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“If I was single, I’d throw my bra at him right now,” Micah jumps to my rescue.
“Gross!” Tarrah laughs over the cringe she gives us like she can’t decide if she’s amused or disgusted. “Besides, you do have a boyfriend, and I’m more worried about this one over here.”
The hair on the back of my neck sticks up when Tarrah pulls me into her embrace.
“You’ve been living with him for days, and I’m sure he’s made moves on you since he just can’t help himself.” She squeezes my hands as she pauses her slurred speech, and a flitting glimpse of sobriety crosses her shining eyes. “If he’s too much, I’ll find him a different place to stay, but I picked yours because I knew you could resist his tacky tactics.”
I open my mouth to speak as another song ends, blanketing the space with only the ardent screams from the mostly female crowd.
In my periphery, I catch Elijah taking a drink of water, and if I turn to get a better view, I imagine clear, dewy drops trickling down his chest with feral sex appeal.
Don’t turn.
Don’t freaking turn.
Tarrah bursts into laughter, eyes squeezed shut. “That so rhymed!”
Micah peers at me over her head and runs a hand across her neck in a motion I read as: we need to cut our friend off before she joins her brother on stage for an excruciatingly squeaky performance.
Which Tarrah has done in the past. A particularly brutal breakup led her to a night of tequila shots and bad choices at one of Elijah’s smaller concerts. Toward the end of the show, he helped her climb onto the stage because he thought she wanted to say a few kind words.
She did not.
Instead, she made her debut as the worst singer in history.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t there to help steer her back in a less humiliating direction.
I can be here for her now, though.
I quickly nod at Micah and reach for the glass in Tarrah’s hand. “Let me have this.”
“Hey! Get your own,” she whines.
“But I haven’t tried yours yet.” I take a gulp and fight the sting in my eyes from the burn of the alcohol. What the hell has she been drinking—poison? All three of us have been sipping on vodka mixed drinks, but Tarrah must have switched while chatting it up with Lincoln.
Which would explain how she got hammered so quickly. Knowing her as well as I do, I’d bet she took a couple shots too.
I make a gagging sound and throw Micah a twisted expression.
Elijah’s voice draws my attention back to the stage, and my breath catches, momentarily sweeping all thoughts of my friend away like a broom to dust.
He’s staring at me with a blazing fire in his eyes, and heat travels through every cell in my body.
“We should go,” Micah calls over to me, but her voice sounds far away.
My blood pumps with renewed enthusiasm as I trace every curve and groove and ridge of Elijah’s bare torso with my gaze.
Splashes of color are scattered among the black ink that covers the left side of his body, and the rest of the design disappears into his pants, teasing me.
The spotlights overhead catch trails of sweat, and his chest glistens in the most delicious game of seduction.
He keeps his eyes on me, expression unchanging, and my heart races.
Is he trying to tell me what I think he’s trying to tell me? Or am I naively placing myself in a romance book and am embarrassingly wrong about the desire I find in his eyes?
“Can you hear me?” Micah’s voice floats back over me, and she gives me a gentle shove. “She’s drunk, and I’m buzzed enough to be horny as hell. We need to go.”
“Right,” I pant, my stomach in knots with an abundance of arousing fantasies.
