Tempting Sydney (11 page)

Unsteady on the skinny boards, I almost fell, but felt a firm hand grab my waist and stabilize me at just the right moment before I would have tumbled. I looked back and saw Drew’s dimples. “Thanks!”

“Any time,” he said, his hand lingering on my waist. Whether it was for support, or an excuse to touch me, I wasn’t sure. I’d take the support, though.

We stepped off the wood walkway and into a tunnel. We had to crouch down and crawl through it. The tunnel was pitch black, and I was constantly on guard for something to jump out from the sides, or in front of me. The confined space wasn’t helping my claustrophobia, either. Without light to guide me, there were more than a couple of times I thought I was going to get stuck. I felt a hand on my ass. I figured it was probably Drew, but couldn’t fault him for it since he was trying to feel his way through the darkness, too. I was surprised I hadn’t accidentally fondled someone myself.

I finally reached the end of the tunnel and pushed through a heavy black curtain into a room pulsing with a bright strobe light. I had no memory of my birth, but figured it probably felt a lot like this, and was just as disorienting. No wonder babies are so pissed when they’re born. I was a little pissed off myself.

I found Brynn and grabbed her arm. “This is ridiculous,” I hissed into her ear. “I’d rather be doing homework.”

She rolled her eyes, still hanging onto Chet. “You’d always rather be doing homework.”

“And his name is Drew! You know how I feel about Drews!”

“Stop overreacting. You’re on one date with him, not having his babies. Plus, you’re obsessed with a Jax. Jaxes are
way
higher than Drews on the douchebag name meter.”

I scowled at the reminder. After he’d followed us to the club and rescued us, Brynn had become even more convinced that Jax was my soul mate.

Drew came up behind me, standing a head taller than me, and pressing into my back. “Hey, you made it!”

I turned from Brynn, trying not to let my pissy mood show and gave Drew a forced smile. “There were times I questioned if I would, but the tunnel eventually birthed me.”

Loud music started blaring and we were all pushed into a room full of mirrors, multi-colored lights flashing in quick patterns meant to be disorienting. The strobe light had been tame compared to this. I kept pushing around the mirrors, trying to find my way through the maze. I finally realized it was useless and they’d provide an exit when they were ready for our group to move on. I decided to stop fighting my predicament, and stood, waiting. I grabbed Drew by the arm so we wouldn’t get separated. He smiled wide. “Don’t worry, I won’t let anything get you.”

Great. My knight in shining armor.

After a few minutes, we were herded into another room. This one had macabre scenes that made photos I’d seen of the plague look like cupcakes and rainbows. It wasn’t scary—it was absolutely disturbing. Each scene was dark until we passed by it, then the scene would flash and come to life. A girl smashing a guy’s head with an ax; a red-eyed monster threatening to attack; a man tied to a rack, arms and legs being pulled apart in four different directions as he screamed in pain. The final scene was a terrified woman sprawled out on what looked to be cobblestone streets. The guy above her was laughing maniacally as he held a knife over her, eyes wild. The screeching music was a horrifying companion to the scene. Just as the guy looked like he was about to do something even worse, like rip off her clothes, the scene went completely black, and the music cut out. I took a deep breath, relieved that part was over, and waited to be herded to the next room of horrors. My eyes tried to adjust to the inky blackness surrounding me, but there was no light at all; I couldn’t even make out shapes.

That’s when I was pulled a few feet away. A strong arm around my waist.

I was glad Drew was so committed to our buddy system, but his grip was a little tight. We stood there, the sound of heavy breathing the only noise in the room. I felt a large hand cup my cheek tenderly—the gesture somewhat familiar. Hot breath hit my face like a warm, beachy breeze. My chest heaved in response. The combination of total darkness and an unfamiliar area where anything could happen had my heart racing, but not with fear—something else. I could feel him in front of me, strong, stable. I liked the feeling more than I wanted to admit. My contemplation was interrupted by soft, silky full lips pressing against mine. He pushed lightly against me, coaxing my mouth open. Our tongues twisted together and the kiss deepened before he suddenly broke away.

His lips, hands, everything—gone.

A blood curdling scream pierced the air and the lights kicked back on, highlighting the woman now dead and bleeding in the scene. The man smiled, his lips curled in a way that seemed to radiate insanity. The actors in this haunted house were pretty damn impressive.

And I was totally disoriented. I looked around the room; Drew was a few paces away. It didn’t
look
like he’d just kissed his blind date. But his name
was
Drew and he
was
probably an epic asshole, so I couldn’t be sure if he was the type to kiss and pace. But jeez, that was an amazing kiss!

I licked my lips, tasting a fruity strawberry flavor. It reminded me of something, but I couldn’t put my finger on what.

I moved closer to Drew, silently studying his face for any sign that he’d just pulled a ninja kiss. He gave nothing away. A door opened and I followed Brynn and Chet, with Drew bringing up the rear. We went through a few more scenes, but my mind was preoccupied as I tried to figure out what had actually happened in that dark room. We rode the elevator back to the top and I managed to nod and give appropriate—albeit short, responses—where I needed to as we were herded through a maze of hay bales, at the end of the attraction.

We were penned in by a chain link fence, and were trying to figure our way out when the obligatory Jason with his chainsaw, minus the chain, was suddenly in the cage with us. He paused to look each one of us in the eye, tilting his head like the psychopath he was. When he got to me, he stopped and stared longer than he had with everyone else. I was uncomfortable with being the subject of his fixation.

Brynn grabbed onto Chet. I had mixed feelings about grabbing the possible stealth kisser Drew, and managed not to until Jason came rushing for us. I screamed and tried to pull Drew with me to the other side of the fence, but he stood there, frozen in place. Great. The guy who was supposed to be protecting me was a pansy. And I wasn’t sticking around to get attacked with him, even if the attack wasn’t real.

I ran to the other side of the fence, leaving Drew by himself. Jason had the chainsaw right above Drew’s head. At first Drew tried to keep it cool, but as the chainsaw lowered more and more, Drew’s fight or flight response kicked in and he eventually ran away, too. Now Brynn, Chet, and Drew were all by the exit and I was alone, on the other side of the enclosure. And really,
really
pissed. I wasn’t going to be terrorized by a fictional character wielding a fake weapon while my date, best friend, and her alleged big dick scampered away. Some protector Drew had been. He had one job and didn’t do it.

Annoyed, I narrowed my eyes and I started to march past Jason. He stalked toward me, pushing me back toward the fence—the last place I wanted to be trapped. Fake chainsaw and fake Jason notwithstanding, the actor still played the part well, and it was hard to be ballsy when I was being detained by a nightmare.

He stood back, holding the chainsaw in front of me, blocking my path. Every time I tried to move, he blocked me again. Finally, I’d had enough. “This is ridiculous,” I said, pushing past him. He grabbed my arm and I swiveled my head in his direction, looking first at my arm, then at him. I’d had friends work as actors in haunted houses. The number one rule was not to touch the attendees. I shifted my eyes up to meet his. They were indiscernible dots through the mask. “Let me go,” I hissed.

The voice that answered was muffled through the mask, but held a familiar, deep tone. The words he spoke were unmistakable, “Not a chance, sweetheart.”

I had one question plaguing me. The same question that had been running through my head all weekend.

Had Jackson West kissed me in a dark, haunted mine? And if he had, was it creepy, or romantic? I couldn’t decide.

I went over the facts—again. The strawberry flavor left on my lips after the kiss had reminded me distinctly of the strawberry candy Jax had popped in his mouth when he fixed the overflow on She-Ra. But a lot of things smelled and tasted like strawberries—including the actual berries—and a lot of people ate strawberries, too. Based on that, I didn’t feel like there was a big enough connection.

Jason’s voice had sounded a lot like Jax’s, but he was wearing a mask, and the voice was hard to distinguish. And the “sweetheart” tacked onto the end of the conversation was a word he’d used in place of my name before. Sweetheart was a pretty common term of endearment, however, so between that and the muffled voice, I had enough uncertainty to drive me nuts with curiosity about whether or not it had actually been Jax. My gut didn’t have any questions, though. My gut told me Jackson West had full-on kissed me—and it had been fantastic. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that revelation. Admitting it even to myself was scary.

I’d gone over and over the night in my head all weekend. Number one, Jax as an actor in a haunted house seemed…odd. I just didn’t cast him as the acting type. Football, wrestling, hell, even baseball, I could see, but drama as an extracurricular? It seemed completely out of character. But maybe I didn’t know him well enough to make that judgment. And if he was that good at drama, no wonder he thought highly of himself in bed. He probably knew quite a bit about role-playing. I got lost in thoughts of that, and the scenes from my fantasies that he could probably act out like a true thespian, before I shook myself out of it and went on to my next point.

Number two, if Jax had pulled something like that off, he’d have owned up to it by now…at least, I thought he would have. Then again, the last time I saw him was at my house the morning after he’d rearranged Karl’s testicles a week ago, so maybe he was waiting until our next meeting to deliver his “I kissed you and you didn’t know it” speech.

Of all the possible kiss explanations, Jax as the kiss ninja made the most sense. It would explain the fact that Drew didn’t seem at all phased by what had happened during the haunted adventure, and—despite his name—was nothing but a gentleman the rest of the night. We’d stopped for hot chocolate after the mine and Drew even bought my drink. Though if he’d stolen a kiss in the dark and still wasn’t owning up to it, hot chocolate was the least he could do.

After calling me sweetheart, “Jason” had terrorized me a bit more before letting me leave with Brynn and the boys. If Jax really had kissed me, he’d broken the rules by touching me—twice: once during the kiss, and again as Jason. A thrill of excitement fluttered through me. Maybe he did like me? I was also a little pissed because why kiss me in the dark, instead of kissing me in a normal lighted area where we could both be privy to the lip lock, and the lead up? You only get one first kiss with a man; it’s really not something you want screwed up. If we’d had a magical moment, at least one of us was unaware of the identity of the other magic maker. That seemed grossly unfair, and gave him the upper hand. I didn’t like that. I preferred to be in control of situations.

“I just wish I knew if it was him,” I said to Brynn. We were doing yoga in the living room, trying to decompress from the weekend. Which meant I was trying to relax, and Brynn was trying to shake a hangover from her second date with Chet on Saturday night.

“Well, it wasn’t Drew,” she said. “I asked.”

“You asked?” My mouth hung open as I switched into Warrior Two pose. “I can’t believe you asked!”

She lifted a shoulder, concentrating on her balance. “Drew was there when I got up this morning, so I took advantage of the situation.”

“Yeah, I noticed you didn’t come home last night. So, are you and Chet an item now, or what?”

She rolled her eyes as she changed positions. “When am I
ever
an item with anyone, Syd? You know I’m just having fun.”

“You had fun with Chet two nights in a row. That’s unusual for you.”

“Chet’s man parts are unusual. They warranted further investigation…you know, for my
research
.”

I laughed and shook my head. “You’re using research as an excuse for a lot lately. I take it the info you got from ‘the wind’ was correct, then?”

Her lips stretched into a smile. “It was. And Chet might be my new go-to booty call. I’m sure Drew would like to be yours. He seemed interested, and was pretty deflated when I told him someone else had ninja kissed you on his date.”

“Ninja kiss” was even funnier when someone said it out loud, and it wasn’t just in my head. “I can’t believe you told him that, either. But it is pretty funny. His date got stolen right under his nose and he had no clue.”