The Infatuation (Josh and Kat #1 , The Club #5) (19 page)

A dragon?

Oh, jeez.

I’m pretty sure I told Josh dragons are top of the
list of “social suicide” tattoos, along with YOLO and barbed wire
and girlfriend tattoos. Why the hell did I say all that? I was just
talking out my butt—babbling off the top of my head. Sometimes I’m
too snarky for my own good.

Well, damn, just one look at him and it’s obvious my
made-up rules were meant to be broken. This boy could sport a YOLO
tattoo framed by barbed wire wrapped around a fire-breathing
dragon’s neck and stamped with an ex-girlfriend’s name and he’d
make it all look sexy as hell. Hot daaaaaaaa-yam, this is a sexy
man. My skin’s bursting into scorching flames just looking at him,
even though I’m standing in cool water up to my chest.

Josh grins at me from the ledge of the pool,
obviously enjoying the expression on my face. “Why are you looking
at me like that, Kat?” He pats his rock-hard abs and snaps the
waist of his briefs playfully, just below his “OVERCOME” tattoo.
“Haven’t you ever seen a guy in his undies before?”

There’s a rippling commotion just behind him and a
loud squeal, but I’m too fixated on Josh’s exquisite body to take
my eyes off him. Fuck the bet. Fuck the application. I’m gonna have
drunken sex with this gorgeous man right now and come like a
freight train. Right fucking now. In the bathroom. Or in one of the
back bedrooms of the suite. Or, hell, right here in this goddamned
swimming pool, if need be. Hell yeah. That’s the plan. We’ll just
pretend we’re hugging and cuddling in the water and all these
drunk, high people around us will never effing know I’m having the
orgasm of my life.

“Josh Faraday, you better get your gorgeous ass—” I
begin, but I stop.

Holy shitballs.

Isabel Randolph just waltzed right up to the edge of
the pool! Oh my God. She’s even more beautiful in person than on
the big screen. I feel faint. How is this my life right now?

“Reed!” Isabel says, waving happily toward the
swimming pool, her eyes focused immediately to my right.

I glance to my side and Reed’s standing just a few
feet away from me in the pool, holding a drink. When did he get
into the pool? And, hey, he looks mighty fine, I must say.

“Hey, Isabel, you came,” Reed replies, smiling
broadly. “Awesome to see you.”

“Wouldn’t have missed it. Hey, Josh,” Isabel says,
turning her attention to Josh a couple feet away from her on the
ledge of the pool. She kisses him on both cheeks and then
unabashedly looks him up and down. “Wow. You’re looking awfully...
fit
.”

Josh opens his mouth to reply, but before he can say
a damned word, his face pales like he’s seen a freaking ghost.

“Josh Faraday,” a blonde woman says, emerging from
the milling crowd and sauntering toward him and Isabel. “I had no
idea you’d be here.” She squeals. “I don’t see you for seven long
years, and now, out of nowhere, I get to see you
twice
in
two weeks—
and both times without a stitch of clothes on
?”
She giggles gleefully. “I guess there’s a God, after all.”

Josh

I feel physically ill.

I look at Kat in the pool and her face is a mixture
of rage and... well, no, nothing else. Just rage. Shit. I look at
Reed in the pool and he grimaces at me like I just got pounded in
the face with a sledgehammer.

Jen takes another step forward, advancing on me like
she’s gonna hug me, so I do the only thing my drunken brain can
come up with to save myself: I cannonball into the pool.

The minute I emerge from my splash-landing—or is it
a crash-landing?—I throw my hands up at Reed. “What the fuck, man?”
I ask, my voice low but intense.

Reed throws his hands up in mimicry of my posture.
“You didn’t tell me you were gonna be in Vegas this week,
Faraday—how the fuck was I supposed to know?” he says, matching my
energetic whisper. “I invited Isabel to the RCR concert when we saw
her last week in New York. You should have told me then you were
gonna be in Vegas if you didn’t want to see—”

“I didn’t know I’d be here—it came up last minute.
Why didn’t you at least tell me Jen was coming tonight? Jesus,
Reed. Help a brother out.”

“I didn’t even know Jen was coming—I didn’t even
know
Isabel
was coming. She said she’d
try,
and
that’s the last I heard.” He lowers his voice to barely above a
whisper. “And I sure as fuck didn’t know she’d bring
Jen
,
man.” Reed glances furtively at Kat.

“Fuck,” I say. “Not good, man.”

“It’s your own damned fault,” Reed says. “Play with
crazy, you’re gonna get crazy-burned.”

I turn to Kat, ready to apologize or assure her or
laugh with her—hell if I know where her head is at right now—and
the expression on her face makes it clear she’s pissed (though
about what, I’m not sure).

“Kat, listen,” I begin. “I—”

There’s a loud splashing noise right behind me.
Jesus, no. I wheel around, hoping my gut is wrong. But it’s not
wrong, unfortunately—Jen just jumped into the pool in her bra and
underpants, giggling and squealing like she’s auditioning for
Girls Gone Wild.

I grunt in frustration and lunge over to Kat. “Kat,
I’m not even
remotely
interested in her. I told you
that—”

“Josh!” Jen says wading up to me, her jaw-dropping
tits on bodacious display in her see-through electric-blue bra.
“Isabel didn’t tell me you were coming to see RCR, too.
Awesome
.” She puts her hand on my arm and leans into me like
she’s gonna kiss me.

I jerk my arm and lurch back from her violently,
toward Kat.

“Jen, I’m here with someone.” I motion to Kat. “I’m
on a date.”

Jen’s face instantly turns to ice. “Oh.” She
clenches her jaw. She blatantly looks Kat up and down. “So are you
gonna introduce me to your
date
? Unless, of course, you
don’t know her name?”

I feel physically sick. “No need to be—”

“Actually, he doesn’t know my name,” Kat spits at
Jen. “He hasn’t asked me for it and I haven’t supplied it, despite
the fact that we were just about to fuck in this pool.” She glares
at me sideways and then flashes a sweet smile at Jen. “I’m Kat.”
She puts out her hand.

Jen takes Kat’s hand like she’s picking up trash
from the side of the road. “Jen.” Jen looks Kat up and down again.
“A Vegas girl, I presume?” Her nostrils flare. “When in Rome, I
guess, huh, Josh? Charming.”

Kat turns her demonic eyes on me, full-force. “Oh,
so your name is
Josh
, is it? Did I hear that right? Or did
she call you
Jess
?”

I don’t reply. Well, not with my vocal chords. My
dick certainly seems to be replying, loud and clear. Yeah, my
dick’s always had a thing for crazy, it’s true—not to mention a
perfect pair of tits. Not to mention
two
perfect pairs of
tits, all of them glistening wet and covered in barely-there
see-through bras.

Kat stares Jen down, smiling the whole time. “You
know what, Jen? I think you just saved me from doing something
really
dumb
.” She’s spitting nails through that beauty-queen
smile of hers. “This guy here—Josh or Jess, whatever his name
is—won’t stop talking about some woman he banged in New York last
week.”

Jen’s face lights up. What the fuck is Kat doing to
me right now? Is she clinically insane?

“Yeah, he keeps going on and on about how this New
York girl was a horrible fuck, that the whole thing was totally
meaningless to him, how he was so fucking shitfaced drunk he
doesn’t even remember it—’oh, it was such a
huge
mistake,
blah, blah, blah—she was such a fucking airhead’—I mean, how
chicken-shit is that? Why the hell did he bang that poor girl if
she was such a horror show? What a fucking douche.”

Jen’s brief elation from a moment ago is long gone.
Now she looks like she was just whacked across the face with a
two-by-four.

This is one of the most uncomfortable moments of my
life. Jen looks like she’s gonna cry—which makes me feel like the
biggest prick on the planet—and Kat, the demon-queen herself, is
glaring at me like she’s readying her blowtorch, a Hershey bar,
some graham crackers, and a very sharp knife.

“And here I was stupidly about to give the guy more
of the same,” Kat continues, on a roll. “Just some meaningless,
shitfaced sex he won’t even remember tomorrow. Ha! Well, fuck that
shit.”

Without warning, Kat heaves herself out of the pool
and glowers at Jen from the ledge, her incredible body dripping wet
and on full, glorious display.

“He’s all yours, Jen. Maybe you’ll have more luck
than the poor girl he burned through in New York last week—whoever
the hell she was.” She flashes me a rage-filled smile. “Bye-bye,
Jess. Or Josh. Whatever your name is. Have fun in Vegas,
asshole—when in Rome.” With that, she struts over to the nearby
lounge chair, grabs her sparkling dress, and waltzes toward the
open French doors leading back into the suite.

A man has never leaped out of a swimming pool so
fucking fast in his entire life.

“Kat,” I yell after her. “Wait.”

But she doesn’t wait. Hell no, she doesn’t, because
she’s a goddamned terrorist.

She marches straight through the French doors, into
the suite, and toward the front doors, her incredible ass-cheeks
shuddering with each ground-quaking march of her long, toned legs.
On her way to the front door, she makes a pit stop at C-Bomb
sitting on the couch. She bends over and whispers something to him,
her tits falling out of her bra and into his face as she does. I’m
just about to leap across the room and tackle him when he nods and
hands her his drink—which looks to be straight whiskey or Scotch.
She throws the whole drink back in one fluid motion and hands the
empty glass back to him. “Thanks, son, I owe you one,” she says,
patting him on the head.

“Any time,” he says, smirking and looking right at
her chest.

“Kat,” I say, my blood pounding in my ears.

She completely ignores me. She puffs out her fucking
incredible chest and marches haughtily toward the front door of the
suite, her ass-cheeks bouncing with each determined stomp.

Jesus Christ. This woman is gonna be the death of
me.

“Kat, wait,” I say, running to catch up to her. But
she ignores me again. Jesus, the girl’s having a
bona fide
tantrum—but she’s so fucking hot while she’s doing it, I truly
don’t mind.

“Kat, what the fuck are you doing?” I call to
her.

She swings open the heavy front door of the suite
and marches right through it, toward the private elevator at the
end of a long hallway, her sequined dress in her hand, her wet body
glistening under the hallway lights.

“
Kat
,” I say, making my way through the
doors. She’s halfway down the hall. “Wait. I’m coming with you and
I can’t go down there in my fucking underwear.”

She stops on a dime.

Oh,
that’s
what made her finally stop?
Another peek at my nearly naked body? Well, good to know.

She whips around to look at me, and, instantly, her
gaze falls right on my dick. My very, very hard dick.

Her mouth drops open. “Wow,” she says, her eyes not
wavering from my crotch.

I look down. My soaking wet briefs are completely
see-through. I might as well be completely naked right now.

She opens her mouth and closes it again. “Wow,” she
says again, her eyes fixated on my hard-on beneath my see-through
briefs.

My dick twitches under her gaze and hardens even
more. “Just stay put,” I say. “Okay? I’m gonna get my clothes from
inside and come right back. I’m coming with you.”

“No,” she says, her hand on her hip. “Fuck that
shit.”

I laugh. “Fuck
what
shit? What the fuck does
that mean?” I ask.

“Did you see how she talked to me? ‘A Vegas girl, I
presume?’ Ha! I’m not gonna stay here and get treated like scum on
the bottom of her fucking shoe.” She whips back around and marches
toward the elevator at the end of the hall again.

“Kat,
wait
. You’re drunk. You can’t go
alone.”

“Yes, I can.”

“You don’t even have your fucking shoes.”

She stops short and looks down at her feet like she
truly had no idea she’s shoe-less. “Well, hmmph. I don’t need no
stinkin’ shoes.”

I laugh. She’s so fucking adorable. “You said you
never get jealous,” I say. “What happened to that, hmm? ‘I never
get jealous unless the guy is mine in the first place.’ Remember
that?”

“Yeah, well.” She sniffs the air and wobbles in
place. “I guess I changed my motherfucking mind. So sue me,
fucker.”

I laugh. “Nice language.”

“Girls can’t say fuck? Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

I laugh again. “Kat, you’re acting fucking
crazy.”

Her face changes from pissed to hurt on a dime.
“Why’d you fuck
her
of all people, Josh?” She wipes her
eyes. “She’s so
mean
. So... snooty. What were you
thinking?”

“What was I
thinking
?” I shrug. “Not a whole
lot.”

“Why’d you fuck such a mean, mean girl? I hate mean
girls.”

I’m utterly confused. “You want me to have
meaningless sex with only nice girls?”

She ignores me. “And why’d you let her keep thinking
you were interested in her after New York, huh? She obviously
thought there was some sort of open invitation afterwards.”

“No. I told her I wasn’t interested.”

“No, you didn’t. No frickin’ way. Or if you did, you
didn’t make it clear enough. Total douche move, Josh Faraday.”

“What are you talking about? What’s a total douche
move?”

She waggles her finger at me. “I should have known
with that whole ‘Mickey Mouse roller coaster’ thing.
Douchey.
I should have listened to my Scooby Doo
senses.”