“You were right.” Nate glances back at his cousin, and I swear, Cal’s olive complexion goes scarlet. “She is f**king hot.” He dips his gaze back down to me. “I’d tell you the same but McCrae would f**k me up in the parking lot.”
Wyatt has mentioned me. In a way that makes Nate assume that we’re a couple.
Good God, what’s been said about me?
I pull at the neck of my tee shirt, stretching out the tip of the sequined anchor on the nautical print. “Where’s your drummer?” I peek around the crowd in search of the bald man who was on stage up until a few minutes ago. As much as I hated to admit it, his skill is almost as mind-blowingly good as Sinjin’s.
Nate turns and scans the area before he finally points to the far corner of the bar. “Ben’s over there with Terra and Wyatt,” he says. Of course, hearing that Terra’s with Wyatt makes my stomach clench, but Nate mistakes my abrupt smile for something else. Anticipation. “You wanna go over?”
I drop my gaze to the nearly full bottle of Corona on my table. This is my fifth one in the last hour, and I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve started to want to hug the bottles. “Maybe in a few.” I jab my index finger toward the small group of women who’ve edged their way up to Cal. One is glancing in Nate’s direction, tapping the cap end of a permanent marker against her hip. “I think you’re being summoned.” I start to advise him that he’s going to need more security soon, that there should already be more security since my guys are playing, but I stop myself.
I remind myself that I’m here as a music lover and not my brother’s assistant.
Nate flushes, racking up a few more good points with me because obviously, he hasn’t let this world go to his head yet. “Looks like I am. See you in a little.”
When I shimmy back onto my seat, Heidi casts me a sharp look. “What?” I ask.
She runs her thumb around the neck of the bottle she’s been nursing for twenty minutes. “We’re going over there.”
I put my Corona to my lips and tip it back, drinking it entirely too fast. My nose is burning when I slap the empty bottle onto the wooden table. “If you feed me that bullshit about claiming Wyatt, I’m probably going to—”
She cuts me off. “Hey, Kylie.” I press my lips together, waiting for her to continue. “You need to get your tipsy ass over there and claim Prince Albert.”
“He got rid of that,” I say through clenched teeth.
“Whatever. Point is you’ve said it yourself that this is it for you guys, that you’re done with the games once we go home. So why the f**k would you just sit around and waste the time you’ve got left?”
This is another reason why Heidi and I get along. I’m not close to many women because I’ve felt the bitter sting of disloyalty and it’s left a foul taste in my mouth, but Heidi’s tells me like it is. She doesn’t hold anything back, even when her thoughts are all over the place.
“I’m not tipsy,” I tell her as she stands and adjusts her tight jeans.
“And I’m not sober, babe.” She grabs my hand, hauling me off in Wyatt’s general direction. As she passes Nate and Cal, and the women they’re mingling with, she skims her hand across the crotch of Cal’s jeans. He stiffens and screws up the R at the beginning of his last name on the br**sts in front of his face.
Wyatt’s eyes drink me in long before I step into his bubble. “Bluebird.” His hands touch the first thing he can grab, my forearm, and he brings me to his side. This is such an intimate gesture that my lips part slightly. Completely hypertensive to my every move, his head bends a little. “You’re f**king me up again,” he says softly so only I can hear him.
Right. And he’s not doing the same thing to me? He has that delicious smell right now of cologne and sweat, and I dart my tongue across my lips. Before I can make a fool of myself, I glance away from him to the drummer. “You’re sound is incredible.”
I feel Wyatt’s mouth against my ear. I feel his labret slide up against one of my earrings as he opens his mouth to say something. And I go perfectly still because I know he’s about to say something that will result in him owning my panties by the end of the night.
Then he pulls away, grinning suggestively. As he introduces me to the drummer, I realized he’s thinking of a hundred creative ways to f**k me in this bar. And it sends a thrill of pleasure through me. “You’ve already met Terra, but this mother f**ker is Ben Dillinger. Ben, this is Kylie and Heidi.”
Ben, who’s short but muscular with a shaved head, lifts his chin a little, acknowledging us. “Good to meet you,” he says to Heidi. She takes his outstretched hand and gushes over how much she loved the set before she excuses herself. As she struts away, her mission to find Cal obvious, Ben turns to me. “Been wanting to meet you since this shithead met up with us in Albuquerque last year.”
This catches me off guard, and I’m unable to keep a frown from making a momentary appearance. When had Wyatt gone to Albuquerque? Why had Wyatt gone to Albuquerque, for that matter? I dart my eyes up to him for a moment, but he’s focused on something else.
Typical dick move, Wyatt.
Because I can feel Terra’s enormous green eyes burning into me, I steer the subject in a slightly different direction. “You’re playing there in two nights, right?”
Ben bobs his head. A tiny, pierced woman with a shock of platinum and jet black slips between us, murmuring, “Excuse me.” She slides a shot glass into Ben’s hand. As he downs the amber-colored liquid, he gives her one of those looks that make me melt. One of those looks that’s not only full of desire, but also that chaos-free kind of love that I crave.