Finding It

across my tongue.

Tamas gestured for me to down it again. It wasn’t really that kind of drink, but who was I to deny him? I threw it back to a round of applause.

God, I love when people love me.

I took hold of Tamas’s and Istvan’s arms and pulled them away from the bar. There was a room that had one wall knocked out in lieu of a door, and it overflowed with dancing bodies.

That was where I wanted to be.

I tugged my boys in that direction, and Katalin and Andras followed close behind. We had to step over a small pile of concrete rubble if we wanted to get into the room. I took one look at my turquoise heels, and knew there was no way in hell I was managing that with my sex appeal intact. I turned to Istvan and Tamas—sizing them up. Istvan was the beefier of the two, so I put an arm around his neck. We didn’t need to speak the same language for him to understand what I wanted. He swept an arm underneath my legs and pulled me up to his chest. It was a good thing I wore skinny jeans instead of a skirt.

“Koszonom,” I said, even though he probably should have been thanking me, based on the way he was openly ogling my chest.

Ah well. I didn’t mind ogling. I was still pleasantly warm from the alcohol, and the music drowned out the world. My shitty parents and uncertain future were thousands of miles away across an ocean. My problems might as well have been drowning at the bottom of said ocean for how much they mattered to me in that moment.

The only expectations here were ones that I had encouraged and I was all too willing to follow through on. So, maybe, my new “friends” only wanted me for money and sex. It was better than not being wanted at all. Besides … everyone wants something from someone else. I just preferred to be up front about it.

Istvan’s arms flexed around me, and I melted into him. My father liked to talk, or yell rather, about how I didn’t appreciate anything. But the male body was one thing I had no issue appreciating. Istvan played soccer, and he was all hard muscles and angles beneath my hands. And those girls were definitely a-wandering.

By the time he’d set my feet on the dance floor, my hands had found those delicious muscles that angled down from his hips. I bit my lip and met his gaze from beneath lowered lashes. If his expression was any indication, I had found Boardwalk and had the all clear to proceed to Go and collect my two hundred dollars.

Or forint. Whatever.

Tamas pressed his chest against my back, and I gave myself up to the alcohol and the music and the sensation of being stuck between two gorgeous specimens of man.

Time started to disappear between frenzied hands and drips of sweat. There were more drinks and more dances. Each song faded into the next. Colors danced behind my closed eyes. And it was almost enough.

For a while, I got to be blank. A brand-new canvas. Untouched snow.

I’d checked my baggage at the door, and just was.

And it was perfect.

There was no room for unhappiness when squeezed between two sets of washboard abs.

New life motto, right there.

I gave Istvan a couple notes and sent him to get more drinks. In the meantime, I turned to face Tamas. He’d been pressed against my back for God knows how long, and I’d forgotten how tall he was. I leaned back to meet his gaze, and his hands smoothed down my back to my ass.

I smirked and said, “Someone is happy to have me all to himself.”

He pulled my hips into his, his arousal pressing low against my stomach, and said, “Beautiful American.”

Right. No point expending energy on cheeky banter that he couldn’t even understand. I had a pretty good idea how to better use my energy. I slipped my arms around his neck and tilted my head in the universal sign of “kiss me.”

Tamas didn’t waste any time. Like, really … no time. The dude went zero to sixty in seconds. His tongue was so far down my throat, it was like being kissed by the love child of a lizard and Gene Simmons.

We were both pretty drunk. Maybe he didn’t realize that he was in danger of engaging my gag reflex with his Guinness record-worthy tongue. I eased back and his tongue assault ended, only for his teeth to clamp down on my bottom lip.

I was all for a little biting, but he pulled my lip out until I had one half of a fish mouth. And he stood there, sucking on my bottom lip for so long that I actually started counting to see how long it would last.

When I got to fifteen (FIFTEEN!) seconds, my eyes settled on a guy across the bar watching my dilemma with a huge smile. Was shit-eating grin in the dictionary? If not, I should snap a picture for Merriam-Webster.

I braced myself and pulled my poor, abused lip from Tamas’s teeth with a pop. My mouth felt like it had been stuck in a vacuum cleaner. While I pressed my fingers to my numb lip, Tamas started placing sloppy kisses from the corner of my lips across my cheek to my jaw.

His tongue slithered over my skin like a snail, and all the blissful alcohol-induced haze that I’d worked so hard for disappeared.

I was painfully aware that I was standing in an abandoned-building-turned-bar with a trail of drool across my cheek, and that a guy across the room was now openly laughing at me.

And he was fucking gorgeous, which made it so much worse.

Sometimes … the now sucked. 

2

MY AMUSED STALKER had olive-toned skin, dark eyes, and hair cut close to his head. He had that muscled, military look about him, which sparked half a dozen dirty puns in my head about him invading my territories. Plus, he was tall with a permanent smolder that would have made Tyra Banks stop the crazy train and stare.

Unfortunately, the only staring happening was on his part. Why did it have to be someone so hot who witnessed my face sucking of shame? And as if he could read my thoughts through my gaze, he laughed harder.

I tore myself away from Tamas and put my hand up to keep him from following me.

“Bathroom!” I blurted.

The word meant nothing to him, so he reached for me again.

“Eh-eh!” I gave him the Heisman and tried, “Toilet?”

His brow furrowed, and he held a hand to his ear. So I yelled louder, “Toilet!”

The volume didn’t help, but it did make a dozen or so people around us who obviously spoke English stop and gawk at me. And my traitorous eyes found the guy across the room. If he laughed any harder, he was going to pop a lung.

Damn it.

I guessed he didn’t have any issues understanding my English.

I turned and fled, probably only exponentially increasing the size of the scene I’d just made, but I was only focused on washing away the embarrassment with another drink.

I tried to walk over the rubble pile that led back to the bar, but the ground kept moving, and I felt a million miles tall in these heels. Tipsier than I realized, I blinked, trying to bring the world back into focus. I had to bend and balance my hand on a chunk of concrete to keep from toppling over.

“What? No more locals around to carry you?”

I turned my head to the side, and my worst fears came true.

Soldier Smolder. He was even more gorgeous up close, which was only magnified by his deep voice. And from the sound of it, he was American, too. The look on his face was part teasing–part condescending, but his eyes still had my organs doing somersaults.

Or … that could have been the alcohol.

Both. Let’s go with both.