Sea Breeze 03 While It Lasts (20 page)

             
I’d noticed him earlier when I’d been sitting at the table. Watching someone that actually knew how to play the bass well was always intriguing to me.

             
“Yo
u’re good. I’m impressed by the fact you can actually pull off Flea’s stuff.”

             
Krit
and Green both froze.

             
“You know who the bassist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers is?” Green asked me. The shock on his face made me smile.

             
“Yes, I do. Flea is one of the greats in my opinion. But Jon Pau
l Jones is my a
ll-
time favorite,
” I replied.

             
Green slammed his still full shot glass on the table and some of it splashed over the side. “Holy shit! She knows the bassist for Led fucking Zeppelin!”

             
He shifted his awed look to Cage, “I’ll do anything man. Just let me have her, please?”

             
Cage’s arm wrapped around my waist and he pulled me closer to his side. “Not happening. Back off.”

             
“Fuck
man, do you know how many girl
s I’ve met that
don’t
even know what the hell a bassist is? NONE! Fucking NONE! Where’d you get her? I want one too.”

             
Cage chuckled beside me, “Sorry
,
man. It’s not happening.”

             
“You could maybe go to a music school and actually meet girls who know how to play the bass. Typically the ones you pick up in bars only know how to unzip your pants.”
I informed him.

             
The entire table burst into laughter. Cage placed a kiss on the top of my head and squeezed my side.

             
“Okay
,
hell now I want one,”
Krit
chimed in.

             
“You are bringing her around more often Cage. I like this one,” Trisha said smiling at me.

             
“
What do you mean by ‘this one’?” Green asked before draining his shot glass. “
There
ain’t
ever been another one he kept more than a couple hours.”

             
“That’s enough you two. I’m not in the mood to keep your
asses
from
being
strung up by Cage tonight. If he decides to shut you up I’m
gonna
let him,” Rock spoke up for the first time.

             
“He knows we’re kidding,”
Krit
shot me a cocky grin and winked.

             
“
Fuuuck
, I
ain’t
kidding. I want her,” Green said before turning to take another shot glass from a waitress.

             
“MATTY!”
Krit
called out over the crowd. I noticed girls with too much makeup and not enough clothing hovering around us like vultures. Were they waiting on one of the band members to notice them
?

             
A guy with long hair that stuck straight up in the air and really tight jeans sauntered up with a girl on each arm. Neither of them looked older than seventeen. I was more than positive they weren’t legal.

             
“Please tell me you checked ID,” Green moaned in annoyance.

             
“I trust them. They’re both eighteen
,
aren’t you girls?”

             
The girls bobbed their head
s
in unison.

             
“Sure they are,” Cage muttered beside me.

             
The new guy finally looked our way and his focus shifted from Cage to me back to Cage. “You already picked one for the night?”

             
Cage
made an aggravated sound in his throat. “Eva
,
this is
Matty
the drummer.
Matty
,
this is Eva
,
my date
.” The warning look in Cage’s eyes wasn’t lost on me.

             
Matty’s
surprised expression was something I was getting used to. If it was really this crazy for Cage to date just one girl then why was he out with me? If we slept together would that be it? Would he be done with me? Had I kidded myself into thinking he was a nice guy? Because I knew he wasn’t exactly a good guy.

             
“I’ll be damned,” was
Matty’s
reply.

             
“Yeah, we already knew you were damned. Even before you decided to have a go with two high school freshman.”
Krit
drawled in an amused tone.

             
“I told you they’re
eighteen,”
Matty
insisted.

             
“We’re up in two,” Green interrupted them and took one last swallow from his newest
shot glass. How many had he dru
nk during his five-
minute break?

             
“Bring her back,” Green called out to Cage and then winked at me.

             
“Sorry about him. But you did unleash some stellar knowledge of famous
bassist
s. That’s like porn for Green,
” Cage said with a smirk.

             
“They were entertaining,” I assured him.

             
He pulled me around to face him and studied me a moment.

             
“Want to tell me how you know about bass guitarist
s
?”

             
Was I ready to share this with Cage? I’d only played my
acoustic
once the other night. Sharing
more of Josh with Cage almost felt wrong. If Cage was just in my life for the summer then did I want to give him too much of me? If I had imagined that there could be more for us that had been killed tonight
. Cage didn’t do commitment. I
was just a summer fling.

             
I shrugged, “I like guitars I guess.”

             
He didn’t buy it. I could see it in his eyes but he didn’t push me either.

             
“You ready to go?”
h
e asked

             
“Yeah, I think I am.”

Cage

             
I hadn’t
said much on the drive back to my apartment.  Eva was cautious. I knew this. I’d known it from day one when she’d basically called me a man whore. It was one of the things I liked about her.
Up
until tonight I had been making progress. She’d told me about Josh. I’d been able to hold her while she cried. I thought that had formed a bond of trust between us.

             
Taking her into my world had undone everything I’d worked damn hard to prove to her. If I didn’t have girls throwing themselves
at me and talking about our threesomes
,
I had my friends acting like I used girls like disposable objects. I’d wanted my friends to meet her. I’d wanted her to know me until she got a real taste of my life. Now, I wanted to get her back to the country so we could live in our little cocoon where my past wasn’t there to haunt me.

             
“Are you mad at me?” Eva’s question snapped me out of my thoughts. I lifted my eyes from the spot in the floor I’d been staring at to see Eva standing in the doorway wearing a pair o
f
tiny pink polka dot pajama bottoms and a matching tank top. It was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen.

             
“Huh?” I managed to ask through the lust haze that had settled over me. She wasn’t wearing a bra. I swallowed hard as her nipples
pebbled
under my gaze and pressed against the thin silky fabric.

             
“You didn’t talk the whole way back from the ba
r. I thought maybe you were mad
at me about something.”

             
Mad at her? What?

             
I tore my eyes off her tits and focused on her worried face. “No, I’m not mad at you. I just had some stuff on
my
mind.”

             
She shifted her feet and chewed on the inside of her cheek nervously. 

             
“Come here.
”
I invited, patting
the spot on the end of the bed beside me.

             
She came willingly. I tried to focus on her face and making her less nervous. But damned if the fact those shorts barely covered up her ass
wasn’t distracting.  She sat down beside me
fisting
her hands together in her lap. I reached over and covered her hands with mine.

             
“Relax
,
Eva. I’m not mad at you
. I’m frustrated with myself.
”

             
She tilted her head to the side and looked up at me. Her silky brown locks slid over her bare shoulder.  Had I ever noticed how sexy something as simple as a bare shoulder could be?

             
“Why are you frustrated with yourself?”

             
Because I’m a fuck-
up and now you know it.

             
“Tonight didn’t go as well as
I’d
hoped. I don’t have a very stellar reputation and it seemed like everyone who knew me wanted to make sure you knew just what a sordid past I had.”

             
Her shoulders relaxed and she leaned over and bumped my arm with her shoulder. “You do realize that I never thought you had a stellar reputation.” Her teasing tone made me smile.

             
“What? You didn’t think I was next in line for Pope? Damn, I thought I had you fooled.”

             
Eva laughed and pulled her legs underneath her and turned her body so she was facing me. “Yeah, the whole DUI thing kind of clued me in.”

             
“You think you’re a funny
one
,
don’t you?” I leaned back on my elbows so I could look up at her. Also because I had a real good view of her ass now that her shorts were inched up enough to show me the bottom curve of her perfectly rounded cheeks.

             
“I had fun tonight. Your friends are very entertaining.”

             
The one friend she’d had there I’d threat
ened.

             
“I’m really sorry about the thing with your friend. I snapped.”

             
A small frown puckered her brown then she shrugged.  “You apologized for that already and I forgave you but
,
in the future
,
if you could refrain from threatening people because of me that would be nice.”

             
I didn’t respond because that probably wouldn’t happen. If she
was
with another guy I
would be seeing
red. No use in making any promises I couldn’t keep.

             
“I really like those
pjs
,” I changed the subject and reached over to run my finger along the edge of the shorts. I couldn’t look at her ass any longer and not at least touch it.

             
She shivered and pressed her lips together tightly. How innocent was she? She’d been with Josh forever. They’d been engaged. Surely she wasn’t a virgin. No guy would be able to make it through high school without getting him some. I didn’t want to know what all she’d done with him. Even if the guy was dead I couldn’t handle images of some other guy touching her. Considering I couldn’t even count the number of girls I’d been with it was fucked up that I cared about her being with just one guy.  But I hadn’t loved one of those girls.  She’d loved Josh. It made a difference. At least in my head it did.

             
“I want… I want to do things, tonight. I mean, I want to do more than we have,” she stammered and her face flushed a bright pink. “But I’m not sure if I’m ready for, you know…
sex.”

             
I sat up and closed the space between us.
The truth was I wasn’t sure I was ready for sex. It would be different for me this time. It scared the shit out of me. Sex and emotion never went together before but it had been so long since I’d been with anyone that I wasn’t sure I could stop myself if we got to
o
carried away. I wasn’t used to stopping and I sure as hell had never been told no.