CHAPTER

SIXTEEN

“Aha!” I hollered, pointing in triumph. “Caught you!”

He nearly spilled the thing all over himself, which would have been awesome. “You—er—” He looked down at the solid proof of his betrayal. “Ah . . . I’m multitasking?”

“You’re cheating is what you’re doing!” Oh, the triumph was as sweet as the smoothie he wasn’t supposed to be drinking in our room because he made that fucking rule ages ago.

“You made me take the transponder off the blender, then neglected to put the blender back in the kitchen.” He said this while having the nerve to sound put-upon. “But this is interesting. You only just left.”

“Yeah, that’s right, left and came right back only to find you— Hey! It worked!” I looked down at my pretty Hell watch only to see it wasn’t there. So, like my clipboard, and Mussolini, it had to stay in Hell.

“Wait, if I just left, where’d you get the fruit? And the ice?” I gasped at further evidence of his shadiness. “The champagne fridge!” Sinclair liked to occasionally use me as a champagne flute, dribbling the ice-cold Bollinger on me and then licking and sucking it off. He always kept a couple of bottles chilling in the unobtrusive fridge in the corner of the room. It sounded like it’d be unpleasant, all sticky and chilly and damp and annoying. It wasn’t. At all. Oofta, just thinking about his steady hands and his mouth, that mouth, and—no. No!

I wrenched my horny brain back to the matter at hand. “How could you drag the champagne fridge into this, you heartless, fruit-hoarding, smoothie-swilling, Bollinger-slurping bastard?”

“I regret nothing,” he retorted and took a defiant slug, one that would have rendered an ordinary mortal catatonic with brain freeze. He was going for regal and disdainful, so was probably unaware of his smoothie ’stache. “And seeing you suddenly pop in like that was most unsettling. But in the very best of ways, my own.”

“You just lost room fridge privileges, mister.” Wait. Why was I cutting off my nose to spite my sex life? Better to make him share the spoils. “Never mind, I realize now that while I was gone for two weeks you moved fruit and ice up here to feel closer to me, so I forgive you. But make enough for me next time and for God’s sake don’t tell any of the others! Their shrill bitching will ruin smoothie sexytimes for us.”

He put his hand over his heart (the one not clutching his glass). “I just fell in love with you all over again.”

“Maybe you could also fall in love with the idea of putting pants on.” If I wasn’t there to appreciate it, I disapproved of Sinclair flaunting his flauntables. Who knew who could stumble in and ogle what was mine, mine, mine?

“‘Make sure that your heartfelt thanksgiving is more consistent than your nagging needs, and your passionate apology more fervent than your unhealthy justifications.’ Israelmore Ayivor.”

“Yeah, I’ll get right on that. Okay, time to get back and see how long I was busting your balls.”

“An eternity?”

“Shut up.” Didn’t even close my eyes that time. Just wished myself back. And there they were, my stepmother and my zombie, right where I’d left them: the seating area outside the Lego store.