Rule (Marked Men #1)(34)

“Alright.” I watched him walk out of the coffee shop and it wasn’t lost on me that so did every other girl in the place. I stifled a sigh and ruefully shook my head. I went to flip the top of my computer back open when the girl sitting directly across from me caught my eye. She was a little bit older than me, had long dreadlocks that were a startling ocean blue and she was staring at me in open envy. I had to blink a little bit because I was so used to being the one that looked at the girls crawling out of his bed like that. She gave me a sheepish grin.

“You’re going to have your hands full with that one.”

Considering I wasn’t even a hundred percent sure what we were doing I had no doubt she was right. It wasn’t like he asked me to be his girlfriend or even on an honest to God date, he just said he wanted to hang out and spend time together, that wasn’t defined or clear and I didn’t even know what that meant to him. I appreciated that he told me he was willing to keep it in his pants, that he was aware that whatever was happening between us was important enough to try and figure out without the complication of other girls involved, but I was acutely aware that old habits tended to die hard and Rule was not known to practice restraint. I huffed out a breath. “You’re telling me.”

The girl laughed a little. “He actually tattooed a giant lotus flower on my friend’s leg; she spent all three sessions trying to get him to ask her out on a date. I guess I can tell her he has a girlfriend so it’ll make her feel better.”

I picked my coffee back up and tried to get my head out of the Rule fog that it had descended into and tried to move it back to good college student mode.

“I’m not his girlfriend.”

“Really? It sure looked like it.”

“We’ve known each other a long time, it’s complicated.”

She winked at me and gave me a saucy grin. “Oh honey when they look like that and exude that kind of do-me, do-me it always will be.”

Well there it was. If a perfect stranger could plainly see after literally only five minutes of watching us together that it was always going to be a battle to keep things with him on the level what chance did I have of making anything between us work? With that depressing thought I went back to assisted suicide and tried to cheer myself up.

Chapter 7

Rule

The club was packed. Enmity was a pretty big local draw for metal heads and punk-rockers, plus Jet had been in the scene since he was just a kid so he had a solid local following from just being around for so long. Some crappy wannabe Slayer band was opening up for them and already doing their warm up, they were followed by an all-girl punk band so the show was supposed to run late which was good because it was well past eleven and I couldn’t stop looking at the display on my phone to check the time. Every time I did it Nash rolled his eyes and Jet laughed at me, granted they were doing a bang up job of polishing off a bottle of Patron between the two of them so I didn’t take it personally but I had sent Shaw a text over an hour ago to verify she was going to be here and I hadn’t heard a thing back.

I was antsy and ill-tempered partly because I was navigating uncharted territory and undeniably because this whole monogamy thing was new to me. I was used to scratching an itch when I felt it, used to appealing to baser needs and letting my carnal instinct drive me, behaving not because someone asked me to but because I wanted to was entirely new to me and the side effects sucked. I was horny and irritable, plus I was sick of playing phone tag with her, I had no idea how busy Shaw’s life was. The girl was bouncing from class, to work, to volunteer stuff all day long. When I saw her before on the weekends I had just assumed she had free time and was choosing to spend Sunday’s with my folks, clearly that wasn’t the case. Every minute of the girl’s day was planned and orchestrated, it made the fact that she had sacrificed a lot by refusing to see them until they opened their eyes more clear.

“Chill out. If she said she was coming than she’s coming.” Nash shoved an elbow in my ribs making me jostle the phone I was glaring holes into. I shoved it back into my pocket and picked up the beer I had been nursing for over an hour. I caught the eye of a smoking hot blond that had been scoping me out under the radar since we walked in the bar and had to do a quick mental rundown of why I thought spending time with Shaw and figuring out how she had got my head all twisted and turned was a good idea when easy as pie was right in front of me. The blond gave me a smile that all but screamed “I want you to take my pants off with your teeth” and I almost choked when beer went down the wrong tube.

Jet snickered and rubbed a hand through his messy black hair. The guy looked like a rock star; he was lanky and had that permanent freshly-laid and outta bed look that made girls stupid and dreamy eyed with zero effort. He also had an awesome voice and could sing, like really sing which made the fact he chose to be in a heavy metal band ironic because most of his stuff with Enmity was screaming and loud, but the guy was a consummate musician and could write a killer song as well as play pretty much any instrument he picked up. One night after a particularly nasty bout of beer pong he had confessed that he liked metal because he couldn’t deal with the fame and adulation of more popular styles of music. They guy wanted to be in a band but for reasons that only made sense to him, had no interest in being a full blown rock star, even though he had the look and the chops to do it.

“I swear you pull more tail than me and I’m in a freaking band. All you have to do is blink and you have broads falling all over themselves to have at it.”