"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 elevators. "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?"