by Adele Hart
“I’m the determined type.” I wrap my fingers around the shot glass and pull it to my mouth. This isn’t a sipping whiskey, it’s an all-in, burn all the way down drink.
“I like your courage, but I have to let you know a bit about me.” She props herself against the back bar and relaxes. Blake stays beside me like any good wingman should, except in this case, he’s standing by to douse the flames in case I go up in a blaze of flaming failure.
“I’m listening.” There isn’t much she can say to dissuade me from my intentions. I’m not looking to marry her. I’m looking for a good time. That doesn’t require a lot of backstory, but I listen because the one thing I know about women is they want to be heard.
Old man Feeble, with his pruned face, and cue-ball head appears from the side door. “Erica, I’m not paying you to make friends. I’m paying you to make drinks.” He grabs a full bottle of scotch from the shelf and disappears through the same door he entered.
Erica looks skyward and shakes her head and mouths, “He’s an asshole.”
“Most of them are.” I hand Blake the pitcher of beer. “You were leaving.”
He laughs. “Was I?” He grips the beer and turns to walk away. “I’m only a few feet away if you need rescue.” He walks toward the others and makes the sound of a sputtering engine. His way of telling me I am still going to crash and burn.
“You were going to tell me something about yourself.”
She grabs the bar towel and wipes the counter in front of me.
“You’re right.” She brushes a black curl from her forehead. “I’m happy to be your friend, but here are three reasons I’ll never be more. I don’t do military, I don’t do casual, and I don’t do assholes.”
Alana approaches us like a racecar without brakes. “What she means is, she’s excited to meet you, Cade. She’s learning to be more flexible, and she’d love to go home with you.” Alana turns to Erica and says, “Remember our talk about accountability? Cade here is one the few, not one of the many.”
I offer her a smile and a look of confusion. “Care to enlighten me?”
“Not really,” she says.
“Stop trying to pimp me out,” Erica grumbles. “Flyboys at six o’clock.” She points her friend toward the new crew who arrives in mass.
Before Alana leaves to see to the new group, she leans over and says, “Don’t give up on her, she’ll give in, eventually. Keep on until you wear her down.”
“Out,” Erica yells. Her voice is thick, and sexy. It makes my veins heat and my heart race. Every word is like a warm caress across my skin. She has a lot going for her in my book, she’s pretty, funny, and short term. Erica is perfect.
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Thrill Me-Sneak Peek
One
CASSIE
"Seriously?" I suck in my gut, but that doesn't magically make my boobs smaller like I had hoped it would. There is no possible way I'm getting the buttons on my wool coat closed around the girls. Is there a way to suck in your boobs?
I haven’t worn this jacket since last winter, and these cheap plastic buttons are proving that yes, I have indeed gained even more weight over the last few months. You’ve heard of the freshmen ten? Well, in my case it was freshman fifteen, sophomore twenty, and junior thirty. Now that I’m a senior, I’m a little terrified of where I’ll end up. Can’t worry about that now, though. I grab my keys off the counter and run out the door, my coat hanging open, leaving me exposed to the frigid air as I make a run for the bus.
I’m having a super crappy day. First, I woke up to an email from the university informing me that my scholarship won’t be renewed for the next session because my grades fell below a three-point-seven. Then, my roommate, Tamara, told me she needs me to move out since her idiot boyfriend wants to move in. Then I burned my forehead while trying to figure out how to make soft, surfer waves in my hair. Now I’m running late for my new job, which is so not cool. Especially when I’m already nervous as a cow in a leather factory about working at a nightclub for the first time in my twenty-one years.
Heck, I've barely even been to a nightclub. I doubt I'll be able to manage to fool anyone into thinking I'm an actual waitress. I round the corner as fast as I can in these stupid new stilettos that are going to cause me to break my neck before the night is over. I'm just in time to see the number thirty-three city bus pull away from the stop. My shoulders drop, and I'm panting as I slow to a standstill in the middle of the sidewalk. Angry New Yorkers grumble as they avoid me. One of them calls me a dumb slut.
“Thank you, kind sir!” I shout at his back. He gives me the finger over his shoulder without turning back. No one called me a slut back in Montana. In fact, nobody got mad at me for stopping on the sidewalk there. Mostly because there weren’t any people walking there. I’m from a smallish town, called Grady’s Bluff, in the Rockies, where everybody drives big, shiny pickups and nobody walks anywhere because everything is so spread out in town, and it’s so damn cold four months of the year, that you pretty much stay inside.
But here, in New York, on a Friday evening, there are people everywhere. Nobody stops, even if someone is having a heart attack. I've actually seen it once, from a bus window. An older man was clutching his heart and sinking to his knees, and people just walked around him like he wasn't there. I'm not saying that everyone in NYC is like that, but I can safely say that back home if someone was having a heart attack, people would probably stop what they were doing to call an ambulance. I miss it there. Right now, my parents and my four younger brothers and two little sisters would be sitting down to dinner. Friday night is pot roast, potatoes and gravy, biscuits, and homemade pie. Pumpkin or apple in fall. My mom makes the best pie in the entire county. I sigh, thinking of that cozy, little kitchen crammed full of the people who love me most, hollering at each other and making faces.
But now’s not the time to pine for home. I’ve got bigger problems than wishing I was home. I’ve got a job to get to, and now that I’ve lost my scholarship, it better pay twenty-six grand over the next month, or I'm going to lose my spot in the Bachelor of Social Work program. Ha! Like that's going to happen. I'm pretty much screwed, right?
I sigh, feeling a blister already forming on my heel. I'm going to have to hail a cab and spend twenty bucks just to get me to a job that pays twelve dollars an hour. I stand at the edge of the sidewalk and stick up my arm. Immediately, there's a screeching sound as a yellow cab makes a U-turn right in the middle of the intersection and pulls up next to me. Horns blare at the cab, making me wince as I climb in the back seat.
That’s never happened to me before. Must be the tiny waitress uniform—tight white tee with a low V-neck, short black skirt, fishnets and shiny heels. I glance down at the girls when I get in the backseat. Yup, they’re at attention thanks to my open coat and the cold breeze. Nice, Cassie. Well, they got me a cab fast, anyway, and around here, that can be like a unicorn sighting.
“Hey, beautiful, where can I get you to?”
Beautiful? What the…? “Ice on Ninety-Ninth. Do you know it?”
“Oh, yeah, me and my buddies go there all the time." He's grinning at me in the rear-view mirror, but his eyes are on my chest. I pull the jacket closed. Show's over pal. Get driving.
He swivels his head toward me. “You work there?”
"I will if I'm not late for my first shift." I tug at the tiny black skirt that is now riding up so high you can almost see if I shaved my hoo-ha or not. I did not, by the way. Since no one's been down there before, there's really no point in going through the whole shave-itch cycle that Tamara is always complaining about. Honestly, I actually saw that girl scratching away with a spaghetti scooper once. I never made pasta again.
Thankfully, the cabbie turns back around. “What time does your shift start?”
“Eight-thirty.”
“I’ll have you there with ten minutes to spare.” More screeching tires as we zip out into traffic. I hold my breath and grip the inside door handl
e, praying we make it there alive. Forget about on time. At this point, I just want to live.
“I like your glasses. You’ve got that whole sexy librarian thing going on.”
Oh, I do wish he’d watch the road. “Thanks. It’s more of a near-sighted-can’t-afford-laser-eye-surgery thing.”
“Oh, don’t do that. My cousin’s friend’s uncle went blind from that. Plus, they suit you. The glasses. Very sexy. What’s your name?”
“Cassie.”
“Ooh, I like that. You got a boyfriend?”
“Yes.” I don’t, but Tamara told me that now that I’m waitressing at a meat market, the answer to that question is always yes, even though in reality it’s never once been true. I might as well practice, just in case. It’s not likely, but maybe… “Professional body builder.”
“Oh.” He sounds so disappointed that I almost feel guilty, but then I see him trying to see down my shirt again.
The rest of the ride is silent, which gives me unwanted time to start sweating about tonight. I've waitressed at a deli before, but it was pretty slow most of the time, and I certainly didn't have to carry heavy trays of drinks through crowds of drunk college students. I also didn't have to take orders to the deafening beat of electro-music. Since I'm actually deaf in one ear, after my brother convinced me to play, "let's put beans in our ears" when I was five, this job is going to be a bit more challenging. But I've gotten pretty good at lip-reading, and tonight I'm going to test out my skills. Also, I'll have to work on my flirting skills, which are super lame, to be honest. I'm more of a homebody who spends Friday nights in her flannels watching Pretty Little Liars than a club-hopper. I've never had a real boyfriend. Not if you don't count Marcus, the football star who used me to do his biology homework in high school. And not the good kind of biology—more like life cycles of plants and animals. He strung me along until finals each spring, and then I didn't hear from him until fall. But that's men for you. Well, for me, anyway.
Although now that I’m dressed like a stripper, maybe my luck’s about to change.
TWO
TY
“What the hell happened to you?” I nod at Dirk, my co-bartender, who is sporting a shiner the size of Denver.
Dirk touches his eye, winces, and then smiles like the cat who fucked the canary. “Mowed someone else’s lawn.”
“Jesus, man, you’re gonna get yourself killed if you keep that shit up.” I pick up three boxes of Coors off the back of the truck and stack them in the warehouse.
Dirk does the same. “Fresh meat coming in tonight.”
“Oh yeah? How fresh?” I keep moving because this wind is making my balls want to crawl back up inside my body.
"Never worked at a bar before. Ron said she seems smart and she waitressed at a deli, though." He rolls his eyes.
I sigh. I’m the lucky guy who always has to train the newbies. “Oh perfect. He loves making our lives harder than they have to be.”
“He likes making himself hard is more like it. And we’re the ones who have the pay for it.”
I pick up another stack of cases. “Just make sure you keep your hands off her, or he’s going to make you pay double.”
“I know, bro. You don’t get your bed where you get your bread.”
“That’s right, Dirk. You’d better remember that.” Ron’s voice booms out from the doorway to the inside of the club. He grins at us. As far as bosses went, he isn’t so bad. A bit of a dick-head, but aren’t they all?
“It’s almost eight-thirty. Dirk, you finish unloading the truck. I need Ty to come up front and check the taps. Then you get to train the new girl. I don’t trust that fucker over there with the black eye.”
I give Dirk the kind of look you give your little brother when he has to go to bed, and you get to watch the rest of the hockey game. He flips me off, then gets back to work, while I head into the comfortable warmth of the bar.
The lights are on full, and there's no music pounding a hole in my skull. I try to enjoy the next few minutes because soon the doors will open and it's going to be hard-going until two a.m. But at least I'll leave with a fat wad of cash. I have six more months, then I'll hang up my tight-as-fuck Ice t-shirt and find myself a job on Wall Street. Until then, no fucking-up or fucking anything. In my twenty-three years, women have been nothing but the quickest way to ruin whatever good thing I've got going in my life. I have to remind myself nightly of that little truth, so I don't let my guard down and take some hottie home with me. And some hotties are hard to turn down. I should be made a saint. Saint Ty, the guy who stopped fucking girls so he could graduate at the top of his class.
I’m behind the bar when I hear her voice. She sounds like a freaking angel and my cock twitches even before I turn around.
“Hello. I’m supposed to find someone named Ty.”
I turn and my cock lengthens at the sight of the fullest red lips I’ve seen since Angelina Jolie was in here three years ago. Fuck me. When I take my eyes off her gorgeous mouth, I look up and see she’s got glasses and long red hair. And not that fake shit red that so many girls wear now. Real red. Her huge breasts are spilling out the tee they gave her. This I make note of using my peripheral vision. I’m no newbie when it comes to women. Except my tongue doesn’t seem to be working right now for some reason and even though I know it’s my turn to talk, I can’t remember the question.
“Do you know where I could find Ty? He’s supposed to train me.” She smiles and adjusts her glasses. Sexy librarian fantasy come to life.
“You found him. Ty Stockwell.”
She holds out her hand. “Cassie Baker. Nice to meet you.”
When my skin touches hers, my entire body wants to let out a groan of desire, but I manage to fight it. I give her a single nod. “So, you’re the fresh meat.”
“I guess so.” She gives this sort of shy smile, and it nearly does me in.
“Here, you can start by wiping down the tables.” I hand her a wet rag, and when my fingers touch her skin, there’s a jolt of heat that burns right through me.
Cassie's eyes grow wide, and she licks her top lip before she turns away from me. Good thing I'm wearing jeans and not sweatpants right now. I watch as she bends over the nearest table, her juicy ass shaking a little while she swipes the cloth back and forth on the wood. Fuck me, but I like a thick girl. She's got curves on her curves, and I feel an almost overwhelming urge to position myself behind her and lift up that tight, short skirt of hers.
I finally force myself to look away before I act on this crazy impulse. I grab a bottle of water from the fridge and take a few gulps, trying to cool down.
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About the Author
Adele Hart is a stay-at-home mom who secretly writes sexy stories whenever she gets a chance. After reading hundreds of romances, she decided to skip all the angst and ugliness, and just get to the good stuff. You know, the part that makes you say, 'Oh my!'
So if you're like Adele, and you want to indulge your guilty pleasures with naughty but nice, fast and fun stories about super hot, practically perfect men and the sweet women who love them, then you've come to the right place.
Adele's guarantee to you:
You'll have that loving feeling from start to happy finish. Nothing ugly, no BDSM, no cheating bastards, just fun, flirty, dirty goodness.
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Also by Adele Hart
Thrill Me
Take Me
Tempt Me
Choose Me
Kiss Me
Devour Me
Alphas and Virgins Volume One
Alphas and Virgins Volume Two
Make Me Wet
Make Me Yours
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