Making bad choices was being pretty kind.
"Fine! Sorry! Fuck! I'll just go—"
Paul had lunged for the door, and Wyatt grabbed his elbow, yanking him back. "First of all, you can't drive like this. You're wasted. Second of all, if you go back home like this and someone sees you before you get to your room, you won't just get a warning, Paul. They will…" He looked from me to Paul. "You know what they'll do."
I'd been wrong earlier in my assumption. Wyatt's concerns had less to do with how he'd get in trouble and more to do with how Paul would.
Meanwhile, Paul didn't try to fight Wyatt. His head hung like a petulant child receiving a scolding, and he swayed on his feet. There wasn't anything wrong with Paul that a nap and lots of water wouldn't fix.
"You can sleep it off in the office." Wyatt pushed off the wall. "I'll help you up there."
Paul grabbed onto my arm and brought it flat against his chest. His body was more rigid than I'd expected. He held me tightly for a guy who had hated me minutes ago. "I want my friend to come."
That was fast. From jerk to friend in minutes.
Wyatt shrugged, clearly just happy Paul was agreeing to sleep it off without a fight. He opened the door, taking the lead, and Paul followed behind, tugging me along like I was his favorite stuffed animal and he was leaving on a trip. We kept to the wall, slipping through a small door near the kitchen. It opened into a narrow stairway with a low ceiling. We all had to duck as we climbed. Paul fell more than once, and eventually, Wyatt hooked his arm around his waist and lifted him the rest of the way. Upstairs, there were two rooms, a small square space with a large window and a bed so large there wasn't any room between the mattress and the wall on two sides. Wyatt heaved Paul onto the bed, and he curled up on his side, grabbing the pillow and digging his face against the cotton stuffing.
That had been easy. I stumbled back, out of the room and into the narrow hallway as I watched Wyatt arrange the blanket around Paul's body. I didn't feel like I was looking in on an intimate moment, but it felt close and like I shouldn't be there. But when Wyatt straightened, he didn't sneer or look like he'd forgotten me. He smiled. It was different than all the smiles he'd given me up to this point. This one was warm and a little lopsided. It felt like an arrow shooting straight through my chest, and I looked away from it.
"Thanks for that. I didn't…" He rubbed the back of his neck. "That isn't how Paul normally is."
My thighs clenched, though I couldn't be sure if they were tightening in preparation to run or wishing they were wrapped around this man in front of me. Butterflies zoomed in my stomach. Despite the act I put on, emotions weren't a part of this trick I pulled. My MO was to find a rich jerk, schmooze him until I got him alone, and then drain him dry, both monetarily and physically. I didn't sleep with anyone, and I didn't kill anyone. I wasn't sure if my powers could kill people. So far, the only thing I knew for sure was that if I took too much too quickly, I'd overload and wake up hours later feeling like I'd mainlined a caffeine-and-crack cocktail.
"No worries." I looked past Wyatt to Paul already snoring on his bed. Something about the way he clung to the pillow tugged at my heartstrings. "He's safe here, right?"
"Safe as he can be. No one has access to these rooms but me," Wyatt said as he led me from the hallway to the second bedroom. "This was one room, and I put in that wall to make a private bedroom."
The office was just as small as the room next door. There was a small desk, a filing cabinet, and a large safe that sat directly on the floor. The thick metal door sat open a hair.
"That's convenient." I could only imagine how many conquests Wyatt had brought up here. Enough to warrant installing a wall.
Wyatt shrugged, tapping his right ear to his shoulder. "Business is good. Sometimes I stay late to close. Been thinking of taking a vacation, actually."
The worry that had made my face stiff cleared. That he was thinking of taking a vacation meant he wasn't scrounging to make ends meet. When I looked up again, Wyatt stood much closer than he had moments before.
"You were really good with him. Do you have siblings?" he asked, his voice low and soft because we were standing directly in front of each other. His breath tickled over my face, sweet like the drinks we'd been sipping.
"No siblings. I'm just used to talking down unreasonable people." Usually, that person was myself, but I didn't add that part. I licked my lips, immediately second-guessing the motion. Wyatt's eyes zeroed in on the movement and narrowed.
Fuck, being so close to this kind of intensity was potent, more so than the drinks we'd had. As Wyatt loomed nearer and I leaned back, feeling the desk bump into my butt, I decided I should've spent this night worrying about Wyatt's stares more than his cocktails. He had me trapped, an invisible force that I was powerless to resist.
"Well, thank you for your help," he said quietly. "That could've been worse down there. Now the poor guy will probably just wake up with a headache."
My chest split apart. Figuratively, of course. But my bones jutted out like bloody spider legs curling around my heart. I never got physical with my marks. I only ever made it seem as if I would. You could string a man along for a while on just a promise of letting him see your dick.
But with Wyatt, I wanted my promises to be real.
He towered over me, canting his head as his lips lowered closer.
I wanted to kiss him.
I shouldn't kiss him, but I wanted to. I wasn't a machine. Kissing him would mean the start of feelings that I couldn't afford to have. Mr. Boots relied on me. And I relied on staying on the move to stay out of my uncle's crosshairs. Pausing, even to spend time with a man as gorgeous as Wyatt, meant waiting like a sitting duck. Because, like the Terminator—or a bad rash—my uncle always caught up to me if I lingered.
Anger, pure and righteous, made my bones feel like iron bars. Why shouldn't I enjoy a normal life? A one-night stand that promised to be something I'd remember for long after? I hadn't asked to be like how I was. I'd adapted to it though, carving out a semblance of a life.
"Won't someone start missing you downstairs?" I reached for the desk behind me, sitting half on the ledge with my hands gripping the end while my index fingers tapped out a restless beat.
"Jasper has a handle on it," Wyatt said, effectively waving away my worries.
If he was any other man, any other mark, I would've thought of an excuse to get out of such an enclosed space, or I would've started zapping him, hoping to suck out the fight in him before he got any friskier. I did neither of those things with Wyatt. Instead, I stood there and waited as the nerve endings all over my body woke up. I hovered like a balloon at the end of its string. Weightless, limitless.
He cupped my face, letting his thumb gently caress my jawline. "I like your lips, Kansas."
"Is that like saying I have a pretty mouth?" I joked, desperate to cut some of the tension thickening between us.
"Sure. While we're at it, you have pretty eyes too. And a pretty chin."
My eyebrows dipped. "A pretty chin? That isn't a thing."
"It is." He nodded solemnly. "And you have one, Kansas. A pretty chin." He tapped the point of my chin with his thumb. "A kissable chin."