At the bottom of the stairs, I turn around to stop Rowan from following me. “I want another drink. You stay here. Wait for Adam.”

She frowns at me, but I give her a smile and walk backward toward the door. “I’ll see you after.”

At the bar, I sit next to the hottest guy I can find and flash a smile in his direction. Two minutes later, I have a drink and a distraction.

“So do you like the band?” he asks, nodding toward the stage.

I shrug. “They’re alright.” They’re also the last thing I want to talk about right now, since I desperately need to stop agonizing over what’s going to happen when their set ends, but God apparently hates me.

“I went to high school with most of them,” the guy brags, like he can claim some kind of residual rock-star status for having shared a zip code. I almost burst out laughing, barely managing to hide it behind the drink I’m sipping.

“Were you friends?” I ask, not caring but knowing it’s my turn to say something.

He goes on and on about the classes they shared and the time he got to see them in the talent show and how he went to one of Adam’s parties his senior year. I’m mentally plotting my escape when the guy’s eyes flit over my shoulder and open wide, sending untamed eyebrows jumping up into his forehead. His hand latches onto my forearm like a lifeline, and I turn my head just in time for my lips to brush Joel’s cheek. “Is this guy bothering you?” he questions in my ear, his blue eyes turning to read mine before narrowing on the guy’s hand, which recoils from my arm even though the rest of the guy looks totally dazed. With his wide eyes and unhinged jaw, he’s so starstruck that I can’t help but cast a quick glance at his lap to check for a man-for-man hard-on.

“You know Joel Gibbon?” he gasps, startling me from my detective work.

“Who, him?” I ask, pointing a lazy finger at the boy standing behind me. Inside, I’m giddy as hell that Joel came to find me. Outside, I’m mildly bored and totally unfazed.

“Oh my God,” the guy says. “I’m such a huge fan!”

“You apparently went to school together,” I add without turning to face Joel, who loosens up behind me even as both of his heavy arms come to wrap around my shoulders. Since no one else has popped up at my sides, I’m guessing the rest of our group stayed backstage to watch the closing band perform.

Joel’s chuckle rumbles against my back. “Oh yeah? What year were you?”

The guys talk and I tune them out until the hot fanboy eventually gets a picture with Joel and leaves. And then Joel’s suggestive voice is in my ear again.

“Are you ready to get out of here?”

“Are you ready to stop being a man-whore?”

He has the nerve to laugh. “Why, are you jealous?”

Insanely. “Why would I be jealous?” I peel his arms away and turn on my stool to face him. “I’m the one you always go home with.”

“Isn’t that interesting,” he muses with an agitating glimmer in his arctic-blue eyes.

Joel usually begins the night with someone else—or a few someone elses—and on nights I’m not around, he goes home with them. But on nights I am around, I always end up winning his attention—through exhaustive efforts that I’m really getting tired of exerting.

“If I say no, what will you do? Go home with one of them instead?”

“You won’t say no.”

I scoff at him. “Shows what you know.”

When I spin away from him, he squeezes up behind me again and presses his lips against my ear. “You won’t say no because you know all the things I want to do to you.”

He starts telling me exactly what those things are, and my toes curl in my peep-toe pumps. Goose bumps spread from my ankles to my ears, and I abruptly hop off my stool.

“Where are you going?” Joel calls after me.

“To see if you’re a man of your word!”

Chapter Two

BY THE TIME we make it to the bus in the parking lot of Mayhem, Joel’s groping hands have my blood rushing. If he slid them over the curve of my ass and squeezed one more time, I was pretty sure I was going to strip naked wherever we happened to be standing.

I reach for the bus door but don’t even have time to open it before he steps against me, pressing me into it. I brace myself against the cold black metal, and his palms cover the backs of my hands. He clasps our fingers together and raises our hands higher, working his jeans against me and kissing the back of my neck. I reward him by rocking my hips, rubbing my ass firmly over his attentive length, and he quickly spins me around, claiming my mouth in a way that makes everything dark. The moon and stars go black. Oxygen leaves my lungs. My heart stops beating and all I can feel are Joel’s teeth nipping at my lip and the cold metal of the bus biting against my bare skin.

I reach down and rub him outside of his jeans, which probably gets me even more turned on than it gets him. He moans low in his throat and impatiently tugs me away from the door so he can pull it open.

“Fuck,” he complains when it doesn’t budge. He yanks on it again, but still it doesn’t move.

I’m so frustrated, I want to scream. Instead, I manage to simply say, “You don’t have a key?”

“Not on me.” He looks around the deserted parking lot until he spots something that makes the corner of his mouth tug up, and then he grabs my hand and tows me across the lot. There are tons of cars, but everyone is inside for the headlining band, so I’m not worried when Joel pulls down the tailgate of a random black truck that I’m sure doesn’t belong to anyone he knows.