Page 38 of Merry Me
I snorted. Loudly. In a very unsexy, very nasal kind of way. He flinched like I’d just slapped him with a snow-dusted tree branch.
His hopeful face fell. “You’re not even going to pretend to flirt back?”
I sighed, tapping my fingers against the sticky bar. “Sorry. It’s not you. It’s me.”
“Classic line,” he said, trying to turn his pout into something charming. Bless his heart, he was trying so hard. But I wasn’t biting. And not just because my ovaries were still on a full-blown strike.
I needed to get out of here. Unfortunately, the other bar—theone without the overly ambitious flirting—was all the way across the room.
Where he was.
And then it happened again. The sound. That unmistakable, shrill, hormone-laced giggling.
I froze. My fingers tightened around my drink.
Don’t do it,Natalie.
Don’t be that girl.
But I was already glancing over my shoulder before my brain could tell my neckno.
And there he was.
Easton.Fucking.Maddox.
Leaning against the opposite bar like he’d been sent straight from every erotic dream I’d ever had. He was wearing a dark green sweater that hugged his body like it had taken an oath to ruin lives. And it was succeeding. The sleeves were pushed up just enough to show off the veins in his forearms…veins that had absolutely no business looking that good.
He laughed at something someone said, his stupid jawline doing that thing where it flexed and made me irrationally angry. His hair fell into his face, artfully tousled and just the right amount ofI didn’t try but look at me being perfect anyway.Unlike the bartender’s gelled mess, I knew for a fact that Easton’s version was real. Real and dangerous.
My fists tightened in his hair,holding him to me as his tongue licked through my folds.He forced two fingers inside me,and I whimpered as my orgasm approached…
NOPE.
I threw back the rest of my drink like it was holy water and I needed to exorcise the memory of that particular orgasm immediately.
Fuck.
I looked around the bar, trying to find a distraction, but all I saw were a bunch of wide-eyed girls clustered around Easton like they were auditioning forThe Bachelor:Mistletoe Edition. They were giggling and flipping their hair, glancing over their shoulders like one seductive glance would unlock the key to his heart and his…assets.
Idiots.
Okay, no. That wasn’t fair.
I was a girl’s girl. I was. And I supported all women in all their pursuits of hotness and happiness.
But I was alsohuman.
And watching those women fawn over him—after knowing what it felt like to have him in my bed, in my life, in my soul—it hit a nerve. A frayed, raw, “I cried into a Blue Bell ice cream container the night we broke up” kind of nerve.
This exact scenario was why I had broken things off in the first place. Because no matter how much Easton said I was the only one, I’d always worried…what if he looked back?
And then…he did look.
But not at them.
His gaze swept lazily across the room, like he wasn’t about to set me on fire with a single glance.
And then it landed on me.
