Try Me (One Night with Sole Regret #1)(6)

"I'll take her home," Melanie said. She should have cut her off from the alcohol earlier.

"No," Nikki said and stomped on Melanie's foot. "I'll be okay. It's just a little loud in here." She glanced up at Shade, her long lashes obscuring her eyes, her body in a completely submissive stance. "Is there a place where I can lie down for a bit?" she asked. "With you on top of me?"

Melanie blinked and turned her head to mouth, Wow.

"If you bring your friend with you," Shade said.

Melanie's head snapped up. Was he serious? "Having kinky sex with my best friend and some freak I don't even know is not my idea of a good time," she blurted.

A guy behind her burst out laughing.

Nikki elbowed her in the ribs.

Shade just smirked. One eyebrow appeared above the rim of his dark sunglasses. "Then what is your idea of a good time?"

She didn't think watching tear-jerkers in her jammies would convince him of her fun-loving nature, so she settled for making a sound of incredulous frustration, turned in the opposite direction, and stalked off. Or tried to. She took precisely one angry step before crashing head-on into a hard body.

The man steadied her with both hands on her upper arms, his cold beer bottle pressing into the flesh of her biceps. She didn't lift her gaze to look at him, but stared at his green T-shirt, feeling like a complete tool.

"Where's the fire, baby?" he asked.

"In my pants," Shade said and laughed.

Melanie shoved away from the man and headed for a nice safe corner to collect her thoughts. She half-expected Nikki to come after her-to either berate her for calling Shade a freak to his face or because she'd ruined Nikki's chances with the egomaniac-but several minutes of staring at the wall convinced her that Nikki had deserted her for a guy she didn't even know. Again. A quick glance over her shoulder confirmed her suspicions. Nikki was laughing and hanging all over Mr. Rock Star Jerk, who seemed to have his gaze trained on Melanie as he suckled a spot right behind Nikki's ear. When Melanie narrowed her eyes at him, he took Nikki's hand and led her out a back door.



       
         
       
        

Melanie scrubbed her forehead with two fingers and turned to stare at the wall again. She considered leaving, but she couldn't desert Nikki without backup. They'd arrived together, they'd leave together. Besides, the woman's love life was a disaster. What if she needed Melanie's help? Considering who she'd left with, the chances that she would need Melanie to bail her out of trouble were all but guaranteed. Melanie supposed attending an after-party alone with a crowd of tattooed metal-heads was better than waiting for Nikki in the car by herself, but not by much. Resigned to her fate, Melanie found the free end of a sofa and sat to wait, keeping her eyes diverted from the people milling about the room.

Her gaze trained on the door that Nikki had just exited, she didn't notice the man sitting next to her until he spoke. "I'm surprised you didn't go with them."

She tore her gaze from the door to look at him. His striking green eyes captured her attention from the shadow beneath the bill of his baseball cap. He was quite possibly the most attractive man who'd ever spoken to her without Nikki at her side. She recognized his T-shirt as the one belonging to the guy she'd careened into a few moments earlier. "Huh?"

"Jacob and your friend." He pointed the neck of his beer bottle toward the door that Melanie was so fixated on.

"Jacob?"

"More famously known as Shade."

"Oh." She settled her hands on her knees. "I didn't realize he had a normal name."

He laughed. "You didn't think his mother named him Shade, did you?"

She shrugged. "Never thought about it." Her attention moved to the door again. "What kind of a dork uses a lame stage name anyway? And why Shade? Because he wears sunglasses all the time?"

"Yeah, he has to wear them. He has vision problems."

Melanie's stomach dropped and she covered her big, blabbering mouth with one hand. "He does? Shit. Now I feel bad."

The guy chuckled. "I'm just fucking with you. He wears them because he enjoys looking like a douche twenty-four seven."

Melanie laughed. It felt good. Her severe case of anxiety decreased substantially, and her bitchiness finally took its leave. "I'm not usually this disagreeable. I just really would rather be anywhere else than waiting for Nikki to finish her fun. I honestly don't understand why she thinks he's so hot. He looks like a prison inmate."

When the guy didn't speak, she turned her head to look at him again.