Page 10 of Maybe This Time (About Time 0.5)
“Do I detect a note of competition in there, Jackson Pearce?”
He gives me a you wouldn’t dare look as he pats his chest. “You want to take me on in pinball, Stone Zenith?”
I puff out my chest. “I absolutely do.”
“Have at it,” he says, confidence etched in those hazel eyes. “Even though I am on the job, and I’ll need to be looking out for you the whole time. Might make it hard.”
Hard. Tell me about it.
“Do not try to get out of it with that whole ‘on the job’ thing.”
He stares at me, unblinking. “You do want me to protect you, don’t you?”
“I do. But I have no doubt I can swing us a private pinball room at any arcade in this city,” I say, snapping my fingers.
“Cocky. You are so cocky,” he says, shaking his head in amusement.
And I love it. I love that a couple of months on the job and he already knows me. He’s unafraid to give me shit.
After a quick Google search, I lob in a request for a private room at a nearby arcade. We walk along the crowded streets, him glued to my side, his hand occasionally skirting over my back if someone comes too close.
My skin sparks the slightest bit from those grazes of his hand, but I do my best to ignore the racing sensation in my body.
It’s harder when a crowd pours out of the subway station, and he drapes an arm around my shoulder, keeping me close.
That arm. That hand.
They are fire on me.
Then the crowd dissipates, and he drops his arm. My skin is sad.
Shake it off.
We reach the skyscraper that’s home to the arcade on the sixth floor, typical of Tokyo. It’s located above a karaoke bar.
“Don’t you want to go sing karaoke?” he asks with narrowed eyes and a nudge of the elbow as we walk through the lobby.
“Why don’t we do that next?” My eyes widen. “Hey, can you sing?”
He laughs. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
I stare like I’m waiting for an answer as we bound up the stairs. “I would like to know. That’s why I’m asking.”
He gives me a look that says you’ve got to be kidding. “Do you really think I’m going to do karaoke with a rock star? Dude who has Grammys? Who sings in front of thousands every night?”
“Yes. You should.” I poke his chest. Damn, that feels good. He’s so incredibly firm. Like brick. Sexy brick. “Karaoke is for everyone.”
“I’m not asking you to play tackle football with me, am I?”
I stop on that image. Stop and savor. “I would. I would play tackle football with you,” I say.
I would love tackle football with him. Too much.
Too much indeed. I should stop thinking about tackle football. Because it’s not actually tackle football I want to play with him.
It’s tackle me on the bed.
But pinball will have to do.
As we reach the sixth floor, Jackson pushes open the door, smiling as if the exercise has done him good. “Ah, stairs.”
I laugh. “But it’s the elevator next time.”
“We’ll see about that.”
We make our way to the arcade, finding several machines right next to each other in a private room as promised.
We take on each other in a best-of-three pinball match. The man is ruthless. A fierce competitor. He is in the zone, lasered in on every single move.
And he destroys me in Star Wars. I annihilate him in Metallica. And he trounces me in Game of Thrones.
“You won,” I say, shaking his hand good-game-style. “I guess that means I owe you a beer.”
“I don’t drink on the job. But, Stone?”
“Yes, J-man?”
A wicked grin shifts his lips. “You don’t need to get me anything. Because you know what I have?”
“What’s that?” I ask carefully.
A playful glint crosses his eyes. “The satisfaction of winning,” he says, all low and smoky.
A tone that could turn me on.
“You are ruthless. And I love it.”
“Thanks. Also, good game. I suppose since you were such a good sport, I can let you pick the elevator.”
“Oh, no. You don’t need to give in on anything.”
But he doesn’t have to, since the stairwell now sports a sign that says closed for cleaning.
“Sometimes an elevator is where you want to be,” I say, echoing my words from the day we met.
“Sometimes it is,” he says, his tone still in that deeper zone, but now it’s a little sexier, a little racier.
Or maybe it’s all in my head.
We step into the elevator. It’s only us in the small space as we descend, and I dig that we’re alone, since I dig the way he teases me, the way he pokes fun at me, but I hate too that we’re in this small space, his clean, soapy scent more intense than when we’re out in the open, and all I want is for him to pin me in the corner and let me show him why elevators can be better than stairs.
