The Cora Carmack New Adult Boxed Set: Losing It, Keeping Her, Faking It, and Finding It plus bonus material (40 page)

The old Jewish quarter.
That’s
where Katalin said we were going.

Oy vey.

It sure as hell didn’t look to me like there were any bars around here. I took in the sketchy neighborhood, and thought at least I’d gotten laid last night. If I was going to get chopped into tiny pieces,
at least
I’d go out with a bang. Literally.

I laughed and almost recounted my thoughts to my companions, but I was pretty sure it would get lost in translation.
Especially because I was starting to question even Katalin’s grip on the English language, if this was what “bar” meant to her.

I pointed to a grungy building devoid of any signs or address and said, “Drink?” Then mimed the action just to be safe.

One of the guys said, “
Igen
. Drink.” The word sounded like
ee-gan,
and I’d picked up just enough to know it meant yes.

Whoo-hoo. I was practically fluent already.

I followed Katalin and András (I was seventy-five percent sure that her guy was András). They stepped into the darkened doorway of one derelict building that gave me the heebiest of jeebies. The taller of my Hungarian hotties slipped an arm around my shoulders. I took a guess and said, “Tamás?” His teeth were pearly white when he smiled. I would take that as a yes. Tamás equaled tall. And drop-dead sexy. Noted.

One of his hands came up and brushed back the blond hair from my face. I tilted my head back to look at him, and excitement sparked in my belly. What did language matter when dark eyes locked on mine, strong hands pressed into my skin, and heat filled the space between us?

Not a whole hell of a lot.

Tonight was going to be a good night. I could feel it.

We followed the rest of the group into the building, and I felt the low thrum of techno music vibrating the floor beneath my feet.

Interesting.

We traveled deeper into the building and came out into a large room. Walls had been knocked down, and no one had bothered to move the pieces of concrete. Christmas lights and lanterns lit the space. Mismatched furniture was scattered around the bar. There was even an old car that had been repurposed into a dining booth. It was easily the weirdest, most confusing place I’d ever been in.

“You like?” Katalin asked.

I pressed myself closer to Tamás and said, “I
love
.”

He led me to the bar where drinks were dirt cheap. I pulled out a two thousand forint note. For less than the equivalent of ten U.S. dollars, I bought all five of us shots.

Amazing. Maybe I should stay in Eastern Europe forever.

And I would totally consider it . . . except there was one downside to Europe. For some reason that made no sense to me, they gave lemon slices with tequila instead of lime. The bartenders always looked at me like I’d just ordered elephant sweat in a glass. They just didn’t understand the magical properties of my favorite drink. If my accent didn’t give me away as a tourist, my drink of choice always did.

Lime or not, tequila is my bestie, so I took it eagerly.

Next, Tamás bought me a gin bitter lemon, a drink I’d been introduced to a few weeks ago. It almost made the absence of margaritas in this part of the world bearable. I downed it like it was lemonade on a blistering Texas day. His eyes went wide, and I licked my lips. István bought me another, and the acidity and sweetness rolled across my tongue.

Tamás gestured for me to down it again. It wasn’t really that kind of drink, but who was I to deny him? I threw it back to a round of applause.

God, I love when people love me.

I took hold of Tamás’s and István’s arms and pulled them away from the bar. There was a room that had one wall knocked out in lieu of a door, and it overflowed with dancing bodies.

That
was where I wanted to be.

I tugged my boys in that direction, and Katalin and András followed close behind. We had to step over a small pile of concrete rubble if we wanted to get into the room. I took one look at my turquoise heels, and knew there was no way in hell I was managing that with my sex appeal intact. I turned to István and Tamás—sizing them up. István was the beefier of the two, so I put an arm around his neck. We didn’t need to speak the same language for him to understand what I wanted. He swept an arm underneath my legs and pulled me up to his chest. It was a good thing I wore skinny jeans instead of a skirt.

“
Köszönöm,
” I said, even though he probably should have been thanking
me,
based on the way he was openly ogling my chest.

Ah well. I didn’t mind ogling. I was still pleasantly warm from the alcohol, and the music drowned out the world. My shitty parents and uncertain future were thousands of miles away across an ocean. My problems might as well have been drowning at the bottom of said ocean for how much they mattered to me in that moment.

The only expectations here were ones that I had encouraged and I was all too willing to follow through on. So, maybe, my new “friends” only wanted me for money and sex. It was better than not being wanted at all. Besides . . . everyone wants something from someone else. I just preferred to be up front about it.

István’s arms flexed around me, and I melted into him. My father liked to talk, or yell rather, about how I didn’t appreciate anything. But the male body was one thing I had no issue appreciating. István played soccer, and he was all hard muscles and angles beneath my hands. And those girls were definitely a-wandering.

By the time he’d set my feet on the dance floor, my hands had found those delicious muscles that angled down from his hips. I bit my lip and met his gaze from beneath lowered lashes. If his expression was any indication, I had found Boardwalk and had the all clear to proceed to Go and collect my two hundred dollars.

Or forint. Whatever.

Tamás pressed his chest against my back, and I gave myself up to the alcohol and the music and the sensation of being stuck between two gorgeous specimens of man.

Time started to disappear between frenzied hands and drips of sweat. There were more drinks and more dances. Each song faded into the next. Colors danced behind my closed eyes. And it was almost enough.

For a while, I got to be blank. A brand-new canvas. Untouched snow.

I’d checked my baggage at the door, and
just was
.

And it was perfect.

There was no room for unhappiness when squeezed between two sets of washboard abs.

New life motto, right there.

I gave István a couple notes and sent him to get more drinks. In the meantime, I turned to face Tamás. He’d been pressed against my back for God knows how long, and I’d forgotten how tall he was. I leaned back to meet his gaze, and his hands smoothed down my back to my ass.

I smirked and said, “Someone is happy to have me all to himself.”

He pulled my hips into his, his arousal pressing low against my stomach, and said, “Beautiful American.”

Right. No point expending energy on cheeky banter that he couldn’t even understand. I had a pretty good idea how to better use my energy. I slipped my arms around his neck and tilted my head in the universal sign of “kiss me.”

Tamás didn’t waste any time. Like, really . . .
no
time. The dude went zero to sixty in seconds. His tongue was so far down my throat, it was like being kissed by the love child of a lizard and Gene Simmons.

We were both pretty drunk. Maybe he didn’t realize that he was in danger of engaging my gag reflex with his Guinness record-worthy tongue. I eased back and his tongue assault ended, only for his teeth to clamp down on my bottom lip.

I was all for a little biting, but he pulled my lip out until I had one half of a fish mouth. And he stood there, sucking on my bottom lip for so long that I actually started counting to see how long it would last.

When I got to fifteen (FIFTEEN!) seconds, my eyes settled on a guy across the bar watching my dilemma with a huge smile. Was
shit-eating grin
in the dictionary? If not, I should snap a picture for Merriam-Webster.

I braced myself and pulled my poor, abused lip from Tamás’s teeth with a
pop
. My mouth felt like it had been stuck in a vacuum cleaner. While I pressed my fingers to my numb lip, Tamás started placing sloppy kisses from the corner of my lips across my cheek to my jaw.

His tongue slithered over my skin like a snail, and all the blissful alcohol-induced haze that I’d worked so hard for disappeared.

I was painfully aware that I was standing in an abandoned-building-turned-bar with a trail of drool across my cheek, and that a guy across the room was now openly laughing at me.

And he was fucking gorgeous, which made it so much worse.

Sometimes . . . the
now
sucked.

M
y amused stalker had olive-toned skin, dark eyes, and hair cut close to his head. He had that muscled, military look about him, which sparked half a dozen dirty puns in my head about him invading my territories. Plus, he was tall with a permanent smolder that would have made Tyra Banks stop the crazy train and stare.

Unfortunately, the only staring happening was on his part. Why did it have to be someone so hot who witnessed my face sucking of shame? And as if he could read my thoughts through my gaze, he laughed
harder
.

I tore myself away from Tamás and put my hand up to keep him from following me.

“Bathroom!” I blurted.

The word meant nothing to him, so he reached for me again.

“Eh-eh!” I gave him the Heisman and tried, “Toilet?”

His brow furrowed, and he held a hand to his ear. So I yelled louder, “Toilet!”

The volume didn’t help, but it did make a dozen or so people around us who obviously spoke English stop and gawk at me. And my traitorous eyes found the guy across the room. If he laughed any harder, he was going to pop a lung.

Damn it.

I guessed he didn’t have any issues understanding my English.

I turned and fled, probably only exponentially increasing the size of the scene I’d just made, but I was only focused on washing away the embarrassment with another drink.

I tried to walk over the rubble pile that led back to the bar, but the ground kept moving, and I felt a million miles tall in these heels. Tipsier than I realized, I blinked, trying to bring the world back into focus. I had to bend and balance my hand on a chunk of concrete to keep from toppling over.

“What? No more locals around to carry you?”

I turned my head to the side, and my worst fears came true.

Soldier Smolder. He was even more gorgeous up close, which was only magnified by his deep voice. And from the sound of it, he was American, too. The look on his face was part teasing–part condescending, but his eyes still had my organs doing somersaults.

Or . . . that could have been the alcohol.

Both. Let’s go with both.

“I don’t need anyone to carry me. I’m perfectly—whoa.”

I tried to straighten up, but my ankle twisted and the world went a little topsy-turvy. In what seemed like fast-forward, I went from standing to sitting on the rubble in the blink of an eye, the heels of my hands scraped raw from the rough concrete. I was still trying to figure out if I was moving at lightning speed, or if the world was moving really slowly, when suddenly—I was flying.

My vision filled with a strong jaw that gave way to soft, full lips. And then eyes so piercing, they reminded me of growing up in church and feeling certain that somewhere out there was a God that was watching, and could see everything I didn’t want him to see.

“You remind me of God, “I mumbled, then immediately wished I could suck those words back into my mouth.

He laughed. “Well, that’s a new one for me.”

“I meant . . .” I don’t know what I meant. God, I was drunk. “Let me down. I don’t need anyone to carry me.”

He spoke, and I felt his low voice vibrate from his chest into mine. “I don’t care what you think you need.”

Story of my life. I loved men as much as the next girl, but why was it that they always seemed to think they knew better?

I rolled my eyes and said, “Fine, carry me all night. Works for me.”

I leaned my head on his shoulder and snuggled up against his chest to get comfortable. I was just curling my hand around the back of his neck when he plopped my feet down on the ground, on the other side of the rubble. I winced, pain jolting up from my ankles to my knees from the hard landing.

Sigh. I should have kept my smart mouth shut. I pretended like I wasn’t disappointed, shrugged, and turned toward the bar. He appeared in front of me so fast, and my reflexes were so slow, that I barely managed to keep from face-planting into his pecs.

Wait
. . . Why was I trying to keep from doing that?

He said, “What? No thank-you?”

I leveled him with a stare, feeling more sober than I had a few moments ago. “I’m not in the habit of thanking people who do things to me against my will. So, if you don’t mind—”

I pushed past him and flagged down the bartender, who thankfully spoke English. I asked for tequila and took a seat on a barstool.

“Give her a water, too,” my stalker added, sitting down beside me.

I eyed him. Hot, he was definitely hot. But I’d never met a guy in a bar who tried to get me
less
drunk. That somehow made it harder to trust him.

Twisted, I know. But I had learned a long time ago that if you didn’t figure out what people wanted from you at the beginning, it would come back to bite you in the ass later. Plus, if I was reading the tension in his jaw correctly, he was angry, and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out why he was sitting there beside me if I annoyed him so much.

I said, “You’re awfully pushy, stranger.”

And kind of dangerous. Who knew stranger-danger could be so hot?

“You’re awfully drunk, princess.”

I laughed. “Honey, I’m barely getting started. When I start talking about how I can’t feel my cheeks and get a little touchy-feely, then you’ll know I’m
awfully drunk
.”

His eyebrow raised when I said touchy-feely, but he didn’t comment. My shot arrived, along with a cup of water. I glared at the latter, pushing it away from me, then grabbed my shot.