Tease Read Online Free Page A

still chattering, I fished my phone out of my pocket and punched in Pepper’s name. It rang four times and then went to voice mail. Yanking the phone from my ear, I glared at the lit screen. “C’mon, Pepper.” Damn rabbits. I could guess what they were doing. Instead of leaving a message, I punched at the phone several times with my finger, missing the end button before successfully landing on it.
    Pink Floyd piped out of the speakers near the stage and everyone looked livelier than they had half an hour ago. No more of Noah’s best of the ’80s to mellow the mood. It was a miracle they hadn’t been booted out of here before I even spilled beer in some biker’s lap.
    I was on the verge of dialing Georgia—if I could hit the right button. She’d been with her boyfriend since she was sixteen, so they probably weren’t having sex. At least certain comments from Georgia led me to believe that they didn’t exactly have a rocking sex life. Harris was such a tool. Sad really. Georgia deserved better. She deserved fun and a guy who worshipped her and that just wasn’t Harris, but somehow I was the only one who saw this.
    “Friends leave you?”
    My head snapped up at the sound of the deep voice. The motion threw off my balance. I staggered sideways.
    Hot Biker Boy reached out as though to steady me, but I slid farther away, determined that he not touch me. He held up his hand, palm face out, as though to proclaim himself unarmed.
    My stare moved from his palm to his face. A face too pretty to be in this bar where it looked like you needed an injection of penicillin if you just brushed up against one of its patrons.
    Except he was one of them . A pretty-boy biker just seemed like an oxymoron. A giggle started to slip past my lips, but I quickly pressed my fingers to my mouth to kill the sound.
    I gave my head a small shake, trying to clear it from the effects of alcohol.
    He leaned against the wall just a few inches beside me. “You okay?” he asked.
    “Y-yes. Fine. You? How are you? Oh, wait. Me?” I frowned. “Why? Why do you ask? Don’t I look okay?”
    One corner of his mouth lifted in a sexy half grin. I could have kicked myself for babbling so much. A simple yes would have sufficed.
    He angled his head, his deeply set eyes focusing on me with an intensity that I wasn’t accustomed to. Like he was really looking past the clothes and makeup and hair to the girl beneath. I squinted. Were those his lashes? Ridiculous. They were longer than lashes ought to be on a guy.
    “You look drunk,” he replied.
    I winced. Was it that obvious? “Not really. I’ve had a few.”
    He gave me a skeptical look. In turn, I gave him what I hoped was my most sober look.
    Shaking his head, he looked out at the bar that was growing just as rowdy as the women in the bathroom had predicted. It seemed like our fight had kicked things off for the night and now things were really hopping.
    “You stranded here?”
    I looked back at him and lied again. “No.” Stranded made me sound so . . . helpless. Even if it was true, that wasn’t me. I wasn’t helpless.
    “Where’d your friends go?”
    “They had to go somewhere,” I answered, not caring if that wasn’t really an answer at all.
    “Without you?”
    I exhaled. It was a difficult lie to maintain when I stood here alone. Cold. Wet. And more inebriated than I should be considering my designated driver had flaked out on me. I dragged a hand down one side of my face.
    He buried one hand in his jacket pocket but didn’t add anything else. We leaned against the wall in silence, staring straight ahead, several inches separating us. The heat from his body radiated toward me. I rotated my phone in my hand nervously, waiting for him to go away, unwilling to call Georgia in front of him and reveal just how desperate and alone I was.
    One of the women from the bathroom was dancing on top of a table now, waving her arms above her head as she gyrated her hips to the shouts and cheers