Love Kinection (4 page)

The fourth time I hit the wrong button and shot his guy in the back, he chuckled and turned the game off. “You are such a nubcake.”

“What? What the hell does that mean?” I didn’t know if I should be insulted or annoyed or what. He didn’t seem like the type of guy to name call a chick. He laughed harder when I put my hands on my hips and pouted.

“In this case it means you’re terrible at these types of games. It’s gamer slang. You know, Abby, you might be the only person on the planet who would’ve enjoyed Atari’s
E.T.
game.”

“What’s that?” His explanation left me mollified but still a little annoyed. I hate not being in on the joke.

“What’s that? Are you serious, woman? Oh, now you’ve elevated yourself to epic proportions of nubbiness. I call nubcake squared.”

The more I glared, the more he grinned. My lips twitched and tried to pull up into a smile but I forced a neutral expression and crossed my arms.

“Abby, the
E.T.
game is gamer urban legend royalty.” He shook his head in mock shame. “Dubbed one of the worst video games ever created. So horrible Atari took semi-tractor trailer loads of the cartridges to a landfill in New Mexico and had them crushed and encased in cement.”

“Oh. Kinda extreme.” I’d never heard of the incident before, but I’m not a video game nerd. “I need an ice cream break. You want some?”

“Sure.” He took my controller and tossed it on the couch.

Eleven o’clock in the evening. Normally I’d be dead to the world. This morning I’d planned to go to bed by 9:30. Huh. I hadn’t even thought about my bitch sister or rotten ex for hours. Maybe I should get an Xbox for myself.

The stupid voice in my head thought keeping Tom around to play with him made more sense. I tased the voice half-heartedly.

“Cherry Garcia, Chubby Hubby, or Mint Chocolate Cookie?” I knew what I wanted, but I thought I should give him a choice. Be a nice hostess.

“What?” A wrinkle appeared in his brow.

“Those are your choices.”

“I’ve never heard of them.”

I pulled all three pints out of the freezer and stared at him. He leaned one shoulder against the wall in the doorway between the kitchen and living room. We’d done nothing but play games all evening and my hormones did a happy dance every time I looked at him. “Seriously? What planet are you from?”

“Tatooine.”

A snicker erupted into a full blown laugh, and I put the cartons down on the counter and peeled the lids off.

“I usually eat strawberry,” he said.

“Huh. You’re an ice cream nubcake. Who would have thought.” Tom chuckled at my co-opt of the slang. “Well, I’m allergic to strawberry. So you’re going to have to trust me when I say all three are delicious.”

“Can I have some of each?”

“Sure.” I picked the containers back up, closed the distance between us, and handed him a nice, big soup spoon. He raised one eyebrow and took the Chubby Hubby. “There’s no other way to eat Ben & Jerry’s. Big spoons only.”

“Do you always have this many flavors in the freezer?”

“Nope. Take a bite. Unless you’re wigged by germs. I don’t usually put it in a bowl.”

“I’d love to share germs with you, Abby.” My face got hot at the comment so I took the Mint Chocolate Cookie and Cherry Garcia into the living room. He followed me. “This is really good.”

“Yep.” The word came out a garbled around a mouthful of cherry-flavored creamy goodness. I dug out another bite and held it out to him. “Try this one.”

He leaned over and took it between his lips. Our eyes met and I looked away, trying to find something else to focus on. A smudge of ice cream clung to his lower lip when I got the courage to meet his stare again, and I wiped it away with my thumb, licked the melted goodness off. His pupils got larger as he watched.

Another bite disappeared into his mouth, and he glanced at me almost shyly.

“Abby? What happened this morning? With your phone?”

Everyone at the office knew about my sister and Charlie. They’d tiptoed around me for a few months. Witnessing someone’s abject humiliation makes people uncomfortable.

After a while I got angry. Angry was easier for them to deal with. Me, too. Then the anger faded into a mostly background ache in my chest. I’d been pretty okay until about last week. With the one year anniversary of my wedding-that-wasn’t looming, depression began to gain a foothold. Then the message arrived…. It was all too much.

Now that I thought about it, Tom hadn’t attended my wedding. Well, not a wedding, because it didn’t happen. The planned wedding. At the time he’d been on one of his military reserve training exercises. Thank God.

“Why do you care?” I took huge bite of the mint and got an ice cream headache before I could swallow. My palm smacked into my forehead and the gesture made my head hurt more.

“Maybe because I’m a nice guy.”

“There is no such thing.”

And let’s up the score on the bitch-o-meter, folks
.

“Fine. How about I think you’ve got a hot body, and I want to bang you all night.” Tom sounded annoyed.

I laughed and looked at him. A stiff edge claimed the set of his shoulders and lips. Part of me wanted to lean over and kiss all his body language away. I wished I could take the comment back.

“Sorry. My sister sent me a text that she and my ex were getting married today in Vegas.”

“Your sister is a bitch.”

“Yeah. So I got upset and dropped my phone.” That I admitted to freely. He already knew I had cried. No reason to bring it up.

He took a bite of ice cream and held it in his mouth for a minute before he swallowed. He dug around in the Mint Chocolate Cookie and offered me a bite. I felt as if he held out forbidden fruit, but since the kiss in the hallway he’d been a gentleman. I’d had a lot of fun.

A chocolate cookie chunk froze my tongue. Mint chocolate is one of my favorite flavors in the world.

“Remind me to never loan you mine.”

“Heh. If I had yours, I wouldn’t get any messages like that.”

He cocked his head and nodded. We ate for a few minutes, occasionally sharing a bite. The way his lips wrapped around the metal of the spoon made my heart do dangerous flutters in my chest. Aspirin in case of a heart attack seemed like a decent idea.

“So, you wanna play some more games? I still haven’t gotten to watch you jump around.”

“Sure. Let me get something from my room first though.”

Tom gathered up the cartons while I went into my bedroom. I yanked off my T-shirt, found my tightest sports bra, and tugged it on. A giggle slipped out at the thought of the look on his face when he realized my boobs were crushed under Lycra. I didn’t stop to examine why I cared.

I grinned wickedly and put my shirt back on. When I walked out I choked back a laugh at the look on his face when he saw the smashed state of my chest. He didn’t say anything but I knew he could tell I’d changed my bra.

“Hey, what’s the matter?” My lips twitched with suppressed giggles.

“Nothing. Let’s play. You like to dance?”

“I used to.” I hadn’t danced in a long time. Charlie didn’t know how. In fact, while I dated Charlie I stopped a lot of activities I liked that he didn’t or wouldn’t do. Starting to do them again hadn’t occurred to me until now. Huh.

Tom showed me how the sensor box would find me in the room, and I laughed at the avatar on-screen. I shook my butt and jumped a few times to experiment with the Kinect. He stood off to the side and chuckled at my antics. I pulled him over, and he spun me in a slow circle with a grin.

“You’re fun when you relax.”

I frowned at the comment and then sighed. He only pointed out the obvious, and anger over the observation didn’t seem valid. Gray eyes met mine, and I smiled at him. Then I shimmied my hips.

“I thought we were gonna dance.”

“We are. And I’m going to kick your sweet ass, too.”

“Bring it on, geek boy.”

“Geek boy? Where’d that come from?”

“You’re a thirty-something-year-old man with an Xbox. You use gamer slang. Geek.” I arched a brow at him in challenge, and he shrugged.

“You’ve got a huge collection of sci-fi and fantasy novels. Anne McCaffrey. Lois McMaster Bujold.
The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide. Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit
.”

“I like dragons. And subversive humor. Besides, it’s much harder to create something completely from your imagination than it is to write about regular old people if you ask me.” My arms crossed over my chest, and I lifted my chin.

“Okay, so you collect books. Let’s talk about the movies then. Let’s see what we’ve got. Oh, look. The entire
Star Wars
saga on VHS, DVD, and Blu-Ray. Complete collections of every season of
Dr. Who, Angel, Firefly, Buffy, Supernatural, Battlestar Galactica
…. Let’s not forget the shirt you’re wearing right now. There are Star Trek sporks in your utensil drawer. You made me watch a B-movie horror flick. I wouldn’t be surprised if you get together with your friends and go all ga-ga over Joss Whedon and what a ‘genius’ he is. Geek.”

“Hey,
Firefly
is an incredible show. The network killed it. I dare you to tell me the ‘Hush’ episode of
Buffy
wasn’t one of the best episodes of network television ever. Oh, and ‘Out of Gas’ on
Firefly
? Remember that one? I know you’ve seen it. I know it.” I poked his chest with my index finger.

“Just admit you’re as much a geek as me. Maybe even a bigger one. You have a TARDIS mug. And you use it. I bet there’s another one, here, in your house all wrapped up for safe keeping.”

“I will admit I’m a geek, but not a bigger one than you. I’ve never seen your geek evidence. And I don’t have a TARDIS mug wrapped up. I like to use the stuff I buy.” I inched closer to him, enjoying the debate. “For all I know, you have rooms and rooms with nothing but unopened action figures like
The Forty-Year-Old Virgin
. I bet you play those big online games like
World of Warcraft
and
Warhammer
. Planning your giant raids while surrounded by little plastic Luke Skywalker figurines.”

He stepped closer with a grin, the distance between our bodies closed almost completely, and pulled a strand of my hair through his fingers. “You’ll have to come over and see then. And I’m no virgin.” He stared at my lips. I licked the lower one, nervous for some reason. My stomach floated somewhere around my throat, and my heart tripped over itself in an attempt to escape my ribcage.

“Maybe I will.” His eyebrows had a sexy arch to them. Combined with great super thick eyelashes and the unusual eye color, and I was hypnotized.

Crap like this is how cobras manage to eat poor unwary little rodents. Suckers don’t stand a chance
.

His hands crossed the gap between our bodies and rested on my hips. Backing away would be the smart thing to do. But hope filled my belly he’d kiss me again. The stupid part of my brain had taken control, and I didn’t fight it. “So if you are in fact the geekier geek, what do I get as a forfeit?” he asked.

The shadow of stubble covered his chin and his upper lip, ran up to the short sideburns he wore. His ears begged to be nibbled on. What would that stubble feel like brushed against my skin? Dangerous thoughts, especially since my hands had somehow ended up on his waist and my fingers clenched his shirt. I looked at his arms, still surprised by the size of his muscles when they flexed. If the biceps were any indicator of the body hidden under the cloth, it broke the mold of a stereotypical geek.

“Forfeit?”

“Yeah. You know, like a prize.”

“I think you already got a forfeit. You got to see me naked.”
And all I’ve gotten is a few stolen kisses
.

“That was an accident.” He grew hard against my belly. It pleased me to wonder in what direction his thoughts had gone. I wondered if ice cream intoxication existed. “How about sex in my truck?”

“No. Car sex isn’t really comfortable. And who said anything about sex?”

“A man can hope. Besides, I know you’ve thought about it.”

“Have not.”

“Have, too.”

“Shut up and kiss me.”

He shook his head. “I promised to behave. You kiss me.”

My teeth chewed my lower lip in a rush of nerves. I hadn’t been intimate with anyone since Charlie. And he’d hurt me so bad. “Are you going to hurt me?”

“Not on purpose. You might hurt me.”

Tears pricked my eyes. “Why do you think he wanted her instead?”

“I don’t know, Abby. Men can be pretty stupid. You’re better off without him. What if you had kids? And besides, you wouldn’t have been able to play games with me all night and drive me crazy with that sexy laugh of yours. I’m glad you’re still single.”

I managed a watery smile, and he stared at me. My heart still ached, but maybe he could help me feel better. Hell, he’d seen my naked overweight ass and still wanted to get in my pants. With how surly and rude I’d been to him, I didn’t understand why he even liked me.

“Why do you like me?”

“Why do women always want to talk instead of have sex?”

“Can’t help it. Pretty sure we’re hardwired.”

He pulled me in closer and wrapped his arms around my waist, looked at the wall above my head. “I think maybe I always knew you’re a closet nerd.”

I smacked him on the chest, and he laughed. “Not that much in the closet. My cubicle waves my freak flag pretty well.”

He sobered and looked me in the eye. “No, really. I always liked you. Before that idiot left you, you were always so happy and smiling. I love your smile. And, I don’t know. You’re nice to people and hardworking and have a great imagination. You make these funny little quips that crack me up.”

“I wasn’t nice to Cindy today.”

“No one is nice to Cindy. She’s not right in the head.” He smiled. “So, are you done stalling and thinking now?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t solved all the mysteries of quantum physics yet.” He rolled his eyes and started to laugh until I did, too. Fear threatened to cripple me. He was a gorgeous man. He could hurt me, bad. Because I could fall for him if I let myself. “What the hell.”