“Is that a promise?”

Oh hell. He released her, taking a hasty step backward. “Go,” he muttered. “I mean it.”

He waited for an argument, but miraculously, she didn’t give him one. Instead, she smirked again before sauntering away, hips swaying with each step she took.

His gaze followed her all the way to the door, staying glued to her slender form as she walked back into the club. And then the door swung shut and she was gone.

But Gage had the unnerving feeling that he hadn’t seen the last of her.

Chapter Two

“I did something crazy last night,” Skyler announced.

Lacey snickered. “Yeah, you went out with Mick the Dick. We know.”

“No, not that. I did something even crazier.” She dragged her tired body to the kitchen counter, poured herself a cup of coffee, and took a much-needed sip.

She hadn’t slept a wink after Mick had dropped her off last night. Instead, she’d spent a solid hour on the computer, followed by several more lying in bed and thinking about the gorgeous sex god who’d made her feel honest-to-God lust for the first time in her life.

Gage Holt.

Yep, she’d Googled him. It hadn’t been too difficult to find him after he’d let it slip that he owned the club. Two minutes was all it took to pull up a newspaper feature about the grand opening of Sin, with a picture of Gage and his two partners underneath the headline. Another search, and she’d discovered that he was a former fighter. He’d fought on the professional mixed martial arts circuit since the age of eighteen, winning a ton of matches before retiring a few years back. She hadn’t found any online footage of his fights, so she’d had to satisfy herself by staring at his picture from the newspaper article.

And seeing his face, even in grainy black and white, had only reignited the fire of lust he’d set inside her.

“Sky?”

May’s voice snapped her from her thoughts. She gulped down some more coffee, the caffeine successfully turning her brain from muddled to alert.

“Sorry, what?” She turned to face her roommates.

“I asked what could possibly be crazier than going out with Mick,” May said dryly.

Skyler drifted to one of the stools around the cedar work island and flopped down next to Lacey. She was kind of surprised that all three of them were even in the same room. She’d shared the old Victorian house with Lacey and May for four years, but their hectic schedules didn’t usually align to allow them to spend much time together. Still, no matter how busy they all were, the two women were Skyler’s closest friends.

And they always gave her damn good advice.

“I made out with a total stranger at the club,” she confessed.

Two jaws hit the kitchen floor.

“You’re shitting me.” Lacey started to laugh. “You had an anonymous hookup? That’s so not your style.”

“I know.” She wrapped her fingers around her mug. “It just sort of…happened. Somehow.”

“Uh-huh. You just opened your mouth and somehow a dude’s tongue slipped inside it,” May teased.

She offered a sheepish grin. “Fine, there was more to it than that. I went outside for some air—Mick was acting like a total ass, by the way. I was dying to get away from him.”

“I told you not to go out with him,” Lacey grumbled. “Didn’t you learn anything from my experience in freshman year? The ass**le forgot he asked me out on the same night he asked someone else, and when the other chick and I showed up at the restaurant at the same time, he tried to convince us to have a threesome!”

“Seriously, why did you even agree to go on a date with that jerk?” May sighed.

Because he asked.

Skyler bit back the words, not wanting to admit just how dismal her love life had become. School and work kept her so busy she didn’t have time to meet many men, and all the ones who did hit on her? No thank you. The guys in her psychology classes just tried to “analyze” her, and the male customers who flirted with her at the restaurant were usually creeps.

Sad as it was, Mick the Dick was the first viable candidate she’d come across in months. When they’d bumped into each other at the university library and he’d asked her out, the thought of actually leaving the house had eclipsed her memories of Mick’s douche bag college days. She’d wanted so badly to crawl out of the work-and-school rut and have some fun.

No, it was more than that, she realized. She’d wanted a change. She’d wanted new and exciting instead of old and boring. Mick might have been a jerk in college, but he’d also been impulsive and larger than life. A part of her had hoped that maybe those traits would rub off on her.

And boy, had they. She’d all but thrown herself at a complete stranger—it didn’t get more impulsive than that.

“I was hoping Mick might have grown up since then,” she answered. “But you were right. He’s still the same cocky, self-absorbed jerk.”

“And your mystery man?” May prompted, her blue eyes twinkling. “Was he, um, cocky?”

Skyler’s thighs clenched as the memory of last night floated through her head. God. She’d almost melted into a puddle of mindless need when Gage had started grinding his rock-hard erection into her.

“He was…intense,” she admitted. “One minute we were talking in the alley—I don’t even remember what about—and the next we were up against the wall pawing at each other.”