Chapter Four
Dane
I LOST HIM ON BOURBON.
Fuck.
Six minutes through a parade crowd, keeping the gray hoodie in my sightline, dodging tourists and bachelorette parties and a brass band that cut across the intersection at exactly the wrong moment.
Then the crowd surged and he was gone. I stood in the street with my hand on my weapon and my lungs burning and nothing to show for it.
Medium build. Gray hoodie. Ball cap. He'd been watching Proof from across the street for forty minutes, and he moved fast and deliberate when I came for him. Not panicked—professional about it.
I walked back with my jaw locked and my pulse still jacked.
Checked the alley, the stockroom door, the camera feed.
All clear. I pulled up the footage on my phone and scrubbed through the last hour, looking for the gray hoodie on any of the angles.
Nothing. He'd stayed out of the camera's range, which meant he knew where it was.
Which meant he'd done recon before tonight. Probably more than once.
The adrenaline had nowhere to go so it sat in my fists and my shoulders, a low current with nowhere to break.
Inside, the bar was closed. Stools up, floor swept, neon off. The only light was the amber glow behind the bottles, and Jenna was standing behind the rail with a glass of Blanton's and a look on her face that said she already knew I hadn't caught whoever I'd been chasing.
She read people the way I read rooms. Inconvenient as hell.
"Courtyard's clear," I said.
"You're out of breath."
"Checked the alley."
"The alley's thirty feet long." She took her time with a sip of whiskey. "Try again."
I braced on the bar. "Someone was watching the bar from across the street. Went after him. Lost him in the crowd."
The glass paused for one second. Then she set it down, careful, controlled.
"Description?"
"Gray hoodie, cap, medium build. Moved like he knew what he was doing."
"So. The car this afternoon, and now this."
"Yeah. And I want you to close through Thursday. Four days. Testify, let Hebert—"
"No."
"Jenna."
"I didn't stutter." She leaned both hands on the rail, mirroring me, close enough that the whiskey on her breath mixed with citrus and warm skin. "I closed once. For a hurricane. I served drinks by flashlight the second the roads cleared. I don't close for men."
"This isn't a rainstorm."
"And I'm not closing. What does it solve? He knows my car, my apartment, my schedule. Closing the bar just means I sit in that apartment staring at the walls while you pace the hallway."
"At least you'd be in a controlled environment."
"A controlled environment." She said it flat, tasting the words.
"That's what you want. Everything locked down, everything in your little grid.
Close the bar, pull the blinds, wait for Thursday.
And then what? I come back to a bar nobody remembers is open, a staff that found other shifts, and a reputation for being the girl who got scared and hid? "
"That's not what I'm—"
"It is exactly what you're asking." She straightened up.
The softness was gone. "You don't get to make me small to make your job easier, Dane.
I've been running this bar for four years.
I've dealt with drunk tourists, bad weather, a busted pipe that flooded the stockroom on a Saturday night, and a bartender who stole nine hundred dollars from the register.
I handled all of it. I will handle this. "
I opened my mouth and closed it. Because she wasn't wrong, and the part of me that wasn't wired on adrenaline and fear could see exactly how insulting the suggestion sounded coming from a man who'd been in her life for seventy-two hours.
"I'm not trying to shrink your life," I said. "I'm saying you're so goddamn determined to prove you don't need anyone that you can't see when someone's standing in front of you trying to keep you alive because he actually gives a damn."
The words came out louder than I meant, rawer than I'd intended. I heard them hit the air and knew I'd said too much.
"I need you to be safe," I said, quieter.
"I am safe." Her eyes held mine. Steady, fierce. "You're here."
That hit me in a place that wasn't on any tactical map I'd ever drawn. I was standing at her bar with my blood still running hot and she was three feet away looking at me with total certainty that I was the thing between her and whatever was out there.
"You're shaking," she said.
I looked down. She was right. Fine tremor in my wrists, my forearms. Twenty minutes of adrenaline catching up all at once.
"It'll pass."
"Dane."
"Give me a—"
She came around the end of the bar. Same walk she used to run the room. Unhurried, hips moving, zero apology. She stopped in front of me and put her hand flat on my chest, fingers spread, right over the hammering.
"Your heart's going about a hundred and sixty," she said.
"Adrenaline."
"Liar."
She said it low, almost a whisper, and I looked at that mouth, red lipstick half worn from the shift, the lower lip she worried between her teeth when she was thinking, and every professional instinct I had said walk away.
Every other instinct won.
I grabbed her waist and hauled her into me.
The sound she made, short and raw and from low in her throat, lit me up from the base of my spine to the back of my skull.
Her hands fisted in my shirt and her mouth hit mine and the kiss was brutal and perfect and tasted like whiskey and fury and three days of not doing this.
She bit my lower lip and I groaned and she laughed into the kiss, breathless.
"There you are," she said.
I lifted her onto the bar. Her legs wrapped around me, boots locking behind my thighs, and the glass went sideways and shattered on the floor and neither of us flinched.
"That was the good Blanton's."
"I'll buy you a bottle."
"You can't afford my bourbon."
She was already on my holster buckle, stripping it off with the competence of someone who'd handled firearms before, setting it on the wood behind her, then pulling my thermal over my head in one motion.
"Nashville," she said, answering the question on my face.
"Follow-up questions."
"Later. Take this off me."
I tugged her top over her head. Black bra, simple, and her skin was flushed and hot under my palms. Freckles across her collarbone I hadn't known about. I pressed my lips to them and she arched into it, fingers digging into my shoulders.
"Off," she said, reaching behind herself. "Stop being polite."
"Yes ma'am."
"I told you not to—"
I closed my mouth over her nipple and sucked and the rest of the sentence turned into a moan that made my cock throb.
She grabbed my hair and pulled, rough, and I sucked harder, my tongue on the stiff peak, then switched to the other breast and gave it the same attention while my hand slid between her legs and ground the heel of my palm into her through the denim.
She rolled into the pressure, greedy, impatient.
"Jeans. Now."
"You give a lot of orders for someone sitting on a bar."
"You follow a lot of orders for someone with a gun."
I popped the button on her jeans, dragged them down her hips while she lifted, and she kicked one leg free, boot still on. I dropped to my knees and hooked behind her thighs and pulled her to the edge of the bar.
"What are you—"
I buried my face between her legs and licked a long, slow stripe up through her folds, and whatever she'd been about to say turned into a noise that made my cock strain at my zipper.
She was soaking wet. I dragged the flat of my tongue through her pussy, tasting her, learning her, then closed my lips around her clit and sucked. Her thighs locked against my head, one hand clamped on the back of my skull, and she rocked into my face.
"Fuck, Dane—"
I found her clit with my tongue, tight circles alternating with broad flat strokes, and slid two fingers inside her.
She clenched around them immediately, hot and slick and snug, and I curled them forward and sealed my mouth over her at the same time.
Her back arched off the bar and her heel dug into my shoulder blade.
"Don't stop, right there—"
I fucked her with my fingers and ate her pussy until her thighs were shaking and her voice was cracking and her nails were raking down my scalp.
I added a third finger and pressed deep and she came with a scream she didn't bother muffling, clenching hard around me, hips grinding against my face, thighs trembling, my name mixed with profanity in a combination I planned to replay in my head for the rest of my life.
Her thighs were still trembling when she grabbed my jaw and pulled me up. "Get up here."
I stood and she was already at my belt. Got it open, shoved my jeans and boxers down, and wrapped her hand around my cock. I jerked against her palm and my forehead dropped to her shoulder and I heard myself groan into her neck.
"Hard for me," she said, stroking, her grip firm and sure and devastating. "How long?"
"Since Thursday."
"Liar."
"Not even a little."
She twisted her grip on the upstroke, thumb sliding through the wetness at the head, and my brain shorted out. Then she slid off the bar, dropped to her knees, and took me in her mouth.
I caught the rail for balance. Her lips were still red and she looked up at me while she sucked and the visual alone almost finished me. She swallowed me down, tongue working the underside, one hand wrapped around the base, and the wet heat and the suction were taking me apart.
"Jenna, fuck—"
She hollowed her cheeks and took me deeper and I felt the back of her throat and my hand found her hair, not pushing, holding on, because if I didn't hold onto something I was going to lose my knees.
She pulled back to the tip and swirled and sucked and then deep again, and my knees were going, my grip on her hair the only thing keeping me upright, and I eased her off because thirty more seconds of her mouth and this was over.