"What the Hell?" I snapped awake as Dylan groaned those words. As I lay there disoriented, the first thought that came to my mind was that he had forgotten I was there. Then, as I lay there waiting for the reasoning behind his outburst, someone knocked on the door... and it wasn't just once. This unknown person was persistent. Dylan turned his head so that he could see the alarm clock on the nightstand. "It is one o'clock in the morning. What could possibly be so important that it couldn't have waited until daylight?" I snuggled in closer to him, pulled his arm back over me and laced his fingers through mine. "Just ignore them and maybe they'll go away," I whispered to him. We lay in the quiet darkness for a moment, and it seemed to have worked. Yet as I had started to get my hopes up, the knocking resumed just as fiercely as before. "Damn it, hasn't this person ever heard of sleep?" he muttered as he rolled away from me. I felt the bed shift as he got off of it and I shivered when the cool air from the air-conditioned room replaced his body heat. I heard him shuffle to the door and unlock it, and then winced as the light from the hall flooded the room. "What do you want?" he asked the person on the other side. I couldn't see who it was behind his large frame, but his tone told me that he wasn't happy to see them. "Dylan, you left so quickly today, and just when I thought we had made a connection. So I bribed Zach to give me your room number, and came up here to see if we couldn't finish what we started." I buried myself further under the comforter as I recognized the voice. It was my half sister Natasha, and from the sounds of things she had done quite bit of drinking before venturing to find Dylan. "So why did you leave so soon," she asked coyly. Natasha and I were as different from each other as night and day. She was flirty and sexy, where I tended to be more conservative and quiet. Natasha always had to be the life of the party, where I liked to observe from afar. We had been raised in separate households, and the different influences showed in our personalities. She wouldn't have thought twice about spending the night with a stranger, and although it may seem that was what I was doing with Dylan, there was a big difference in my mind. Before I had slipped into a pair of his shorts and t-shirt, we had spent a couple of hour just talking and getting to know one another. During this time he had reassured me that he didn't usually do this sort of thing, and that he didn't have a girl waiting for him in every city he visited. "Listen. It's the middle of the night. I'm sick, and I was sleeping. In fact, I would love nothing better than to still be sleeping." He raked his hand through his hair, causing it to stand up a bit. He paused for a moment and then ducked his head behind the door as he let out three monstrous sneezes. "Excuse me... So let me get this straight. You woke me up to talk about some connection you thought you felt after talking to me for all of five minutes? You're wasting my time." He started to close the door but with the way that Natasha had positioned herself made the task impossible. She had inched her way partially into the room, sticking one stiletto-clad foot so far out in front of her that it looked as though she were trying to wrap her leg around Dylan's. "If you are sick, then you shouldn't be here alone. I could take really good care of you," she purred. "I would make you forget that you were even the slightest bit ill." I watched from the shadows as she reached up to stroke his face, and how he automatically pulled away from her touch. He lifted up his arm and sneezed into the crook of his elbow. "Which part of 'go away' didn't you understand? I'm tired, I feel like shit, and I'm cranky. I'm not in the mood to deal with this just now. I'm with somebody who is taking care of me just fine, and right now I'm going back to bed and hopefully getting a good night's sleep, so that I can function at my best friends wedding." I was impressed. I hadn't yet seen a guy who could resist the hair tossing, eyelash batting charms of Natasha. Dylan was the first person I had ever seen stand up to her. "Ah-Ishoo! Ishoo! Ishoo!" Dylan was starting to do the rapid fire sneezing again, and Natasha still didn't seem to be getting the message. Then, Natasha started laughing. It wasn't her sexy, sultry laugh, it was her you've-got-to-be-kidding-me cackle. "Do you have Ava in there? Is that it? Ava, our little mouse. You prefer that to me?" She spat these questions at Dylan. I could see that she had taken a step back at the thought that I had something she wanted. I could picture the expression of disgust on her face as she realized that she couldn't have him. Natasha was used to getting what she wanted; it had been that way the whole time we had been growing up. Our dad had felt bad because he didn't get to spend as much time with Natasha as he did with Anna and I, so he had spoiled her. The step back that she took gave Dyalan the opportunity to close the door. As he did so, he told Natasha, "I do have somebody here with me, but I don't think it's any of your business who it is." He locked the door and turned around to face the bed. " 'Bout time you came back. I was getting lonely here without you," I teased. However, he didn't move towards the bed. "Just give me a moment, I'm going to sneeze again." So there I lay in the darkness listening to him. In the quiet of the room, I could hear his breathing speed up in anticipation of the sneeze. The long and ragged build up got me incredibly excited. This sneeze was teasing him along with me... |