Nick.
My ex leans against the wall, drink in hand, cigarette dangling perilously from his lower lip. He’s surrounded by women, and he’s every bit as devastatingly untouchable as when we’d dated. He drags a hand through his tousled black waves and his mouth tips up in one corner as those dark eyes offer empty promises.
Ooof.
It’s been four long, lonely months since Nick the Dick hooked up with a groupie backstage and broke my heart. Four months of wallowing. Four months of pining and watching him hit on other girls while he gave me lingering looks across the bar as if to say, “You could be in her position right now, if you weren’t such an uptight bitch.”
Four months of going home alone.
And a single glance is going to be my undoing.
Stupid fucking smoking hot musicians.
I back up several steps and stumble, landing a solid hit to the stranger behind me as we’re both thrown off balance and slammed back against a standing table. Anoomphleaves his chest and I grimace as my cheeks flame beet red.
“Fuck. Sorry,” I mutter to the guy I just knocked over, then I move away without so much as a backward glance. Venice is kind of small. And considering I work here at Pete’s, the likelihood is that this guy is a regular, and the last thing I need is to make a bigger ass of myself in front of my ex. So, I hightail it out of there before I can even get a good look at my collateral damage.
I lost my hat when I bowled that dude over, but there’s nothing to be done for it now. Instead, I smooth my hands over my hair and shoot a pleading glance at Clementine.
“Jesus,” Clem shouts from beside me, glancing between Nick and me. “You’re attacking random dudes now? You made eye contact with Nick the Dick, didn’t you?”
I chew my bottom lip. “Little bit, yeah.”
“He’s coming over,” she says impatiently. “Look, I gotta get backstage. Declan just texted me.”
Declan was the newest bassist in Nick’s band, High Treason, and their third for the year. Nick didn’t like anyone to be prettier than he was, and Clementine had been screwing Declan for a solid two weeks now but every night she worried that if she didn’t show her face by his side as number one groupie, someone else would.Relationship goals.
“No, no, no, don’t leave me.” I dig my fingers into the Tawny, golden flesh of her arm.
She wrenches free. “You’ll be fine. Just don’t sleep with him.”
“Easy for you to say!” I shout to her retreating back. My gaze rolls over Nick as he makes his way through the crowd towardme, blowing off scantily clad women and nodding at fans who give him the chin tilt or who stop him to say hi. “Shit. This isn’t good, this is soo not good.” I turn away, bow my head, and mutter to my vagina. “Listen up, you’re going to sleep with him. You’re definitely going to have the shit banged out of you, and—I won’t lie—at the time you’ll even like it. But just remember in the morning when you’re all achy and fighting off a UTI and that penis is no longer around: that you’re beautiful, and any penis would be super lucky to beinyou.”
“Please tell me I’m not hallucinating,” a rich, gravelly voice to my right says. I glance at the guy holding my hat.
Did he follow me across the room?
“What?” I straighten and take him in—scruffy face, pretty green eyes, ripped jeans, black shirt, scuffed vans, and muscles for days. He’s tall. And big too. Insane tats run the length of his forearm, and his burned-honey messy hair needs a wash, and likely a cut, but he’s cute. Really cute; in a badass, tattooed Viking gonna-throw-you-over-my-shoulder-at-any-minute kind of way.Okay, so he was more than cute. Just one look promised long, hot, should-be-physically-impossible sex ... and trouble.And damn if I didn’t love me some trouble.
“So, I may have had a couple of cones earlier, and I can’t be certain, but I’m pretty sure you were just talking to your vagina.” His accent is ... different. Like it’s peppered with a little southern seasoning, but he’s fighting hard to keep it at bay.
“I was not.”
He chuckles. “Yeah, you were. That’s cool. I talk to my dick all the time.”
“You do?”
He nods and then shakes his head. “No. Not really, but I like that you talk to your pussy. If you introduce me, I’d be happy to talk to her too.”
“Okay, asshole.” I roll my eyes and turn away, but I panic when I see Nick just a few feet away, talking to some balding fanboy, his eyes firmly fixed on me.
The guy beside me crouches a little and yells at my crotch, loud enough for me to hear in the packed bar, “She’s right. That was out of line. Please accept my apologies.” The Viking grins up at me like he’s clever, and I have to give it to him, no man has ever addressed my vagina quite so sweetly. He clears his throat and whisper-yells, “We’ll talk later.”
“Do you make it a habit of talking to random pussy?”
“Ah, no. I’m especially stoned this evening,” Southern Viking Dude says. A half-laugh escapes me, and I glance back at Nick. “You don’t wanna sleep with him.”
“I don’t?”