Page 25 of Hot Summer's Prey

“Oooh, forward, aren’t you?” I laugh.

“Boundaries, set,” Taara murmurs to me pointedly.

“So what if some guy ditched you after giving the best head of your life?” I ask.

“After you gave him the best head?” she asks.

“No, him to me,” I clarify dejectedly.

“Huh. I’d drown it out in the sugariest, girliest cocktail I could find,” she says after a moment’s thought.

“Yeah, get me one of those.”

“And for you?” she asks, nodding to Taara.

“I’ll take your choice of whatever local beer,” Taara says.

“So trusting,” Lydia smiles. “I like that in my customers. Can I start a tab for you two?”

Taara and I hand over our cards. With another wink, Lydia turns to make our drinks.

“How am I supposed to survive that much flirting?” Taara grumbles.

She sneaks several looks back to Lydia.

“You’re trying the single thing, remember?” I nudge. “But I get it. I get a little pitter patter too when she looks at me.”

“I’m a monogamist, remember? It’s less attractive when I think of her with someone else.”

“Oooh, then I just wanna—” I hold Lydia’s invisible head in my hands and make obnoxious smooching noises towards it.

“Sto-hop!” Taara whines, slapping my arm.

I double down.

At least, that’s the plan until my eyes catch on a pair of so-familiar green eyes. I roll my lips inward, stand up totally normal—like a perfectly normal, unsilly person who was definitely not making out with a fake hot bartender to torment my friend.

It’s him.

“Damn it, Taara, I wish it wouldn’t be weird for me to make out with you right now,” I grumble.

“Less weird than making out with the air?” she snorts.

“It’s him,” I say, turning away.

“Sex cave guy?”

“Yes, that’s definitely him. Even if he doesn’t have his cute little dog. Actually, it’s better he doesn’t have his cute little dog because now I can bring out the big guns.”

“The big guns?” Taara repeats. “Is that your thighs, your ass, or your tits?”

“You never heard the good word of Our Lady Khia—my neck, my back, my pussy, and my crack?”

“Mmm… you’re just trying to make a joke, but my answer was better,” Taara laughs.

Lydia dropped off our drinks while my back was turned (awkward, if she saw me making out with her invisible doppelgänger). I knock back the drink without even tasting it, and I’m pleasantly surprised by how good it tastes.

“Shit, that’s good!” I say. I down the rest of it and slam the glass on the bar like the himbo son of a one-eyed Allfather and shout, “Another!”

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