don’t want,” she said, once she’d managed to calm herself enough to speak. One hand on her hip, expression steely—just to really drive home how outrageous he was being.
But somehow that didn’t make anything better.
Instead he just looked as close to boggled as she had ever seen him.
Then somehow, he saidthis. “Dear god,no, I think I’m going to wake up with my face accidentally in your butt. And don’t saywell, I can just sleep in the bed, and youcan sleep in the bathtub. Because we both know it’ll somehow happen anyway. I’ll sleepwalk in the night and fall forehead first into your ass cheeks.”
She honestly didn’t know what to say for a full thirty seconds.
He had to have gone mad. The food thing had cracked him like an egg.
“How would thateverhappen?” she gasped.
And thank god, he had the decency to look chagrined.
Like he knew he was being ridiculous, and needed to explain.
“I don’t know but it seems to in romance novels all the time.”
“A second ago you didn’t even understand enemies-to-lovers.”
“Yeah, but you said all that and so I looked it up and there are all these tropes we seem to be stumbling into. Only now they seem less like tropes and more like curses. I’m being made to pay for my crimes against romance by a spell some TimTommers attached to my immortal soul,” he burst out with, and oh, she cameveryclose to laughing at that.
She had to pinch her lips together to stop it happening. Now was not the time to find him amusing. It was the time to make fun of him. “Okay, first of all: You think it’sTimTomnow?”
“Goddamn it, I know what it is, I’m being absurd on purpose.”
“Well, I can see that, considering the rest of what you said.”
“The rest was deadly serious, Emmett. I’m not about to just molest you.”
“I wouldn’t think you were molesting me. I would think the soul of someone else had entirely possessed your body, and that when we exorcised them out of you, you’d be real pissed that my butt got on your face.”
He went to argue after that. His finger even came up to jab at her.
Then he seemed to process what she had said, and sagged. Sighed. Shook his head almost ruefully. “Jesus, why was that so reassuring?” he asked, almost to himself. As if it were a mystery, instead of the most understandable concept in the world. Nobody wanted their worst enemy to believe they wanted them.
And so much so that it was almost a relief to get to spell that out.
“Because now you know I will never imagine you’re being a creep. I will never imagine that you want me. The very idea is preposterous to me in so many ways I don’t know where to begin. Just as I would hope that you would think the same of me, no matter what happens,” she said.
And when she did, that relief in him deepened.
It stretched, catlike, behind his dark eyes. Quirked up the corner of his mouth, in a way she found so familiar she named it without even thinking.He’s going to say something he thinks is funny, she thought. And sure enough: “You could probablyaskme to put my face in your butt and I wouldn’t believe it was a proposition. I’d just think you desperately needed a colonoscopyand I was the only person available to perform the procedure.”
After which, she had no choice.
She had to go with the bit. Just like she used to with him. Only somehow different, at the same time.Faster, she wanted to call it. But the moment she let rip with what she wanted to say, she knew that wasn’t it. “So, like, after the zombies kill everyone else,” she said, and there it was. Not speed, butease.
It was gettingeasyto do this.
