Surrendering Series Box Set

“Because we’re young and hot and it’s Friday night in Boston,” Sloane said, mimicking the heavy accent so many people around here had. Mine only came out every now and then, but I definitely had a tendency to drop the R’s in certain words.

I could feel the effect of the alcohol starting to take hold of me after the next two acts. I became pretty much cool with everyone and everything and I couldn’t stop touching everyone’s faces.

“Um, you should look at the stage right now, Ror,” Sloane said, moving my head for me.

It was him. Lucas Blaine. He was holding a guitar, had swapped out his diamond ear stud for a silver hoop and his hair was falling all over the place. Add the guitar and flannel shirt and he was one bow tie, pair of nerd glasses and a set of suspenders away from being a hipster. I’d personally never seen the appeal, but Lucas Blaine could make a duck costume sexy.

Damn him. Damn all good looking guys and their chin dimples and well-proportioned muscles and their hair that you want to touch so bad you can barely sit still.

Damn them all to the fiery pits of hell.

The announcer started to introduce him, but Lucas whispered in his ear, and then the announcer spoke into the mic. “Our next act is Lucas Blaine. Give him a hand everyone.”

Lucas pulled a stool forward and adjusted the mic as Sloane and Marisol talked about the various sexual things they’d like to do to him. Chloe just stared into her drink.

“Do you want to go?” I asked her, hoping she’d say yes so I had an out.

She shrugged.

“I’m good for now.” Crap.

I decided that I wasn’t going to watch. Nope.

But then the bastard started singing, “Sooner Surrender” by Matt Nathanson and my head snapped around at the sound of his voice.

Oh, fuck me. Again.

His eyes were half closed, his hair falling in front of them. And his voice. Oh, his voice touched me in places that a voice shouldn’t have access to.

His voice crawled down my body and under my clothes and teased me, taunted me, pleasured me. Like he was making love with music.

Alcohol. It had to be the alcohol causing me to be more turned on by a song than I’d ever been before. Everything else faded into the background as my entire being focused on him on that stage.

The song ended, and the spell was broken, almost with a snap, and I was back to reality.

And everyone was staring at me as my face flamed up.

“You, um,” Sloane said, taking a sip of her drink, “you didn’t tell us he could sing.”

“I . . . I didn’t know.” He sure didn’t put that on his résumé. Not that it would have made a difference.

My throat was dry, but I was out of drinks. I should have gotten a glass of water.

“I’m, I’m going to get another drink,” I said, getting up and hurrying to the bar without asking if anyone else wanted anything. I just needed to get away for a minute. Try to clear my head.

“What did you think?” a voice said behind me as a warm hand lightly touched my back to tell me that he was here.

I froze and didn’t answer, instead concentrating on trying to get one of the bartenders’ attention.

“You seemed to, ah, like it,” he said, removing his hand, but he was still close. The fact that the bar was so packed could have been responsible, but I didn’t think it was.

The bartender was completely ignoring me, and I had to get away from Lucas Blaine if it was the last thing I did, so I whirled around so fast, I nearly knocked him completely off balance and announced, “I have to pee.”

There were worse things I could have said, I suppose, but the way he smiled in response to my declaration morphed his irresistible face into something that was somehow even more irresistible.

Abort, Abort! I needed to bail, so I shoved him aside and headed for the ladies’ room. I swore I heard him chuckling behind me.

Of course there was a line at the ladies’, so I was stuck standing behind two girls that were trying to prop each other up and doing that whisper-yell thing that drunk people do.