A Demon in Waiting (Crimson Romance) by Holley Trent Page B

Invigorated, even. She could be up all night with the way her body thrummed with excitement. That was the kind of juice that could have kept her on the road until dark. She knew coffee didn’t have a damned thing to do with it, though, and the feeling probably couldn’t be replicated.
    She stabbed the
Up
button and offered her escort a little grin.
    He smiled back. He knew where the evening was going as well as she did. He was holding the proof in that paper bag. If he was concerned at all about losing his virginity to a woman who’d picked him up from a roadside, he certainly didn’t show it.
    Suddenly, she tensed as if she’d been injected with a shot of ice water.
His virginity.
A lump formed in her throat that seemed too large to swallow and the lobby’s air suddenly seemed too thin to breathe.
    His virginity
. She didn’t want to be responsible for that. That was a lot of pressure. He’d remember that coupling for the rest of his life, whether it was good, bad, or ordinary. She didn’t want to turn sex into a performance, by any means, but she couldn’t just lay there with her eyelids fluttering while he did all the work. Or would he expect her to be the one on top? The
experienced
one?
    They stepped into the open elevator with her still ruminating over what was about to happen, but before she could formulate a plan of any sort, a man slipped in between the closing doors.
    “Whew!” he said with his back to the doors and offering Ariel, then Hitch, a giant grin.
    Ariel stared.
    “Thought I’d miss y’all. Hitch, you didn’t hear me calling you? I know it’s been a long time, but that’s no way to treat your brother.”
    Brother?
    She studied the man. Tall, lean, dark-haired where Hitch was blond, but there was a definite resemblance there. Same blue eyes. Same sly grin. Naturally, he was gorgeous, and there she was, standing in a cramped elevator with wrinkled clothes, wearing no make-up, and her hair probably looked like she’d combed it that morning with a plastic fork. Just her luck, really, to be wedged between two drop-dead sexy men and to look like she’d just clawed her way out of a grave.
    She whimpered, though probably neither heard.
    Hitch’s expression shifted from one of confusion, to stunned horror, to annoyance.
    What’s going on here?
    She looked from one man to the other, trying to get a read on their relationship, but that information seemed closed off to her. As if a wall had been erected.
    Finally, Hitch said, “What are you doing here?”
    The brown-haired brother shrugged. “I’m on the road a lot, remember?”
    Hitch lifted a brow, then turned his gaze to the digital display that told them what floor they’d ascended to. Two to go.
    “Just made a little overnight stop. Heading to Utah, towing some cars. Saw your ass and said to myself, ‘Shit, that can’t be Hitch’.”
    They stopped. The elevator dinged. They got out, and the newcomer followed them.
    She read the room number on her keycard and pointed when Hitch looked to her for direction. They headed down the corridor.
    “Folks call me Trucker, by the way,” the man said, catching up to Ariel and looking down at her with a grin.
    “Trucker and Hitch. I sense a theme,” she said.
    It dawned on her that she didn’t even know Hitch’s real name and she was thinking about having sex with the guy. Like,
legit
sex.
    Wasn’t she more discriminating than that? She looked up at the two men, idling in front of the door, staring at each other. The tension between the two was palpable, crackling, even. She fully expected that at any moment, one or the other would throw a blow. But why?
    She slipped the keycard into the slot and listened to the click.
    The room exhaled a cold whoosh of air as she shouldered the door open. Behind her, Hitch said, “We’re going to relax and have some dinner. It’s good seeing you, man.”
    “Shit, little brother. I was hoping we could catch up.”
    The door clicked closed behind the