Page 2 of Shaken and Stirred (Bottle Service Boys #1)

The click-clack of high heels across the linoleum floor had me glancing up to find our instructor, a graduate student at MIT, according to what she’d written on the whiteboard behind her desk.

When she entered, she walked straight to the desk at the front of the room, where she pulled a laptop out of her bag.

She wore straight black slacks and a cream-colored turtleneck sweater.

Her long, shiny black hair hung down her back, tied away from her face in a low ponytail.

After she opened her laptop, she watched her class fill through black-rimmed glasses and a pleasant expression on her minimally made-up face.

All in all, she was a beautiful woman. Though we were well into the twenty-first century, men still dominated the engineering field. I loved that our first lab had a female instructor. It would be fun to watch the rich bros in my class take direction from her.

Most likely, they’d spend their time slobbering over her instead of learning.

“Good morning, everyone,” she said once most of the seats filled up.

Her melodic voice floated above the low hum of get-to-know-you chatter, which faded to nothing when she spoke.

“My name is Marissa Haverstead, and I’m a PhD student here at MIT.

I’ll be leading you through this introductory robotics course. Please call me Marissa.”

She glanced down at a paper on her desk, then quickly scanned the room.

“Looks like we have a full class this year and one vacant seat right now, which means…”

My stomach fluttered as I glanced at the chair next to me.

Empty.

Awesome. Everyone in the room had a partner except me. My face heated from the stares of the other students focused my way.

“Someone is running late,” she said right before a body slid into the chair next to me.

“Sorry,” a male voice said without an ounce of the embarrassment I would have experienced at being called out for arriving last on the first day.

I turned to introduce myself to the newcomer—my partner—and my stomach plummeted.

The Ken Doll.

“Hey, FL,” he said with a smirk. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“FL?” I asked with a frown. What the hell was FL?

“Freeloader.” He winked.

If I could have smacked the smug grin off his face without being expelled, I would have in a heartbeat. What a conceited prick.

Why the hell did he have to be so hot? His arrogant smirk would be so much less irritating if it weren’t made up of plump lips and accompanied by twinkling blue eyes.

I loved blue eyes. They were so different from my dark ones. This close, I noticed a small fleck of green in his left eye shaped like a comma. One speck of imperfection in an otherwise flawless face that only made him more attractive.

Damn Ken Doll.

Since I couldn’t hit him, I settled for my usual weapon, my caustic tongue.

“I suppose you paid for this with your lucrative job?” I snapped my fingers.

“Oh no, wait, your mommy and daddy paid for it. Just like they paid for your clothes and your Tesla and whatever else you have that you didn’t earn yourself. ”

I only had two seconds to enjoy the flash of surprise in his eyes before he grinned again. “Dayum, FL has a backbone. All right, I can work with that. Let the games begin. This is gonna be fun,” he said as he rubbed his hands together.

Maybe I should tell him I was gay. That would get his future-frat-boy ass out of that seat faster than anything. He was the type of jerk to be afraid of catching sexual orientation if he sat too close to a queer guy like me.

I’d be fine if he dropped out of the program. Completing the assignments alone had to be better than putting up with him.

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” Marissa said. She narrowed her eyes at us. “Save the chitchat for the breaks, please.”

“Sorry, ma’am,” Ken Doll said with a charming tone that probably had his high school’s entire cheerleading squad fawning all over him.

I resisted rolling my eyes.

Barely.

“FL here was just asking if he could borrow a fiver for lunch. Poor thing doesn’t have much,” he added in a faux whisper.

Oh, fuck him.

My ears burned. Why the hell wasn’t I born with the ability to disappear on command?

A few of my classmates snickered, but most remained quiet.

Marissa didn’t get the joke. She had no idea I was there on a scholarship.

She probably didn’t give two craps about petty high school bullying.

“Doesn’t matter the topic of conversation,” she said with a tight-lipped grin. “Talk on your own time.”

What an awful start to my first day. “Sorry,” I mumbled like an idiot. Ignoring the murmurs and whispered chuckles of my summer classmates wasn’t possible. My face burned so hot my ears had to be smoking.

Kenn Doll didn’t seem to mind in the least. “Won’t happen again,” he said without an ounce of remorse while flashing that charming grin at our teacher.

Lucky for me that grin didn’t do a damn thing besides piss me off. It was so annoying, it canceled out his appealing features, like his blue eyes.

Tanned skin.

Plump lips.

Fuck .

“Thank you, gentlemen,” she said. “Moving on, let’s look at the syllabus. I’ll tell you a little about what you can expect in this lab for the next six weeks.”

As I slid my syllabus in front of me, Ken Doll leaned over. “Name’s Ryder,” he whispered, making electricity run down my spine.

Of course it was. Such a rich boy’s name.

His breath tickled my ear, which was the only reason I shivered. Warm air unexpectedly brushed across sensitive nerve endings. That’s all.

“Alex,” I ground out through clenched teeth. I scooted my chair away from him. “You’re too close. Back off.”

He grunted out a laugh, then finally turned his attention to Marissa as she reviewed the syllabus.

Being a summer program, everyone paid out the ass to attend.

There were no exams or papers, only ungraded projects we had plenty of time to complete and learn from.

As I listened to her review our planned schedule, the buzz of anticipation I’d woken up with returned.

This is what excited me—computer coding, machine learning, robotics, all the nerdy technology I could get my hands on.

I wasn’t about to let spoiled idiots ruin this opportunity for me.

Working with Ryder would be fine.

“Grab a pen or highlighter,” Marissa commanded. “There are a few important details I want to emphasize.

The spoiled idiot plucked his backpack off the floor and rifled through it. After pulling out a pen, he dropped the backpack on the table—a Prada?—in my space and halfway across my laptop.

“Uh,” I whispered. “Wanna move your shit?”

“It’s an expensive bag. I don’t want it to get dirty on the floor.”

This had to be a joke.

“It’s a fucking bag.”

“Shh. I’m trying to listen,” he spoke sideways out of his perfect mouth.

Not that I’d noticed.

Of course, he didn’t remove the bag. Instead, he rested his elbow on the table and, every few seconds, shifted it my way, nudging the thousand-dollar bag farther on my laptop.

All the while, he sat there with an innocent expression, staring at the front of the room.

It happened at least four times, and each time, my blood heated another few degrees.

Who the hell did this guy think he was? Mommy and Daddy clearly taught him he was better than everyone else because they had fat wallets.

Maybe it was time for him to learn their money couldn’t save him in every situation.

As slowly as I could, I inched my fingers forward until I could grab the strap on his bag.

Then, with one solid yank, I sent the whole thing, every thousand-dollar bill that bag cost, tumbling to the floor.

His shit flew in every direction. His pencils, pens, and paper fluttered to the floor all around our lab table.

“Oh shit,” I cried. “Ryder, you knocked your bag down. You’d better pick it up before it gets dirty. Looks like a nice one.” I pressed my lips together to keep from laughing out loud. Damn, pettiness felt good sometimes.

I risked a glance at Ryder, expecting the same anger and annoyance on his face that he’d been causing me. All I found was that damn Ken Doll smirk.

“Let the games begin,” he mouthed.

Fine, if that’s how this was going to be, I could roll with it.

Let the games begin.