While It Lasts (Sea Breeze 3)

Krit and Green both froze.

“You know who the bassist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers is?” Green asked me. The shock on his face made me smile.

“Yes, I do. Flea is one of the greats in my opinion. But Jon Paul Jones is my all-time favorite,” I replied.

Green slammed his still full shot glass on the table and some of it splashed over the side. “Holy shit! She knows the bassist for Led f**king Zeppelin!”

He shifted his awed look to Cage, “I’ll do anything man. Just let me have her, please?”

Cage’s arm wrapped around my waist and he pulled me closer to his side. “Not happening. Back off.”

“Fuck man, do you know how many girls I’ve met that don’t even know what the hell a bassist is? NONE! Fucking NONE! Where’d you get her? I want one too.”

Cage chuckled beside me, “Sorry, man. It’s not happening.”

“You could maybe go to a music school and actually meet girls who know how to play the bass. Typically the ones you pick up in bars only know how to unzip your pants.” I informed him.

The entire table burst into laughter. Cage placed a kiss on the top of my head and squeezed my side.

“Okay, hell now I want one,” Krit chimed in.

“You are bringing her around more often Cage. I like this one,” Trisha said smiling at me.

“What do you mean by ‘this one’?” Green asked before draining his shot glass. “There ain’t ever been another one he kept more than a couple hours.”

“That’s enough you two. I’m not in the mood to keep your asses from being strung up by Cage tonight. If he decides to shut you up I’m gonna let him,” Rock spoke up for the first time.

“He knows we’re kidding,” Krit shot me a cocky grin and winked.

“Fuuuck, I ain’t kidding. I want her,” Green said before turning to take another shot glass from a waitress.

“MATTY!” Krit called out over the crowd. I noticed girls with too much makeup and not enough clothing hovering around us like vultures. Were they waiting on one of the band members to notice them?

A guy with long hair that stuck straight up in the air and really tight jeans sauntered up with a girl on each arm. Neither of them looked older than seventeen. I was more than positive they weren’t legal.

“Please tell me you checked ID,” Green moaned in annoyance.

“I trust them. They’re both eighteen, aren’t you girls?”

The girls bobbed their heads in unison.

“Sure they are,” Cage muttered beside me.

The new guy finally looked our way and his focus shifted from Cage to me back to Cage. “You already picked one for the night?”

Cage made an aggravated sound in his throat. “Eva, this is Matty the drummer. Matty, this is Eva, my date.” The warning look in Cage’s eyes wasn’t lost on me.

Matty’s surprised expression was something I was getting used to. If it was really this crazy for Cage to date just one girl then why was he out with me? If we slept together would that be it? Would he be done with me? Had I kidded myself into thinking he was a nice guy? Because I knew he wasn’t exactly a good guy.

“I’ll be damned,” was Matty’s reply.

“Yeah, we already knew you were damned. Even before you decided to have a go with two high school freshman.” Krit drawled in an amused tone.

“I told you they’re eighteen,” Matty insisted.

“We’re up in two,” Green interrupted them and took one last swallow from his newest shot glass. How many had he drunk during his five-minute break?

“Bring her back,” Green called out to Cage and then winked at me.

“Sorry about him. But you did unleash some stellar knowledge of famous bassists. That’s like  p**n  for Green,” Cage said with a smirk.

“They were entertaining,” I assured him.

He pulled me around to face him and studied me a moment.

“Want to tell me how you know about bass guitarists?”

Was I ready to share this with Cage? I’d only played my acoustic once the other night. Sharing more of Josh with Cage almost felt wrong. If Cage was just in my life for the summer then did I want to give him too much of me? If I had imagined that there could be more for us that had been killed tonight. Cage didn’t do commitment. I was just a summer fling.

I shrugged, “I like guitars I guess.”

He didn’t buy it. I could see it in his eyes but he didn’t push me either.

“You ready to go?” he asked

“Yeah, I think I am.”

Chapter Sixteen

Cage

I hadn’t said much on the drive back to my apartment. Eva was cautious. I knew this. I’d known it from day one when she’d basically called me a man whore. It was one of the things I liked about her. Up until tonight I had been making progress. She’d told me about Josh. I’d been able to hold her while she cried. I thought that had formed a bond of trust between us.

Taking her into my world had undone everything I’d worked damn hard to prove to her. If I didn’t have girls throwing themselves at me and talking about our threesomes, I had my friends acting like I used girls like disposable objects. I’d wanted my friends to meet her. I’d wanted her to know me until she got a real taste of my life. Now, I wanted to get her back to the country so we could live in our little cocoon where my past wasn’t there to haunt me.

“Are you mad at me?” Eva’s question snapped me out of my thoughts. I lifted my eyes from the spot in the floor I’d been staring at to see Eva standing in the doorway wearing a pair of tiny pink polka dot pajama bottoms and a matching tank top. It was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen.