I smile to myself again. Great minds think alike.
Jonas keeps arguing his (ridiculous) position until, suddenly, without warning, Josh reaches up, midsentence, and flicks Jonas’ forehead with his index finger.
Jonas abruptly stops talking and puts his hand on his forehead. “Ow.”
For a short beat, it’s not clear if Jonas is gonna throttle Josh or laugh uncontrollably, but then Jonas’ features contort into unmistakable amusement and he lets out a belly laugh, causing Josh to burst out laughing, too. All tension averted, Josh leans back, spreads his legs, and shifts his dick in his pants.
“Dumbshit,” Josh mutters, shaking his head.
Jonas chuckles.
“Peyton Manning.”
“Sorry,” Jonas says, still laughing.
“You should be, bro—you fucking should be.”
The boys laugh together a bit more and then finally refocus their attention on Jonas’ laptop.
My jaw is hanging open.
My chest is tight.
My pulse is pounding in my ears.
I can’t take my eyes off Josh, though all he’s doing is staring at a laptop.
Audra Mae is singing from Sarah’s laptop into my ear, and suddenly, I realize her lyrics were written for me—for this moment.I want Josh.And I’m coming for him, just like Audra Mae is coming for her man in the song.
Josh had better watch the fuck out.
Forget what I said about wanting to take a break from our battle to the death. That was before this moment—before Josh correctly named Joe Montana as the all-time best NFL quarterback of all time. Before Josh defended his (correct) position with a perfectly timed forehead-flick, expertly diffusing potential tension with humor. Before he shifted his donkey-dick in his pants for the umpteenth time, making my crotch burn and my pulse race. Before Audra Mae and the Almighty Sound entered the room and belted out my own feelings into my ear. And, most of all, that was before Josh Faraday paid some ungodly amount of money to my boss so I can continue saving the world here in Las Vegas with himandkeep my job in Seattle, too. “And speaking for myself personally, I have no desire to save the world without my Party Girl with a Hyphen by my side,” Josh said. Holy hell, I get goose bumps just thinking about him saying those words to me.
I want him. I want him. I want him.
And not just sexually, either—I’m way past simply wanting to bang Josh now (though God knows I want to bang him more than I want to breathe). I want Josh to bemine—in every conceivable way. I want his body. I want his heart. I want his soul.And, goddammit, I want his secrets, too.
Josh says I’ve been demanding something from him that I can’t or won’t give him in return? Well, he’s got a point about that, actually. But what if Ididunexpectedly have something to give him in return for his secrets? What if I had secrets of my own to give him—and what if I turned the tables on him and gave them to himfirst?
“If I had an application, I’d give it to you,”I told Josh last night outside my room after the Henn-kissing debacle.
“Easy for you to say,” Josh replied. “You don’t have one.”
But what if Idid? That would change everything, wouldn’t it?
“Hey, Sarah,” I whisper, leaning into her shoulder.
“Hmm?”
“Do you happen to have a copy of an old Club application lying around?”
Sarah pauses what she’s doing and looks up. “Um. No, all the applications I had were on my laptop that got stolen.”
“And Henn hasn’t been able to access member applications yet?”
“Not yet.” She puts down the document she’s reading with sudden emphasis and looks at me like I’ve suggested we try to sneak up on the President of the United States and give him a wedgie. “Katherine Morgan, even if wecouldget our hands on Josh’s application, you absolutely can’t read it without his permission.”
I roll my eyes. “I knowthat. Jeez. Gimme some credit.”
