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eyebrows shot up. “And you’re complaining?”
    “Not at all.” Her gaze dropped to his mouth and she licked
her lips flirtatiously. He needed no further provocation and a second later his
mouth was on hers.
    While this was certainly a welcome change from their
bickering over skanky women, their making out in front of her was making Mina a
little uncomfortable. She already felt like the third wheel around the two of
them most of the time but this just made it worse.
    “Jesus Christ, Brian, get a goddamn room.” Tyler laughed as
he pulled out a chair and sat down next to Mina. Her body instantly went back
on high alert. At least her friends’ grope session had done the trick. She’d
been sufficiently distracted and hadn’t seen Tyler enter the bar.
    “That was an awful lot of blaspheming for one sentence, man.”
Brian smirked when he came up for air.
    “Yeah well, I think the Big Man will forgive me, given the
circumstances.” Tyler turned all of his considerable attention on Mina. “You’re
here,” he said in a much softer tone than the one he’d been using with Brian.
And was she mistaken or was the smile he threw her one born of satisfaction?
    Sitting up straighter, she nodded. “Here I am.” The smile
broadened.
    “I’m glad. I’m gonna go get a beer. You want anything?”
    Was he buying again? How odd . “I’m good, but thank
you.”
    He narrowed his eyes but said nothing as he left the table
and approached the bar. She ate up his gait as he went, smiling and saying
hello to various people along the way. It seemed as if he frequented this
place. Either that or this was the same crowd that showed up to the fights
every week.
    Now that she knew where he was—safely on the other side of
the room—she gave herself the opportunity to survey her surroundings. There
were a lot of the same faces she’d seen surrounding the ring. Scantily clad
amazons included. Grumbling to herself, Mina shrank down into her chair.
    Able’s was bigger on the inside than it appeared to be from
the parking lot. The massive bar was the central focus of the room, dividing it
into two sections. To the left were the tables at which she and her friends
were currently seated. To the right was a large dance floor and a DJ booth. The
music was loud but not so much so that they had to scream across the table to
be heard.
    Just as she thought it, a popular song with a pounding
rhythm started to play, drawing people onto the dance floor. Chloe gave Brian a
meaningful look and with a sigh, he set his beer down and let her pull him out
onto the dance floor, leaving Mina alone at the table.
    She wasn’t sitting there for long. Tyler came back, sat down
beside her and with no preamble at all said, “I wanna know why you’re such a
tight-ass.”
    Affronted, she lifted her eyebrows to her hairline. “I’m not
a tight-ass.”
    Laughing, he flashed her that impish smile of his. “Shit,
girl, it was like pulling teeth to get you to come have a drink with me. And on
my birthday no less.”
    Shock raced through her, leaving her momentarily speechless.
It was his birthday? Why in the world had he been so hell-bent on spending it
with her, of all people? She could feel her forehead crinkle as she thought it
out but it just didn’t compute. The more time she spent with him, the more of a
conundrum he became.
    “First off, I had no way of knowing it was your birthday, so
don’t try to put that particular guilt trip on me, buddy. That said, happy
birthday.” His lips quirked upward and she didn’t know where she got the gall,
but she continued. “And second, I am not a tight-ass. I’m just not very good
with people, so it tends to make me come across as a bit of an introvert.”
    For a few moments he said nothing, just gazed at her with
some foreign expression she couldn’t read. Then he scooted closer to her and
spoke. “First off, it’s good to see you do have some bite to you.” He winked at
her as he brought his beer to his