Easy Little Lick (Copperline #3) Read Online Free PDF Page B

a couple months, but, in all reality, we’d not actually spoken a whole lot.
    “Sure thing,” I replied, hoping like all hell that I was coming off kinda cool and nonchalant. I glanced back at Pauline as I started walking away. “Gotta go. Duty calls.”
    Pauline, rather displeased with Ilsa’s timely interruption, called out after me as I followed Ilsa back to the cooler.
    “I’ll catch you later, okay?”
    Yeah, nah… not if I had anything to say about it. She wouldn’t catch me at all. Now or later. Been there, done that.
    “So which keg?” I asked as Ilsa and I stepped into the walk-in cooler.
    Turning to look at her, it suddenly hit me that we were alone. I’d never really been this alone with her, not even when we’d been washing glasses. Even then, there’d been the cleaning crew in the room, but now… it was just her and me.
    I’d actually daydreamed about this. Being this close to her made me remember how pretty her eyes were. It reinforced her slender, yet curvy build, her fine-boned features. Her breath was visible in the chilled air as she exhaled nervously. I had to swallow back a little groan when she bit her lip and shrugged, looking a little guilty.
    “I… well, I kinda… made that up.”
    The strangest feeling swirled around inside me at her confession, dazed and excited all at once. “You what?”
    “Well, you seemed like you wanted to get away from her, but she wasn’t really taking the hint.”
    I chuckled and looked down at my feet. “Yeah, she’s a bit… forward.”
    “I just thought I’d give you a hand,” she said with a shy tilt to her lips.
    Shit… she really did kinda like me. She had to.
    I knew it!
    I liked it!
    Actually, I fuckin’ loved it!
    Unable to help myself, I grinned wide. “You were just trying to lure me into the cooler, weren’t you?” I teased.
    “Okay, now who’s being forward?” she asked wryly, rolling her eyes.
    Yet she still wore just the slightest smile.
    “Sorry,” I laughed, holding up my hands. “Really, I appreciate your help. More than you know. Feel free to come to my rescue anytime.”
    “I’ll keep an eye out,” she replied, and quietly left the cooler.
    I stood there for a minute after she left, allowing the frigid air to surround me, to chill the raging heat that suddenly burned through my veins. It occurred to me that, while I’d been watching her without watching her, she’d been watching me without watching me, too. And she just indicated she was going to keep watching me. There was a certain satisfaction that arose from her need to step in and save me.
    If I had been crushing on her before, that little interlude in the cooler had shot my imagination into overdrive.

    I managed to catch her eye a couple times that night as us guys played. She rounded the tables, waiting on the crowd.
    She smiled brightly at me from clear across the room. Such a little gesture, but… wow . It felt like a massive victory.
    And at one point, after I had just finished shredding a solo for one of our best songs, I looked up to see her looking almost hypnotized as she watched me play. Her eyes were hot and intense, studying my movements. She was close enough to the stage that I could see her breath catch in her chest. I felt the sweat drip down my back, a slow-moving trickle that I could almost pretend was her touch.
    Holy shit! She was turned on.
    Progress!
    Right about then, I managed to totally flub up, crashing down on the cymbals way early. All three of my band mates turned to look at me, but I ignored them and kept playing along as though they were the ones who’d made the mistake. The audience didn’t notice, or at least most of them didn’t seem to, and the ones that did didn’t seem to care.
    Ilsa caught it though. She sheepishly glanced away, taking another deep breath, and turned, focusing diligently on the customers at the table behind her.
    And then the next table.
    And the table after that.
    Avoiding eye contact. One step