“Fuck.”
“Oh. Yeah. I don’t do it in places like this, though. If you’re interested, I’ll fuck you in your room.”
“What if I want to fuck you?”
“Eh, I can do that, but I’m mostly for the fucking. I gotta know someone better before I let them slip it in.”
“What about your room?”
“Nah.”
“Nah?”
“Yeah, nah,” I said with a shrug. “That’s not what my room is for.”
I could see him trying to wrap his brain around that. “Uh, that doesn’t make sense.”
“Doesn’t have to; that’s my rule. I have others too. Like, don’t get any romantic ideas, because I’m sure as shit not. And if I think you’re getting feelings, you get cut off immediately. I’m not here to find a boyfriend, a husband, or whatever. I’m supposed to be here for the same reason as everyone else, but shit, if I get laid while I’m being ‘healed’ then I’ll do it, but I’m not havingsomeone mooning after me because they caught a case of the feels,” I told him quickly.
I didn’t understand the point of catching feels for a bed hopper, but people did the weirdest shit. I wasn’t going to string someone along just to get laid; there were plenty of less complicated options. “I also don’t do boyfriend shit like kissing, and the most cuddling you’re going to get is a little bit of laidback shit after a good fuck. But there’s no spooning, and I sure as shit don’t stay the night. If you want fun without any hang-ups or expectations, I’m your guy.”
Logan considered that for a minute. “So, uh...do you suck?”
“I do. What time do you want me to show up to prove it to you in your room?”
“Uh...ten?”
“Cool. I also go to bed by midnight, so keep that in mind if you’re trying to make a dick appointment with me.”
“Sure.”
“Awesome, see you at ten.”
I left him to wrap his head around what probably felt like an odd conversation, but it was a system I’d developed long before I came to Arete. Like I’d told him, I wasn’t the dating type, and hadn’t been for a while. I wasn’t planning on changing that. If he was the sort to get hung up, which, yeah, happened a lot more with men hiding the truth than with guys who were comfortable with themselves, he needed to stay away from me. I wasn’t going to try to break his heart, but I wasn’t going to hold his hand if he was stupid enough to catch feelings, either.
Finally dressed, I walked toward the main hallway. The Arete Resort was built into a mountainside, and yet it felt like any other building, albeit one where the designer incorporated some of the environment. There were walls of stone in some places, and others were glass that looked out onto the Rockies. There were rooms for activities all over the place, a canteen that servedsurprisingly good food, and on the opposite end of the resort, were the private rooms.
It was those I was headed for, as I wanted to drop off my gym bag and then consider the canteen for a late dinner. Reaching the door to my room, I frowned when I saw someone had entered and hadn’t left. The guy who ran the place for the most part, Reggie, was proud of the security system in the resort. It used AI or something, and it apparently kept track of a lot of things.
Which didn’t mean much to the rest of us. It did mean that I knew when someone was in my room, however, and that was not something I wanted to see as I tapped my pass to let myself in.
I stopped when I saw someone sprawled across the bed in the corner and blinked when I saw familiar red hair peeking out from under the pillow. Sighing, I closed the door behind me. “Cade!”
I winced when the large man jerked up from the bed, his hand shoving under my pillow as though he were searching for something that wasn’t there. That something, I suspected, was a weapon, and I immediately regretted startling him.
“It’s just me,” I told him softly, not moving as he looked around with quick snaps of his head, the muscles in his arms tightening. “Cade.”
He blinked, then light entered his eyes and with it, understanding. Cade let out a little laugh, ran his hand through his tightly shorn hair, and huffed in embarrassment. “Sorry about that. Musta been havin’ one of my dreams again.”
“That’s fine,” I told him as I dropped the bag onto the chair. “I should have known better than to wake you up like that. Sorry.”
“Nah, you’re fine. Just bein’ a big baby, I guess,” he snorted, twisting so he could hang his legs, one real and one a hi-tech example of metal design. It was apparently built to work farmore smoothly than a ‘regular’ prosthetic, meaning the part of his leg where it connected didn’t get overly stressed when he was walking or even running. His shirt had ridden up to show the ugly scars on his torso and hip after being blown out of a helicopter, and he absently tugged it down when he felt the air on the unscarred skin. “It’s kinda funny. All those head doctors like to tell me I’m safe now, and that one day I’ll figure it out. Can’t quite get ’em to figure out that I know I’m safe. It’s whatever’s in my head that doesn’t know.”
“Or maybe that part of your brain knows the world really isn’t safe,” I said with a twist of my lips. “What are you doing here anyway? I thought you weren’t supposed to be back until November, and last I checked, it’s the end of August.”
“Ugh, yeah, I... family is going on vacation and I, uh...wasn’t goin’,” he said, looking away as I sat down in one of the comfortable chairs and watched him fidget.
I waited a moment before realizing what was wrong. “They were flying, huh?”
