Unstoppable (Fierce) by Ginger Voight Read Free Book Online

city go by. It made me wonder about their kiss eons ago, when he had been drinking and kissed her because I had disappeared with Eddie.
    What had it been like? What had it looked like? Had he pulled her close, or had she leaned in?
    And most importantly, if I were not in the picture right now, would they be doing it again?
    Despite the romantic grandeur of the tour, or the rest of the night that followed, my mood was definitely in the shitter by the time we reached the hotel . Shelby, who had just turned 22, wanted to celebrate a nightcap with Jace, to toast their good fortune with the T&L campaign. She was, in her very subtle way, trying to get rid of the one she considered the “third wheel” – the married lady who wasn’t old enough to get into the bar.
    Off her hopeful glance, I sent them on ahead with a feigned yawn. My head was low all the way up to the room. As much as I didn’t want to think about it, I kept imagining the scenarios with them in the pool back at the finalist mansion, when they had kissed for the first, and Jace had assured, the last time.
    I knew Jace well enough to know that he wasn’t the kind of guy to kiss any girl who happened to be in his reach. After Amy dumped him, he had shunned female attention, afraid of his heart being broken again by trusting the wrong girl. I was the first one he kissed, the first one he’d made love to, the first one he had wanted more than he had feared.
    So his decision to add Shelby to that list was significant. I knew they were friends, and had spent quite a bit of time talking – privately – probably sharing the same deep secrets both of them had shared with me. I really couldn’t imagine a scenario where Jace might have willfully used her out of convenience, the same way Eddie always had used me.
    No, he had kissed her because he wanted to. He had been attracted to her, enough to want to cross over the line of friendship for a taste of her lips.
    Why wouldn’t he want to have sex with her? Eddie certainly did. She was petite, with glowing blonde hair and bright blue eyes, and was, at the very heart of it, a sweet person that Jace must have trusted on some level to give himself over like that.
    And now they were in a bar together. He was, no doubt, sharing a celebratory drink with her. Maybe with every sip, he’d remember why he wanted to kiss her in that pool in the first place. I could imagine them sitting close in an intimate little booth, his head bent towards hers to hear what she was saying in the noisy, crowded bar. She’d place her tiny hand on his thigh as she’d bend to whisper in his ear. He’d laugh, they’d look into one another’s eyes and time would stretch as another kiss hung in the air.
    Would he look away from her beseeching eyes? Or would his gaze drift to those pink, perfect lips and remember what they felt like, what they tasted like?
    Would he want more?
    My masochistic brain pulled a memory from the Eddie files.
    “ If it makes a man an asshole to want beautiful, sexy, thin women ,” he had told me once, “ then all men are assholes .”
    “ Not all men .” I tried to insist, but he was quick to correct me.
    “ I suppose you think your Bionic Boy is any different .”
    “ I know he is ,” I had asserted.
    “ Why ?” he challenged. “ Because he told you some pretty, flowery things that made you feel less gross about yourself? He’s a man. Men lie. They say what they want to get what they want. But inside we’re all the same .”
    I rattled my head to free myself from such depressing thoughts. I was driving myself crazy. This was my idea, I reminded myself again. Jace wasn’t Eddie, not even remotely. Shelby was our friend and we both wanted to help her. He had never given me any reason not to trust him.
    So I peeled off my clothes and jumped into a frag rant bubble bath, trying to fill my mind with much nicer thoughts… like what I was going to do to him when he finally got back to my room that night. I