I’m not even the only one at my table who notices.
Carver Riley gets up with a grin and crosses the room to kiss his wife.
Kaelyn is with Mia, Sloan Bennett, and Whitney Bennett—cousins, not sisters. They’re obviously out for a Friday night Girls’ Night Out. All of the women are dressed up and look beautiful. Sloan is wearing a short, fitted sundress too. But I can’t keep my eyes from returning to Mia over and over.
Her lips are a dusky pink that looks less like lipstick and more like she was just thoroughly kissed. Which makes me think about kissing her and seeing how that makes her lips look. Do they get even darker pink? More plump? Would her cheeks turn pink like that, too? Does her neck flush when she’s turned on?
I want to know all of that.
And I definitely can’t stop cataloging every detail of that dress. The skirt doesn’t hit any lower on her thighs than a pair of shorts would, which leaves a lot of her long, tanned legs bare. How’s she going to sit in that skirt without flashing anyone? And come to think of it, I don’t notice any panty lines when she turns and waves at someone sitting near the windows.
Yes, I checked out her ass.
I’m not happy about that either, but it just happened.
I check Sloan and Whitney out, too, just to try to even things up, but my eyes bounce back to Mia like she’s a bright, beautiful flower and I’m a helpless honeybee functioning on instinct only.
I scrub a hand over my face. Jesus, what is wrong with me?
I know what it is and I know I need to ignore it.
But if that sweet-looking, shy-seeming, cardigan-wearing woman is showing up to this bar on a Friday night in a short shirt and no panties…
I shift on my seat. What am I going to do? Storm over there and demand she go home and put some underwear and blue jeans on? Sure.
Or maybe storm over there, throw her over my shoulder, take her out to my pickup, and show her how much I love that dress and her not wearing panties.
Fuck.
A week ago, that would not have ever crossed my mind. I might have noticed that all of the women look gorgeous tonight and might have thought “lucky bastards “about anyone who gets to flirt, dance, or even go home with one of them.
But I wouldn’t have been zeroed in on Mia.
I wouldn’t have checked out her ass.
I wouldn’t have been thinking about her panties.
I wouldn’t have already had three nights of hot as fuck dreams about her.
But no, I had to rescue her, almost eat frozen pizza with her—we didn’t even do that, and I still can’t look at one of my favorite foods without thinking of her—and actually fall into like with her.
Then I had to go to the fucking library.
I shouldn’t have done that. That was the second biggest mistake I made.
The biggest one was reading her fanfiction.
Mia Hansen has a very dirty mind.
And I did not need to know that.
I blame Charlie. He never should have told me about the fanfiction. He could have kept that information to himself. He could have been a normal guy who doesn’t want his asshole little brother to know things like that he writes mystery fanfiction for a contemporary romance series.
But no, Charlie told me all about it. Probably because he’s a damned good writer. I read all of his stuff, too.
I watch Carver greet the women, and all of their smiles. He takes Kaelyn’s hand and starts to pull her toward our table, but they laugh, and Whitney pulls her friend back toward the all-female pack, shaking her head.
Carver shrugs, kisses Kaelyn again, leans in to whisper something in her ear that makes her nod enthusiastically and him laugh, then he comes back to our table as the women move toward one of the high-top tables closer to the stage where the band is setting up.
