Losing Streak (The Lane) by Kristine Wyllys Read Free Book Online

just remembered. Hell. Maybe he did. Maybe we’d come up to the place where names mattered, sped past it, and now we needed to backtrack.
    No earthly good could come from telling him, and yet I saw no reason not to either.
    “Rosie.”
    “Well, Rosie, what do you say we get out of here? I don’t know how much longer I can deal with feeling like we are imposing on Ashley with our presence. I’d say that’s why I gave her a shitty tip, but to be honest, it’s because I blew most of my money on a hot bartender earlier.”
    “She sounds like a bitch.”
    “Maybe,” he agreed. “But I happen to like them bitchy.”
    I’d gone home with people for less.
    The sky was an ashy gray when we emerged, and soon it would be streaked with the first rays of the sunrise. As if what was left of the night sensed that its time left was limited and wanted to punish those who were happy to see it go, the air had a stronger nip to it, almost stinging. Goose pimples broke out along my bare arms, and I rubbed at them briskly as we crossed the parking lot toward our vehicles, gravel crunching under our feet. I told myself that I wouldn’t look over at him, that it was flirty and dumb and I was neither of those things.
    I caught his eye.
    “So. Where to now?” he asked, leaning against the back of his truck when we reached it. “Night’s young, you know. Or the morning is, anyway.”
    I glanced up from where I’d been digging in my purse for my keys, considering him for a moment.
    “You’re going nowhere fast, aren’t you?”
    “I’m going somewhere. Just taking my time getting there.” He straightened, shoving his hands deep in his jacket pockets, and took a step toward me that I didn’t back away from. “What about you, Sadist Rosie? You going nowhere?”
    “I’m already there.”
    He nodded, expression mostly neutral and maybe a little approving. Then he reached out and caught me by the belt loops, pausing long enough for me to resist if I was going to before dragging me forward. Again, he hesitated, his lips only a breath away from mine. It was only a moment, the barest of seconds between two heartbeats, and yet it felt as if it stretched out until it was almost unbearable.
    I grabbed him by the neck with an impatient snarl and closed the last of the space between us. I felt his lips turn up against mine and for a moment that was all that existed, all that mattered. The smell of him, faint cologne and something that reminded me of an autumn night surrounded me, shoving every noise, everything that buzzed and hummed on a constant loop, from my mind. I pressed myself closer, making a noise of approval when one of his hands came up to fist in my hair and tugged.
    There was something nearly angry in the way our mouths moved against each other. Something scalding in the force of it. It was almost cathartic, giving as hard and insistent as I could, gripping a little too tight and pushing a little too hard and having it matched. It was unleashing the beast and the storm that came with it, and having one meet it, just as eager. It was an outlet I could snap and claw at, and it returned, biting back just as hard. Enough to feel the blood close to the surface without it being drawn.
    I was the first to pull away, reluctantly, dragging in oxygen in big, desperate gulps.
    “Damn,” he swore, his hands never moving from where they held me in place “This is the part you can leave if you want to. Because if we do that again, my next question is going to be a clichéd one.”
    “Yours,” I answered, pulling him toward me once more. “The answer to that question is your place. So don’t waste time asking it.”

Chapter Four
    I insisted on driving, though there was something physically painful about putting that much space between us for the short drive to his apartment.
    I crinkled my nose slightly as I pulled into a space near his truck and climbed out. Though not nearly as sad and run-down as my looming ruin of an apartment or