“Over MnM?” she scoffed at herself.
“Sure, why not?” he said. “Or over your boyfriend saying something nice.”
A tear slipped down her cheek. She didn’t scrub it away. It trailed all the way down to her jaw and splashed on her T-shirt. “Thank you, Felix.”
“I got you something,” he said, opening his bag. “I hope it fits. They said I could exchange it tomorrow if it doesn’t.”
He held up the “Things Are Getting Dicey” shirt for her, with its bubbly font and scattered dice of every shape and color. Jo gasped and giggled.
“It’s not cropped,” he said.
“It’s perfect,” she replied, taking the shirt with both hands. “I love it. I’m going to wear it tomorrow.”
She grasped him by the back of the neck and pulled him roughly toward her, kissing him soundly on the mouth. He had barely begun to kiss her back when she released him. Felix staggered back, a bit dizzy.
She reached for his bag. “What else did you get?”
“Oh, no, you don’t,” he said, lifting it up out of her reach. “These are surprises for tomorrow.”
Jo dropped her fists onto her hips. “Just tell me you didn’t buy any swords and promise to ship them to Trey.”
“Now why didn’t we think of that?” he cried.
She smacked him lightly on the arm.
Jo returned her attention to her pile of GM supplies. Felix offered to help, so she handed him a stack of papers and asked him to return them to the admins. For just a moment, she stared at his ass as he walked to the front of the room.
A T-shirt. He’d gotten her an MnM T-shirt with a dumb, wonderful pun. She’d almost started crying again at the sight of it. Jeremy never would have—
Stop it, Jo, she told herself. Don’t compare them.
It was so hard not to, when Jeremy was all she’d known for so long. And really, what was a few months broken up compared to their years together? He was still right behind her, just over her shoulder. She was driving on the highway, trying to move forward with Felix beside her yet seeing Jeremy every time she glanced in the rearview mirror. She just needed to keep driving, keep leaving him behind and holding on to the man next to her. Hopefully, with a little more time, a little more distance, it would be easier to separate them in her mind.
Hopefully, Jeremy wasn’t lurking in the backseat, keeping pace with them as they went.
On the walk back to the hotel, Felix told her about the exhibit hall and his time with Trey, and she gave him some of the highlights from her Legendary table. In the elevator, Felix moved behind her and wrapped one arm around her waist, his hand a warm, secure weight against her low belly. “I liked the part of your game I saw,” he murmured. “I liked your sphinx voice.”
“Oh really?” she said, pitching her voice down. She’d only done the voice in the first place because she thought it was funny. It had started as a bad Lauren Bacall impression and ended up a mishmash of femme fatale caricatures. She rolled it out for sphinxes, seductive archfey of all genders, and hags in disguise luring people to their deaths.
“Yeah,” Felix said. “I really did.”
His breath was hot on her ear. Jo leaned her head back, exposing her throat to him. He pressed his lips to the side of her neck, and she let out a breathy moan.
“I might be persuaded to use it more often,” she said in that low, lazy voice, “if—”
The elevator came to a stop, and the doors opened on their floor, revealing a well-dressed elderly white couple waiting to head downstairs. Felix quickly released Jo, and they hurried off the elevator.
“That woman gave me the dirtiest look,” he said with a chuckle once they were out of earshot.
“I was avoiding eye contact,” Jo replied. “But they’re the ones going out at ten o’clock. We should be giving them the stink eye.”
The moment they were safely inside their room, Felix’s hand was on her stomach again, dragging her backward against his chest. “What was that you were saying? You’ll use it more often if…”
“Oh, I can’t remember,” Jo said in her normal voice. She tapped him on the wrist. “Let me go, please, I have to pee.”
Felix grumbled but did as requested. She kissed his cheek, right on the edge of his stubble, before dropping her bags and disappearing into the bathroom. Leaning back on the door, she pressed her hand to her chest.
Jo knew what she wanted now, in a way she hadn’t a mere twenty-four hours ago. This wasn’t just a con hookup; it wasn’t just sex. They weren’t going to bang it out and move on. Felix was hers, and she was his. She held his hand and brought him breakfast when he woke up grumpy. He scratched her back and bought her stupid, perfect T-shirts.
Christ, how her heart was pounding. She skimmed her fingers over the spot on her neck where his lips had brushed her skin. More, her body demanded. More, more, more, with every throb of her pulse in her clit.
It was so tempting, to fling open the door and fall into his arms and ask him to touch her and taste her and fuck her until she couldn’t see straight. To give him everything he so plainly wanted. To ride him like she had dreamt about and hear the sounds he made when he came.
There was only one problem: she really was exhausted. Playing and running MnM all day, including a Legendary, had wiped her out. Her eyelids were like lead. She didn’t want to be fighting off sleep their first time together. She wanted to be present and remember every detail.
Tomorrow, she told herself as a flutter of anticipation went through her. Sleep tonight; sex tomorrow.
As Jo readied for bed, she considered if she should tell Felix what she was planning. Not yet, she decided. She was already having fun teasing him. And despite (or maybe because of) his claims that he was going to die over it, she thought he was enjoying it too. Plus, they would be playing together as Grax and Veena in the morning.
Oh yes. Tomorrow was going to be so much fun.
16
“Good morning, folks. Everyone excited for some MnM?”
