Consolation Prize (Forbidden Men Book 9) (10 page)

I sighed. “No. Yes. I don’t know. All I know is I’m not in a hurry to hop back into a bed with just anyone.” Not the way I’d been in a rush to hop onto that table with Colton at the wedding reception.

Dammit, that had nothing to do with this discussion. This was about boyfriends and commitments. That had been nothing but drunken revelry. A mistake. A really amazing, breathtaking mistake, but still clearly a mistake of drunken proportions.

“And all I know is that time’s wasting, my ladies.” Sasha clapped her hands. “If you don’t want a man, JuJu, that’s fine. But you still need to make time for us between all your schooling and working, and right now, we have a par-
tay
to get to.”

“Yeah,” Tyla cheered. “Dancing and drinks. Who needs men when you can have a girls’ night out?”

I stood up, glad we’d veered away from talking about me. “Then let’s get our drink on.”

A
fter making a few calls, Sasha discovered the biggest party going on around campus was being hosted by the Kappa Sigma fraternity. She’d heard there were four kegs and a band playing on the back deck. I believed it. In the fall, when it’d been warm, they’d had this huge waterslide and tiki torches everywhere. Those Kappa Sigma boys
knew
how to throw a party.

Which made me less enthusiastic to attend. I could handle myself in a crowd, but I wasn’t in the mood for one tonight.

And boy was it crowded. We had to park about three blocks away because the place was already so congested by the time we arrived.

“This is going to be so much fun,” Tyla screeched as she hooked her arm through Sasha’s and swept her ahead.

Left behind, I shivered into my coat and rubbed my arms as I trailed them. Feeling lame and wishing I really had talked my way out of attending, I followed them into the yard where the crowd thickened almost instantly. People were freaking everywhere, laughing, dancing, talking, drinking.

I drew in a deep breath, ready to find my own drink when I passed a row of guys sitting on this short concrete wall-divider thing. Whatever it was, it rose just enough above the ground that their feet had to hang down and couldn’t touch as they sat on it. I really didn’t notice them, was more just aware of them there out of the corner of my eye as I began to pass and tried not to lose sight of Tyla and Sasha in front of me. That was, I didn’t pay them much mind until one of the guys stuck out his leg, barring my path.

I jerked to a halt and stared at the jean-clad leg with arched-brow annoyance before slowly swerving my attention to the asshole’s face. The expression I sent him clearly told him he needed to let me pass immediately if he wanted to survive the night with his junk intact. But my ire quickly morphed into shock when I met a set of familiar brown eyes.

He smirked. “I figured I’d get bitched out again if I didn’t at least say hello this time.”

My heart skipped a beat, and my breathing hitched into high gear.

Colton was here.

C
OLTON’S
C
HAPTER
|
10

D
ammit. I couldn’t escape Julianna anywhere, could I?

Sarah had shown up at our place earlier, announcing she was going to help Noel watch the kids tonight, ergo I needed to get out for the evening and go do “college-guy stuff,” as she’d called it.

“It’s the first day of the semester,” she’d told me as she’d shooed me toward the door. “Go. Celebrate.”

So I’d left, though I felt guilty all the way to my truck. Aspen hadn’t come out of her room once today, and Lucy Olivia had been fussy, or at least she had been when I’d been home from school. It didn’t seem like a good time to go out and celebrate anything.

I would’ve gone to Forbidden and bothered Brandt at work. Since I was eighteen now, I was at least allowed through the doors while they were open. But I hadn’t really talked to him since he’d returned from his honeymoon. I was still sore about the whole “you owe me” thing, not to mention the fact that he’d unknowingly cock-blocked me in the worst way possible. Plus, I didn’t want to risk seeing Julianna there in case she was also working. And I
really
didn’t want to see the two of them
together
.

They played this cutesy game whenever they worked together. Julianna was determined to create her very own alcoholic mixed drink, and she and Brandt often collaborated on mixing different concoctions and taste testing them. They smiled and laughed a lot when they did it too, and I didn’t want to see that tonight because right now I kind of hated that special thing she shared only with him.

So I called Caroline.

“Ass muncher!” her husband answered the phone, seemingly glad to hear from me by the tone of his voice. An instant later, he demanded, “Why’re you bothering me?”

I snorted. “Like I called to talk to a scroatbag like you. Get my sister on the line.”

“She’s got more important things to do than talk to a shit stain like
you
. She’s busy wiping my kid’s ass.”

My two-and-a-half-year-old niece Teagan was in the midst of potty training, and she was being a resistant little turd—much like her father—so I asked, “Diaper or toilet?”

Ten sighed. “Still diaper. I swear, that kid’s going to shit her pants until she’s thirty.”

With a laugh, I taunted, “And you’ll have to change every single one of them.”

“Hey, fuck you. Oh wait. Here’s Caroline. Later, goat breath.”

“Possum fucker,” I returned in farewell, only to shake my head as a two-second pause ensued until my sister took control of the phone.

People told me I acted a lot like my brother-in-law, Ten, but I didn’t see it. He was lame; I was awesome. Enough said.

“Bubba!” Caroline greeted. “What’s going on? Everything okay?”

I had no idea how she could sound both happy to hear from me and worried for me all in the same breath, but she managed it nicely.

“Yep, it’s all good. Sarah came over to help with things only to kick me out of the house for a couple hours, so…wanna make a couple Vines?”

“Oh, man, I wish I could, but Oren picked up a new client today, so he and Teagan and I were going to go out for dinner to celebrate. But you can come with us.”

She was the only person I knew who called her husband by his real first name. It made me wonder if his clients called him Oren or Ten.

Yeah, he was probably
Mr
. Tenning to them, which made me smirk. Mr. Tenning? How professional. He probably wore a suit and tie when he met with them too, like some kind of skilled architect or something, which I guess he was, but still…weird.

“Colton?” Caroline asked.

“Hmm? Oh, right. Sorry. No. You guys go ahead.” I wasn’t going to crash their family night out. “I’m not hungry.” I was fucking starving, especially since she had mentioned food. But with the mood I was in, I already knew I’d feel like a fifth wheel if I tagged along. “Maybe some other night.”

“Yeah, sure. Anytime. I had this idea about a Vine where someone tells you to log online to some website, and in the next scene you’re cutting a literal log off a tree with a chainsaw, asking, ‘is this big enough,’ or something like that.”

“Sweet. I like it.” I nodded, already thinking through the details to accomplish it. “Do you have a chainsaw?”

“Why would we have a chainsaw?” Caroline sounded perplexed. “There are no trees in our yard.”

“So we have to get our hands on a chainsaw
and
a tree someone is willing to let us maim?”

Caroline sniffed as if irritated. “Well, I didn’t say it was going to be easy.”

“I suppose you want
me
to come up with both the tree and chainsaw too, huh?”

“Yeah, would you? You’re such a doll, thank you!” In the background, I heard a male shout and then a toddler’s shrieking back talk. “Oh, geesh. I gotta go. Love you. Bye.”

She hung up on me before I could say anything back, and I mumbled a delayed farewell as I stared at the dead phone. Typical of her to race off in the middle of a conversation. I always felt a little abandoned when she did that to me. But glad I had a mission now, I called Asher, hoping he had a chainsaw and a bushy tree he wanted trimmed.

He had no chainsaw and wasn’t willing to let me touch one of his trees either. “You’re not cutting up my trees, kid. My squirrels need those.”

And that was that. End of discussion.

I knew Pick had trees in his backyard, but I’d already begged enough from him lately. Caroline and I had about a dozen awesome bar skit ideas we wanted to post on Vine, so we were probably lucky enough Pick had given us some time in Forbidden after hours. We shouldn’t push our luck by begging for more shit from him.

I knew Felicity and Knox didn’t have a tree in their backyard.

I was about to call Sarah’s brother, Mason, because they had trees—not sure about a chainsaw—but an incoming call from one of my buddies I’d known since high school waylaid me.

“Dude, are you coming to the Kappa Sigma tonight? You are so missing out right now. There are chicks
everywhere
. Hot chicks. Hot
half-dressed
chicks.” And alcohol too, apparently, since he sounded about as toasted as I’d ever heard him.

“I, uh…” When I realized I was trying to think up an excuse why I couldn’t make it, I paused.

What the hell was I doing? I had no reason in the world not to go, except I hadn’t been in the mood to do much of anything outside family shit since…well, Julianna.

I didn’t like realizing that. I didn’t like how I’d given her that much power over me. She’d been on my mind every day since
that
night. I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her, I hadn’t been able to throw her underwear away, and I hadn’t been able to look at her after she’d tried to hide from me the day after Brandt’s wedding when I’d gone to the bar to see her.

I’d been ready to move past her drunken slip and actually apologize to her for the way I’d taken off, but then she’d ducked behind the counter when she’d seen me walk in. I don’t know why that made me so irate, maybe because she’d promised she wouldn’t regret anything we did, when clearly she regretted the fuck out of it. But I lost it. I breezed past her and ended up making my cover reason to be there—to talk to Pick—the only reason I was there.

I’d been ready to forget about her completely after that—or, you know, at least try to—but then I’d bumped into her in philosophy class and then she’d bitched me out afterward for ignoring her at Forbidden, when actually, I had kind of thought that’s what she’d
wanted
me to do since she was the one who’d hidden from me in the first place. But now I had no idea what she wanted. I just knew that whatever I did around her was going to be wrong…which irritated me even more.

Dropping the philosophy class we shared had been tempting, but ridiculous, so I’d stayed on, thinking it was such a large class we’d probably rarely cross paths anyway. Hell, we’d probably run into each other at a party more than we’d be forced to interact in that class.

But I should’ve never had that thought because shit, here we were, running into each other at a party.

Jinxed myself.

I should’ve let her walk on by, but the words of her scolding me earlier after class, telling me I needed to be less contentious, echoed through my head. And before I knew it, I was lifting up my foot to stop her and smarting off some stupid comment about how I was only talking to her because she’d pretty much demanded it and I didn’t want her to bitch me out again.

Except that wasn’t the reason at all. What was worse, I didn’t even know
why
I felt the pressing need to make her see me and acknowledge me and talk to me. I just knew blood surged through my veins when she turned her glare my way, only for her expression to freeze with shock when she realized who she was looking at.

My heart began to pound and my breathing stalled as if I was actually worried about what I was going to say to her next and how it needed to be exactly the right words. But that wasn’t something I
ever
worried about, which pissed me off too, so I blurted out the first angry thing that popped into my head.

“You do realize how much you put every guy here in danger by sashaying around dressed like that, don’t you?”

Her wide, surprised eyes squinted, then her eyebrows crinkled with confusion. “Excuse me?”

I swept my gaze over her, every single spectacular inch of her. “You’re lethal, baby doll, and
way
too gorgeous for your own good. All the guys are going to want to hit on you, and they’re all going to limp away after you reject them and stomp on their testicles with those pointy heels of your boots. It just doesn’t seem fair to them.”

She blinked once before her lips smirked as if I’d complimented her and she was proud to be labeled such a way.

But then she chased it with a scowl.

Focusing on the red Solo cup I held, she swiped it from my grip. “What the fuck are you drinking?” After taking a sip and tasting it, she sighed and shook her head like she was disappointed. “Alcohol? Really?”

I shrugged. “What?”

“Honey, I’ve seen what alcohol makes you do.” My stomach hitched the moment her dark, intense gaze met mine. I knew she was going to do something bold a split second before she tipped the cup down and let the rest of the contents splash out onto the ground. “So no alcohol for you.”

I shook my head and sniffed. Typical. But also kind of hot. The way her brown eyes met mine was full of daring challenge. Red hot, savage challenge. It made my dick hard as a rock.

“I paid three bucks for that,” I said, making sure my expression didn’t alter and give away how much she turned me on.

Keeping eye contact with me, she dug her hand into her pocket and pulled up a roll of cash. After peeling off three ones, she stepped closer, making my body tense with craving. Then she came in closer still, nearly stepping between my parted legs where I sat, and she continued to look me straight in the eye as she slowly tucked the cash into the front pocket of my T-shirt.

I released a breath. My cock throbbed and my skin buzzed with the need to be touched. “You know, you could’ve paid me back another way,” I murmured, lifting my eyebrows in invitation.

I didn’t even think about what I was saying or how I’d labeled her a no-go zone in my mind. I just knew she turned me on like nothing else, and I wanted to taste her again.

God damn. I swear her mouth was like five inches away.

When her lips pursed into a smile, I almost groaned. “Sorry, that would’ve been worth a hell of a lot more than three dollars.”

Shit
. The need to tug her in and grind her into my lap was almost painful. “Then you
definitely
should’ve paid me back another way.”

Her smile only grew, letting me know my words amused her. Then she reached out and traced the longest, blue-painted fingernail I’d ever seen gently along my cheek. I gave a full-body shudder as she murmured, “Be good tonight, Little Gamble.”