Free One Hot Fall Term (Yardley College Chronicles Book1) by Sharon Page Page A

the multi-colored liquids inside them glow. The rear of the bar looks like an enormous stained glass window.
    Lara is propped on her elbows on the white-topped bar, sucking on a piece of lime, while a good-looking bartender with gorgeous tattoos and a shaved head shakes up a drink. He pours it in a long stream into a margarita glass, never taking his eyes off her. Then he slides it to her. His eyes meet mine and he mouths two words. Last one. That is worrying since she hasn’t been there that long.
    Lara skewers the margarita glass between the V of her fingers and scoops it up. Half of it disappears in the time it takes her to turn away from the bar. We are underage—most of the crowd must be less than twenty-one—but like in high school, that isn’t stopping anyone and the bartenders have obviously been paid enough not to care. However, they aren’t completely turning a blind eye. This one is looking out for Lara.
    She totters toward the windows on her platform sandals. “I don’t care if he thinks this is the last one. It’s not. I. Am. Getting. Blitzed.”
    Considering Lara won’t eat meat, agonizes over the healthiest vending machine decisions, and worries about how well the cafeteria washes its lettuce, I know something is seriously wrong for her to be drinking so much.
    She weaves through the crowd, her drink sloshing here and there. Until she finds a bathroom, a different one than the one I used. There’s a couple in it, making out, who didn’t bother to lock the door. She says, “God, get a bedroom. Some of us have to pee .”
    The couple stop and I’m pretty certain the guy intends to say something rude until he looks at Lara. She looks so upset the guy shrugs and leads his partner outside. Lara grabs my wrist and hauls me in.
    “Uh, I don’t have to go,” I say.
    “I don’t either. I wanted somewhere to talk. In private. You have to promise not to tell anyone. Jonathon made me do that—at least he didn’t ask me to sign some sicko contract .”
    Not tell anyone? “What happened? I saw Jonathon from the terrace. He was on an upstairs balcony, looking out over the lake and the mountains as if he’d lost his soul.”
    “He lost that a long time ago,” Lara mutters.
    I pull the drink out of her hand and set it on the edge of a bathtub—one I could swim in. I put the lid down on the toilet and make her sit there. “What did he do to you?”
    She looks longingly at her drink. “What would you do if you found the perfect guy and he turned out to be a perverted creep? Or do I mean creepy pervert? God, I feel like I’ve walked into Fifty Shades of Grey, except there is no way I’d ever let any guy go within fifty feet of me with a whip.”
    I blink. “A what?”
    “He has this room, Mia. His domination room, filled with all sorts of wacked-out, kinky things. That’s what he likes, what he wants, and there is no way I am ever going there. Not with him. Not with anyone.”
    Jonathon is into BDSM. In my head—based on books—I imagine the room. Various images flit through my head. Red leather benches for spankings and whippings and a rack for tying up a woman. A selection of whips on the wall. A décor of red and black to make the room look hellish and wicked. Or maybe the room would be sleekly white and silver. Or filled with heavy dark wood, illuminated with flickering candles, featuring medieval torture instruments…
    Wait. That one is probably devil worship, not BDSM.
    “Maybe he was presenting it as a suggestion. He was hopeful you would say yes,” I say.
    “It wasn’t a suggestion. It was an obligation.”
    “Oh. Maybe you can come to an arrangement where he doesn’t do that stuff with you.”
    She gets up and grabs her drink, downing it. Then she sinks back onto the toilet lid. “So he does it with someone else while he’s dating me. Then we get married and he does kinky stuff on the side with trashy women? That’s not my idea of happily ever after. I wasn’t into him for his