Page 7 of The Wrong Game

Hot lawyer with a cat? Swipe right.

Boating captain with a gaggle of girls in every single photo of his? No, thanks. Swipe left.

Self-proclaimed “rich stud” with a photo of him holding a stack of cash?Hard left.

Cute freelance writer with a love for all things Chicago, including the Bears? Yes, please.

This is fun,I thought.

Until the first message popped up.

Hey there, Gemma. How ‘bout them Bears?

I stared at the message, thumbs hovering over the keyboard on my phone.

What do I say back? Do I wait to respond? What if he thinks I’m stupid? What if he sees me in person and makes up some lame excuse to leave, and then I’m just sitting at the game alone?

Actually, that might not be so bad.

“Down To Fuck?”

I balked, blinking with my eyes still on the unanswered message on my phone before I peered up at the man the voice belonged to.

The bartender.

“Excuse me?” I asked, sure I didn’t hear him correctly. But he made no move to correct himself. Instead, he just stood there, staring at me, a little smirk on his full lips as he glanced down at my phone and back up at me.

“Down. To. Fuck,” he repeated. “That’s what DTF means.”

My mouth popped open, eyes skirting to where Belle had disappeared into the bathroom. “No… she wouldn’t.”

The bartender chuckled, fishing a beer out of the cooler behind him and sliding it over to a group of guys down to my left. “I mean, from the first words I heard her say when you two walked in here?” He smirked again. “I think she would.”

My cheeks flushed with heat, fingers flying over my phone as I quickly exited the message and tried to find my profile. “Oh, my God. How do I edit this thing? How do I delete that? Ah!” I threw my phone on the bar when another message came in. “Jesus Christ.”

The bartender laughed, picking up my phone from where I’d tossed it like a detonating bomb. He thumbed through a few screens, typed something, and handed it back to me.

“There. I edited it.” He leaned over the bar. “But, from the sounds of it, you should have left it. I mean, youarelooking for someone who’s down to fuck, right?”

I closed the app, shoving my phone inside my purse with heat still creeping over my neck. “Nosy, much?”

“Hard not to overhear two gorgeous women talking about gettingrailed into next year by a hammer cock.”

I laughed at that, taking a sip of my vodka as my eyes met his. I finally got my wish, a chance to stare at him a little longer, andboy, was he fun to stare at.

His square jaw was lined with a faint shadow of stubble, his dark eyes hooded in a mixture of lust and playfulness. The way his jet-black hair sat in a styled wave reminded me of a Calvin Klein model, and I knew without a second thought that I wouldn’t mind seeing his tan skin sporting nothing but a pair of white briefs on a giant billboard —especiallyafter that brief glimpse I got of his ass.

Ha! Take that, Belle. My libido is far from broken.

He was the definition of what Belle hadsaidDTF stood for — Dark, Tall, and Fun.

“So, which one are you taking first?” he asked, pushing back from where he’d leaned over the bar. He nodded to a woman at the opposite end, letting her know he saw her request for a refill. And as he made her margarita, I pulled my phone back from my purse, sighing.

“Truthfully? I have no idea. I have two messages already, but I have no idea what to say to them.”

“Maybe you should start withhi.”

“You know what I mean,” I shot back, rolling my eyes. I opened up the app, staring at the first unanswered message again. “I haven’t talked to another man like this since…” My voice faded, heart slinking into my stomach with a mixture of guilt and loss. “Well, in a very long time.”