Twelve
12
Tex
Present Day
The shit I did for Micah. Scowling, I shook my head as I walked into the back entrance of Paradise Brew.
I had gotten in from Ocala with Liam after midnight last night. Then church, our weekly club meeting, was at eleven this morning, and that was too fucking early, but Liam didn’t want to be gone long. His son was teething and not sleeping well. Once he was back on the road, I planned on going back to bed. Maybe get Nixie to suck my cock first to take the edge off. But Micah had called, wanting me to go help Pepper with security tonight.
Seemed Pepper’s security was needing to be amped up due to some strange shit on the cameras the past two nights. Someone was messing with them, but that was all we’d been able to tell so far. Micah had already sent shit to the tech guy who worked for the Southern Mafia. He’d be able to find out what was going on with it, but until then, there would be a Judgment at each entrance to the bar. I was in charge of the back since that was where the tampering had happened.
By the time Liam had left, I’d had to get showered and leave for Pepper’s. I’d skipped Thursday night the last time I was in town. Still trying to shake Salem from my head. Hell, it had been two fucking months, and she was still starring in my dreams. To make matters worse, I had called Nixie Angel Face the last time she sucked me off. Which had her thinking she was special. Telling her I’d had my eyes closed, imagining another pair of lips wrapped around my cock, seemed like a bad idea. She’d have likely gotten dramatic and shit.
I nodded at the two cooks already prepping in the kitchen, and I kept stalking toward the swinging door leading into the main room. I needed something to drink before shit got busy.
Nixie had been strutting down the hallway in nothing but a thong and heels when I was leaving the club. Her eyes lit up at the sight of me. That would have worried me that she was going to get clingy if her lipstick hadn’t been smeared and her hair mussed. She had clearly had a brother’s cock in her mouth moments before. The sight of her ass and bare tits, however, had stirred my interest, but there had been no time to do anything about it.
Since shooting my load wasn’t happening, then I needed some whiskey.
Stepping through the door, I headed directly to the bar. I could hear Pepper’s laughter already and figured she must not be pissed about Micah’s extra security. He’d said she might give me lip, but to tell her to call him. It wasn’t like I fucking wanted to be here tonight. The last thing I needed to deal with was Pepper Abe getting all pissy.
Prepared to deal with her bossy ass, I walked up in her line of sight and then stopped. I fucking froze. A slender, smooth, delicate neck was arched as long black hair hung over one shoulder. Tits, pressing against a white shirt, almost bounced as she laughed loudly. I didn’t see her face, but I knew that laugh, and I’d licked, kissed, and sucked that neck enough to recognize it. My body remained rigid as she straightened from having her head thrown back. Then she turned and I saw her profile. That fucking beauty mark.
How many times had I kissed that spot?
Pepper was saying something but instead of looking back at her she turned in my direction, her eyes caught mine, and she stilled. The cornflower-blue pools swirled with so many emotions before she blinked and stiffened. Her smile was gone, as if I had walked in and sucked the air from the room, along with the joy.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Pepper snapped, and Salem jerked, startled. “What the hell are you doing here!”
Tearing my eyes from Salem, I met Pepper’s furious glare.
“Security,” I replied coldly, trying not to swing my eyes back to soak in the sight of Salem.
“Security?” Pepper asked, confused, but it seemed to click with her. “Micah fucking Abe.”
I watched as she pulled her phone from her pocket and punched a button angrily before putting it to her ear.
She then pointed at me. “You, go. To the back. Just away.”
I cocked an eyebrow. Was she fucking serious? I wasn’t her goddamn lap dog. I narrowed my gaze, then walked right behind the bar where she was and snatched up a glass while she watched me.
Salem’s eyes following me felt like an electric current. It wasn’t that I could just feel her; there was energy pulsing through me because of it.
“Get your whiskey and go,” Pepper demanded. “Micah!” she then shouted into the phone and walked out of the space behind the bar as she began to ream him a new one.
I lifted my eyes from the glass to meet Salem’s. Damn, that face. Jesus, it was still like a kick in the gut. Would I ever be immune to it?
“You got the job,” I said, then picked up my glass and took a drink.
She nodded and began to fidget with the stem of the martini glass in front of her. “Yes.” Her voice was soft and unsure.
I studied her hand and saw the wedding rings were still gone. Just like they’d been at the art gallery. Why? Had she been leaving her husband? Was that why she’d come back south?
Her hand moved away then, and she stuck it in her lap, out of my view. My eyes lifted slowly back to hers, and I took a moment to memorize how good her tits looked in that shirt. The creamy mounds peeked from the top, tempting a man like Eve with her fucking apple. Her swift intake of breath made them slightly bounce. I smirked and set my glass down, then met her eyes.
“How long have you been here?” I asked her.
Her tongue came out and licked her lips. That bottom one a little bigger than the top. I used to bite it until she cried out. I’d been obsessed with it.
“Almost two months,” she replied, then cleared her throat. “I, uh…we should be going.”
We? I cut my eyes to the woman beside her. A blonde, wearing a pair of orange glasses, was staring at me with a mixture of surprise, interest, and I thought amusement.
She gave me a small smile. “Hi, I’m Marlana. I work with Salem,” she said brightly.
“We should go,” Salem told her. “I think Pepper has some, uh, issues to deal with.”
“Just her brother trying to keep her safe. She’ll be back in a moment,” I said, not wanting her to leave. “I didn’t know you had been back around. Pepper didn’t mention it.”
She dropped her eyes, and a tight smile touched her mouth. “Yeah, well…” She lifted a shoulder in a shrug.
She’d asked Pepper not to tell me.
“Don’t tell me you’re trying to avoid me, Angel Face,” I drawled, using the name that I had called her back then.
Like I’d intended, her eyes snapped back up to meet mine, and along with the anger displayed, I could see hurt. Even now, all these years later, there was an instant unsettling inside me at the idea that she was hurt.
“Don’t,” she said, then took a deep breath. “Don’t call me that.” She turned to her blonde friend. “Let’s go.”
When her eyes didn’t meet mine and she stood, slipping a purse over her shoulder, I grappled with the panic that she was about to walk away again.
“Still not wearing those wedding bands,” I said, knowing that would get her attention. “Trouble in paradise?”
Salem stared at the floor for a moment as her shoulders rose and fell with each breath she took. Then she straightened, and I thought she’d look at me. But she didn’t. She said nothing and started toward the exit. Running from me again.
Fuck!
“What did I just hear you say to her?” Pepper’s voice sneered behind me.
My hand gripped the glass tightly. “You obviously heard me,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant and not like I was debating smashing this glass against the wall.
“You son of a bitch,” she snarled.
“Watch it, Pepper,” I warned, my entire body on edge.
I didn’t need to be pushed anymore. There was a fucking limit, and I was at mine.
Pepper slapped her hand, palm down, on the counter in front of me. “Her husband is dead.” The fury in her voice as she said the four words made me think she’d point a gun at my head if she had one handy. “The night she came here for the first time, it was to drink his favorite beer on the one-year anniversary of his death. I don’t give a shit what went down with the two of you all those years ago. She doesn’t deserve your cruel words. She’s not from your world, and she’s not a club skank.”
My fire sizzled out as quickly as it had been ignited. I blew out a breath and stared down at my glass as I released the ironclad hold I’d had on it.
Fuck. Dead. Jesus.
The pang was no longer a slight prick that made me uncomfortable. It had morphed into a burning pulse that went beyond painful.
“Why was she here?” My voice sounded void of the turmoil eating at me.
“Because I invited her to come in on Monday evenings. I told her the MC wouldn’t be here. I meant you, but she’s not opened up to me about you, so I wasn’t specific. I like her. She is lost and lonely. You know how I am about needing to save people. She needs help finding her way more than anyone I’ve ever met.”
She hadn’t been much different all those years ago either. Lost and lonely. Searching for a place to fit. So goddamn beautiful that it hurt, yet clueless and wanting me. The one bastard who should have never touched her. But I had. I’d touched her and been so addicted that I was crazed with it.
“You and your fucking strays,” I muttered, then winced.
Mom would have hated to know she was alone again. But she was the one who told me to let her go. She’d been right. I would have destroyed Salem.
She’d fallen in love again. She had loved someone else. Even if she’d lost him, she’d had that.
Someone else had had her love, her heart. That knowledge wasn’t supposed to slice through me, but it did. That hadn’t just been mine once; it had been mine first.
Twenty-One Years Ago
My phone alerted me of a text, but I had oil on my hands as I worked on a bike.
Shana had come by early and sat, waiting on me to finish up. We were going to a party at a friend of hers tonight. Going to her uppity friend’s house was the last thing I wanted to do, but since we’d started officially dating, she’d been pushing for more. I was putting up with it because she would let me fuck her anywhere. The girl was a nympho. I’d already decided I was bending her over in the stockroom here before we left. She had shown up with a skirt that barely covered her ass.
I glanced over at her. “Get my phone and see who it is. My back right pocket.”
She sauntered over and smiled at me as she slid her hand into my pocket and pulled it out.
“It’s your mom,” she said.
Mom didn’t text often. She normally called. Even with the new phone she’d gotten herself last month, which was one of the best on the market. I grabbed my hand towel and wiped off the oil, then took my phone from Shana.
“I think it’s a picture,” she said, her eyes following my phone.
Opening it up, I stared down at the photo, then enlarged it so I could see it better. Mom might as well have driven her ass down here and taken a hammer and hit me in the chest with it. Inhaling oxygen literally burned me as Salem smiled at the camera. She had already been the most beautiful girl I’d ever laid my eyes on, but, holy fuck, what did Mom have her wearing?
Jesus.
Then there was the child television star looking at her as if she were his and he owned her. She wasn’t his. Was she? Had she done things with him? Had she finally kissed someone?
The wrench in my hand began to bite into my palm; I was gripping it so tightly. I wanted to hurl it through the wall. Roar like a goddamn animal because I wanted her. Me. I wanted Salem so bad that it consumed me.
But I had walked away. Only went to Mom’s twice a week at most, and Shana was always with me. It wasn’t fair to Shana, but she was my buffer. My insurance policy that I wouldn’t push Salem into the nearest closet and feast on her glossy pink lips.
What if he’d taken her virginity? Girls got attached and shit when guys did that. Was she like that with him now?
Rage became my pulse. I wasn’t going to be able to stand back and let this happen.
She’d wanted me. It was all over that gorgeous face. Those eyes had almost been my undoing. I guessed they still were. Because looking down at this photo, I knew I was going to get back what had been mine for the taking.
Shoving the phone back into my pocket, I dropped the towel in the dirty clothes hamper and barely glanced at Shana. “Can’t go tonight. I got some shit I need to handle.”
“What?” she asked in a higher-pitched voice than normal, which hinted that she was about to pitch a fit.
“You heard me,” I replied. “Go on so I can lock up.”
“Not until you tell me what shit you gotta handle. And what was that picture your mom sent you?”
I shook my head, stalking toward the inside of the repair shop from the garage. “Not your concern.”
“Was it that girl?!” she shouted. “I saw a hot-pink dress. I knew you liked her! But you swore that it was the other way around. You can’t keep from looking at her when we are at your mom’s. I see it, Rome!”
Stopping at the door, I knew I should feel guilty, but right now, I had so much fury and panic, thinking that I was too fucking late, churning inside me that there was no room for another emotion. “You’re right. I can’t. It’s best you go.”
“What?!” she shrieked. “You’re kidding me, right?”
Trying to find a shred of sympathy in my inner turmoil, I turned around. “You were a buffer. But I don’t need that anymore. We had a good time, yeah. Let’s leave it at that.”
Her face was a mix of disbelief and outrage. “Oh my God. Are you breaking up with me? She is sixteen. How many times did you tell me that when I mentioned her always staring longingly at you?”
I sighed, then nodded. “Yeah, she is. But it seems I’m gonna wait for the day she’s legal, and until then, I’m gonna keep the pricks away. Because she belongs to me.”
The tears glistening in Shana’s eyes meant more drama, and I didn’t have time for that. I had to get to that fucking prom and make sure Salem didn’t end the night in a hotel room. If she’d already fucked him, I might kill him.