Chapter 2
Pyre
“Douche bags come into this bar,” Scythe said, looking around in disgust.
“Tonight is Ladies’ Night,” Demo told him.
“Okay, douche bags and women come into this bar,” he corrected.
“What’s your point?” Warrant asked.
“He’s wondering why we’re here,” I answered. “I have the same damn question.” This place wasn’t usually where we came to drink. In fact, we usually stayed at our clubhouse to do that. I definitely preferred that to this plan.
“Did you miss the part about the women?” Demo asked.
“Does he care?” Jury wondered out loud.
“I like women,” I muttered. “Just not usually enough to deal with all this shit.” I motioned at the people who weren’t a part of our club. I stepped back as a man stumbled past and slammed into a woman standing near the pool tables.
“Hey!” she screeched. Her boyfriend shoved the drunk away from his lady.
My head rolled on my shoulders—maybe a bit dramatically—as I turned it to look over at Warrant with a disdainful scowl.
Scythe was even worse. Our vice president was grumpy on a good day.
Coming out into public didn’t qualify as a good day for him.
Our president, Cypher, was smart enough to pull rank and had refused to venture out tonight.
“I’m going to fucking kill you if some asshole gets too full of himself, War. ”
“It’ll be fine,” Warrant promised Scythe, his eyes scanning the bar. A grin spread over his face. “There they are.”
“Who?” Jury asked, winking at a woman who walked past.
“His old lady,” Demo replied, holding four fingers up for the bartender to see.
“You’re one off,” Scythe told him. “Can’t fucking count or what?”
Demo scoffed. “None of those are for you. You guys get your own beers.”
We made our way to a table as Scythe muttered under his breath, grabbed Jury by the back of the cut, and dragged him to the bar. “She’s married, Bro,” he said as they went.
It was too loud to hear Jury’s response, but he didn’t look the least bit deterred by that piece of information. I grabbed one of the chairs that put my back to the wall. We were all ex-military and none of us wanted our backs to the room, but someone was going to have to take one for the team.
Scythe and Jury came back with beers for the rest of us right around the time a waitress dropped four more off. Demo scooted them all closer to his section of the table and scowled suspiciously at the rest of us.
“Fuck no,” Scythe said, hitting Warrant on the back of the head. “You dragged us out here, you get that chair.” He motioned to the one that put him squarely facing away from the room.
Warrant rolled his eyes, but moved over so Scythe could take his new seat. “You just have to turn it around.” Which he didn’t bother with. Instead he straddled it then jerked his chin up in acknowledgment as Ainsley, his old lady, caught his gaze.
She shook her head, but didn’t come over. The other women she was with looked over at us curiously as she pointed us out. Harlow, the mayor of Sentinel, raised her glass in a salute to us, but then they went back to whatever they’d been talking about.
My gaze landed on the only one of the group that mattered in my mind. Rae’s black hair was straight and loose and had a blue sheen to it under the lights of the bar. Those soulful brown eyes flicked my way then darted back to her group.
“When are you going to make a move on that?” Jury asked, lifting his beer bottle to take a long swallow.
“On what?” I asked.
They all stared at me like I was a fucking idiot. Warrant had even turned around in his seat to study me better.
“You’ve been into the death chick since she moved here,” Demo told me.
“It’s not exactly a secret,” Scythe added.
“How could it be when he’s always staring at her?” Warrant pointed out.
“She’s hot. So?” I replied with a shrug, doing my best to act nonchalant about their line of questioning.
Scythe leaned forward, his arms on the table as he caught my gaze. “So…we haven’t seen you interested in a woman in…” He paused as he considered how long it’d been.
“A long fucking time,” Warrant finished for him.
“Your dick is going to fall off if you don’t use it,” Demo said.
I arched my brow, unimpressed with his logic. “Pretty sure you have that backward,” I countered. “The places you stick yours are going to land you with a fucking disease.”
He chuckled. “I always wrap it up, Brother. That’s my prized possession. I have to take care of it.”
We all laughed at that. I glanced back over toward Rae.
They weren’t wrong. I was into her. But we were always bouncing here and there on assignments with Sentry Securities and I hadn’t done anything about my attraction to her.
But that was just the excuse I used. There was time for a relationship if I made one. There was certainly time for sex.
“Oh my God.” A hand ran through my shoulder length hair.
Twisting, I snagged the woman’s wrist, yanking her fingers away from me. “Why are you touching me?” I growled, glaring at her.
“I-I’m sorry,” she stammered. “You just have really beautiful hair.”
She slurred her way through the explanation, clearly drunk off her ass even though it was only nine p.m.
I released her. “Go find someone else.”
She blinked at me, swaying on her feet, then stumbled off to do what I’d ordered her to.
Jury let out a heavy sigh. “Seriously, Pyre?”
“What?” I asked, washing away the irritation with beer.
“That was a prime example of how easy it’d be for you to get some pussy,” Demo said with a shake of his head.
“It’s that fucking hair of his,” Jury told him in agreement. “The women fucking love it.”
“Don’t know how it doesn’t make him look like a dirty hippie,” Scythe said, joining in.
“It’s the scruffy beard,” Warrant replied in speculation. “And the blue eyes. The women think he’s a sexy piece of man meat instead of the weirdo he really is.” He batted his eyes and put his wrist to his forehead, mimicking a woman swooning.
I flipped him off while scanning the room to make sure no other women were going to come up to me. That one had come up on my side while I was focused on my brothers. A momentary lapse in awareness on my part.
My brothers weren’t wrong. Women loved my hair.
It was long, thick, and brown, though the sun had bleached it blond on the ends.
They either wished they had it, or wanted to touch it, or so plenty had told me over the years.
I’d considered chopping it off more than once.
A buzz cut would get rid of the main reason women approached me.
I fucking loved when women ran their hands through it though, scratching their nails over my scalp. So I hadn’t cut it. But I was damn picky about who I allowed to do that. Chasing anything that moved was Jury and Demo’s thing, not mine.
“Can we get back to the death chick?” Demo asked.
“Stop calling her that,” I told him.
“What should I call her?” he asked.
“You could try her name,” I suggested, wholly unamused at his nickname for her.
“Where’s the fun in that?” He gave me a shit-eating grin. “Besides using her name doesn’t piss you off. And I like doing that.”
“It could,” Jury said. Then he met my gaze full on as he groaned out, “That’s it, Rae. Take it like a good gir-” He broke off into laughter as I lunged across the table at him. The beer bottles rattled as I jerked him forward until he almost toppled it.
Scythe grabbed my arm, digging his thumb into a pressure point on my wrist and forcing me to let Jury’s cut and shirt drop out of my grasp. “He’s just riling you up, Pyre.”
“Well, don’t tell him,” Jury complained. “Then it’s really not fun.”
“You’re such a dick,” I muttered, sitting back down. People were staring at us, but when nothing else happened, they went back to what they were doing.
“That’s true,” Jury said, straightening his cut. “But we’re only teasing you because we want to see you get a move on with death-.” He swallowed the nickname when I glowered at him.
“You’re in a shitty mood tonight,” Warrant told me.
“Wonder why?” I shot back. “You dragged me out here with these assholes.”
Demo and Jury just grinned, no offense taken.
I loved them as though they were my real brothers, but that also meant I wanted to kill them half the time.
I could, too. I’d been a Navy Hospital Corpsman in the military.
I’d been assigned with various Marine Corps units as a field medic.
There wasn’t much I couldn’t do to stitch someone up.
Which meant I was an expert in how the human body could be taken apart as well.
If you did my job in reverse then you knew all the really sensitive parts to cut, poke, and make bleed. And I knew where they slept.
Jury cleared his throat and Demo sat back as I continued to scowl at them. They knew I was a crazy bastard and they knew they were close to really pissing me off.
“Leave him alone,” Scythe said, eyes scanning the bar. “He can fuck whoever he wants.”
I rolled my eyes. “No one said anything about fucking anyone.”
“It’d put you in a better mood,” Warrant told me.
“You could’ve gone on the mission with Rotor, Cynic, and Torque,” Scythe added.
We were all employed by Sentry Securities, which was a special operations firm.
Or that was what Cypher called it anyway.
He used us, and all of our combined skills, to run missions all over the world.
We did anything from rescuing people to killing others.
Whatever the client needed. Sometimes that client was our government.
Sometimes it was another government. Other times it was rich businessmen or senators.
Just depended on who needed what and if they could afford to pay.
Cypher was very selective about who we worked with.
We didn’t work with pieces of shit who would put our country or our families in danger.
“Or stayed back at the clubhouse with Glitch,” Jury replied, pulling my attention back to the conversation. “Though he was just going to spend all night looking at computer porn.”
Demo perked up. “I thought he didn’t watch porn on his computer? Something about it being too full of viruses,” he added in a mournful tone. “Really laid into me the last time he had to fix my computer.”
“I don’t even want to think about what weird shit is on your computer,” Warrant told him. “Your software probably has crabs, or some shit, now.”
“I meant computer porn like all that hacking shit he does,” Jury said. “Not actual porn.”
“Too bad,” Demo said. “If anyone needs to get laid, it’s him.” Then his eyes landed on me. “Well, him and you.”
“I don’t need to get laid,” I muttered, though my dick hardened as Rae stood up and headed toward the bathrooms. She was fucking gorgeous.
“She’s gorgeous.”
I looked over at Jury with suspicion. Had I said that out loud? No, he was just making an observation.
“Yeah if you like that goth Elvira thing,” Demo said with a shrug.
“She doesn’t even dress like Elvira,” I told him.
“No, I think it’s the dark hair and dark eyes and sort of pale skin,” he replied.
“And she dresses in dark clothes a lot,” Warrant said in agreement. “I get that kind of vibe from her, too.”
She was in a black skirt that hit mid-thigh and some kind of blouse that was unbuttoned down low enough to draw my eye.
The sleeves were loose and flowy. She had her own style, I’d give her that.
And I’d love to shove that skirt up to see what she had on underneath it. She hadn’t worn heels to match.
That would’ve been too easy, and what most women would have done. She had on a pair of thick clunky shoes. Ainsley had called them Mary Jane’s once. Whatever the fuck that meant. The only Mary Jane I knew about was pot and a chick I made out with in middle school.
“Good looking face,” Scythe added, ignoring the dark look I aimed his way. “Those red lips of hers would look good wrapped around your dick.”
“What the fuck, Scythe?” I growled.
“What? I said your dick, not mine. Believe it or not, I think they’re right.” He shrugged. “You’re due for a good fucking. You’ve been in a bad fucking mood ever since-” He broke off and sighed.
They all looked away. Not long ago one of my distant cousin’s kids got killed in a hit and run.
They were right. I’d been in a foul mood even though we caught, and killed the guy responsible.
He’d been a great kid and it was a fucking shame that’d happened, but it was less about his loss—at least now—and more that I was realizing I was going to be fucking thirty-seven years old in a couple days and what did I have to show for my life?
My military career. Sure. And I was a damn good medic.
Had a good job working for Cypher’s team and enjoyed my club.
But I went home alone every fucking night.
Of course I hadn’t done a damn thing to fix that over the years.
I’d basically gone celibate over the last three.
Not for any religious reasons. I was just fucking sick of the dating games.
I hadn’t met any women worth jumping through the hoops for. My eyes strayed over toward the bathroom again, then narrowed as I saw Rae pinned up against the wall by some asshole in a cowboy hat.
“Well, fuck me,” Scythe said with a sigh as he followed my gaze. “I promised Cypher I wasn’t going to let you assholes get out of line tonight.”
It was a warning. It was also a warning I ignored.
Shoving off my chair, I made my way through the crowd, anger building as I watched Rae shake her head no to whatever the guy said and then watched that fucker ignore her.
He put his hand on her shoulder, entirely too close to the great set of tits she had.
I knew my brothers were right behind me, even Scythe. Not that I needed them to take care of one piece of shit who thought he was a cowboy and didn’t know what no meant.