That didn't mean I couldn't throw a little bait on the hook to test the water, as my dad would say—just small things to gauge his reaction, if he gave any at all. Knowing I was stepping outside my comfort zone, I attempted to channel one of the strong female characters I was used to writing—characters that were the opposite of me and were not afraid to seduce a man. Someone who knew what she wanted and wasn't afraid to show it.
It felt understandably awkward, especially after my first attempt that nearly shook my confidence. The idea was to lean in and whisper something in Alec's ear during the panel we were sitting in. At which point my lips would "accidentally" graze his ear. The problem with my plan was that I was still me, not one of the characters from my books. In my typical fashion, I forgot about my cell phone on my lap, which of course fell to the floor. In my haste to try and catch it, my face nearly ended up in his crotch, which would have been interesting, but was not my intention. For once my awkwardness actually paid off, since I caught myself by placing a hand on his leg. His glorious, hard thigh, to be exact. It could have—and should have—been a disaster that turned my face several shades of red, but somehow I maintained my composure. Alec reached down and picked up my phone and handed it back to me. His eyes stopped on my hand that still sat on his thigh before he looked up and smiled. A warm giddy feeling filled my belly. A hand on the leg was definitely bigger bait than a lip grazing his ear, and I would take it as a subtle victory.
My next attempt went more according to plan. As the crowd filed out of the small convention room after the panel discussion, Alec stood behind me when I dropped my purse. I abruptly put on the brakes, and as planned, Alec bumped into my backside. Trying to keep from bowling me over, his hands circled my waist, anchoring me snugly against his hips. "Oops, sorry," I murmured. Feeling him pressed against me felt so obnoxiously good I had to fight off the urge to snuggle closer.
"Butterfingers today, huh?" He laughed, kneeling down to pick up my purse for me. I looked down to catch him, taking notice of where his head was in respect to certain areas of my body. Needless to say, it made that particular area take notice also. "Here you go," he said, standing.
High with power, I filed from the room with a new bounce in my step. The signals were subtle, but it seemed he was still interested. Some stupid code of ethics was just holding him back.
It was time to put Operation Seduction into play.
Chapter Eleven
Deciding to try and seduce Alec was easy. Figuring out how was the hard part. It would be different if I was as beautiful and confident as Olivia, but this was me. I could write a steamy seduction scene, but the thought of actually orchestrating one practically broke me out in hives.
That evening as I dressed for the Hunky Ball, I mentally sifted through a list of ways I could possibly get Alec into bed. The obvious methods, like simply asking, were not an option, and everything else that came to mind sounded either ridiculous or just plain desperate. He'd already seen my breasts, so that would be nothing new. Besides, he'd gotten more than his share of cleavage in his face during the trip. Liquor could be an option, but considering he was a bartender, and I was the lightweight drinker, I would likely get nothing out of that scenario but a hangover.
Finally, as I applied a light layer of makeup, it occurred to me that I could do what I had been doing all day. Be myself. Anything else would seem forced and transparent. I had already thrown out some bait today and it went a long way toward snagging his attention. All I had to do now was reel it in. It may not have been the most creative plan, but it was me. If I couldn't get Alec that way, it wasn't going to ever happen.
My thoughts were interrupted by a light rap on my door. Giving myself a quick once-over, I tucked a lock of hair behind my ear that had escaped the knot I had gathered on my head. I was shooting for something elegant, but I wasn't the best at fixing my own hair. My messy buns usually ended up looking more like birds' nests. Attracting pigeons would probably be a little over-the-top dorky. With my luck, I had just jinxed myself.
Sighing, I gave my bird's nest one last pat before pulling my door open with gusto. I was unprepared for the sight of Alec dressed to the nines. Everything I had been thinking flew from my head, along with my ability to breathe.
I sucked in a mouthful of air at the time I should have been exhaling. My confused lungs expressed their displeasure by taking it out on my throat, which closed.
Choking on thin air is embarrassing enough, but doing it in front of the man I'd like to see in my bed while he pounded me on the back wasn't exactly the essence of sexiness I was hoping to start the evening with.
"Jesus, are you okay?" Alec sounded concerned. He should be. My life felt like it was coming to an end. How ironic that this would be my final moment. Dying as a virgin in the arms of the man I wanted to take my virginity. Hopefully Olivia would learn to love or at least coexist with Severus.
Catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror as I hacked my lungs out, I could see my mascara mixed with tears running down my cheeks. My face was red and blotchy and my hair had fallen down. This would be the last image Alec would have of me.
My description was a tad melodramatic. I might not have been dying, but the raccoon eyes, clown face and scarecrow-like hair were true enough.
I turned away from my reflection, focusing on dragging air into my asshole lungs that wouldn't be happy until I had barfed all over Alec.
Thankfully, that didn't happen. After several more pounds on my back, I began to breathe again—barely. I felt like I'd just run a marathon.
As my heaving breaths returned to normal, Alec began rubbing his hand in wide circles along my back. It felt so good I almost forgot I looked like something from a Stephen King novel. "You gonna make it?" He smiled, trying to make me feel better.
I stepped away from him reluctantly, even though I couldn't help returning his smile. "I'm fine," I croaked. "Tell me you would have at least known what to do if I had passed out."
"Most definitely. I was tops in my class in mouth to mouth," he said, winking. "Whoops. It slipped. I'm still working on that."
"Funny. I'll let it slide since you practically saved my life. Give me a sec to fix—well, this," I said, waving my hands up and down my body and face.
It only took five minutes to scrub my face clean and reapply my mascara. I decided to throw my hair up into a high ponytail this time that would be easier to manage. At least my throat was already beginning to feel better. I smoothed on some lip gloss as a finishing touch. No one would mistake me for a model, but it was a vast improvement over what I looked like before.
Alec was sitting on the edge of my bed when I left the bathroom. This time I was able to better appreciate his appearance. To say he was devastatingly handsome in a tuxedo would be cliché, but it was true. In my opinion, a tux automatically knocked every guy up two notches in the looks department. Considering Alec's looks were already a ten, shoving him in a tux knocked him off the freaking charts.
"You look lovely," he said, standing up.
I didn't snort. It would have ruined the ladylike image the dress I was wearing was supposed to project. Next to him, I was the ugly stepsister.
"You doubt me?" My look of reservation had not escaped his notice. He stepped closer, offering me his arm.
"No, I just disagree. Olivia is lovely. I'm average. You know, the girl next door. The one guys eventually settle down with after they're tired of doinking anything that moves." Chicken-eggs-in-a-crap-basket. As usual, the words left my mouth before I could retract them. Highlighting the fact that I wasn't beautiful wasn't the best way to seduce a guy.
"Doink?" He laughed, holding the door open for me.
Shooting him a sheepish grin, I grabbed my room key off the dresser and slid it into my small clutch before leaving. "Sorry, my brothers used to say that all the time. You'd never know I was in college by my thirteen-year-old mouth."
Alec placed his hand lightly on the small of my back, leading me toward the bank of e
levators. "I didn't know you were in college."
His touch made me want to do cartwheels, but I was able to keep my head as we stepped on the elevator together. "I'm finishing up a bachelor's degree in English lit. Slowly, since I only take a couple classes per semester. The sense of urgency to finish dissipated as soon as I realized I was already working my dream job. I'll graduate eventually. Besides, it'll be nice to have a degree to fall back on if my books begin to tank, but for now I'm happy with the way things are going."
"And you're all of what, twenty-one?"
"Twenty-two," I said, correcting him. He laughed. "Sorry, habit. I've always looked young for my age, so I'm constantly forced to convince people of my actual age. Each year counts. How old are you?"
"Twenty-five, but I feel much older," he admitted as the elevator slowly chugged downward. The book convention had booked the hotel to peak capacity, so all the elevators had been abused the past few days. Thankfully, we were only on the fifth floor and didn't have to wait as long as others.
We could hear the buzz of voices in the lobby before we had even reached the ground floor. It sounded like a bunch of bees in a hive. As the elevator doors opened, the noise swelled and we were engulfed in the loud chatter. "You ready for this?" I asked Alec as we stepped into the throng of women all dressed to the gills, waiting for the ballroom doors to open.
We received more than our share of whistles and catcalls, or should I say, Alec received them, as we walked arm in arm through the lobby.
"Hey, sweetheart, show us your pecs."
As women, we never liked to admit it, but sometimes we could be as raunchy as a bunch of construction workers. Alec took it all in stride. "You can dress the woman in a fancy dress, but the horndog is still waiting to bark," I muttered as Alec grabbed my hand. His long lean fingers laced through mine and we continued toward the cash bar set up on the far side of the room. I appreciated the seemingly intimate gesture more than he may have realized. There were a serious number of bodies waiting for the ballroom doors to open and I was feeling claustrophobic.
Alec leaned in close to talk over the loud echoing pitch in the room. "What's your poison?"
"Something fruity, please." I tilted my face toward his, making our cheeks touch—accidentally. Smiling to myself, I remembered my original plan to graze his ear in the panel earlier that morning. It seemed the only way my plans ever worked was by accident.
With drinks in hand, we moved to the far corner of the room, away from the majority of the crowd. I took a long sip of my drink to take the edge off. My lips puckered from the strong taste of alcohol, but I didn't let that deter me from taking another long drink.
"You okay?" Alec watched as I sucked down my drink like it was a Coke.
"Sure, this is my favorite thing in the world to do. You know what would make it even better? If they decided to seal up the room and slowly fill it with water. That would make everything dinosaur nuts fabulous."
He barked out a laugh, taking a pull off his bottle of beer. I was sure he hadn't meant to do it, but he managed to distract me anyway. Alec was sexy even when he was taking a drink. I decided it had to be his mouth. Anytime it came into contact with something, my body responded.
"I thought you had a lot of friends here. You look so nervous."
I answered, pulling my thoughts from my lip watching. "I do. I just get overwhelmed in crowds. All the conversations going on at once gives me sensory overload."
"So, you don't really want to fill up the room with water and drown everyone?"
"What? No. What I meant was being in a crowded room was about as much fun as being in a sealed room filling with water."
"I take it you're afraid of water too, then?"
"Not water in particular. I actually like to swim when I have time. I'm afraid of big water, like tsunamis, hurricanes, flash floods. Any of those reach my freak-out meter."
"Sweetheart, I hate to break the news, but you sorta live in the wrong state." The word sweetheart left his mouth like thick honey, but much more enticing. It made me want to lick his lips.
I blamed the drink I had just consumed. "That's why I don't live on the beach. I have it down to a science. Even if a tsunami hit the east coast of Florida, the water wouldn't reach me on the second floor of my apartment complex."
"I guess a romantic getaway to the Keys is out."
I couldn't tell if he was propositioning me or just moving the conversation forward. "Are you kidding? I'd have to be tranquilized before you could even get me across the Seven Mile Bridge. Not to mention I would need to be knocked out to stay on an island surrounded by water."
"It's really not that bad. The farther south you go, the more crystal blue the water gets. You can literally see everything in the water when you stand in it."
"Pass. I don't need to see the shark before he snaps my hand off," I joked.
"You're afraid of sharks too?"
"Who isn't? Have you seen the movie Jaws?" I realized the list of phobias I was admitting to was quite extensive, and I hadn't even mentioned my fear of spiders, heights or roller coasters flying off their tracks. "How about you? I bet you're not scared of anything."
"Snakes."
"Snakes?"
"Yep, Indiana Jones had nothing on my fear of those slithering bastards. They should all die in the pits of hell."
I couldn't help laughing at the passion in his voice. It was cute.
"Ms. Blake," a voice called out from behind Alec. Instinctively, I looked around for my mom. Ms. Blake was so formal. It took a moment before it registered in my head that the voice was talking to me.
"Yes?" I answered, stepping away from the wall I had been slouching against.
"We're ready for you and your model," a woman said, blushing brightly when she nodded in Alec's direction.
"You need me too?" I asked.
She nodded. "We'd like the authors to introduce their models before each one is auctioned off."
"Like with a microphone?" I groaned as we followed her through a side door into the ballroom.
"Yes, ma'am," she answered respectfully, though she wasn't much older than me.
Alec leaned in to whisper in my ear. "Microphone phobia too?"
"Public speaking," I answered out of the side of my mouth.
He chuckled but didn't comment as his warm hand found the small of my back again.
We stepped onto a makeshift stage that had been set up on the far left side of the ballroom. With the paranormal theme of this year's event, the room was decorated top to bottom to resemble a dark and mysterious lair. Purple and magenta lights shining on the walls combined with the crystal chandeliers twinkling on the ceiling gave the illusion of movement as the music throbbed throughout the lair.
Alec let out a low whistle of admiration. "Swanky. This is something else." He turned to the girl who had fetched us and winked at her.
She beamed. Even under the dark purple lighting, I could see the bright red shade of her face. I couldn't blame her. Alec was intoxicating.
The assistant left us on the stage with the other models and authors. I edged closer to my friend Jennifer, and Tristan, the model she had used for some of her previous books and who also adorned the cover of her current release. Tristan was a veteran in the cover-modeling scene. Currently, he looked plain bored. His abs and pecs had graced more than a hundred romance novel covers. I knew from past conversations with Jennifer that he was hardcore. He maintained a daily regimen of exercise and buffed and waxed his entire body every single week. He also went to the tanning salon at least four times a week and was a dedicated vegan. His services came with a big price tag from what I understood, but readers loved him.
"Hey, Jennifer," I said, giving her a quick hug.
Tristan's bored expression disappeared the instant he took in Alec standing next to me. Watching the way he eyed Alec like he was a delectable treat made it clear what side his bread was buttered on. "Jennifer, this is Alec," I said, introducing them.
She
shook Alec's hand, looking as nervous as I was. "Nice to meet you."
Tristan cleared his throat, waiting to be included in the introductions. "Oh, right," she said, shaking her head. "This is Tristan."
"Good to meet you." Alec gripped Tristan's hand firmly and patted him on the shoulder. Watching the almost giddy look on Tristan's face made me wonder if that was how I had looked the first time I saw Alec. I debated having a little fun with him, but I became distracted when a couple more people joined us on stage. Specifically, the author who would be my archenemy if I had one.
Samantha Tran and I started self-publishing at the same time and had naturally formed a friendship as we waded through the trenches together. She found greater success a little quicker than I had when her third book took off like a rocket. I was thrilled for her. It was encouraging to see someone I knew find a larger audience for their books. The way we had supported each other, it felt like a shared success. Somewhere between hitting a couple bestseller lists, Samantha decided our friendship was no longer necessary. Some of the personal thoughts we had shared with each other about our fears and insecurities had started being whispered back to me through social media. Of course, what she neglected to tell anyone was that some of the things she was giving me the embarrassing credit for saying had come from her mouth, not mine. The worst part was she did it all to fit in with a different crowd. Her crushing betrayal almost made me walk away from the business. It was like high school all over again, but so much worse. We were adults after all. Hell, we were supposed to be professional.