Free Unknown (Unknown Identity #1) by Lexy Timms

you’ll like it a lot.”
    “Sure,” Josie said, looking at the other two and shrugging as she stood up and followed the handsome man to go dancing.
    Leslie’s gut reaction was to give her pepper spray, just in case he turned out to be the biggest creep in the world, but she giggled as she realized the panicked little writer inside of her was overreacting. He was probably a perfectly normal guy who wasn’t actually interested in raping and killing her.
    “Amber, let me get you another drink,” Mikhail, the handsome model, said, pushing back his own platinum locks as he held out his hand for her. No doubt all the guys decided that this was the time to start carving up the trio and surprise, surprise, no one wanted to end up with her.
    Amber looked at Leslie, no doubt guilty about abandoning her friend, but clearly wanting to go with the German hunk offering to get her wasted, one of the things Amber truly excelled at. She was like Marion, drinking all the natives under the table without even batting an eye.
    “Go ahead,” Leslie said to her, waving her hand to brush off the guilt Amber was feeling. “These tacos aren’t sitting very well with me. I think I’m going to call it an early night and hit everything bright and early tomorrow.” She was lying, but Amber didn’t need to know that.
    They were the magic words that released Amber from her bond to Leslie. She jumped up and walked with Mikhail, out of the restaurant to some other bar where Mikhail had no doubt picked up some other woman the previous night.
    Again, Leslie had to resist the urge to give out pepper spray.
    Sitting alone in the Mexican restaurant, she saw couples tucked away in the corners of the cavernous room. They were all dwelling just in the dim lighting and the shadows of the festive room, enjoying each other’s company, staring into each other’s eyes, and having the time of their lives, just the two of them.
    It wasn’t nostalgia that hit Leslie as she was looking at them. The sad fact that sank into her mind was that she didn’t know how to have that anymore. How did one flirt after love had left and you knew you would never find it again?
    She thanked the waiter as he came to clear the table, and she finished the glass of wine she’d been nursing. She needed something stronger.
    “Face it, Leslie,” she mumbled to herself. Like the characters in her novels, she forced herself to come clean on what the problem really was. She didn’t know how to get the one thing she wanted more than anything in her life right now, which was the interweaving of fingers, the gazing into another’s eyes, and slipping so gleefully into the embrace of another, never looking back. She was a romantic and she longed to have what she was giving Tiffany Black and all the other characters in her books.
    Yet she didn’t feel like she was the author of her own stories. It felt like she was the victim being dragged through a boring string of events, enjoying the comforts of life, and risking nothing at all. In fact, she was worse than the most boring character she had ever written. Sure, she believed she was in charge of her life and that she was capable of doing greater things, but not the way she was living.
    She didn’t need a soulmate; she’d had Michael and lost him. But she did want to be touched. To feel the warm breath of a man against her bare skin, him touching her and driving her mad. The heat only sex could give.
    It wouldn’t happen if she kept her standards ridiculously high. That was why she’d told Grant she needed somewhere quiet, and hot. He knew what she meant. No man tonight met her standards. She was just sitting back and wanting the world to throw the perfect man into her life.
    Sure, Josie and Amber weren’t going to find a man here who was going to give them the romance to end all other romances, but at least they were looking and they were embracing the excitement all around them. They were diving in.
    Why couldn’t she?
    Leslie