I couldn’t tear my eyes away as he ran the flat length of his tongue along the salt on her stomach, as his fingertips dug into her skin while he sucked and licked that tequila off her. Then, he was hovering over her face, and he bent slowly and seductively to bite the lime wedge in her mouth.

For only a brief second — then, the lime was gone, and his mouth was on hers.

Pain spiked through my chest like an ice pick, intensified when the girl threaded her manicured nails through his hair. She opened her mouth to let his in, and though the swipe of his tongue against hers was only a split second, it made my neck heat, made my stomach turn, made me…

What, exactly?

I stared and stared at them, trying to dissect what I was feeling, but didn’t solve the puzzle before a husky voice was at my ear.

“She doesn’t hold a candle to you.”

I shivered, the rough lilt of syllables tumbling down the back of my neck and leaving chills in their wake. I angled my head, finding Shawn staring down at me with a playful grin.

I laughed. “Yeah,” I said, but without even trying, without having to fake it… my eyes trailed back to Clay. “Sure.”

I watched as he helped the girl off the counter, his hands staying at her waist once she was safely on the floor. I knew I’d stared for too long because when I glanced back up at Shawn, he was watching me with his brows folded together, with pity and something like longing in his golden eyes before he leaned close to whisper in my ear.

“Want to get some air?”

While the front yard of the Snake Pit was crawling with students, the back yard was a serene garden, a hidden oasis that it seemed no one bothered to investigate because it was far too quiet to be part of the party. Shawn and I walked by a small pod of people passing around a joint before we found a bench along the stone path, a bubbling bird bath and feeder in front of it along with a rose garden that I was fairly certain had to be landscaped by a paid company.

No way was there a college football player with that green of a thumb.

Shawn gestured to the bench for me to sit first, and once I had, he sat right next to me, his thigh brushing the outside of mine. My cheeks heated at the contact, but he seemed unfazed, simply reclining and widening his stance as he threw an arm along the back of the bench.

“Color me impressed,” he mused, eyes trailing over the garden.

I chuckled. “Yeah, not exactly what I expected to find back here. I was assuming it’d be more of a trash-littered patch of dirt.”

“Is it your first time here?”