Four Letter Word (Love Logic #2) - K.M. Neuhold Page 0,2

Can’t wait to see you either, B!! Does You Know Who know I’m coming?

Bishop: Voldemort? I doubt it, unless your scar is hurting?

Leo: Ha. Ha. You know who I’m talking about

Bishop: I haven’t told him, so unless you have, that would be a no

Leo: You know I haven’t talked to him in over a decade

Bishop: Well, the two of you are going to have to get over whatever your problem is, because if you’re living in the same city, you’re bound to run into each other

Leo: It’s a big city

I sigh and close out of the conversation without responding. I’m not in the mood to have this same argument again. There was a time when Leo and Hudson were inseparable. The three of us were best friends, and I was jealous of how close they were. But now...now, it would take a miracle to get the two of them into the same room together, and neither of them will even tell me why. A familiar twinge twists in my heart, and I shove my phone back into my pocket.

“Why the long face, gorgeous?” the bartender asks. My eyes dart to the name tag pinned to the front of his too tight t-shirt. Riot— I’m not sure if it’s his birth name or if it’s a moniker he’s chosen, but it fits him either way. His hair is long on top, short on the sides, and colored a shade of lilac that seems to soften him. There’s a hoop through the left side of his bottom lip, another through his eyebrow, and colorful tattoo sleeves decorating both of his arms. He’s different from my usual type— both Hudson and Leo are more clean cut. So clean cut in fact that they could both be on the cover of Hot As Fuck Businessman Weekly. There’s something about the wildness of Riot that drew me in the first time I saw him, when he started working at Twisted Cherry six months ago.

I’ve been appreciating his good looks from afar for a while, but I’ve never talked to him. I was thinking about leaving after Hudson decided to start pulling his usual bullshit, flirting with me and then pushing me away. We came out tonight to celebrate our friends Pax and Elijah deciding to settle down and move in together. I’m happy for them; I never thought anyone would get Pax to settle down, let alone cohabitate, and I didn’t really want to leave their little celebration, but I wasn’t sure I could take another night of watching Hudson go home with someone else.

Then Riot smiled at me over the bar, and I figured I could probably stand to stay a little longer.

“Life is complicated,” I answer with another sigh.

“You know there’s a cure for that, right?” he says, putting his elbows on the bar and leaning in conspiratorially, a strand of his purple hair flopping over his forehead, humor dancing behind his eyes.

“Let me guess, more booze?”

He shakes his head slowly and then looks from side to side as if he’s afraid someone will overhear as he reveals government secrets.

“Orgasms,” he whispers, and I snort my beer into my nose in surprise, coughing and sputtering as the liquid stings my nasal passage.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Nothing uncomplicates life like coming back to my place after my shift and letting me make you come over and over until the sun comes up.”

Heat rushes through me, settling between my legs as my heart beats faster, and a slow smile spreads over my lips. Excitement sparks along my skin even as a small voice in the back of my mind tells me this might not be the best idea. I deserve a night of fun, don’t I? I deserve to have the attention of a sexy man for one night, even if I don’t understand why someone as appealing at Riot would give me a second glance.

“Sounds like exactly what the doctor ordered,” I agree. “When does your shift end?”

Riot chuckles, the deep rich sound reaching inside me and stoking the flame that’s already burning there.

*****

It turns out Riot’s closing down the bar tonight, but I have nowhere else to be, so I’m happy to wait. I switch from beer to soda once I decide to go home with him, because I hate being fuzzy during a hookup. I don’t do this often, with anyone but Hudson, and I’d rather remember every second of it in the morning.

He flirts in between helping customers, and by the time he