What the hell? “What habit?”
“Your addiction. Your addiction to, um, superficial connections. I hope that wasn’t because of me, of the way I stopped seeing you.”
Addiction? Alec put a tight hold on his temper. And she thought she’d stopped seeing him? The truth was, he’d never once thought of her, not after that devastating phone call that had changed his family’s lives. Not for months and months, anyway, and by then she was part of the before when he and his family were struggling with carrying on into the after.
As bar-goers shifted around them, he shoved a hand through his hair and wondered if there was a graceful way to end this conversation and if he felt like being graceful at all. “Look, Tina…”
A body brushed past him and a familiar, feminine scent tickled his nose. Without thinking, his hand reached out and he snatched the warm arm of someone passing by.
The someone squeaked as he reeled her closer and relief and pleasure twined inside him. “Lilly. I’ve been looking for you.”
From his other side, Tina piped up. “I thought you were looking for Jessie.”
“And Lilly,” he said, lying like a rug. “We have something important to discuss.” Already he was moving away, so that she couldn’t contradict him in front of the other woman.
“As a matter of fact, we do need to talk,” Lilly said, obligingly following him through the crowd. “I was actually looking for you.”
“Yeah?” There was a huge jam at the exit, so he turned around and headed for the rear in hopes of finding another. It was slow going, because they had to wind their way around knots and pairs and the occasional singleton who stood unhelpfully like a boulder in a stream.
Alec cursed beneath his breath and yanked Lilly closer, wrapping his arm around her shoulders to make them one unit.
“You’re in a bad mood,” she observed.
“You would be too,” he said grimly. It was unclear if a back door was actually open, and then he remembered that the cell phones were at the front so on a sigh he turned around again.
After a few minutes he found himself unable to make any forward progress at all, and he took a stand against the nearest wall, planting his feet with a frustrated sigh. “Fuck this shit.”
“Let’s make that a really bad mood.” Lilly’s glow-in-the dark crown was a soft white that illuminated her face like a portrait captured by a photographer. Every eyelash cast a delicate shadow on her cheeks and his attention was inexorably drawn to her mouth, a tantalizing pink even in the low light. “What happened?”
He lowered his voice. “Tina happened.”
“Tina happened how?”
“First, she essentially called me a womanizer,” he admitted, and it still stung.
“You said you used to date her.”
“Right. Five years ago. Then…things happened that didn’t make that a priority and I let it go.”
“Let her go.”
“I guess, though I think—I thought it was mutual. But now she’s says she wants a do-over.”
“Oh.”
“And I don’t,” he hastened to say. “But I also don’t think she’s used to rejection.”
“Likely not.” Lilly seemed to ponder that. “Is that when she called you a womanizer?”
“And worse,” he said, indignation spiking. “She hinted I’m a sex addict.”
Lilly started to laugh. “I’m sorry,” she said when he just stared at her. “But you can’t take that seriously. She’s a beautiful woman who wants you, a beautiful woman who’s not used to hearing the word no.”
“I suppose.” Alec clipped out the words.
“Don’t you see? You’ve been with other women, but then along comes lovely Tina to save you from all that normal, male-in-his-prime behavior. When you so easily refuse her offer she can only conclude you must have some sort of mental disease or defect.”
As Lilly continued to chuckle, Alec felt his temper cool. Drawing nearer, he cupped her cheek in his palm. “What you’re saying is I’m an idiot for letting her get to me.”
“Her ego,” Lilly suggested.
“I’m an idiot for letting her ego get to me.”
He was close enough to see the corners of her mouth tip up in a smile. “An idiot but not a sex addict.”
Staring at her lips and breathing in her particular, pleasing scent, he wasn’t so sure of that. Because he was ravenous to kiss her again, to inhale her taste, to have her body molded to his. “Lilly,” he murmured.
Yeah, he wanted another kiss and more, despite all their reservations and those walls of hers that could seem impenetrable. Her small fingers wrapped around his wrist but they weren’t trying to push him away, they were holding him in place.
“Lilly,” he whispered again, that naughty name of hers such a delight in his mouth. He leaned down and—
Pop! An explosive noise penetrated the walls of the building. A woman screamed. A second did the same. In the next moment everyone went still and then in another it was pandemonium as people started moving. Glass hit the ground, bottles and wineglasses crashing to the floor as people bumped into tables and into each other in their haste to flee in the dark from the unknown threat.
Glancing over his shoulder at the chaos, Alec caged Lilly against the wall with his body, instinctively protecting her from flying elbows and stomping feet. “Turn on the lights,” he yelled, trying to be heard over the din. “For God’s sake, someone turn on the lights.”
But when the darkness remained as black as ever, he pulled back a few inches from Lilly. “Wait here,” he said, unwilling to haul her through the panicking crowd. “Wait right here and I’ll be back for you, I promise.”
It didn’t register, then, that she hadn’t made a sound.
Long minutes passed as he made his way out of the building to an outside courtyard that was as dark as inside the facility. The landscape lighting was out or off as well. As patrons continued to stream from the building, Alec caught sight of his second cousin, Kane, jogging forward with flashlight in hand.
Alec flagged him down.
