Lust

A look of surprise and what might have been anger flickered across her face. And then she crumbled.

“I-I’m sorry,” she whimpered. “I don’t know what I was-you brought me here, and we’re all alone, and then you brought me to the bedroom, and-”

“We’re scouting locations for a party,” he yelled, backing away from her. Overreacting. (Had he been sending out some kind of messages? Hadn’t he, in fact, kissed her back? But he cut off that line of thinking before it could go any further. He couldn’t afford to go any further.)

“I know, I’m sorry-I told you, I don’t know what I was thinking. I just-got carried away.”

She raised her hands to her face and turned away from him.

“I’m so embarrassed,” she said in a muffled voice. “I’m sorry.”

Adam instinctively reached out a hand to comfort her, to still her shuddering shoulders, and then, on second thought, let it drop to his side.

“No, I’m sorry,” he said stiffly. “Don’t be embarrassed. If I-if I gave you some kind of wrong idea, I’m-it’s just, you know. Beth. And I-”

“Can we just go?” Kaia asked, turning around again, her eyes dry. “I think we should just go now.”

The awkward pause lasted all the way out of the building, across the parking lot, and throughout the interminable ride back into town.

Kaia leaned her cheek against the cool glass of the car window and sighed, remembering when seducing a guy meant slipping into some sexy lingerie, crawling into his bed, and waiting for him to come home and get his surprise. Either that or, if she was feeling lazy, just grabbing the nearest hot guy and pulling him into a lip-lock. No questions asked.

Things were so much simpler on the East Coast.

Okay, so seducing Mr. All America was somewhat more interesting-but it was also turning out to be a lot more work.

She darted her eyes to the left, admiring his profile; he sat rigidly in the driver’s seat, hands at ten o’clock and two o’clock on the wheel, eyes resolutely focused on the road. This guy had by-the-book written all over him. Well, that’s why she’d picked him, right? She liked a challenge. And even if his heart was still totally committed to Beth, she now had some concrete evidence that his body was less than hopelessly devoted. No, his body seemed to have some ideas of its own.

They hadn’t spoken since pulling out of the motel parking lot, and Kaia had plenty of quiet time to plan her next move. She just wasn’t sure what it should be. She’d come so close back there, with the ridiculous mouse scare-and damsel in distress had certainly seemed the right way to go. But she was getting a little tired of waiting around for him to sweep her onto his white horse and off into the sunset; maybe it was time to be a little less subtle.

Adam parked the car in the diner lot and hopped out. Kaia waited a moment, and when it became clear that he wasn’t planning on opening her door for her (as he usually did), she got out as well. They walked together toward the entrance, Adam careful to keep at least a foot of space between them. Kaia could feel the guilt coming off him in waves, and she made sure to compose her face into the perfect combination of embarrassment, rejection, and vulnerability.

Just to rub it in.

Before they stepped inside the restaurant (undeserving as it was of the name), he pulled her aside, grasping her wrist to get her to stop-then dropping it quickly as if the touch of her skin had burned.

“Listen, Kaia, I’m really sorry-again-if I sent you the wrong signals or something,” he stammered, rubbing his temples and looking down at his feet. “I don’t want you to feel like, well-” He paused and finally looked up, meeting her eyes. “I’m sorry,” he finished lamely.

“Don’t worry about it,” she assured him. “It’s totally okay. I’m okay.”

But she averted her eyes and let her voice waver, and she knew he didn’t quite believe her.

Good.

“Here they are,” Adam said, in a light and brittle voice. He waved frantically toward the silver Camaro pulling into the lot. Harper and Miranda hopped out and jogged toward them, Kane loping behind at a more leisurely pace.

“Well?” Harper asked, before anyone had a chance to say hello. “Did you find a place?”

“Impatient much? Wait until we sit down “Adam told her, visibly relaxing now that it was no longer just the two of them. Kaia suspected that with all the excitement, Adam had almost forgotten their original reason for visiting the motel, or the triumph he’d felt when declaring it the perfect spot. He caught her eye, and the tips of his ears turned a bright red-was he thinking not of the motel’s ample party space or conveniently out-of-the-way location, but of the feel of her skin beneath his wandering hands, the touch of her warm breath on his face? She gave him a cryptic half smile-and he quickly looked away.

The group crowded inside and grabbed a booth next to the jukebox. Kaia would have sacrificed a few quarters to save herself from the tedious Ricky Martin song currently booming through the speakers positioned over every table, but she’d taken a quick look at the playlist last time she was there. If you weren’t an NSYNC fan and didn’t want to groove to the sweet sounds of Britney Spears or the Beach Boys, there wasn’t much there. Kaia grimaced, wondering how much she’d have to pay to get them to turn the music off.

As the rest of the “gang” bantered back and forth, Kaia quickly scanned the menu, reconfirming for herself that there wasn’t a thing on it she wanted to eat. She certainly wasn’t going for the “Sushi Special,” the mere thought of which filled her with nausea. (They were five hours from the nearest ocean and no freshwater in sight; the fish on the menu might very well have been, as advertised, the “catch of the day”-but which day? And in which year?) She did her best to suppress a sudden pang of homesickness-there was a little place in the West Village that served thirty different kinds of sushi, all better than anything you could get in Japan (which she knew from personal experience). She and her friends had made it a policy to stop there at least once a week-and the secluded park just down the street made the perfect spot for a picnic, as she and an incredibly hot NYU student had discovered one night. He’d satisfied her craving for sushi, and she’d satisfied his for something equally fresh and spicy. One of those perfect New York nights. It all seemed a very long time ago-and very far away.

Thankfully, before she could spiral downward into a cesspool of nostalgia and self-pity, the waitress showed up to take their order-and the shock of it was enough to slam Kaia back into the present. She was surprised enough by the quick service, but she was even more surprised that the waitress, beneath the tacky spangled tank top and gaudy makeup, was Beth.

Beth, her hair pulled up into a high side ponytail and garish blue eye shadow smeared across her lids, looked even more surprised to see them. And not in a good way. She fumbled with the small notebook she used for taking orders and dropped her pen; as she was bending down to pick it up, she came within a few centimeters of smashing her head into the edge of the table. Finally, she stood again and waved a feeble hello, trying to smooth down the wisps of blond hair that had escaped from her ponytail and shifting her weight back and forth from one foot to the other.

“Hey, honey!” Adam said giddily, oblivious to his beloved’s disarray. “Look-I brought everyone down to cheer you on. How’s the first day going?”

“Yes, tell us, Beth,” Harper added. “We’re all eager to hear about your adventures in food service.”

Beth flushed and shot a nervous glance over her shoulder, where a rotund middle-aged man was giving her the fish eye from behind the counter. Kaia guessed he must be the manager, or perhaps the owner-either way, she shuddered at the thought of his greasy hands coming anywhere near her food. Good thing she hadn’t really been planning to eat.

“I-uh, hey guys,” Beth said finally, with a weak smile. “Adam, why didn’t you tell me that everyone was coming?” she added, glaring at her boyfriend.

Kaia could easily pick up on the thinly disguised hostility in her voice. The people across the restaurant probably picked up on the hostility in her voice. But Adam, unfortunately for his peace of mind and fortunately for everyone else’s entertainment, did not. (Was he still too shaken from the afternoon’s events to participate in normal human interaction? Kaia hated to give herself too much credit… but on the other hand, she knew she was pretty damn good.)

“I wanted to surprise you, Beth,” Adam said, grinning.

“Well, you definitely did,” she acknowledged through a gritted smile.

Before she could say anything else, the greasy manager guy with the bad comb-over strolled by.