“Yes!” I grab my clutch and stuff my cards and phone into it, walking downstairs. “Last minute.” I kiss his gray-whiskered cheek. “I have my key. I promise I won’t be late.”

“Sure. Try not to wake us.” He wraps his arm around my shoulders for a quick squeeze, kisses the top of my head, and turns me toward the door. “And for the record, that dress is far too short.”

“Can you see my Spanx?” I tug at the hem and look over my shoulder, bending in an unnatural way to see my thighs from behind.

“That’s when I send you to get changed.” Dad grins, scratching his chin. “Go, now, before I do that anyway.”

I blow him a kiss with a grin and walk through the door, pulling it closed as I make my way to the minivan cab at the end of the driveway. The door opens and I slip in, my smile widening into a mischievous grin when I see Chelsey, Leila, Sofie, and Ella sitting in the back of it. Chelsey moves over so I can squeeze into the backseat, then she leans forward, her finger pointing between the heads of Sofie and Ella and directly through the windshield. “To the bar!”

This is dumb. So very, very dumb.

I can think of a hundred thousand things I’d rather be doing right now than standing at the bar of the club in which I found my boyfriend doing the dirty with some random chick. Skydiving, paragliding, walking a tightrope across Niagara Falls with no safety harness in a tornado. . . .

“What were you thinking?” I yell into Chelsey’s ear. “Here of all places?”

She leans into me. “I was thinking you need to find someone to give you a damn good lay and get that asshole out of your brain.”

“Sex doesn’t solve anything!”

“Maybe not if you’re in a relationship, but it sure does if you’re single!”

I huff, rolling my eyes, and turn away from her. It’s packed in here, and I’m constantly being jostled from side to side as people make their way to the bar and do their best to squeeze in to get served.

“Dance?” Sofie asks, touching my arm.

I shake my head in response and point to my empty glass. She gives me a thumbs-up and takes Ella’s hand. Ella blows her bangs from her eyes and smoothes out her green dress, which directly contrasts with Sofie’s pink one. They move across the packed bar area, illuminated with glaring UV-esque lights, and toward the dance floor, where I know Chelsey has already disappeared with Leila.

The bartender makes eye contact with me, and I bite my tongue as someone’s elbow jabs into my side, breaking my contact with the girl who has the power to give me cosmos.

“Hello?” I yell when she turns to the guy next to me. “Waiting here!”

She looks between me and him, panicked, but I just lift my eyebrows. “Um, okay.”

“Can I have a cosmo, please?” I ask, still shouting over the music. Her eyes flick between me and the elbow-jabber before she nods and disappears.

“Damn.” Fingertips ghost across my lower back, coming to rest at the curve of my ass. “You never dropped the sass, huh?”

The voice sends shivers through me, the huskiness of it slicing through the desperate pound of the music until it’s crawling over my skin with a recognition I don’t welcome in the slightest. “Do you mind takin’ your hand off me?”

“Actually,” he moves in closer, “I do. I mind very much.”

Aidan Burke.

Aidan

Jessie Law reaches back and grasps my forearm firmly, shoving my arm away from her like I’m fire and she’s gasoline. “I mind you touching me,” she replies. “What’s takin’ so long?” she yells to the bartender.

“Chill out, Jessie,” I murmur, moving closer to her and meeting the bartender’s eyes. “Can you hurry with that, babe?”

She nods and within two seconds, a cocktail glass full of perfectly red-pink liquid is placed in front of us.

“That’s—”

“And a bottle of Budweiser, thanks,” I demand before she says the price. “Put it on my tab.”

“I can pay for my own drink,” Jessie argues, her eyes sparking with defiance.

“Sure you can, but that don’t mean you’re gonna.”

“It means I will.” She riffles in her purse and slams a ten into my chest. “Thank you, Aidan, but no thank you.”

I take the crisp bill from her hand and crumple it up, crooking my finger in the collar of her dress. She gapes at me in disbelief as I pull the fabric from her body and drop the balled-up note down it. “Where are your manners, Jessica Law?”

“The same place as my real name clearly is,” she grinds out, her jaw tight. “Shoved so far up your ass it’s blowing your head up.”

My lips curve into a smirk despite my best efforts, and I move closer to her, bringing my hand back to rest on her hip. “Oh, that’s right. It’s Jessie, isn’t it?”

“Aidan Burke, you were throwing basketballs at me before you had chest hair. You know my damn name. Now, if you don’t mind”—she pushes me away and retrieves the ten-dollar bill from her very impressive cleavage—“this is yours. Thank you, but no thank you.” She shoves the note down my shirt, grabbing her glass.

I laugh and, careful to avoid her drink, wrap my arm around her waist, making sure that my fingertips brush across her tight little ass. “You’re thankin’ me real early, baby. I haven’t even kissed you yet. Doesn’t the thankin’ come after the best orgasm you’re ever gonna have?”

Her tits brush my chest as she inhales sharply. She reaches up, and despite her suspiciously flushed cheeks, rests her hand against my chest and leans back. Her eyes find mine, defiance in them. “When I’ve had it, I’ll be sure to call and let you know.”

The black dress she’s wearing is unforgiving—for both her body and my restraint. Her bright red hair, swept over her shoulder, stands out against both the dark fabric and her lightly tanned skin. And it matches her lips.

Her lips.

Fuck. So many things could be done with those lips. . . .

She spins, but I keep my hold on her, grinning, her frustration only amusing me more and more. Goddamn, she’s always been so easy to wind up. Even when we were in middle school she had a fuse that could light her up and make her burn brighter than fireworks on New Year’s Eve.

I lower my mouth to her ear, taking my time as she stands deathly still in my hold. “I’ll expect your thanks by midnight then, should I?”

She turns her face to mine. “In your dreams, asshole.”

One last shove has my arm falling from her and her stalking away from me. My eyes drop immediately to her ass, because, holy fuck. That dress, her skin—whatever it is, it fits her like a fucking glove, and I’d give just about anything to have my hands curved around that sweet ass while she rides me.

I rub my hand down my face. Shit on me—and for years I’ve ripped the shit out of Tate for being a pussy-hungry manwhore, when here I am, lusting over a girl who’s hated me for at least ten years. Maybe a few more. Definitely a few more.

But damn.

Jessie Law—the free spirit. She’s the girl who never had a single fuck to give, and if she did, she never handed them out like many of the other girls in school did. She did her thing, haters be fucking damned. And now . . .

Shit, now. With her red hair and the flower tattoos melding together into a sleeve that slinks down her arm to just beneath her elbow, she’s still the girl that never gave a fuck. . . . Except now she’s all grown up.

I lift the beer to my lips and watch her, talking with Leila. She’s already thrown several guys off her ass tonight before any of us have had a chance, and my baby sister’s eyes are scouring this place like she’s part of our security detail.

Jessie drinks her drink quickly, dropping the empty glass on a table before Leila sweeps her into the mass of writhing bodies on the dance floor. My lips curve up yet again as she disappears into the darkness, hidden despite the strobe lighting that streaks across the crowd every few seconds.