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With the official contestants on the verge of rioting, I expect Jordan to agree, especially after making such a big deal about not participating. So when he strides over and sits in the circle, my breath stills.

Jordan’s gaze flicks to mine. “I’m in.”

“There you have it. He’s playing.” Nicole hands me the empty bottle before darting to the bar where Jeremy fills two red cups from the keg. He hands her one, and they both down them in a single breath.

Jordan clears his throat, drawing my attention back to him.

My heart flutters wildly. His entry has given me a reason to be excited about the game. I glance at his shiny snakebite piercings and lick my lips. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious. Ever since he saved me at the aquatic center, I’ve wondered what it would be like to kiss him.

Keeping Nicole in my peripheral vision as she tops off her cup, again, I reach between Jordan and Elijah, placing the cool bottle on the smooth tile floor. Here goes nothing. With a twist of my wrist, I give the bottle a good spin, then sit back and watch it rotate.

The blue glass catches the light, sparkling as it goes round and round in the center of the circle. As it slows, my heart rate picks up, and I follow the trajectory of the open end, calculating where it’ll land.

Tyler whoops as the neck of the bottle comes to a stop, pointing directly at him. “Oh yeah!”

I’ve already kissed Tyler, and the experience wasn’t entirely unpleasant, but as he crawls toward me, I can’t ignore the uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. This isn’t at all how I wanted any of this to go. And Tyler isn’t the person I wanted that bottle to land on.

His lips are cool and wet as he fixes them to mine. Like really wet—with a hint of sausage pizza on his breath and more than a trace of beer on his slippery tongue. Like the last time we kissed, Tyler’s mouth is all over mine, but after who-knows-how-many drinks, he’s like an exuberant Saint Bernard, and I’m afraid I’ll drown from all the drool.

When I can’t decide if I should spit or swallow, my gag reflex kicks in, and my brain screams at me to regain control of the situation before I die. This has to be what waterboarding feels like. I’m half a breath away from slapping the shit out of him when he abruptly stops and goes back to his spot in the circle as if he didn’t slobber all over me like Beethoven.

Jordan’s jaw flexes hard enough to crack in half. “You need a towel?”

You’ve come too far to play the victim now.

“No thanks.” I catch Jordan glaring at Tyler’s smug grin as I swipe the back of my hand across my mouth.

“Go on, spin it again.” The football team’s new backup quarterback—a bronze Adonis with a shitty attitude—gawks at me with his fathomless dark eyes and snaps his fingers, making me flinch.

Tyler shoves him to the side. “Come on, dude. Can’t you see she needs a second to recover.”

Tyler’s cocky comment snaps me out of it, and I grab the bottle, sending it swirling around again. My heart jumps as the bottle slows with the mouth approaching Jordan, but when it finally stops, the neck is angled more toward Elijah, and he doesn’t hesitate to claim his victory.

Elijah takes his time, cupping my cheek before bringing his lips to mine, and I pretend I’m not disappointed when the butterflies never come. As soon as he sits down, I glance at Jordan, and those pesky ninja butterflies knock the wind out of me.

I will kiss that man before the night is through if it kills me.

16

An hour later, after kissing most of the guys at least once, my lips tingle, and not in a good way. Tyler nearly drowning me followed by Caleb’s thorough inspection of my tonsils earns a veto of all use of hands or tongues, but I refuse to pull the plug on the game until I kiss Jordan.

Groaning, I reach for the bottle, but before I can get my hand around the neck to spin again, one of the Theta guys jumps to his feet, swaying like an old pine in the wind as he raises his cup over his head.

“Time to make this game interesting,” he slurs. “I say we chug every time the bottle lands on us.”

“Sit down, Seth!” Grant Michaels hurls his empty cup through the air, and it bounces off the guy’s chest. Grant slides his thick black glasses up the bridge of his nose and gives me a one-shoulder shrug as if to say I tried.

“Go to hell, dude.” Seth flips him off before stalking over to fill his cup again.

Then someone shouts, “How about every time she spins, we chug?”

“Spin-the-bottle-pong!” Trey whoops and jumps up, dragging the keg closer.

I raise my hand like a little kid. “I vote no.”

My voice is lost under the chorus of “Chug! Chug! Chug!”

Nicole leans over me from behind, creating a purple curtain around me with her hair.