Christina Lauren - Sweet Filthy Boy

He laughs. “I really like you.”

“Good night.” I turn to walk back to our door on less than steady legs.

“I’m Ansel.”

I ignore him as I slide my key into the lock.

“Wait! I just want your name.”

I look back over my shoulder. He’s still smiling. Seriously, a kid in my third-grade class had a dimple and it did not make me feel like this. This boy should come with a warning label. “Shut the hell up and I’ll tell it to you tomorrow.”

He takes another step forward, feet bare on the carpet and eyes following me down the hall, and says, “Does that mean we have a date?”

“No.”

“And you really won’t tell me your name? Please?”

“Tomorrow.”

“I’ll just call you Cerise, then.”

I call out, “Fine with me,” as I walk into my room. For all I know, he’s just called me uptight, or prude, or pig jammies.

But somehow, the way he purred the two syllables makes me think it was something else entirely.

As I climb back into bed, I look it up on my phone. Cerise means “cherry.” Of course it does. I’m not sure how I feel about that because something tells me he wasn’t referring to the color of my nail polish.

The girls are both asleep, but I’m not. Even though the noise across the hall has stopped and everything grows still and calm in our suite, I’m hot and flushed and wishing I’d had the guts to stay out in the hallway just a little longer.

HARLOW ORDERS FRIES before dropping her shot into her beer and downing it.

She pulls her forearm across her mouth and looks over at me. I must be gaping because she asks, “What? Should I be classier?”

I shrug, drawing the straw through the ice in my glass. After a morning massage and facial, an afternoon spent at the pool, followed by a few cocktails, we’re all more than a little tipsy. Besides, even after chugging a beer with a shot in it, Harlow looks classy. She could jump into a bin full of plastic balls at McDonald’s Playland and come out looking fresh.

“Why bother?” I ask. “We have the rest of our lives to be sophisticates, but only the one weekend in Vegas.”

She listens to what I say, considers it before nodding firmly and motioning to the bartender. “I’ll have two more shots and whatever that monstrosity is that she’s drinking.” She points to Lola, who’s licking the whipped cream from the rim of a hideous, LED-flashing cup.

He frowns before shaking his head and says, “Two shots of whiskey and one Slut on a Trampoline, coming up.”

Harlow gives me her best shocked face but I barely have time to register it before I feel someone press up behind me at the crowded bar. Large hands grip my hips only a split second before “There you are” is whispered hotly—and directly—into my ear.

I startle, turning and jumping away with a gasp.

Ansel.

My ear feels damp and warm, but when I look at him, I see the same playful light in his eyes he had last night. He’s the guy who’ll do a ridiculous robot dance to make you laugh, who’ll lick the tip of your nose, make a fool out of himself for a smile. I’m sure if I tried to wrestle him to the ground, he’d let me win. And enjoy every minute.

“Too close?” he asks. “I was going for seductive, yet subtle.”

“I’m not sure you could have been any closer,” I admit, fighting a smile as I rub my ear. “You were practically inside my head.”

“He’d make a horrible ninja,” says one of the guys with him.

“Oliver, Finn,” Ansel says, first pointing to a tall friend with messy brown hair, stubble, bright blue eyes behind thick-rimmed glasses, and then to the one who spoke, with short-cropped brown hair, dark backlit eyes, and what I can only imagine is a permanently cocky smirk. Ansel looks back at me. “And gentlemen, this is Cerise. I’m still waiting for her real name.” He leans in a little, saying, “She’ll have to give it up sometime.”

“I’m Mia,” I tell him, ignoring his innuendo. His eyes trip down my face and stall at my lips. It’s precisely the look he would give me if we were about to kiss but he’s too far away. He leans forward, and it feels like watching an airplane fly ten feet from the ground for miles, never getting closer.

“It’s nice to put a face with all the man shouts,” I say to break the thick sexual tension, looking around him to Oliver and Finn, then point to my wide-eyed friends beside me. “This is Lorelei, and Harlow.”

They exchange handshakes, but remain suspiciously quiet. I’m not usually the one meeting guys in situations like this. I’m usually the one pulling Harlow back from hooking up on a table within minutes of meeting someone, while Lola considers beating up any guy who dares speak to us. They may be too stunned to know how to respond.

“Have you been looking for us?” I ask.

Ansel shrugs. “We may have gone to a couple of different places, just to peek.”

Behind him, Oliver—the one in glasses—holds up seven fingers and I laugh. “A couple?”

“No more than three,” Ansel says, winking.

I spot movement just behind him, and before I have a chance to say anything, Finn steps up, attempting to yank Ansel’s pants down. Ansel doesn’t even blink, but instead asks me, “What are you drinking?” and simply grips his waistband without looking even a little surprised or annoyed.

As if I can’t see a considerable amount of gray boxers.

As if I’m not staring directly at where the distinct bulge in the cotton would be.

Is this what boys do?

“It’s nice to see you in your underwear again,” I say, struggling to restrain my grin.

“Almost,” he clarifies. “At least my pants stayed up this time.”

I glance down, wishing I could get another eyeful of his toned thighs. “That’s debatable.”

“Last time Finn did that, they didn’t. I beat his road time this week and he’s been trying to get me back ever since.” He stops, brows lifting and seeming to only now hear what I said. He leans in a little bit, asking in a soft, low voice, “Are you hitting on me?”

“No.” I swallow under the pressure of his unwavering attention. “Maybe?”

“Maybe if my pants go down, your dress should go up,” he whispers, and no sentence anywhere has ever sounded so dirty. “To level the playing field.”

“She’s way too hot for you,” Finn says from behind him. Ansel reaches back, putting a hand on Finn’s face and moving him farther away. He nods to my drink, wordlessly asking what was in my now-empty glass.

I stare back at him, feeling the strange warmth of familiarity spread through me. So this is what chemistry feels like. I’ve felt it with other performers, but that kind of connection is different from this. Usually chemistry between dancers diffuses offstage, or we force real life back in. Here with Ansel, I think we could charge large appliances with the energy moving between us.

He takes my glass and says, “Be right back,” before glancing at Lola as she steps away from the others. She’s watching Ansel like a hawk, with her arms crossed over her chest and stern mom-face on full display. “With a drink,” he tells her good-naturedly. “Overpriced, watered-down alcohol, probably with some questionable fruit. Nothing funny, I promise. Would you like to come with me?”

“No, but I’m watching you,” she says.

He gives her his most charming smile before turning to me. “Anything in particular you desire?”

“Surprise me,” I tell him.

After he walks a few feet away to get the bartender’s attention, the girls give me exaggerated what the hell stares and I shrug back—because, really, what can I say? The story is laid out right in front of them. A hot guy and his hot friends have located us in a club, and said hot guy is buying me a drink.

Lola, Harlow, and Ansel’s friends make polite conversation but I can barely hear them, thanks to the booming music and my heartbeat pounding in my ears. I try not to stare down the bar to where Ansel has wedged himself between a few bodies, but in my peripheral vision I can see his head above most others, and his long, lean body leaning forward to call out his order to the bartender.

He returns a few minutes later with a new tumbler, full of ice and limes and clear liquid, offering it to me with a sweet smile. “Gin and tonic, right?”

“I was expecting you to get me something adventurous. Something in a pineapple or with sparklers.”

“I smelled your glass,” he says, shrugging. “I wanted to keep you on the same drink. Plus”—he gestures down my body—“you have this whole flapper girl thing going on with the short dress and the”—he draws a circle in the air with his index finger near my head—“the shiny black hair and straight bangs. And those red lips. I look at you and I think ‘gin.’” He stops, scratching his chin, and adds, “Actually I look at you and think—”

Laughing, I hold up my hand to stop him there. “I have no idea what to do with you.”

“I have some suggestions.”

“I’m sure you do.”

“Would you like to hear them?” he says, grin firmly in place.

I take a deep, steadying breath, pretty sure I’m in way over my head with this one. “How about you tell me a little about you guys first. Do you all live in the States?”

“No. We met a few years ago doing a volunteer program here where you bike from one city to another, building low-income housing as you go. We did it after university a few years back and worked from Florida to Arizona.”

I look at him more closely now. I hadn’t given much thought to who he is or what he does, but this is far more interesting than a group of asshole foreign guys blowing money on a Vegas suite. And biking from state to state definitely explains the muscular thighs. “That’s not at all what I expected you to say.”