Page 2 of Fearlessly Us

“Is there a reason you’re serving him first when I’ve clearly been waiting here for twenty minutes? I may not be a professional football player or a man, but having gone to kindergarten, I’m well acquainted with the way turns work, and mine was about six people ago.”

My lips quirk up in a smile at the voice that manages to be both authoritative and dripping with irritation, and I immediately glance to my left looking for its source who, it turns out, is someone I know.

Sort of.

Caitlin Parker, Tyler’s first cousin and one of Maddy and Sophie’s best friends, stands at the other end of the bar, spine ramrod straight and one hand on her hip. Her golden-brown hair tumbles down her back, and the navy-blue dress she’s wearing molds to her curves like second skin, falling to mid-thigh and showcasing long, smooth legs that end in silver sandals with straps that crisscross over her feet.

The entire look screams taste, class, and a do not fuck with me kind of sophistication I find unbearably sexy. And when my eyes catch on her toenails sparkling purple under the dim club lights, that little touch of whimsy for the badass lawyer has a grin spreading over my face, and the interest that escaped me earlier roars back to life.

For her.

Fucking someone so closely connected to people I know is the kind of complication I aggressively avoid, but there’s no reason I can’t enjoy the show as long as I’m standing here.

And what a show it is.

Caitlin glares with narrowed eyes at the bartender who, with his purposefully messy hair and black polo shirt with a popped collar, looks like he’s auditioning for king of the douchebros.

“Relax, honey, I’ll get to you when I get to you.”

I roll my eyes because has this guy ever even met a woman before?

Right on cue, I can practically hear Caitlin suck in a breath, her body coiling tightly as if she’s prepping to lunge across the bar and strangle this asshole. “Honey?” she practically hisses, and when the bartender rolls his eyes at her, I marvel at the fact that he’s still standing, and that the daggers shooting out of Caitlin’s eyes haven’t struck him dead. “Don’t be a condescending dick. And if you want to keep all your important parts attached to your body and maybe successfully bear children one day, I suggest you get to me right the fuck now.”

The hand sliding over my cock pulls my attention away from Caitlin, and my entire body jolts like I’ve been hit with a cattle prod. I whip my head around, looking into the smirking face of the woman I had completely forgotten about.

I blame Caitlin’s purple toenails.

“So, what do you think?” the woman asks, moving her hand back up into a safer zone now that she has my attention. “I’ve got a hotel room a few doors down and there are a lot of hours until morning. Think of how much fun we could have.”

No.

The word slams definitively into my brain, but before I can say anything, my attention is pulled away again by Caitlin’s audible growl as the bartender, once again, turns his back on her in favor of a group of guys who can’t possibly be old enough to drink.

I’m in motion immediately, great goal woman forgotten.

“There you are, baby. I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” I say, sidling up to Caitlin and leaning against the bar. I’m so close to her, the heat of her skin radiates into mine and her scent wraps itself around me. The lavender and vanilla somehow manages to be both businesslike and seductive, and I have to restrain myself from burying my face in her neck to see what it smells like up close.

Smelling Caitlin Parker’s neck is the opposite of aggressive avoidance of complication.

“I’m not your baby,” she mutters under her breath with an exasperated eye roll, but her words are drowned out by the bartender, who is suddenly extremely interested in this end of the bar. I’m not usually one for using my fame in any kind of overt way, but I have a feeling this is going to piss Caitlin off mightily, and for reasons I don’t entirely understand, the idea of getting a rise out of her delights me.

“Oh my god, you’re Drew Ellicott!” the bartender exclaims. “Your touchdown at the end of the third quarter was the greatest thing I’ve ever seen! How did you even hold onto that ball?”

I can feel Caitlin’s second eyeroll, and I ignore the question. “Hey, man. Seems my friend here has been waiting quite some time for a drink. Do you think you can do something about that?”

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry. Yes, of course! What can I get you?” he asks quickly.

I turn to Caitlin, and when my gaze clashes with hers, electricity zings through my body for the second time in ten minutes, but this time it’s the welcome sort of zing. Her gray eyes narrow as she studies me, and I have the strange, almost unsettling feeling she can see straight through to my deepest depths. All the way down to a place I’ve never granted anyone entry before.

A place I don’t even enter myself unless my brain forces me to while I’m sleeping, which is why I so rarely sleep at all.

“What are you drinking?” I ask her, pasting a lazy smirk on my face to cover the discomfort suddenly roiling beneath my surface.

She levels me with a glare. “I can get my own drink.”

“Sweetheart, you are independence personified, and I’m positive there’s nothing on earth you can’t do. But I’m right here, and I won a kind of important game earlier today that makes people like that bartender, who’s been ignoring you for the last twenty minutes, amenable to giving me things I want. And what I want is to get you a drink. So, what’ll it be?”

“First baby and now sweetheart?” she asks, still not telling me what I want to know, and something about the challenge of figuring her out lights me up in a way nothing has in a very long time. Maybe ever.