Chapter 12 Shots And Surrenders #2
The expression materialized on my face with the involuntary, traitorous immediacy of a reflex that my conscious mind had not authorized and my facial muscles had decided to execute anyway.
The corners of my mouth turned upward. My cheeks lifted.
The red lipstick shifted into a configuration that was less composed woman at a bar and more woman who has just detected the presence of a man she is pretending not to want and whose body has decided to betray the pretense in real time.
His presence arrived seconds after his scent—the warmth of a body positioning itself behind mine with the deliberate, spatial awareness of a man who understood proximity the way a goaltender understood the crease.
Close. Intentionally, unmistakably close.
Not touching—not yet—but occupying the space adjacent to my body with a gravitational certainty that made the bartender’s Alpha musk retreat approximately three feet in every direction, replaced by the stone-and-clove-and-chocolate signature that had been colonizing my olfactory memory.
Then the contact. The passive, barely-there press of his chest against my back—not a lean, not a push, a presence.
The kind that communicated territorial claim without the aggression of a grab, that said the person you’ve been pouring generously for is accounted for in a language that required no translation.
A bill appeared on the plywood. Slid forward by fingers I didn’t need to see to identify.
“One more shot for me.” Luka’s voice arrived at my left ear, low and warm and carrying the specific, smoky undertone it acquired when he was amused and territorial in equal measure. “And spike hers while you’re at it. My girl’s got a high tolerance.”
My girl.
Two words. Delivered to the bartender with the casual, proprietary confidence of a man stating a fact so obvious he considered the declaration a formality.
Not a girl. Not that girl. My girl. The possessive pronoun deployed like a flag being planted—territorial, definitive, and aimed with surgical precision at the bartender whose generous pour had just been reclassified from “investment” to “mistake.”
The bartender’s gaze shifted from me to the man behind me.
Whatever he saw there—and I could imagine it, because Luka Petrov’s jealous expression was a piece of artwork that communicated volumes without moving a single unnecessary muscle—recalibrated his evening plans in approximately one and a half seconds.
He nodded. Reached for the tequila. Poured the shots at standard measurement this time, no bonus volume, no meaningful eye contact, no lingering assessment of my bar posture.
Fascinating how the economy of male attention operates. One Alpha signature in the vicinity and the market corrects itself instantaneously.
I was grinning now. Full, unrestrained, and entirely too pleased with myself, which I could feel in the specific, warm pressure behind my sternum that always accompanied the collision of tequila confidence and Luka proximity.
He leaned back. Not fully—just enough to create the space for me to turn, which I did, rotating on the barstool until we were face to face and approximately four inches apart.
Fucking hell.
Luka Petrov when jealous was a sight that never, in all the months I’d known him and all the months I’d spent pretending I didn’t miss him, got old.
He’d dressed for the evening with the specific, understated intentionality of a man who understood that looking effortless required significant effort.
Black fitted shirt, sleeves rolled to the forearms—and those forearms, Christ, the veined, muscular architecture of a goaltender’s grip built through years of blocker and glove work, displayed with the confident casualness of someone who knew exactly what that particular visual did to the women and men in his vicinity.
Dark jeans. The navy-purple hair pushed back from his forehead, the longer strands falling just past his ears.
And his jaw—set. Tight. Carrying the rigid, controlled tension of an Alpha whose territorial instincts had just been activated by the sight of a bartender pouring generous for a woman in a short dress, and who was managing the resulting hormonal surge with the disciplined composure of a man accustomed to absorbing impact without flinching.
His green eyes were fixed on me. Unblinking. Carrying the concentrated, unwavering focus of a goaltender reading a play that he already knew the outcome of—not because he was guessing, but because he had studied the shooter long enough to anticipate every move before it was made.
I was smiling. Broadly, infuriatingly, with the deliberate provocation of a woman who recognized the power she held in this specific dynamic and had every intention of wielding it like the precision instrument it was.
I could tell it ticked him off. The jaw tightened another degree.
The green eyes darkened by a shade—not with anger but with the particular, heated intensity that lived in the narrow corridor between frustration and desire, where the body wanted to close the distance and the mind was cataloging every reason it shouldn’t.
He was seconds from kissing me. I could read it in the trajectory of his gaze—the way it dropped from my eyes to my mouth, lingered on the red lipstick with the reverent, hungry focus of a man studying a painting he intended to steal, and then lifted back to my eyes with the silent, loaded question that his mouth hadn’t yet formed.
I didn’t let him.
My index finger rose. Slow. Deliberate. Placed itself against his lips with the gentle, precise pressure of a woman setting a boundary she had absolutely no intention of maintaining but was going to enjoy enforcing for as long as it amused her.
“Hmm.” The sound was low, musical, carrying the warm vibration of a woman whose vocal cords were operating in the specific register that three shots of tequila and proximity to this particular Alpha produced.
“Since when was I your girl?” I cocked an eyebrow upward.
The left. My precision instrument. “Hmm?”
His response was immediate. No hesitation. No playful deflection. The straight, firm, absolute declaration of a man who had been waiting for the question and had the answer loaded.
“Since we got officialized as partners.”
And then—without breaking eye contact, without shifting his gaze by a single degree, without any indication that he considered the finger against his lips a barrier rather than an invitation—he pressed his mouth against my fingertip.
A kiss.
Slow. Warm. Deliberate. Applied to the pad of my index finger with the same tender, focused precision he’d used to wipe tears from my cheek on the ice that morning.
His lips were soft. The contact sent a current through my hand, my wrist, my forearm, into the elbow and up through the shoulder and down through the ribs to the specific, traitorous region of my lower abdomen that had been in a state of heightened alert since approximately the moment his scent had entered the building.
He just kissed my finger like it was a challenge he was accepting. Like the barrier I put up is a starting line, not a finish line, and he’s letting me know exactly how he intends to run the race.
God, this man.
I smirked. Leaned in. Closed the distance between my mouth and his ear until my breath was warm against the cartilage and my words were delivered at a volume designed for an audience of one.
“Bribing your enemies isn’t going to get you pussy tonight, Petrov.”
The whisper was a weapon. Aimed with the surgical precision of a woman who had learned, years ago, that the quickest way to dismantle Luka Petrov’s composure was to combine proximity, profanity, and the specific, low-register vocal frequency that his Alpha biology responded to like a key in a lock.
I barely had time to register the shift.
His hand found mine—the one with the finger that had been stationed against his lips—and lowered it. Gently. Firmly. The kind of grip that asked permission by not taking it, that communicated I’m removing this obstacle with the same calm, methodical certainty he brought to every save.
And then he kissed me.
Not gently. Not tentatively. Not with the cautious, exploratory restraint of a man testing whether the door was open.
He kissed me the way he played hockey—full commitment, total presence, the entire weight of his attention and his intention compressed into a single point of contact that detonated on impact.
His mouth found mine with the precision of someone who had memorized the coordinates.
One hand cupping the side of my jaw, thumb braced against my cheekbone, fingers threaded into the curls behind my ear.
The other hand at my waist—firm, possessive, drawing me forward on the barstool until the space between us collapsed to nothing and the only thing preventing full-body contact was the plywood bar at my back and the fundamental laws of physics.
His lips were warm. Tasting of tequila and hunger and the faint, residual salt of a man who had been sweating on a dance floor before his nose had led him to the bar.
The kiss was deep. Thorough. The kind that didn’t stop at the surface but went in—past the lipstick, past the composure, past every wall I’d constructed in five years of learning to survive without this, until it reached the place where want lived unedited and undefended, and it set the whole room on fire.
We broke when our lungs filed a formal complaint.
The separation was minimal—an inch, maybe two—the distance between our mouths occupied by shared breath and the residual heat of a kiss that had required approximately four seconds to accomplish what five years of separation had been trying to prevent.
I was smiling. Flushed. My red lipstick redistributed across a radius that now included his lower lip, which wore my color with the unabashed pride of a man who considered the transfer a trophy.