Gali raised her cup. “I’ll drink to that.”
“Bye. Take care.” Minh waved, then stepped away from the bar and turned to leave. But she’d barely taken one step before an unexpected boot somehow got in the way of her feet. She stumbled over it, tripping forward and yelping as she lost her balance. Her body reacted before her brain, flinging her arms out to grab onto the closest handhold that would keep her from landing flat on her face.
Of course, the object she managed to wrap her fingers around happened to be the arm of the person attached to the boot. In the dim light of the club, she was only able to catch a glimpse of him as momentum carried her forward. Tall. Muscled. Holding a—
“Aah!” She shouted, cold beer tipping and spilling down the front of her blouse, soaking into the thin cotton.
“Oh my God, Minh, are you okay?” Gali’s voice managed to break through the roar of blood rushing past her ears, humiliation effectively soundproofing her from the rest of the world.
No, I am not okay. She wanted to sob. This week had just gone completely unbearable to flat-out depressing. She was bent at a horribly ungraceful angle, her face practically mashed against some strange dude’s chest as he held her upright with what Minh could see was a pale, heavily-muscled, heavily-tattooed, incredibly sexy forearm that—
She sucked in a sharp breath. Had she just thought “tattooed” and “sexy” in the same sentence? Men with tattoos weren’t supposed to be sexy. They were too brash, too bold. In fact, another item on The List was No tattoos. Taking a risk like that, getting permanently inked…guys like this weren’t for her.
But for some reason, she couldn’t stop the rush of arousal that made her forget the cold beer plastering her shirt to her body. Strong muscles decorated with bold lines…bright colors on a white canvas, accented with thick, blonde hairs…
Are you seriously getting hot over a guy based solely on his tattooed forearm? Have you gone insane?
It had just been a rough week, that was all. She pulled back and straightened, trying to summon enough dignity to look this guy in the eye and apologize for being so clumsy.
But the words died in her throat the second she saw the stranger’s face.
He was gorgeous. It came at her in a barrage of explosive notes, resonating somewhere deep inside of her. Impossibly crystalline blue eyes accented by a silver eyebrow piercing. Strong, straight nose that topped lips almost fuller than her own. Ear spike that matched the thing in his brow. It should have made him look tough, but all she could think was that the piercings added to his good looks. A gray herringbone-patterned fedora…oh damn damn damn. He even had tattoos around his neck. His neck! She’d never seen a more beautiful man.
She’d lost her mind. That was the only reasonable explanation, because she barely caught herself before her hand could snake out and stroke those swirling patterns. The blood that had been pulsing through her cheeks went suddenly, throbbingly southward.
She’d never dated a guy who looked like him. What would it be like to strip him completely naked, to see what a man like this really looked like, to study what that explosion of color looked like all over his body? She could feel the hard muscles of his stomach against her shoulder. Did he have tattoos there? What did he feel like? What did he taste…
Get ahold of yourself! Not only are you draped all over this guy, but you’re just hanging there like a limp rag, fantasizing about his abs.
And other parts.
“Fuck,” she whispered, feeling the beat of arousal between her legs erasing her usual self-censorship. She was immediately horrified. No matter how frequently she thought them, she never said bad words in public.
The tattooed stranger shrugged, and his lips were curved up in a smile. “Yeah, I’m game. But you could have just said that up front, you know. You didn’t have to spill my beer just to get my pants off.”
She knew he was joking, even if it was crude. On any other night, she would have simply turned up her nose at his off-color attempt at humor and walked away. But the rejections this week, her failure of a date last night, the sub-par alcohol still ripping up her esophagus, and the horrible band driving unending, dissonant notes into her skull made the whirling mess of embarrassment too much.
She leaned in so close to the stranger that she could smell his soap, and somehow the subsequent arousal only further fueled her anger. “If you hadn’t been standing way too close to me, this never would have happened. That hat—” she gestured to the fedora he was wearing— “probably blocked your view. Who wears a hat indoors, anyway? And look at the rest of you. Look at all that stuff all over your body.”