He nodded. “Your mum must be happy about that.”
“Ecstatic.”
Another nod. He was already losing interest in talking to her, she knew.
She thrust her cup toward him. “Any chance a girl can get a vodka tonic?”
“A good chance, I’d say.” He fixed her drink with a deft hand, rinsing out her beer cup first, and passed it back with a rare, true smile. “Welcome back, love.”
“Thanks.” She took a sip, returned his smile, ducked back out of the bar…
And ran smack into someone’s broad chest.
Her drink slopped out of the cup, soaking her top, splattering across her shoes.
“Shit!” She shook the vodka off her hand, and glanced up…
To realize she hadn’t run intosomeone. She’d run into Mercy.
He loomed above her, black brows pulled tight together, expression one of open concern. “Shit, I’m sorry–” he said, and reached for her arms.
The sight of both those big hands coming toward her closed her throat up like a valve. Away, away – she had to get away!
With an inhuman sound of distress, she spun away from him and pawed her way through the crowd.
“Hey!” someone shouted.
“Watch it!”
“What the fuck?”
She stammered apologies, but didn’t stop moving. On and on she clawed past Lean Dogs patches and fragrant leather, until she reached the hallway. There were couples back here: pressed up against walls, groping, moans coming from behind closed doors. It was a goddamn orgy in this place tonight. She went all the way down the hall, to the last dorm on the left, before the hall jackknifed right and fed into a storage area and laundry room. Thankfully, the dorm was empty, and she darted inside, closing the door behind her, leaning back against it a moment as she caught her breath.
This was the nicest dorm, for the sole reason that it was the longest walk down the hall, and most of the guys picked another one before they got this far. Its hideous orange, short-napped carpet looked almost like new – though it hadn’t been pretty even then. A narrow bed – just big enough for two who weren’t interested in keeping any distance between them – anchored the far wall. An inexpensive pine dresser and bureau crowded the rest of the small space. There was a full en suite bath and a closet, a tiny frosted window above the bed that flared bright with the manmade light from outside.
The clubhouse boasted fifteen of these tiny rooms, places for stolen intimacy – the purpose they served tonight – or for members to crash if they were drunk, displaced, or visiting from out of town. In an emergency, the building could house the entire club and their families, a situation that hadn’t been tested in her memory.
Ava stood with her palms pressed to the cool wood of the door until her heart had slipped back inside her ribcage. She still couldn’t breathe, couldn’t stop shivering, but she didn’t think she’d have a stroke at this point if she tried to move.
“Dumbass,” she scolded herself aloud.
Some of the shivering, she decided, had to do with her wet shirt. She still wore the yellow skirt, white blouse and denim vest from before, and now it was all soaked with vodka.
Making a face, she doffed the vest and laid it across the foot of the bed, going into the bathroom to see about the shirt. The fluorescent tubes came on with a hiss and a hum; her reflection filled the medicine cabinet mirror, the pale light and the avocado tile on the wall behind bringing out all the ghastly, unnatural colors in her face. Her deep purple and gray eye shadow – a soft touch in the sunlight – made her look like she’d been punched in the face. Her cheeks were thin, sunken, sallow, her skin waxy and obviously pored. Her hair hung, two limp sheets, in front of her shoulders. She wanted to blame the lighting, but she knew the truth: this is what two-point-three seconds in front of Mercy did to her.
Her white linen blouse clung to her breasts, translucent, the cups of her white bra vivid, as were the sharp points of her nipples beneath as they strained against the satin.
“Great.”
There was nothing to do for it except try to blot away what moisture she could. She peeled her shirt away and laid it on the counter as she dug a towel from the cabinet below. The skin of her throat, chest, and stomach was zombie-pale under the fluorescent light, the blue pathways of veins flowing down between her breasts, goose bumps pebbling her flesh, shrinking it, until she felt tight and restless all over.
Just the drink, she reminded herself. And the excessive air conditioning.
She stood in the open doorway of the bathroom, dabbing at her shirt as she stretched it flat in one palm, knowing her efforts were futile, trying to keep her thoughts from wandering.
Then the door to the room opened, and her reaction was that of a prey animal. She went perfectly still, even her heart, which stalled for a full second as the door swept across the carpet and Mercy stepped in, closing them in together with a softclickof the latch finding its place.
In the moment before her pulse kicked in again, she allowed herself a pure reaction, a chance to clap eyes to him and miss him and want him. He was too big to be indoors like this – that’s what Maggie had said once. Whatever else was in the room, he dwarfed it, literally, and figuratively. In his presence, Ava felt everything fade to rosy kaleidoscope tones around her; he was her focal point, her north.
