Page 54 of Carter

I took the glass from him and watched him turn and make his way back to his table where a couple of other guys sat. Melanie burst into laughter behind me, and I smacked her arm as I hurried to the bar. So not only did I have to endure some girl shaking her boobs in front of Carter’s face, but a sexy man had to hear me talk about my friends with benefits type of relationship.

This was going to be a long night.

Twenty

Igave the damn man his refill—shunning the heated way he grinned at me—and then I watched Carter and the guys at the table. There were two more girls now, and they were staring at him with the most desperate look in their eyes.

I thought of what Mel said. Inserting myself and getting them to see he was technically taken.

Could I muster the courage?

The way one leaned even closer, rubbing her chest against his arm as he laughed with Jared and Leo had me gripping the tray I was holding tight enough to bruise my palms. I glanced at Mel, and when she met my gaze, I gave her a simple nod. She nodded back, motioning to the table with a lethal look on her face. I rolled my shoulders and headed for him.

Of course he’ll say he’s with me, I told myself. There’s no way he wouldn’t. After all the nights we’d shared—the intimacy so naturally engrained in the way our bodies gravitated toward one another—he couldn’t deny what we were.

As I neared him, my body was jittery and the butterflies inside my stomach danced in circles. This was the affect he had on me, and it was overwhelming at times. He looked deliciously good tonight in his dark jeans and tight blue shirt. He’d taken off his jacket, and his body looked strong and built. You couldsee the lines of his muscle, and my lust for him just then was magnified by the fact I knew what he looked like underneath.

Because when Carter wasn’t writing music and performing, he was running in the mornings and hitting the gym in the afternoons. The results made him look like a ripped sex god, and his longevity in bed? Well, the man could fuck for hours and hours.

I wasn’t surprised to hear Jared making everyone laugh at his dirty jokes. He had the gift of the gab, which drew the ladies in. He was a likeable guy and pretty cute. I could see the attraction, but he was too brotherly to me. Leo, on the other hand, with his light hair and dark smouldering eyes, was the biggest playboy of all, and he was already mapping out a girl across the bar for the taking.

I stopped by the table and Carter looked up, beaming at me behind his beer bottle that was raised to his lips. “Hey, Angel,” he said. “What’s brought you here?”

“Came to see how you guys were doing,” I told him, sneaking glances at the girls who were already sizing me up. I would be doing the same, so I didn’t blame them, and honestly, they weren’t doing anything wrong.

“You came at the best time,” Jared told me. “I was about to tell everyone the story about the hot chick with the third nipple—”

“I already heard that one,” I cut in with a straight face.

“You did?”

“About five times now.”

“What’s one more time, though, right?”

Before I could ask him not to insult my ears for the sixth time, he dived right into it, giving me every horrible detail about his experience with this third-nipple girl who blew his socks away. Halfway in, an arm went around my shoulders, and I turned my head to Rome, who was shaking his head at me.

“Since when do you come to the table?” he asked me quietly with a knowing smile.

“Just checking in on you guys,” I answered. I was so lame. Rome already knew somehow. The guy was a mind reader.

“Drop the arm, Rome,” Carter then said firmly, cutting Jared’s story off.

Rome dropped his arm, but he gave me a big fat kiss on the side of the head, whispering in my ear, “That should piss him right off, beautiful.”

Great, because what I needed right now was a pissed-off Carter. I looked at him and, sure enough, he was glaring at Rome with the frostiest look ever. I thought I felt an arctic chill sweep through the room just then.

“Ladies,” Rome then said, motioning to me, “this sweetheart here is the creator of Fatal Rebellion. Without her, we never would have been born into this magnificent world of music and—”

“And tits with three nipples,” Jared cut in, taking a huge swig of his drink.

The girls laughed, but it sounded contrived. The blonde girl I aptly named Big Tits stared levelly at me and asked in a slur, “So, who are you exactly?”

“Just a waitress,” I muttered absently, shrugging off my existence because it was a pretty dismal one at the moment.

“Fuck off,” Rome countered in dismay. “Just a waitress? Bitch, please. This stunning babe here is Leah Miller, one of the best chicks to ever walk intoallour lives. Right, guys?”

Jared and Leo nodded vaguely, mumbling their yeahs, while Carter just stared at us with an intense look.

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