Page 75 of Theta

“Yeah,” I mutter. “Good thing."

She laughs as she steps into the jeans and does that wiggle-into-tight-jeans dance that I’ve always found so unbearably fucking erotic for reasons I couldn't explain. When she does it? Jesus, I’m sprung.

And she notices. "I'm putting on clothes, Kills," she says, her eyes on my tightening zipper.

I shrug. "Can't help that you turn me on doing totally normal things."

Her expression is equal parts melty and sweet. "You're killin' me, Killy." She sucks in her belly and fastens the button fly, tugs up the zipper, and then relaxes, twists to look at her backside over her shoulder, stuffs her hands in the hip pockets and then the back ones, uses the belt loops at her hips to tug them a bit higher with another shimmy. "Well hot damn, Killian." Clad in the jeans and bra, she stares up at me with an extraordinarily complicated expression. "How did you manage to find a pair of jeans that fit me this freaking well?"

I shrug. "No clue." I stare at her ass as she twists and turns, does knee raises to test the extent of the stretch. "But they look great on you."

She unbuttons the jeans and wriggles out of them, folds them, and sets the folded stack of new clothing on the old-ass chair in the corner. "You know what'd look even better on me?"

"Nothing?" I say, grinning.

She leans into me and hooks a finger in each belt loop on either side of my fly. "I like that answer too, but I was gonna say you."

I clear my throat and snag the pharmacy bag. "On that particular note." I hand it to her. "I got a few things."

She takes the bag and peers down into it without moving away from me, and then reaches in, naming the items as she pulls them out and tosses them on the bed. "Toothbrushes, toothpaste, deodorant, gauze, tape, hand sanitizer, antiseptic spray…" she pauses at the last item in the bag, looking up at me. "And condoms."

I swallow hard, shrug. "I, um. I hope I'm not…getting ahead of myself, there."

Her gaze is heavy-lidded with arousal. "We have a bed and we have privacy. You're a smart man, and it turns me on when you think ahead." She uses her fingerhold on my belt loops to yank me up against her. "You could say I'm a pretty sure thing, babe."

"I must have spent five minutes trying to decide if I should get them or not. I know what we'd talked about earlier, but that was in the heat of the moment. I wasn't sure if—" I shrug, trail off. "I dunno. I was hesitant to assume."

"But you went with the assumption."

"More with hope than an assumption."

She gives me the melty-sweet look again. "You don't have to hope anymore, Killian. Nothing short of an all-out gunfight is going to stop me from making love with you in that bed right there—and soon.” She pats me on the chest with both flat palms and steps back. "But first, the ride. Explain, if you please."

I scrub a hand over my head. "Well?" I laugh. "I still can't believe it worked, honestly, and even now I'm gonna be wary until we're boots dry on the mainland."

Story peels my shirt up and tosses it aside. "Don't mind me. Carry on."

"Ahhh…okay." She rips open the velcro straps of the vest and slides it off me; I cover my face with both hands, breathe, and force myself to focus despite the distraction of Story Binyamin undressing me like I'm a present to herself. "So, Cal and I used to play this game that we called Spot The Dealer."

She pauses with the vest in her hands. "Oh. I think I see where this is going. Very clever." She tosses the vest on top of the backpack and reaches for my fly. "Continue."

"Um. Where was I? Oh. Right. So I sat in an outdoor cafe and watched people for a while. Which is how the game works—Cal and I both love people watching. The game was just Cal's way of turning it into a competition."

"Because as we've established, Cal Roth has to win at everything." She very, very slowly unbuttons my fly, and then even more slowly lowers my zipper. "So I take it you found a dealer."

"I did. His uncle owns a boat, and for four hundred euros, they'll take us to the mainland, no questions asked. He'll be here at midnight to take us to his uncle's boat."

She gnaws on her lower lip, gazing up at me. "So you seriously just wandered around Olbia until you saw someone you thought was a drug dealer and asked if he could get us a no-questions-asked ride to Rome?"

I grin. "Yep."

"And it worked?”

"Yep." I laugh. "I almost bought some pot off him, too. I would've, if I didn't think we'd need all of our wits about us."

"It's illegal here, isn't it?" Story asks.

I shrug. "I think so? I'd assume so. It's only federally legal in a handful of countries, as far as I know." My jeans hit the floor, and I step out of them, toe them aside.