Dirty Rowdy Thing (Wild Seasons, #2)(7)

“You going to rearrange their kitchen for them?” I ask, smiling at the clinking sounds as she moves glasses around. “In the middle of a party?”

“Maybe.”

Dark auburn hair frames her face, which she tucks behind her ear as she stretches for the top shelf, exposing her long neck. I immediately think of sucking little marks into her skin, from her ear to her collarbone.

“Preoccupied this morning,” I say, drinking in the sight of her bare shoulders. “Distracted tonight.”

She retrieves two clean shot glasses and pulls back to look at me silently in response. And now I remember the heat of her oddly hypnotic eyes—more amber than brown—and the temptation of her full, flirty lips. Unscrewing the cap from a bottle of pretty stellar tequila, Harlow blinks away before pouring each glass to the brim.

“Well, I can tell Not-Joe is doing a great job undistracting you,” I tell her, “but you might want to slow down on shots with the guy who pierced his own penis.” Honestly, when Oliver told me that story, I nearly choked on my sandwich.

Harlow was beginning to hand me a shot, but her hand pauses, midair. “He . . . what now?”

“Twice. One in the tip, one in the shaft.”

She blinks.

I lean in a little and the way she’s staring at my mouth is making my skin hum. “According to Oliver, ‘things happen’ when Not-Joe gets drunk.”

She tears her eyes from my mouth and looks up at me, lifting her chin to indicate the table of people still playing cards across the room. “You’re suggesting instead I go play cards with the people who’re giving out shots of Clamato as penalty?”

“It’s even better than that,” I say with a shudder. “It’s Budweiser with Clamato. It’s called chelada, and it’s pretty warm now.”

She makes the exact same face she made when the barista offered her a pumpkin spice mocha this morning—complete and total horror—and that drink she ordered. “Someone actually made that into a thing? There are people who drink and enjoy that?”

Laughing, I tell her, “You know, despite my better judgment I find it really funny when you act like a diva.”

With her head tilted to the side, eyes incredulous, she asks, “Being turned off by Budweiser mixed with tomato and clam juice makes me a diva?”

Apparently I’m buzzed enough to belt out a few lines of the only diva song I can think of at the moment: “I Will Always Love You.” And then I lift my shot and down it.

Harlow looks at me like I’ve lost my mind, but I can tell she’s amused. A smile lingers in her eyes, even if her brows are pulled together disapprovingly. “You can’t sing to save your life.”

Wiping a hand across my mouth, I say, “That’s nothing. You should hear me play the piano.”

She narrows her eyes further. “Did you just quote the Smiths?”

“I’m surprised you got that. It wasn’t from a song eventually sampled by P. Diddy.”

Laughing, she says, “You have a pretty fantastic impression of me.”

“I really do.” The tequila slips into my bloodstream, warming me from my chest outward. I lean closer so I can get a good whiff of her. She always smells warm, somehow, and a little earthy and sweet. Like the beach, and sunscreen and honeysuckle. I’ve said more nonsex words to Harlow in the past five minutes than I did the entire time she was in Canada, but I’m surprised to find that not only is she easy to talk to, she’s fun. “And, my impression of you is ever evolving, now that you aren’t just a pretty face in my lap.”

“You’re one classy motherf*cker, Finn.”

“This speaking thing does wonders for expanding our horizons.”

She takes her shot, swallows, and winces before saying, “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Sunshine. I like our arrangement.”

“We have an arrangement?”

Nodding, she turns to pour us each another shot. “We fight, or we bang. I think I prefer the banging part.”

“Well, then I would have to agree.”

When she hands me the second shot—on top of the three beers I’ve already had with Ansel—I ask, “Why did you come up my way anyway? I never got around to asking you that because you were sitting on my face most of the time. The visit was . . . unexpected.”

“But awesome?” she asks, brows raised as if she knows I’d never deny it.

“Sure.”

She licks the side of her hand, shakes some salt on it this time, and studies it, thinking. “Honestly?

I guess I wasn’t sure I could trust my memory from Vegas.”

“You mean your memory that the sex was so good?”

“Yeah.”

“It was,” I assure her.

“I know that now.” She licks the salt, takes the shot, and grabs a slice of lime from the counter, sucking it briefly before murmuring through wet, puckered lips, “Too bad the man attached to the penis is such an epic loser.”

I nod sympathetically. “True.”

“You’re fun,” she tells me, pulling back a little as if she’s only really looking at me now. “You’re fun in this sort of easy, unexpected way.”

“You’re drunk.”

She snaps her fingers in front of my face. “That must be it. The tequila I’ve had is making you fun.”