“They were entertaining,” I assured him.
He pulled me around to face him and studied me a moment.
“Want to tell me how you know about bass guitarists?”
Was I ready to share this with Cage? I’d only played my acoustic once the other night. Sharing more of Josh with Cage almost felt wrong. If Cage was just in my life for the summer then did I want to give him too much of me? If I had imagined that there could be more for us that had been killed tonight. Cage didn’t do commitment. I was just a summer fling.
I shrugged, “I like guitars I guess.”
He didn’t buy it. I could see it in his eyes but he didn’t push me either.
“You ready to go?” he asked
“Yeah, I think I am.”
Chapter Sixteen
Cage
I hadn’t said much on the drive back to my apartment. Eva was cautious. I knew this. I’d known it from day one when she’d basically called me a man whore. It was one of the things I liked about her. Up until tonight I had been making progress. She’d told me about Josh. I’d been able to hold her while she cried. I thought that had formed a bond of trust between us.
Taking her into my world had undone everything I’d worked damn hard to prove to her. If I didn’t have girls throwing themselves at me and talking about our threesomes, I had my friends acting like I used girls like disposable objects. I’d wanted my friends to meet her. I’d wanted her to know me until she got a real taste of my life. Now, I wanted to get her back to the country so we could live in our little cocoon where my past wasn’t there to haunt me.
“Are you mad at me?” Eva’s question snapped me out of my thoughts. I lifted my eyes from the spot in the floor I’d been staring at to see Eva standing in the doorway wearing a pair of tiny pink polka dot pajama bottoms and a matching tank top. It was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen.
“Huh?” I managed to ask through the lust haze that had settled over me. She wasn’t wearing a bra. I swallowed hard as her ni**les pebbled under my gaze and pressed against the thin silky fabric.
“You didn’t talk the whole way back from the bar. I thought maybe you were mad at me about something.”
Mad at her? What?
I tore my eyes off her tits and focused on her worried face. “No, I’m not mad at you. I just had some stuff on my mind.”
She shifted her feet and chewed on the inside of her cheek nervously.
“Come here.” I invited, patting the spot on the end of the bed beside me.
She came willingly. I tried to focus on her face and making her less nervous. But damned if the fact those shorts barely covered up her ass wasn’t distracting. She sat down beside me fisting her hands together in her lap. I reached over and covered her hands with mine.
“Relax, Eva. I’m not mad at you. I’m frustrated with myself.”
She tilted her head to the side and looked up at me. Her silky brown locks slid over her bare shoulder. Had I ever noticed how sexy something as simple as a bare shoulder could be?
“Why are you frustrated with yourself?”
Because I’m a f**k-up and now you know it.
“Tonight didn’t go as well as I’d hoped. I don’t have a very stellar reputation and it seemed like everyone who knew me wanted to make sure you knew just what a sordid past I had.”
Her shoulders relaxed and she leaned over and bumped my arm with her shoulder. “You do realize that I never thought you had a stellar reputation.” Her teasing tone made me smile.
“What? You didn’t think I was next in line for Pope? Damn, I thought I had you fooled.”
Eva laughed and pulled her legs underneath her and turned her body so she was facing me. “Yeah, the whole DUI thing kind of clued me in.”
“You think you’re a funny one, don’t you?” I leaned back on my elbows so I could look up at her. Also because I had a real good view of her ass now that her shorts were inched up enough to show me the bottom curve of her perfectly rounded cheeks.
“I had fun tonight. Your friends are very entertaining.”