What the hellisshe doing?
Staten, abandoning her previous seduction scheme, now cocks her hip out and has her palm on the table, her body at a strange forty-five-degree angle. She’s also doing some weird thing with her neck, as if she’s trying to fling the hair out of her face without employing the help of her hands. All the while, Leif continues to drone on about God knows what.
“Maybe it’s like an interpretive dance?” Crew offers.
Oh, this is hard to watch.
Even with my subpar eyesight, I can still pinpoint the blush sprawling over her cheeks like a variegated sunset. The look in her eyes is telling enough—she’s got it bad for this guy, and she’ll do anything to get on his radar. Then she explodes into loud, high-pitched laughter, making her not-so-subtle crush flinch, along with my eavesdropping teammates.
When Leif gets up to refill their communal beer pitcher, Staten glances around suspiciously, holds her hand up to her mouth to do a quick breath test, then wrinkles her nose in disgust. It’s kind of endearing.
“I can’t look away. This is worse than a car crash,” Axel exclaims, an undercurrent of amusement coasting through his tone.
As an incoming penumbra claws across the floorboards with the silence of a shadow-bound wraith, the business of the bar picks up, a dozen more college students filtering through the door and meandering over to the counter. A decent line has formed, stranding Leif somewhere near the end, and impulsivity grabs me by the throat. Squeezing, smarting, staunching the much-needed blood flow to my brain. I don’t think. I just act. Any concern about my friends’ unwarranted opinions gutters quicker than a kerosene flame underwater.
Like the valiant savior I am, I jump up from my seat, saunter over to Staten, and voluntarily thrust myself into the line of fire.Will I get burned? Probably. Do I care? Not really. I park myself right in front of her, caging her in with my mountainous body and showing her how a real pro exploits close proximity.
“Guys don’t like it when you try so hard,” I tell her, bestowing my great fuckboy wisdom in the name of science.
I’m surprised when she doesn’t shirk away from me. “Excuse me?”
I jerk my thumb in Leif’s direction. “Dumbo isn’t getting the hint.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” she hisses, anger burnished in the amber-flecked pits of her eyes—anger solely reserved for me.
Is it wrong that I’m flattered? I don’t know any other guy who gets to be the lucky recipient of her fuck-you face.
“If you want him to notice you, you have to act more subtle. Leave a little to the imagination, you know? You want him to chase after you, not the other way around.”
“Oh my God. Are you spying on me?”
“Technically, this is a public place.”
A guttural growl slithers between her teeth, an unvoiced diatribe coiling back to strike at me like a cornered rattlesnake. Her anger has irradiated in a short amount of time, but her pint-sized height puts her at a disadvantage. A chihuahua that’s all bark and no bite.
Staten bristles, shoving her pointer finger into my chest as she glares up at me through mascara-lined lashes. “What part of ‘giving zero fucks about you’ didn’t make it through your thick cranium?”
Yes! She’s touching me again! I mean, oh, nooo.
Ignoring her jab, I flex my pecs, a smug grin flourishing over my lips. “I can help you out. I don’t know if you know this, but I have a pretty good track record when it comes to flirting. Never gotten a bad review. Ten out of ten customers always walk away satisfied—orstruggleto walk, if you catch my drift.”
Staten’s mind must be buffering because it takes her five extra seconds to recognize our incriminating position. She snatches her finger away, shaking it like she’s just come into contact with some kind of biohazard. “I’d rather slam my boob in a car door than let your STD-walking ass anywhere near my love life.”
“Yournonexistentlove life, by the looks of it. And I stay on top of my routine checkups, thank you very much.”
The humongous vein in her forehead palpitates, her small hands balling into fists to probably prevent herself from scratching my eyes out. Her whole frame trembles with bottled-up indignation threatening to overspill—threatening to fossilize my body in thick, blackened tar.
“I don’t need your help,” she repeats with clipped breath.
I hold my index finger up to pause her train of whoop-ass, hook said finger in the direction of a busty blonde who’s been eyeing me from across the room, and beckon her with my best panty-dropping smirk.
Without fail, she minces over to me in six-inch heels like a moth to a flame, biting down on her lower lip in coquettish compliance. She wears her lust as a heady perfume, but no matter how concentrated the concoction is, none of my caveman urges activate.
“Hi, Knox,” she greets, her tone drenched in enough sex appeal to cure worldwide erectile dysfunction.
“Ten p.m. You, me, my place,” I say point-blank, brooking little room for her to decline—which she doesn’t, of course.
I hood my eyes, make a show of staring at her lips, then lick my own to subliminally plant the pussy-wetting thought of some mouth-to-mouth action in her head.
