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“Goddamn, I want you to make a mess inside these pants. I want to know I did that to you.”

“You gotta stop,” he pleads, all while continuing to chase my movements with his hips because he doesn’t actually want to stop at all.

“Maybe I don’t want to?”

“If you keep doing that, I’m gonna come.” His chest heaves and I really, really wish that could be the end result here, but fate intervenes.

Hiccuping, drunken chatter, and the click-clack of high heels on polished flagstone draws closer, far too close for comfort. I haul myself off him, swallowing hastily and readjusting my tie. Flinn stares back at me, wide-eyed for a second, and my gaze ticks down to the extremely obvious outline of his cock bulging the front of his pants.

I have to scrub my hand over my mouth as he snatches his hat back and sets it in place. He looks every inch a man reduced to a terribly flushed, sexy mess.

“Ugh. There you are.” The whiny voice of Izzie’s drunk roommate echoes across the marble floor, and that seems to snap Flinn out of his daze. He wrenches off his suit jacket and holds it in front of his groin. A move straight off the pages of the “randy teenager with a boner” playbook.

The smug glee in my expression intensifies as I take the opportunity for one last deep inhale of how gorgeous he looks—ruffled, disarmed, kiss-bitten lips. Damn it all if he isn’t an attractive sight.

Turning on my heel, I melt into the shadows before the others can notice my presence. Slipping my flask out of my jacket pocket, I take myself and my own raging hard-on outside to where I can suck in some lungfuls of the chilly night air. To put myself on ice for a few minutes until I’ve got the situation with my dick under control.

My best option for tonight? Get blind drunk.

It’s snowing heavily outside now, so there’s not a hope in hell of getting a taxi home. I’m too strung out by all this to think about staying at Sky’s flat. Tonight’s the type of night I just wanna be in my own bed.

I grew up on a ranch in the mountains. A little bit of snow doesn’t bother me.

Fuck it, I’ll hit the bar, and then I’ll walk home.

CHAPTER 10

My only concern is where he’s gone.

Izzie and her roommate have friends they want to see and dance with, and that leaves me feeling a lot like a meaningless third wheel in the background.

I came here tonight as their sober driver, but if I’m daring to be truthful with myself—especially after that kiss—it’s because I was hoping to see him here. A Yule ball on a campus where I don’t even live, or a school I don’t attend, is the last fucking thing I care about. The reality is I’m way too hung up on him to think straight.

To add to that, a part of me couldn’t help but keep a watchful eye on him earlier, worrying about how much he’s had to drink. Brad hugged that bar from the moment he strolled through those big ornate doors tonight, and it’s not my place to tell him what to do, but all that alcohol is gonna slam him sideways as soon as he gets out in the cold. It’s been snowing heavily since we arrived, and I shouldn’t fixate on him, but he’s acting reckless enough that it doesn’t sit right to not pay close attention.

Great. So now I’m looking out for my sister, her wasted friend, and her ex-boyfriend, who I really want to disappear into a shadowy archway with so that he can shove his tongue down my throat again.

Yuletide greetings to my fucked-up conscience.

Hanging at the edge of the room over by the windows, I’m looking out on the white flakes pelting down when I see it. The very distinct outline of a cowboy hat trudging through the snow.

Jesus Christ.

I don’t even bother to find my sister. There’s a much more powerful sense of urgency pulling me from this crowded student party that I have no interest in being at if he’s no longer here.

By the time I make it to the front steps, I’m shit out of luck. He’s gone. Vanished into the night and swirling snowflakes. I can’t see him, but I know the direction he was walking in at least. My truck is parked close and it only takes a few minutes to drive the short distance to catch up to where I last saw that cowboy hat of his tipped low, shoulders hunched against the cold.

He’s on foot, in these conditions, with god knows how much liquor on board.

The idiot will be lucky if he hasn’t fallen headfirst into a ditch already.

Crawling along the deserted road, the snow is sticking fast. It’s not an issue right now for driving anywhere, especially not for my truck. But if it keeps up by morning, this sleepy little college town will undoubtedly be snowed in. Leaning forward, I scan the footpath for sight of the fool, with the heater turned on high to warm my cab up.

The gorgeous asshole is gonna be frozen to the bone.

Sure enough, I find him cutting a slightly wobbly path only a handful of blocks further along the street. Headed away from town.

Where the fuck does he think he’s going?