Secret Admirer - D.J. Jamison Page 0,30

walked off with Tracy, and I hadn’t seen him since. They were probably hitting it off. The thought made me uncomfortable, but Tracy was beautiful, and Ace was gorgeous.

That was a picture that made sense.

Me and Ace? That was never going to happen.

“Come on,” Jonas said, throwing his arm over my shoulders again. I sagged a little under it. As the night went on, the amount of weight that came with the gesture increased. Jonas had been downing two drinks to each of mine, and I was drinking more than usual for me.

As Jonas led me from crowd to crowd, laughing and joking, it had seemed necessary to survive the experience. I’d been asked about my major approximately ten times. Once they learned it was art, they either lost all interest or demanded I show them something. Apparently, I was supposed to carry a sketchbook in my back pocket. True, I did have one with me often, but it didn’t fit in my skinny jeans. My ass barely fit in my skinny jeans.

“You should go into tattooing!” a slender girl with long, bleached blond hair told me after I’d admitted I wasn’t sure yet what career field I’d go into after graduating.

“Yeah, man, I want to get a tattoo of our Greek letters on my arm. Could you do that?”

“Well, I don’t know how to tattoo, so—”

“You know what would be cool? A massive dragon. Could you do that?”

“Well, I could draw it…”

The tattoo talk shifted to everyone’s favorite tattoos and tattoo horror stories, and I let the conversation wash over me while guzzling down another beer.

“Not a fan of tats?” Jonas asked me.

I glanced at him. “No, tats are cool.” Not that I’d ever want to do them. Not because I didn’t respect the art form, but because I didn’t want to talk to my canvas. “I’ve seen some beautiful work.”

“You have any?”

“No. You?”

“Maybe you’ll find out later,” he said with a wink.

My heart turned over, but I was pretty sure it was anxiety more than excitement. Jonas was an okay guy, but did I want to end up in his bed on our first date? That was rushing things a bit, considering I’d never had a serious make-out session, much less a full-on hookup.

Another loud burst of laughter washed over me. I finished my beer and held it up. “Can we get another?”

Jonas tipped his cup up, gulping the rest of his beer. “Yup. Let’s go.”

I followed him through the house, breathing in deeply of the fresh air that cooled my skin as we stepped into the backyard, where the kegs were set up.

“Hang back,” Jonas said. “I’ll get the beers.”

The fraternity needed reasonable deniability, should anyone call the police out, so they purposely did not serve drinks to minors. Most people had gotten stamps on their hands after being carded once, so they could get drinks without constantly checking, but us under-21s had to rely on friends to get us drinks.

“Having fun?”

Ace appeared beside me, and my heart flipped again. It was getting its exercise tonight.

“Um, yeah. I think so?”

I smiled up at him, feeling floaty and happy to see him. Despite my mild discomfort with so much socializing and my small-talk deficiencies, I could see the appeal of a party like this.

And I could definitely see the appeal of getting smashed. The more I drank, the more my nerves faded away.

“How much have you—”

“Ah-ah-ah,” I singsonged, waving a finger at him. “Do not act like a big brother right now.”

“Why not?” he grumbled. “That’s how you see me.”

My eyes trailed over his body, taking in the delicious stubble I’d like to lick, the bobbing of his Adam’s apple, the way his shirt clung to his pecs, the … stain spread across his chest.

When I looked up, his eyes were intent on me. “You’re stained.”

“What?”

“A stain,” I said, using my index finger to trace the outline of discolored material, brushing over his nipple in the process. He sucked in a sharp breath.

“Someone spilled a beer on me.”

“Again?” I glanced up at him. I was standing so close. Had I always been this close to him? “You need someone to look out for you.”

He smiled down at me. “You asking for the job?”

“Maybe.” I frowned, glancing around. “What happened to Tracy?”

His smile fell. “She decided to take off.”

“Oh. I thought you two might have hit it off.”

Ace looked at me so hard I wondered if he was trying to see through me. I glanced over my shoulder, just