“Sorry about that.” Paige offers us an exasperated smile,along with an eye roll. “I love her, but she’s a complete stick in the mud.” Backing away from the table we’re all clustered around, she gives me a flirty wink. “Don’t worry about her. We’ll have a good time this weekend—whether she likes it or not.”
That was several hours ago and, true to her word, everyone seems to be having a blast. I set up the rollaway bar I found in the garage on the veranda near the swimming pool. These women have been drinking steadily since I cracked my first bottle of Goose, ping-ponging between me and Angel, who’s set up shop in the pool house. The last thing anyone needs is to find some spray-tanned debutante face down in the pool because no one had the foresight to hire an actual lifeguard.
With one eye on the bar and the other on the pool, I do my job. Smile and wink. Flirt and laugh—and when the very tipsy bride-to-be asked me to take my shirt off, I happily obliged.
“Gawd, you’re so much hotter than Dalton,” she says, chin cupped in her hand while she gazes up at me with bleary blue eyes. Popping her chin out of her palm, she turns that bleary gaze toward one of several women clustered around the bar, waiting for a refill. “Like,insanelyhot. Why can’t Dalton be insanely hot?”
“Dalton’s good-looking,” one of her more sober friends reminds her. “Andhe’s rich.” As soon as it’s out, her friend looks up at me with a wide, slightly mortified expression. “No offense.”
“None taken.” I give her one of myhot bartendersmiles while I skewer a couple of cherries on a pink plastic sword. It’s a lie. I’m offended, but it’s not her fault.Insanelyhot and poorloses out togood-looking and richevery time. That’s just how the world works. Sliding the drink across the bar, I give the bride-to-be a wink. “Dalton is a very lucky man.”
Sending them back to the pool with a fresh round, I watchas the cousin, Paige, fights her way upstream with an empty glass and a wine bottle tucked under her arm. Stopping in front of my bar, she sets the empty glass and the bottle on top of it, pushing both in my direction. “When Stick-in-the-Mud Millie asks for her wine back, make her work for it,” she says before spinning on her heel to saunter back the way she came. She’s been giving me signals all night. Long looks and knowing smiles. Unlike the rest of the bridal party, this woman knows exactly what she’s looking for and how to get it. I have no doubt that if I wanted to, I could be balls deep inside her by the end of the night.
“Sure thing,” I say to her retreating back and am rewarded with another one of those knowing smiles, tossed over her perfectly tanned shoulder before she disappears into the pool house. She’s undoubtedly playing both Angel and me in hopes of doubling her chances of getting laid.
Hell, she might even be bucking for a threesome.
Laughing to myself, I take the brief lull in business to tidy up my bar space and refresh my garnish station from the supply of cherries, limes, and orange slices in the mini fridge under the bar. Pulling a clean towel from the stack, I use it to wipe down the bar. Lifting the abandoned bottle of wine while I wipe, I study its label. Working at Level, I’ve poured more than my fair share of top shelf. This wine isn’ttop shelf—it’s someone’s pride and joy. The sort of label a wine connoisseur spends a lifetime chasing. The sort of label that is coveted and never,everopened.
“May I have my wine back, please?”
Like predicted, Little Miss Stick-in-the-Mud’s come to collect.
I look up from the bottle in my hand when I hear her, and my cock instantly starts to throb because she’s giving me that look. The same look she gave me in the foyer this afternoon.Haughty and regal. Cool and detached. Like all of this is totally beneath her—andall of thisincludes me.
When tipsy bridesmaid #4 made her offhanded remark, insinuating that while I was good enough to play with, I certainly wasn’t good enough tostaywith, I was offended. Hell, maybe I was even a little ashamed. The look Little Miss Stick-in-the-Mud keeps giving me doesn’t just imply it. It all but screams it.
But I’m not offended.
Not by a long shot.
I’m as hard as a fucking rock.
Make her work for it.
A sudden image of Little Miss Stick-in-the-Mud on her knees in front of me, mouth open and choking on my cock while I fuck her throat, pops into my head in excruciatingly vivid detail.
Pretty sure that’s not what her cousin meant bymake her work for it.
“Sorry, Princess,” I say, giving her an insolent grin to cover up the fact that my dick is so hard it hurts. “No can do.”
My refusal widens those gorgeous hazel eyes and loosens the hinge on her jaw, giving me a brief, cock-twitching view of her soft, pink tongue before it snaps shut. Gaze narrowing slightly, she tilts her head just enough to tell me she’s sure she didn’t hear me correctly. “Excuse me?”
“I saidno.” I give her another insolent grin, this one accompanied by a head shake. “It’s warm, Princess.”
Now she looks like I just slapped her in the face. “So?”
“So, a deb like you should know that you can’t drink a label like thiswarm.” I look at her like she’s sprouted a third eyeball in the middle of her forehead and have the satisfaction of watching her cheeks heat with embarrassment. “It’s practically against the law.” Before she can protest or threaten to fire meand have me escorted off the property by the private, well-paid security firm that polices these kinds of neighborhoods, I pluck the bottle of Goose from the auto chiller under the bar and replace it with her bottle of wine. “It’s going to take about fifteen minutes to properly chill, Princess, so you might as well make yourself comfortable while you wait.”
THREE
Ihad a plan.
Retrieve my stolen wine and take it directly to my bedroom, barricade the door, and don’t come out until morning because I heard Paige on the phone earlier. She’s getting bored, and when she gets bored, things get out of control.
I need backup. It’s just my lame cousins and their snotty friends.
Impatient to get to my room so I can hide under my bed before Paige’s reinforcements get here, I take what I’d hoped was a discrete look at my watch to gauge how much longer I have to sit here before I can make a run for it. It’s beenlessthan five minutes. Dropping my hand back in my lap with a sigh, I glance up.
