Slow Twitch - Реинхардт Лиз (бесплатные серии книг .txt) 📗

“What do you want to do while we wait?” I asked. So she could throw out an idea that wasn’t me leaping across the room and tearing her clothes off in a fit of uncontrolled lust, ‘cause this girl was messing with my head in a serious way.

“I don’t know.” She linked her hands behind her neck and let her arms open and close like butterfly wings.“I don’t usually have guys over. Actually my parents would probably kill you if they knew you were here.”

“I can keep a secret,” I promised. “So, doesn’t Jeff come and hang?” There he was again, the Goon-in-the-room, but I wanted to know.

“He’s really busy with school and stuff. I only see him when I have a night off and he’s up here.” She dropped her hands and grabbed the end of her ponytail, and she was twisting it around her fingers. “It’s not that often. And we always go out. Like with his friends. He doesn’t like to hang around here much.”

I just nodded. “So what do you do with your girlfriends? When they’re around?”

“Oh!” She laughed nervously. I had never seen Cadence this jittery. I kind of loved it. “We do stupid stuff. Like paint each other’s nails. Or we do karaoke. We got it for Wii. Or we look at old yearbooks.”

“Alright.” I put my hand out. She looked at it for a long second, then took it. “Let’s get this party started. Will karaoke wake Sullie?”

“No.” She squeezed my hand, just slightly, and smiled a little. “Once he’s out, he could sleep through a hurricane.”

“Cool. Um, I guess we should paint our nails while we wait for the food, right? So we can rock our hot looks when we’re performing?” I felt a little like a tool, but just a little.

I was usually trying to keep up a persona, and it got old after a while. Being jaded and sexed-up and rebellious was fine, but it was also kind of humorless sometimes. As ridiculous as the night’s activities sounded, I was kind of looking forward to them.

“You want me to paint your nails?” Cadence pulled my hand over and inspected my nails. “Really?”

“Hell yeah.” I wiggled my fingers at her. “Don’t think I’m going to do yours and not get anything in return.” Alright, I had to get one kinky shot in the midst of all of the flaming girliness.

“I’ll be right back.” Candence ran to the staircase, hopped up a few steps, then looked down at me, smiled, and hopped up the rest of the steps. She came back down a minute later with a bag of polishes. There were probably about fifty thousand, and a lot looked the same, but I wasn’t going to pretend that I knew shit about what a girl needed to keep her nails different colors.

She handed me the bag and we sat across from each other on the couch. “Okay.” She clapped her hands a little. “You pick a color first.”

“I like this green.” It was kind of an olive, metallic color. Not very girly.

“Do you want me to do your toes or your fingers?” She grabbed the polish and smacked it against her palm a few times.

I laughed. “You’re asking me that because you’ve never been exposed to my feet. I guarantee you they stink. You’re not getting near them.”

She unscrewed the top from the polish with a twisted smile and took my hand. Hers were everything you’d want a girl’s hand to be; soft, small, delicate, pretty.

I loved the feel of her holding my hand, and I loved her painting my nails with her ridiculous polish.

“So you think I won’t like you if your feet stink?” She dipped the brush and softly, smoothly, coated one of my nails with a thin coat. Her hands were sure and steady.

“I don’t think I’ve ever talked to anyone about my feet before.” I felt like a slightly different version of myself around Cadence. A more honest version. Who didn’t mind letting a hot girl know how bad my feet smelled.

“Didn’t any of your girlfriends complain about them?” she asked slyly.

She was fishing hardcore, and I was glad for the interest.

“I’ve never had any complaints from the ladies.” When she rolled her eyes, I amended. “I’ve never had any complaints in the physical department.”

“What did your girlfriends complain about?” she asked, laying rapid, even strokes of green paint on my fingernails. It was weird to watch them transform.

“Basic stuff, you know. That I’m a cold-hearted asshole. That I’m a womanizer. That I’m an egomaniac. Basic girlfriend gripes.” I wrapped it up with my best cocky smile, even though I was sweating fucking bullets. I wasn’t into false advertising, but this was pure Kamikaze shit.

She laughed, her shoulders shaking slightly. “So, are you, like, the Casanova of Sussex County?”

“You could say that.” She leaned her head closer, and I could smell the girl shampoo sweetness of her hair.

“So every girl just falls in love when you snap your fingers?” Her green eyes flicked up and she stared right at me from under all those sexy black eyelashes.

“No.” At the word, the light in her eyes cooled and changed. She was hooked and hungry for more. “Not every girl.”

“Even the great Saxon Maclean has been burned?” She was giving every nail a second coat. I was trying to pay attention. It looked easy enough, but, like most shit, I seriously doubted it was as easy as it seemed. And I was going to have to do her in a minute. I smiled at my own dirty mental innuendo.

“Yeah, I’ve been burned.” I watched her cap the polish and flexed my green-nailed fingers.

“Tell me,” she suggested casually. “Unless it hurts too much.” She lifted my hand a little, pursed her lips, and blew gently on the drying paint.

There was something undeniably erotic about watching her blow on that nail polish. Even though I couldn’t put my finger on what it was, I definitely had a visceral reaction to it. One that I had to cover quickly with a throw pillow before I drew any attention to it.

“Alright.” I swallowed hard and tried not to stare too hard as she blew on my fingertips. “I had a thing for this girl. Really, really smart, mad talented, gorgeous, funny, the whole package.”

“Sounds good,” Cadence said coolly, but I could tell her back was up just a tiny bit.

“Too good.” All the stupid fucking memories bumped and burned in the corners of my brain, still pretty raw and mostly just humiliating. “For me, that is. She thought we might work for about three hours. Then she met my brother.”

Cadence’s eyes snapped up. “You have a brother?”

“Yeah.” My mind flipped back to Jake, and, for a split second, I dealt with the weird ache I usually managed to keep smashed completely flat. “And, unfortunately, he’s considered very hot by the women-folk. He’s naturally a nice guy, you know, into all that romantic shit. And he’s a little bit of a straightedge, a totally hard worker, and madly in love with this girl.”

“Wait.” Cadence looked up from her torturous nail polish blowing. “Are you the evil twin?”

I laughed outright. “I might as well be.” I shook my head and immediately wished I could tell Brenna. She’d like that idea. “Anyway, they met and it was like fucking Romeo and Juliet, you know? No competition. I did manage to get her away from him for, like, three weeks. But she was just desperate to get back to him as soon as she could. She figured me out quick.”

“What’s so bad about you, Crackhead?” She put my hands down on my lap, and I felt a little bad about that. I admired the finished product. I’d never had nail polish on my fingers, so it was kind of fascinating.

“I really am cold-hearted.” I tapped the polished surface of my nails with my thumb, surprised by how smooth they were. “I don’t care about other people. I’m kind of a man-whore.” Her eyes popped wide on that one. “I have no ambition. I have no respect. I’m too smart to ever worry about school. I start fights on purpose. I’ve done enough drugs to kill a small horse. I think the real question is, What’s good about me?That one might take less time to figure out.”

Her whole face went still while she looked right at me for a long, uncomfortable minute. “I think there’s a lot of good about you, Saxon.”