Chapter 1

Sage

I’m bored. Like, really bored. I’ve spent most of the night at this ridiculous bachelorette party with people I barely know and I’m so ready for the night to be over. Normally, I have a strict only go to the parties of people I care about rule, but what was I supposed to do when Skye invited me to this thing? Say no?

Not super impressive considering we work together. Even less impressive considering, while my mom is off trying to reaffirm who she is by practicing spiritual meditation in India, I’m the boss. And the boss can’t blow off an employee invitation, no matter how much he or she wants to. Not when the business is as small and close-knit as ours is.

Which is why I’m sitting here in the middle of this ridiculously upscale bar watching women in penis hats swill drinks and talk dirty about whatever man happens to pass by the table…It’s my own personal version of hell and I’m pretty sure I’m doing a lousy job disguising that fact.

Then again, I’m not sure it matters considering I’m the only sober one at the table right now—which is obvious by both my lack of penis hat and my ability to keep my mouth shut no matter who walks by. Being the boss means I had to come to this little shindig. But there’s no boss or girl code in the world that says I have to wear a dick on my head or drink out of a straw shaped like one. And even if there was…well, that’s one code I’d have no trouble breaking.

“You need another drink,” Autumn—one of the other instructors at my mom’s yoga studio—tells me with a giggle. “Come on. Let’s go to the bar.”

I don’t want to go to the bar. And I sure as hell don’t want another drink. Skye has a limo booked tonight, which means that even though I drove myself here I don’t have to drive myself home, but I still have a two drink limit when I’m at a bar. Any bar. If I’ve learned anything through the years, it’s that everything’s easier when you’re stone-cold sober—which is why it’s been an hour since I’ve had anything to drink but water.

Still, I follow her. It’s not that hard of a choice, considering the rest of our party has just started singing dick songs. Because why not? It’s not enough to drink out of a dick and eat dick cake and whistle at every dick that walks by while wearing a giant dick on their heads. They need to sing an homage to the damn things, too.

Maybe it’s time to say to hell with the limo and get out of here instead…except Autumn’s grabbed onto my arm and a lifetime of yoga has rendered her a lot stronger than she looks. With a sigh, I acknowledge that I’m not going anywhere until she releases me.

We’re halfway to the bar when I see him. I’m so annoyed that I almost don’t pay attention, but—let’s be honest—I’d have to be dead not to notice this guy. Notice him, hell, just knowing he’s in the room is suddenly taking up all the oxygen.

Or maybe it’s just that I’ve forgotten how to breathe.

But can you blame me? With a fallen angel face, eyes that glitter like black diamonds, and a stubble-covered jaw that’s sharp enough I can feel the cut from here, he’s the hottest thing in this place. Maybe the hottest thing anywhere. Tall, dark, and drop-dead freaking gorgeous. And that’s before you take into account the shoulders wider than my zip code and the biceps to die for.

Is it wrong that I want to lick him? I wonder as I shift to get a better look. Because I do. I really, really do. Those narrow hips. That silky-looking, too long hair. Those big hands that wrap all the way around his beer bottle and then some. No wonder it feels like all the oxygen has been sucked out of this place. He’s like a personal playground designed especially for me.

And that’s before he glances up, his eyes meeting mine across the dimly lit bar.

Normally, I’d look away. I’m not the type to eye-fuck a stranger in a bar. Or anywhere else, for that matter. But the moment our gazes lock, I forget about normal. Forget about usual. And instead try to keep my panties from dropping straight to the floor.

It’s harder than it should be, especially considering I’m wearing skinny jeans.

I press my legs together, just to be sure. And that’s when he smiles, a wide, come-hither kind of grin that hits me straight in the feels…plus a few other, oh-so-memorable parts. He shifts a little, rests his elbows behind him on the bar. Stretches his long, long, looooong legs out in front of him. And looks for all the world like he doesn’t have a care in the world. And like he expects me to approach him.

Which is so totally not going to happen. I’ve already made prolonged eye contact with the guy. Actually walking up to him—a gorgeous stranger who obviously has an ego to match—is so not in the cards. I mean, it’s not that I’m ugly or anything. I have a reasonable amount of confidence in my own attractiveness. But there’s attractive and then there’s whatever that guy is and I am honest enough to admit I’m not in his class. Hell, I’m not even sure he has a class…he might be the only one of his kind on the planet.

“What do you want to drink, Sage?” Autumn asks and there’s a hint of impatience in her voice, like she’s asked the question a few times. It snaps me out of my trance—I swear, it’s like I’ve been dickmatized or something— and I decide what the hell.

“I’ll have another lemon drop,” I tell her, breaking my self-imposed limit just this once. It’s already been an hour since I had a drink—one more won’t do any real damage. I’ll still be the most sober woman at the party. Plus, if I’m going to let a rule slide tonight, the two-drink limit is a better rule to break than the don’t fuck a hot stranger in a public bathroom one.

One more drink, I decide, just to loosen me up a little bit. Not enough to be okay wearing a penis hat by any means, but maybe just enough to make flirty eyes with the hottest guy in the place.

Maybe.

Fifteen minutes later, I’m back at my table and doing just that. All around me, the others are getting steadily drunker—so drunk, in fact, that Skye just crowned another instructor Priscilla, Queen of the Dicksert. I have no idea where the title comes from considering the woman’s name is Lela, but it’s not like I’m about to ask. I don’t want to know what goes on in these women’s minds on the best days, let alone right now.

Across the bar from me, Mr. Tall, Dark, and So Fucking Hot I Get Burned Just Looking at Him, is obviously amused. Whether by my attempts to flirt with him when he’s so clearly out of my league or by my table’s increasingly ridiculous antics, I’m not sure. I tell myself it’s the latter as I bat my eyes at him, but the truth is I just don’t know.

“Whoaaaaa,” Autumn says after drunkenly circling the table and plopping down in the empty seat beside mine. “Who. Is. That?”

“Who?” I ask, but she’s not buying the whole me playing dumb thing. Then again, I wouldn’t if I was in her position either.

“The guy I would totally have noticed earlier if I wasn’t sitting on the other side of the table,” she tells me. “You know, the hottie over there who can’t take his eyes off of you.”

“I think you’re confused.”

“Really?” She raises one skeptical brow. “Because from where I’m sitting, that man looks like he wants to eat you alive. In a very, very good way.”

“Yeah, well, I, he, just, we, umm…” I stutter through a totally unintelligible list of words before finally just shutting up and reaching for my drink. I down what’s left in one long swallow.

She laughs. Cackles, actually, and all but rubs her hands together in glee. She might be the nicest person I know, but right now she looks like a Disney villain hatching her evil plot. “You should go talk to him.”

“I’m not going to go talk to him.”

“But you should. It’s obvious he wants you.”

“It’s not the least bit obvious,” I tell her. If it was, wouldn’t he be over here already?

“You should totally go over there. Right, Skye?” she asks, raising her voice to enlist the help of tonight’s bride-to-be.

“Absolutely,” Skye says without even asking what Autumn is talking about.

“See?” she says, turning back to me. “Skye agrees and so does everyone else. Right, everyone?”

“Right,” choruses one of Skye’s other friends, whose name I don’t even know.

“They have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Sure, we do!” Skye says, and she’s so happily drunk that she’s bouncing up and down in her seat. “You need another drink.”

“I don’t—”

“You do!” she interrupts, raising her hand to signal our waitress. When she doesn’t get immediate attention, she pushes at her own drink, sliding it down the table to me. “Here, drink this one.”

I stare at the bright blue concoction distrustfully. “No, thanks—”

“Come on,” she says, whining a little in the way only happy drunk people can. “Drink it.”

“I’m not really interested in another—”

“Drink it!” she squawks, loudly enough to have not just the people at our table staring at me, but everyone around us, too.

“Okay, okay.” I accept the thing to avoid causing any more of a scene than we already have, then take a cautious sip. Despite its electric color, it’s actually quite smooth and I take a second sip, then a third.

I don’t finish it because I know my limits, but I can feel my muscles relaxing a little more. Feel my normal inhibitions growing just a little less rigid. And that’s when Autumn moves in for the kill.

“He’s still looking at you,” she hisses with a less than subtle chin jerk at Mr. Tall, Dark, and So Fucking Hot I Get Burned Just Looking at Him (who will henceforth be called Hot Stuff because the rest is a mouthful even in my own head). He’s still kicked back on the barstool, his long well-muscled legs spread out in front of him as he chats casually with the man next to him. A man who is also sexy as hell, I realize, when I finally manage to pull my gaze away from Hot Stuff’s broad shoulders and tight abs.

“Maybe he’s looking at you,” I answer, doing my best to ignore the flutter way down deep inside of me.

“Yeah, right,” she says with a snort. “If that was the case, married woman or not, I’d already be sitting on his very delectable lap. But he is one hundred percent looking at you. If you don’t do something about it, I am never going to forgive you.”

“I guess I’m just going to have to live with that, because—”

“Live with what?” Skye interjects loudly. Suddenly, everyone at the table is looking at me.

“Live with the fact that that very hot guy over there obviously wants to get to know her,” Autumn answers in a stage whisper so loud I’m afraid it can be heard in the entire bar, despite the eighties music emanating from the upscale jukebox in the corner.

“What guy?” Skye asks, her voice going even louder as she starts looking over the bar. “Where is—oh. There he is.” Her eyes go wide.

“He sure is,” echoes Dawn, the woman sitting across from her. “Wowza.”

Wowza? Seriously? I feel like I’ve slipped into an alternate universe or a bad porn movie, especially when the entire table—all ten women—turn around to stare at him. Because that’s not obvious at all.

Our gazes lock again, and this time he’s wearing a full-blown smirk, one that says he knows very well we’ve been talking about him—and that he’s totally okay with that fact. My cheeks start to heat, along with the rest of me, and I don’t know whether I’m going to die of embarrassment or spontaneously combust from unrealized desire right here in the middle of the bar. And when he raises his beer in a silent toast that’s obviously meant for me, I almost swallow my tongue.

As does every other woman at my table.

“Do something!” Autumn hisses out of the corner of her hugely smiling mouth.

“Do what?” I demand just as Skye kicks me.

“Strip naked. Dance on the table. Who cares?” chimes in Karen, the receptionist at the yoga studio. “Because if you don’t, I definitely will!”

“I’m pretty sure I’ll get arrested if I do either of those things,” I answer, but my heart is beating more quickly with every second that he continues to look at me.

Suddenly, I’m thinking of saying to hell with the fact that he’s an eleven, maybe a fifteen, and I’m an eight on a very good day.

Thinking of going for it since I have nine women telling me that he’s very definitely interested.

Thinking of breaking all my rules.

I’m a little tipsy, a little aroused, and there doesn’t seem a better time or a better reason to just go for it.

And that’s when he turns away, not only breaking our eye contact but going so far as to swivel his stool around to face the other direction.

And just like that he’s another missed opportunity. The story of my damned life.