Liv pushes me forward like she’s presenting Evan an offering. The fact that he doesn’t reach out a hand or even say hello makes me feel even more like a human sacrifice, but I make no move to escape my fate. I’m locked in place by his hooded green eyes and the way my name comes out on his exhale, sweeping across my face as it does.
“Kaia.”
His lips stay parted like he’s breathing the word back in, and when Evan licks his lips, I swear the button on my jeans pops open to grant him easier access.
Liv swats my butt, cuing me to speak.
“Hi.”
Under the heady intoxication of tequila and thewalking sexof a man in front of me,hiis the best I can do.
And apparently that’s all it takes. Evan reaches for my hand, guiding me away from our audience. I can’t say for sure why I let him, but the answer probably lies somewhere in this view of Evan from behind. In the way he mindlessly rakes his fingers through the perfectly undone black waves covering his head. In the tattoos that snake across his upper body, following every defined muscle.
My eyes trace the intricate black and red ink that paints every bit of his exposed olive skin before disappearing under his loose black tank top.
When he’s satisfied with the distance we’ve achieved, he turns his slightly stubbled face back to mine. I’m acutely aware of his hand on the newly exposed skin at the small of my back. It’s not unpleasant, but it is foreign enough that I can’t stop thinking about the weight of it on me. When Ro touched me there, I’d nearly forgotten to notice because of how familiar it felt. Like he belonged there. Like he’d always held me that way.
I step back until I’m just barely out of Evan’s reach.
“Thought we could use some space to get to know each other,” he says, stepping closer with his fingers at my back again. He taps out a rhythm on my skin, making his presence even more impossible to ignore.
He scans my face for recognition. “We haven’t met before, right?”
My laughter eases a bit of the tension. Mine, anyway.
Evan’s brow quirks in confusion, but it’s justtoofitting that he’d be the type of guy to forget women he ought to remember. I adjust my purse to form a buffer between us and shake my head, taking a couple big sips of my cocktail. “You guys any good?”
“Just wait,” he practically purrs. “You’re gonna see these people lose their fucking minds.”
I try to regain the composure of my earlier sobriety, but my blinks are lazy now, and even I hear new warmth dripping from my words as I tease, “Okay, rock star.” And it’s only when I’m removing my hand from his chest that I realize I’d touched him at all.
Thanks, tequila.
“Fair warning, though, this isn’t usually my thing.”
“Don’t knock it till you try it,” he says. And I can’t tell for sure if it’s his breath or his tongue that makes contact with my ear when he leans in to whisper, “It’s always the good girls.” Evan grabs my hips to pull me into him.
“Whoa,” I mutter, stumbling briefly before catching myself on his sculpted biceps.
“You were all the way over there,” he says. He dips his head down so his mouth is in my ear again. Lip jutting out as he pouts. “I feel like I’m yelling.”
Tipsy as I am, and tempting as he is, if this guy doesn’t keep his hands to himself, he’s going to need all his pretty muscles to defend himself against mine.
“I can hear you just fine.”
I take another step back from a shocked-looking Evan, just as Liv, Travis, and the rest of the guys appear to retrieve him. Without another glance in my direction, Evan pushes through the newly formed group, and before he’s completely out of earshot, I hear him yell to the guys, “I need a fucking drink.”
“Come on,” Liv says, grabbing my hand. “Let’s go backstage.”
There’s just no fucking way.
But Liv looks drunk and happy and I’d like to keep it that way.
“Is it okay if we just stay out here?” I say, instead of telling her that her boyfriend sucks and his friend’s a creep.
Liv’s eyes follow Travis’s retreating frame as a gaggle ofpick mes materialize from thin air, closing in on the band as they reach the red curtain by the stage.
I sense Liv’s silent debate.
