Frigid (8 page)

Kyler got right up in Zach’s face. Well, he was much taller, so he pretty much looked down his nose at the dude. “I know exactly who I’m fucking with,
buddy.”

“Is that so?” Zach started forward, but Kyler was too fast. He caught the ski instructor by the shoulder and pushed him back into the paneled wall. The checkered dartboard rattled around the nail it hung from.

“Better think again,” Kyler said. “I have no problem with wiping the floor with your face.”

I tugged on the back of his sweater. “Kyler, come on. Let’s go.”

Kyler ignored me.

“You think you little rich fucks can come up here and push people around? Yeah, not happening.” Zach’s eyes flicked over Kyler’s shoulder. “That goes for little cock-teases, too. Seems like your taste in females is the same.”

“What?” Now pissed off for a whole different reason, I tried to get around Kyler. “I am not a cock-tease, you ass-hat.”

“Whatever.” Zach shrugged off Kyler’s hand and edged around him, about to tuck tail and run, but not before he threw out a, “You two have a great time up here.”

Kyler looked like he was about to follow him across the bar, but the unfriendly faces that had started paying attention—probably locals—had him thinking otherwise. “God, where do you find these creeps, Syd?”

“Hey!” I smacked his back. “He wasn’t a creep until you got involved.”

“Whatever. You don’t know him.” He reached down and took my hand. The weight felt different and about a thousand other things I couldn’t figure out. “Come on. Let’s go back to the house.”

His tone carried no room for arguing. Stopping by the table, he said his goodbyes to a pouty Sexy Sasha and then we headed to the door. A whole group of big dudes were doing the evil-glare-thing from the corner, Zach among them, but Kyler didn’t notice. And the evil-glare-thing from a group of big dudes born and raised in West “by golly” Virginia could be a pretty frightful thing. Brought up images of long and dark backwoods and graves in hastily covered ditches.

Shuddering, I realized I was freaking myself out.

As soon as we stepped outside, harsh wind smacked me in the face. I gasped. “Holy crap, it’s cold as balls out here!”

“Balls are not cold, Syd. Trust me,” said Kyler. “Didn’t I say you should wear a coat?”

“Bah!” I pulled free and started stomping through the fresh snow that had fallen since we’d gone in. It was only a couple of inches, but I was kicking it up everywhere. “We should have driven down here.”

“You
wanted to walk.” He pulled his hoodie over his head and off. “Here—put this on.”

I shook my head and started down the hill, but Kyler sighed as he stepped in front of me, his jaw set in a determined line. “Lift your arms.”

“What if I say no?”

His lips twitched as he held his hoodie out. “I’ll hold you down and dress you.”

That kind of sounded like it would be fun. Actually, Kyler holding me down and
undressing
me sounded even better. I sighed, completely lost in the fantasy. We could be like snow bunnies getting it on.

Kyler stepped closer, tipping his chin down. “What are you thinking about?”

“Snow bunnies,” I replied.

He let out a deep laugh. “Come on, lift your arms and tell me why you drank so much. Please?”

“Since you said please…” I lifted my arms and felt him step forward. He slipped the opening over my head and then moved onto the arms. “I just wanted to have fun.”

“Nothing wrong with that.” He got my left arm into the sleeve and then he started working on the right arm, his brows furrowed in concentration. “But you’ve had fun before without drinking so much.”

“So?” I balled my fist, and he sighed, trying to work the sleeve around it. I giggled as I straightened out my hand. “What’s the big deal?”

“There isn’t one.” He tugged the hoodie down and it swamped me, ending just above my knees. “There you go.”

When I looked up, he’d stepped back and he had this strange look on his face—like approval. “Aren’t you cold?” I asked.

He shrugged, stretching the material of the black thermal he’d had on under the hoodie. “I’ll be fine.”

I opened my mouth to say okay, but something totally different came out. “I don’t want to be boring anymore.”

“What? Shit.” Kyler thrust his fingers through his hair. “Baby, you’re not boring.”

“Yes. I am.”

His eyes pinched at the corners. “Sydney, you are so far from that. I shouldn’t have said that shit in the car. You’re perfect—”

“Just the way I am?” I finished for him. “Isn’t that from
Bridget Jones?”

“Maybe.” One side of his lips tipped up.

“You are such a vagina.”

Kyler nudged me. “But seriously, Syd—”

“I don’t want to talk.” I was suddenly about a million times uncomfortable. Walking again, I heard him keep pace with me a few steps behind. “Talk. Talk. Talk,” I muttered.

Snow kept falling in a steady light shower that coated my head and shoulders. I had an urge to tip my head back and catch snowflakes on my tongue, but I ended up throwing my arms out, tipping my head back, and belting out, “If you want a woman with a tight little kitty, then find one with itty bitty titties!”

Kyler got an arm around my waist, laughing. “God, you are so trashed.”

“You haven’t heard of the song.” I leaned into him, wrapping my arms around his waist, but my grip ended up around his thighs. Odd. “It’s by Haven Palen Pole.”

He held me up. “That would be David Allen Coe, baby.”

I frowned. “That’s what I said.”

“Whatever you say.”

We walk—or shuffled along—about a yard and then I walked straight into a mailbox. I grunted. “Son of a bitch jumped right out in front of me!”

Kyler stopped, shaking his head. “You are a hazard to yourself right now.”

“I’m fine.” I waved him off, edging around the tricky inanimate object as I shot it a dark look. “I’m watching you.”

“Let me help you,” he offered. “Okay? I’ll get us both home in one piece and keep us far away from ninja mailboxes.”

Sounded like a good plan, but when Kyler wrapped his arms around my waist and lifted me, practically tossing me over his shoulder, I was
so
not expecting that. I let out a squeal and immediately started squirming.

“Behave.” He smacked my ass.

“Hey!”

He smacked it again, and I got in a good punch in the kidneys. My butt was too cold to really burn, but his grunt brought a smile to my face. This whole position wasn’t real good for the alcohol sloshing around in my stomach, though.

Kyler took three steps, and I decided I
needed
to get down. I reared back suddenly and he stumbled to the side. He stepped into a snowdrift. I wiggled down his front, causing our legs to tangle.

“What are you doing?” he asked, trying to get a grip on me.

“Down.” I swung back and ended up taking our legs right out from underneath us. Kyler twisted at the last moment, taking the brunt of the fall in the drift, and I landed on top of him.

Neither of us moved for a second, and then his hands clamped down on my hips. Under me his chest started to move slowly and then faster. Loud laughter barreled out of his throat, bringing a happy smile to my face.

I planted my hands on his chest and lifted my head.

He stared up at me, smiling. My breath caught and I felt dizzy. “You’re beautiful.”

Kyler reached up, brushing my hair from my face and tucking it back behind my ear. “I think that’s my line.”

“You think I’m beautiful?”

His gaze roamed over my face like he was committing every freckle to memory. Giddiness swept through me, like I was caught up in a bubble. “I’ve always thought you were beautiful, Syd.”

The world was bright and shiny and new. “Really?”

“Yeah,” he replied, his hand falling away from my hair, back to my hip. “Yeah, I have.”

There was nothing else for me to do. I only had one option. Kyler said I was beautiful and I’d waited since forever to hear him say that.

So I kissed him.

Or at least I tried to.

My aim was completely off. My lips collided with his cool cheek.

“Syd,” he said, and the way he spoke my name, like it was caught between a curse and a prayer, hollowed my stomach.

His hands slid up to my waist, under the hoodie and my sweater. His fingers brushed my bare skin and I felt the contact in the sharpest, most delicious way. My back arched, and it all seemed like the go ahead to me. I rolled my lower body down onto his and I sucked in a sharp breath as I felt him pressing against the softest part of me. Kyler made a deep sound in his throat, his fingers digging into my sides and setting fire to my nerves.

Kyler moved so fast. The world turned upside down, and I was suddenly on my back and he was above me, his hair falling over his forehead in a messy sweep. Hey now! I liked where this was heading.

Tiny snowflakes covered his head, glimmering in the dim street lamp. Cold snow crept under my clothing, but I barely felt it. I was on fire. I was burning up from the inside, my senses were all over the place, and it was the best feeling I’d ever had. I reached up, letting my fingers thread through his soft hair. His reaction seemed to be on instinct. He closed his eyes and tilted his cheek into the palm of my hand. Warmth blossomed in my chest.

“You have no idea what you’re doing,” Kyler said, catching one of my hands and holding it down in the snow, next to my head. His fingers circled my wrist in a firm grip.

I wiggled under him. “Yes, I do.”

His eyes closed again and when they reopened, they were like black pools. “You’re so drunk, Syd.”

“Nah-uh.” I managed to get a leg out from underneath his, but then he sat up, pulling me along with him. A second later, I was on my feet and the sky did a little jig. “Whoa.”

“Yeah, whoa, exactly,” he said, his voice deeper than I’d ever heard it. “Let’s go home.”

“But—”

“Sydney,” he snapped, and I flinched. “You are drunk. The only thing that I’m going to let happen is me getting you home.”

There was that tone again—the kind that said “shut up and do as I say.” Usually I bucked at that, but I was shocked into listening. He took my hand again and started walking back to the house. I stumbled alongside him, confusion eating away at me along with the tequila. I didn’t understand. He was attracted to me. He’d said I was beautiful and that he’d always thought I was beautiful, and I’d felt him. Like I felt how attracted he was
against
me. There’d been no hiding that, but he’d rejected me.

Kyler had rejected me.

And he didn’t reject
any
female.

I wanted to cry—to sit down in the snow and cry. Humiliated, confused, and still more than a little horny, I forced myself to stay quiet and to keep walking. Both were equally hard. Diarrhea of the mouth was building in my throat. No good could come from that. It took forever to get to the house and by then I couldn’t feel my hands or legs and I didn’t think the snow had anything to do with that.

Kyler let go of my hand as he turned on the lights. The harsh glare hit me hard, causing the room to make like a Tilt-a-Whirl. He was right there—perfect timing too, because I was sure my legs had stopped working.

Lifting me up, he cradled me close to his chest as he started toward the stairs. “You shouldn’t have drunk so much, Syd. There was no reason for that.”

I burrowed my face into his shoulder. Being admonished for drinking too much by Kyler Quinn was the height of irony and embarrassment, but he was right. I was so drunk I could admit I was drunk.

Kyler said nothing as he carried me upstairs and to the room I was staying in. He said something when he placed me down on the bed, but the moment my head hit the pillow, I was blissfully and luckily out cold.

What in the fuck just happened?

Seriously. I was waiting for some divine intervention to offer up an explanation.

I stared down at Syd, totally convinced that when I entered Snowshoe I must’ve walked into some kind of warped reality where seeing Syd half-naked occurred, watching her get drunk off her ass, and then having her try to kiss me was run-of-the-mill.

I was absolutely struck stupid, and kind of pissed, too. If I hadn’t been with her tonight, she would’ve hooked up with some random ski instructor. And fucking Zach at that? Acid burned in my stomach. Holy shit, that didn’t sit well with me at all.

And I was also sort of turned on, but then again, she had just been wiggling in my lap like any number of the girls back at school did. And she’d felt really damn good wiggling in my lap—too damn good, and real hard to turn down.

Man, I had no business even thinking about this. Of course I was attracted to her, but I couldn’t go there, because if I really started to acknowledge that, then I’d have to get real about other things.

I scrubbed my hand over my face. Syd was drunk, really drunk. The girl needed to stay away from Jose.

She shifted, her brows pinching as she whimpered softly.

I was by her side before I even realized I’d moved. “Syd?”

No response from her, and I could tell she wasn’t comfortable. Straightening, I bit back a curse. I couldn’t leave her like this. And what if she got sick? Grabbing a pillow from the head of the bed, I slipped a hand under her head and placed the pillow underneath. She didn’t wake, but flopped onto her back.

I grinned and wondered if she even knew she had lain down the wrong way on the bed. I was going to go with a no. Moving to the head of the bed, I sat down and gently tugged off her boots. They were some kind of fake sheepskin or something and came up to her knees. The wedge soles were damp from the snow.

Placing them near the chair in the room, I turned in time to see her trying to sit up. “Syd?”

She mumbled something and the only thing I made out was the word, “Hot,” and then she started tugging at the hoodie I’d made her put on. Within seconds, she got it stuck around her head.

I laughed as her arms dropped to her sides.

Her voice was muffled but it did not sound friendly. Then she bent over, trying to pull it off that way. Good God, she was going to suffocate herself.