Page 47 of Something Like Sunflowers

Oh, Katie is not passing the vibe check.

“I dare you to sleep with Hunter,” she says, folding her arms across her chest in a triumphant and, I’ll hand it to her, pretty badass move. If I didn’t hate her right now, I might want to be her friend.

“Nice try. But you can’t dare someone to have sex.”

“No, not sex. I dare you to spend the night with him. One night. No sex. That’s the dare. Because there’s one more rule, you can’t have any sexual intercourse even if you want to. I’ll put fifty bucks on it.” She smirks and turns her attention to Robbie. “I doubt they last an hour.”

“What?” Lemon and I say in unison. And I have to admit it feels good that the girl’s got my back. I’m not used to that. I’m used to being the one other girls hate. Katie? I’m not sure yet.

“This is a horrible idea, Devyn. We should call Shana and—”

“No.”

Hunter’s eyes widen in my direction. Most everyone at the table has something to say about it. It’s wrong. It’s stupid. We wouldn’t last a day. We would kill each other. Someone, I think Robbie, says he wants it on film.

Ew.

Then again, it’s kinda hot to think about filming myself with Hunter. Laying his TikTok moves down on me, above me, while the world scrolls by and sees he’s mine and I’m his.

Stop. Nope. Lemon’s right. Bad idea.

“Look,” I say, coming to my senses, “on second thought, maybe Lem is right…”

“Whoa, there,” Hunter interjects. “Don’t I get any say in this?”

“Hear ye, hear ye!” Robbie slams down his beer-bottle-made-gavel, suddenly the drunken grand master of bets and challenges. “What’s your input, Isaac?”

Hunter drags his eyes across my body almost as slowly as his tongue across his lips, scorching me internally as he holds my gaze.

“I say we’re on. But I want something out of it.” He strums his fingers together. “I want more than a night with you. Let’s make it a month.”

I gasp, and the rest of the table does too. But Lemon smiles.

“And,” she adds in singsong tune, “whoever caves and initiates sex first forfeits the charity competition for Classy Country and lets the other one take the job.”

At first, I’m flabbergasted. I shoot Lemon a death glare. How could she? I thought we were friends now…truce and all. Why would she do that to me?

But I hear psst from across the table, and she winks at me. Not at Hunter. And it’s then I realize she’s an actual genius. I am not going to cave.

But I’ll do everything in my power to tease the hell out of Hunter so he does.

Everyone says I always do things impulsively, but I’ve thought it over, in the point-three seconds I’ve had since realizing it, and I’ve decided this is a win-win for me.

I tease him, he caves before I do, and I get my dream job. It’s as simple as that.

In the back of my head, Sober-Devyn shouts things about guarding our heart and feelings and risks, but I take a big swig of my beer and drown that Debbie Downer right the fuck out.

“No problem. I’m in,” I tell the group before twisting to face a smirking Hunter beside me.

“Are you sure about this, babygirl?” His fingers brush my bangs away from my eyes, and I shiver. He leans in and kisses my ear, the sensations that ripple across my body each a separate promise of their own that he won’t make this easy on me, either. “I know how much you want that job. I’d hate for you to fail because you couldn’t behave.”

He whispers that last part directly in my ear, and the stupidly sexy asshole even lets his teeth linger, nibbling for far too long to be considered appropriate for a group setting, and leaving behind a hot, wet breath that I want to preserve against my skin so I can feel him there.

When I’m alone.

Thinking about his words…

“Such a filthy little princess.”

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