Loud: The Complete Series (A Bad Boy Alpha Male Romance) by Claire Adams

little primates with the
big bulging eyes I’d seen at a zoo once.
    He clicked the rumbling machine into gear and with a
fistful of loud, roaring throttle, he took off at a blistering pace and quickly
disappeared around a bend at the end of the road as smoothly as any racer I’d ever
seen handle a bike on TV. There was something sexy and alluring about it.
    But more than the unwanted impulse of attraction,
which I quickly suppressed, I felt disappointment. After gearing myself up for a
performance — I'd wanted to show him and Melissa just how little I cared about
them — I'd been denied an audience.
    Okay, so maybe it was more than a little petty.
In fact, it was pretty full-on bitchy. I had no clue what had come over me. I
shook my head and shook out my arms too, trying to rid myself of this strange,
uncomfortable feeling that seemed to take hold of me whenever I saw Emerson.
    There was only one way to get past it. I needed to
avoid him and his chauvinist friend, Chris, as much as possible. Given that
they lived next door to me, I realized that might prove difficult. Nonetheless,
I had to do it.
    Avoid. At all costs.

 
    CHAPTER
SIX
    Emerson

 
    “Come on, bro, the dive bar on 4 th has
their two for one special! Remember? Last Sunday of every month. Let's hit it,
I bet there'll be some talent there. In fact, I know there'll be talent — hot,
fresh talent that just arrived for the new semester! This is a college
town, ya know.”
    “Chris, dude, I told you already. I've got to
do some prelim reading before the first day of class tomorrow. Seriously, man,
I need to get through these articles. And, you should be brushing up a bit
yourself. You barely scraped through last semester.”
    Chris' expression morphed instantly from a cheesy grin
to a scowl. He looked away from me and shook his head. “Bro, you're acting like…like
a freakin' old man these days. Where's the E-Train I'm used to, huh?
Man, for the past month you've been so damn serious. Lighten up!”
    “Chris, we've been out drinking two nights in a row.
We got back from the club at…what was it? Six in the morning Saturday? Then fourteen
hours later, we were hitting it hard again. And that carried on until three
this morning. Seriously, man, aren't you even feeling the slightest bit tired
after all that? I know I am. If I do it again tonight, I guarantee that I won't
be able to wake up for class tomorrow. And even if I do manage to get to class,
I'll probably fall asleep halfway through. I've gotta have at least one quiet, sober, early evening. Seriously.”
    Chris got up, obviously upset. “Whatever man. I'm
gonna call Brent. He'll go have beers with me, at least. Enjoy your books, bro,”
he mumbled as he left the apartment.
    I shook my head and sighed as I watched him leave. He
really could act like such a spoiled child sometimes. We weren't eighteen
anymore. I didn’t know when he’d realize that I needed to start taking life a
bit more seriously and, quite frankly, so did he. However, there didn't seem to
be any way to get through to him, so what could I do? I leaned back in my chair
and resumed reading, trying to get my mind off Chris and the tension building in
our friendship.
    Several hours later, I closed my books and yawned,
stretching my arms out in front of me. I felt proud of myself at that moment.
I'd managed to get through everything I needed to read before my first class the
next morning. To be honest, I should have read most of it a week before instead
of procrastinating and wasting a bunch of time partying and then having to do
it all at the last minute. But at least I'd had the determination to get it
done, even if that happened to be the night before class.
    I got up, stretched out a bit more, grimacing as my
arms and chest burned from the post-workout pain from the grueling Saturday
session, and then headed to the kitchen to whip up a protein shake before bed.
    As I was shaking the whey powder and milk in my gym
bottle, for