Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
STELLA
An electric shock worked its way from my wrist straight to my chest, the skin beneath his hand tingling and sparking like a live wire. “What are you—how did you—I don’t—”
Why in the ever-loving hell couldn’t I form words? The sight of West Scott had rendered me speechless. I didn’t think that could really happen, but there I was, gaping like a fish out of water at the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen, trying and failing to cobble a sentence together.
“Quiet,” he ordered in a tone that immediately raised the tiny hairs on my arms. “Come with me, grift.”
“Excuse me?” I snapped, ready to let him have it for being so domineering.
“I’m not going anywhere with you, assho—” But he acted like he hadn’t heard me and began moving across the floor much quicker than I had, dragging me along behind him.
I wasn’t short, not even close. At five seven, I was taller than a lot of women, but he was just so damn .
. . big, those legs so long, that I nearly had to jog to keep up as the crowd parted for him like the Red freaking Sea.
“Hey!” I gave my arm a useless tug. “Where are we going? This is not okay. For all I know, you could be a psycho who cuts out people’s livers and sells them on the black market.
I got news for you, buddy, my liver’s totally shot,” I lied.
“No good. Years of drinking will do that, so you won’t get shit for it. It’s not worth the effort.”
He grunted as we hit a hallway at the back of the bar.
One second I was skip-walking to keep up and the next he had me pressed against a wall, towering over me and caging me in.
It was quiet and secluded back here, no bar patrons in sight.
I should have been scared. Hell, I should have been downright terrified, but for some reason—probably insanity—all I felt was a thrill of excitement as the smell of his cologne filled my lungs.
He smelled like leather and musk combined with mint, like he’d just been chewing a stick of gum.
I could have sworn the mint on his breath felt cool against my skin as he spoke next.
“Jesus. You really have a colorful imagination, don’t you?”
I really did. It was one of the reasons I’d never had many friends growing up.
Other kids didn’t want to hang out with the little girl who said weird things or made up elaborate stories.
My family thought it was hilarious how I’d sometimes go off on a tangent, but they had to love my quirky nature; we were blood, they had no choice but to love every part of me.
Jason hadn’t been so accepting, always pointing out how weird I was and asking me to tone it down whenever we were around his friends.
As if that wasn’t a big enough red flag. Man, I’d been an idiot with that guy.
However, as I looked up into West’s golden fire eyes, I didn’t see any of that distaste people usually displayed at one of my outlandish bouts of verbal diarrhea.
Instead, he seemed amused. I could see he was fighting back a grin, and because of the insanity that had obviously come over me, it made me feel all warm and squishy inside.
“Maybe a little,” I said with an insolent shrug.
At my response, he didn’t bother holding his humor in any longer.
His chuckle wrapped around me like velvet and his grin made my belly somersault.
Damn, he was pretty. My mind hadn’t been playing tricks on me these past couple weeks.
If anything, the memory of what this man looked like didn’t live up to reality.
“You’re really fucking cute, you know that?”
Oh, we like him, my lady bits screamed, reminding me how long it had been since I’d gotten laid. Nearly two long, bleak, lonely years. How long did a woman have to go without sex before she was revirginized?
Christ, Stella! I silently berated. Get your shit together. It was hard as hell, because I could have sworn the man was leaking pheromones into the air like a broken faucet, but I somehow managed to drag my mind, kicking and screaming, out of the gutter.
“If the reason you dragged me back here and away from all other people was to tell me that, I might have a case for harassment.”
He chucked again, and it sounded really freaking nice. Head in the game, Stella!
“As much as I wish that was the only reason I had to talk to you, I think we both know better.”
Uh oh. I felt an irrational spike of annoyance that this man had caught me a-freaking-gain. Was I seriously off my game, or was he just that good?
Instead of trying to find the answer to that question, I thought back to the Ryan Rules for Grifting. Rule number eleven flashed into my mind: deny, deny, deny.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He arched a brow. “I clocked you the moment you walked through the door. I think you do.”
Damn it! My sixth sense was all kinds of wonky tonight. Deny, deny, deny. “Nuh uh! I was just having a beer before you rudely pulled me into a dark corner of the bar. Speaking of which, I’d really like to get back to that beer. It was yummy.”
He pushed on like I hadn’t said a word. “You’ve got piss poor taste in marks, grift,” he told me.
“That asshole you were about to fleece was already in a shitty mood, and you were seconds away from making it worse. Vibe on that guy, he wouldn’t have hesitated to take a swing at a woman.
What the hell were you thinking? If you weren’t so damn good at what you do, I’d think you were a newbie. ”
That got my hackles up in a very big way.
“I was thinking he was an asshole that deserved it for how he was treating his woman,” I defended vehemently.
“Not to mention, the guy was a sore loser. I mean, if you know you’re shit at pool, don’t play, asshole!
And I usually have excellent taste in marks.
I don’t know why the hell I’m so off my game right now.
Maybe I’m coming down with the flu or something. ”
His expression turned wry, and I knew I’d just played right into his hand. Like. A. Newbie. Goddamn it. I curled my lips between my teeth before I could say anything else that could be held against me in a court of law.
“You can’t do that shit here,” he stated plainly, no humor whatsoever in those words. “Not in my town. Not my people.”
I could not walk away tonight without a big haul. My family was depending on it. I lifted my chin stubbornly. “You said yourself, you’re not a cop, so there’s nothing you can do about it.”
He stepped in even closer, his chiseled, rock-hard features all I could see. “I think you know that’s not exactly true. You’re here tonight for more than just a few wallets, aren’t you?”
Was this dude a mind reader or something? “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Pretty sure you do.” His voice was low and gravelly, causing a tremor to trickle across my spine. “Not a coincidence you picked this place tonight, is it?” His lips curved up in a smug grin. “You ask around about me?”
I hadn’t, but only because I didn’t have anyone to ask.
But that didn’t mean I hadn’t grilled Serenity on everything she knew about Alpha Omega so I could get a feel for West. And even though I knew it wouldn’t turn up anything, I’d still googled the hell out of the man religiously, so often that his name auto filled every time I tapped the W key on my laptop.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” was all I said, because something told me he’d see the lie in an outright denial and wouldn’t hesitate to call me on it.
I was clearly off my game tonight due to an impending illness that hadn’t made itself known quite yet, and the smell of West’s cologne was only addling my brain more.
The moment he pressed in on me, I’d actually forgotten why I was here.
Something about . . . feathers and my dad?
Oh shit, that’s right.
Desperation tinged my words as I said, “Just pretend you never saw me and walk away. Please.” And I was begging now. Freaking perfect.
A frown marred his gorgeous face as he took a single step back, but it was enough for me to suddenly miss his closeness. “You in some kind of trouble, grift?”
I rolled my eyes and dropped my head back against the wall. “For the love of God, please stop calling me that.” Yes, I was a grifter from a long line of grifters, but it wasn’t like I was proud of it, and I found myself hating the reminder of what I was coming off his plump lips.
“Fine. Stella.”
I righted my neck to look at him, my back shooting straight. “How do you know my name?” I rewound to the night at the bar, trying to remember if I’d ever given it to him. I was almost certain I hadn’t.
“Checked your license before I gave your wallet back at the hotel that night,” he answered shamelessly.
“How?” I cried. “I didn’t even see you lift it, for crying out loud!”
That son of a bitch. Oh, he was good. Better than me! And that was really saying something. Well, usually that was really saying something. Maybe I was cursed.
“Stop avoiding the question. Tell me what’s going on.”
I let out a snort and fisted my hands at my sides.
“You’re kidding right? You’re a complete stranger who, no offense or anything, hasn’t exactly proven to be all that sane the two times we’ve run into each other.
For all I know, you could be stalking me right now.
How else would you explain being in the same bar twice, huh? ”
It was a little hypocritical, considering one of the reasons I’d decided on this place was in the hopes of seeing him, but he didn’t need to know that.
“Pretty sure I’m not the one doing the stalking,” he teased. “You’re in my town, darlin’.”
“That’s . . . neither here nor there.”
He smiled again, telling me I’d just played right into his hand, but before I could say anything else, he spoke again.
“If you’d tell me what kind of trouble you’re in, maybe I could help.”
If only, I thought, but what I said was, “Doubtful,” in a sardonic tone.
“You don’t know that. I have certain skills.”
“So did Liam Neeson in all those Taken movies, and his ex-wife still got dead,” I threw back at him. “And it bears repeating: You’re. A. Stranger.”
“That was a movie. This is real life,” he stressed, then asked in a teasing manner, “You can tell the difference, right?”
My cheeks heated as indignation swelled up inside of me. “Of course I know the difference,” I snapped. “And why are you so eager to help me? You got some weird knight-in-shining-armor fetish or something? You don’t even know me.”
“I want to help because I haven’t stopped thinking about you since you first walked into that hotel bar a few weeks ago.”
None of my radars were pinging, no sirens or red flags went off. He was telling the truth.
My throat suddenly felt like I’d swallowed sand. “That’s crazy,” I told him while a war raged to life inside of me. My lady parts were doing the freaking “Cupid Shuffle” and my belly swooped again while by brain yelled at them both to get their shit together.
“Tell me you haven’t been thinking about me,” he insisted, bracing his palms on the wall on either side of my head. “Tell me it wasn’t me you were looking for the moment you stepped in here tonight.”
“I was casing the place,” I lied. I hadn’t done that until later. The initial scan I’d made when I entered The Tap Room was all for him.
“Liar.”
Damn it! How did he know?
I clenched my teeth and gritted out, “I’m not lying.” If I kept this up, I was going to be struck by lightning.
“All right. Then tell me you wouldn’t want me to kiss you right now.”
God, what a presumptive asshole! So why did it suddenly feel like the heat had been cranked up in the building? “I definitely don’t want you to kiss me right now.” Didn’t I?
Those unique golden eyes glinted with something that looked almost like a dare. “Yeah?”
I tipped my chin back defiantly. “Absolutely.”
He smiled full on then, and I felt a clench low in my belly. “Then why are you leaning into me like you want to fuse our bodies together, grift?”
Why was I what? Oh holy shit! He was right.
Without realizing, I’d not only leaned so close the heat was radiating off his skin and warming my own, but I’d also reached up at some point to place my palms on his hard, solid chest. Now that it had been brought to my attention, there was no way to keep from noticing how firm and round his pecs were.
The man’s chest felt like it had been carved from marble, and I was dying to know what he looked like without that heather gray Henley on.
I wondered if the rest of him would live up to what his chest felt like, and my lady parts were telling me it absolutely would.
Before I did something incredibly stupid, like drag the tips of my fingers down over his rippled abs so I could count how many were there, I dropped my arms and side-stepped his massive frame.
Once again, because of this man, I was leaving without everything my family needed from me.
I couldn’t help but feel like a failure, and that morphed into an overwhelming feeling of desperation that fueled my anger.
“Kiss me. I dare you,” I threatened. “Give me a reason to plant my knee in your balls.”
His eyes scanned my face then. “I don’t know what I like better. When you’re spouting ridiculous things, or when you’re all worked up and mad like this.”
I had to get out of here. It was still relatively early; I could find another bar and work that one so this whole night wasn’t a complete bust, but to do that, I had to escape West’s thrall.
“Too bad for you, you aren’t going to see either of them ever again.
” Hitching my purse higher, I gave him a snide look and finished with, “Hope to never see you around, Weston.” Then I turned and started for the exit I’d spotted at the end of the hall, silently praying it would lead me right out into the parking lot.
The heavy metal door closed on his voice calling out, “It’s West. And something tells me this isn’t the last time we cross paths.”
Fuming now that the first part of my night had been ruined, I stomped across the blacktop parking lot toward Gertrude when that creeping sensation of being watched returned.
Thinking it was West standing at the back door I’d just escaped through, I whipped around, ready to shoot him the finger. Only, it wasn’t him.
“Hello, little dove.”
Oh shit.