At first glance, they couldn’t have been more different from each other. Whereas Clarke was a pastel princess, decked head to toe in a Tiffany’s blue dress with a high neckline that showed off her shoulders, Dani looked like the evil queen. She had traded out her electric-blue mullet for (what I assumed was) her natural jet-black color and had trimmed it pixie short. Her backless gown left little to the imagination.
I still hadn’t figured out which of my teammates she had been hooking up with or if they were even still a thing, but something told me this dress was a message, a warning without a label. Lord help him, whoever he was, because Dani was dressed to kill.
And then, there was Nessa, my angel is blue.
We had barely talked all night, each of us too caught up in conversations and canapés, but that hadn’t stopped me from always keeping an eye on her. As if feeling the weight of my gaze on her now, she flicked a glance over her shoulder, smiling when her sparkling green eyes met mine.
“Peer pressure won’t work on me,mi pana.” Diaz tilted his Champagne flute toward me. “We watched that same ‘say no to drugs’ video in Puerto Rico.”
I turned back to my teammates. “What if I can guarantee some grade A, high-quality man meat?”
“Please,” Diaz said, cocking a brow. “You think I need help catching a dick?”
“Just trying to help you out, man.”
He finished the rest of his drink before asking, “How high-quality are we talking?”
Perfect. One more name to add to Nessa’s list.
A soft hand grazed across my back at the same time as Clarke came around Soren’s side. “What are y’all talking about?” she asked.
“Pink’s trying to convince Diaz to do the bachelor auction thing.”
I reached my arm around, snagging Nessa around the waist and drawing her to my side. Pleasure rocketed through my body when she shivered under my touch. Her skin was delicate, a stark contrast to my callused palms. I loved it when she let me touch her, even more when she leaned into my touch, silently asking for more.
“That’s wonderful.” Clarke turned her attention my way. “I know you throw a mean curveball, Jared, but you might have missed your calling as a salesman.”
“Eh, talk to me about it again when I’m thirty.”
“Seriously, first the festival donation, and then the auction—”
“Wait, what?” Nessa asked.
Fuck.
“Jared matched the Roasters’ donation for the festival.”
Nessa searched my face. “You did that?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“He also talked all of us into volunteering,” Soren added, shifting his eyes away from my withering stare. So much for what happened in the locker room, stayed in the locker room.
“I’m sorry,” Clarke apologized. Her eyes bounced between the two of us. “I assumed you knew.”
I tracked her and Soren’s escape from the corner of my eye. It wasn’t Clarke’s fault for spilling the beans. The truth was bound to come out at some point; I just wished it had come from me.
“Let me explain,” I told her, spinning her in my arms until she faced me. “I would have donated to the festival either way. Rose City has been good to me, so it was the least I could do. As far as the volunteers go, Clarke mentioned to Soren that you were having trouble finding people, so I may have talked a few of the guys into pitching in—”
“More than a few.”
“—but it’s only because I know how much the festival means to you, which is a fraction of how much you mean to me, so—”
She yanked my lips down to hers, fusing us together without another word. This was the moment I had been dreaming about since the first time we’d kissed, only this time was just for us.
This should have been our first kiss.
My palms grazed her torso, pausing only when they met the bottom curve of her breasts. I swallowed her gasp of surprise, using my tongue to tease her lips open.
