CHAPTER ONE #2
“Looks like,” Colt said, his voice steady, unreadable. His usual contained self. Which was starting to make me want to do something reckless just to crack it open. Men who kept everything that still were either very boring or very dangerous. I was already pretty sure Colt McAllister wasn’t boring.
The crowd thinned out slowly. Last call came and went, and eventually it was just the two of us and his brothers. Grant left first, followed by Sutton. He slapped Colt on the back and gave me a wink. Then the door swung shut and we were alone.
I flipped the sign to closed.
When I turned around, Colt was still at the bar.
“You know,” I said, walking back toward him because apparently I had no sense of self-preservation, “most people leave at last call.”
“Most people aren’t me.”
“No.” I stopped on the other side of the bar, facing him. “They definitely aren’t.” I picked up a glass and set it down again, unable to concentrate on the closing routine. “Six weeks, Colt. Every Friday. You barely drink the beer I serve you. So why?”
“Maybe I like the atmosphere.”
“Bullshit.”
Something flickered in his eyes — amusement, maybe. “You really want to know?”
“I really want to know.”
He was quiet for a long time. “Because you’re the first person in years who looks at me like I’m a man instead of something to be afraid of.”
The honesty caught me off guard.
“People are afraid of you,” I said carefully.
“Yeah.”
“Should I be?”
He studied my face. “Probably.”
“But you’re not going to tell me why.”
“Not tonight.”
I held his gaze. “Okay. Then let me ask you something else.” I leaned against the bar. “That bet. If you’d won — if I’d lost — what would you have asked for? Really.”
Something shifted in his expression. Careful. Deliberate. “You sure you want to know that?”
“I asked, didn’t I?”
He stood slowly, moved around the end of the bar until he was in my space again — that close, that warm, that much. I held my ground, but barely. I had a little bit of sense left.
“Make a new bet with me,” he said.
“What kind of bet?”
“Simple.” His eyes were dark and steady. “I bet I can make you fall apart with just a kiss.”
The air went out of the room.
“That’s—” I started.
“One kiss. Right now. You still standing at the end of it means I lose.”
“And if you win?”
His smile was slow and devastating. “One night. On my terms.”
Every sensible thought I owned told me to laugh it off, close the bar, go upstairs to my apartment and my safe, predictable life. Every other part of me was already leaning forward.
“You’re that confident?” I managed.
“I’m that good.”
“And if I win?”
“Name your price.”
I thought about it for exactly three seconds. “You go back to your mountain and leave me alone. No more Friday night brooding sessions. No more watching me from the corner booth.”
Something dark crossed his face as if me trying to keep him out of my life bothered him. Then it was gone.
“What about the repairs?”
“I’ll find a way.” Why? Because I always did.
“Deal.” He held out his hand. I looked at it, knowing that shaking it would change something.
I shook it anyway.
“Well?” I said, lifting my chin. “You said right now.”
He reached out and tangled his hand in my hair, tilting my head back, and kissed me.
I gasped at the unexpected move, and he took full advantage of the fact, thrusting his tongue into my mouth. I tried not to moan, I really did.
But this was the hottest damn kiss I’d ever had, and I could still feel him holding back — which meant what he was giving me was the restrained version. I didn’t like that.
He licked into my mouth, tasting me, his tongue skimming my teeth before sliding deep, setting a slow, filthy rhythm that made my knees forget their job. Not just a kiss. A demonstration. A promise of exactly what that mouth could do given the time and the space and a woman who’d stopped arguing.
I opened wider for him with a sound I would be embarrassed about later. His hand slid from my waist straight down to cup my ass, both hands, pulling me up and into him until every hard inch of his cock was pressed against my belly with absolutely nothing left to the imagination.
He wasn’t hiding what this was doing to him. And God help me, I didn’t want him to.
That cautious voice in my head — the sensible one, the one that had been running my life for years — said something I completely ignored.
Because the rest of me, every nerve ending and every inch of skin and the wet heat building between my thighs, was entirely focused on the man grinding against me like he wanted me to be his and was just waiting for me to admit it.
I fisted my hands in his shirt and pulled him closer. I returned his kiss with every little bit of experience I had, plus all the fuel my imagination could provide.
When he finally lifted his head, we were both breathing hard.
“Well?” he asked.
I was still standing. Technically.
“Nice try,” I said. “I think you lost that bet.”
“Do you?” His big hand encircled my throat, his thumb pressed against the pulse point. “Your heart’s going a hundred miles a minute. And your hands—” he looked down pointedly at my fists, still gripping his shirt — “are the only thing holding you up.”
I made myself let go. He didn’t step back and I didn’t fall down. “That doesn’t mean—”
“One kiss and you’re ready to beg.” His voice was dark with satisfaction.
“I am not.”
His hand traveled down my stomach, fingers teasing at the waistband of my jeans. “Should I check?”
I slammed my hand over his before he could find out just how right he was. We both knew what he’d find. Me, wet and wanting, ready to go off like a rocket. His mouth curved and he left his hand there, warm against me, not pushing, just — knowing.
“I win,” he said simply.
I looked up at him — this quiet, dangerous, watchful man who’d been haunting my Friday nights for six weeks — and made a decision.
“Maybe you do,” I said. “But I want to negotiate the terms.”
His eyes sharpened. “I’m listening.”
“One night. But not tonight.” I stepped back, giving myself room to think. “You show up and make the repairs – because I did win that bet, and you agreed. And then we see.”
He studied me for a long moment. “I’ll be here tomorrow morning.”
“What? That’s not what we agreed on. You’ll come back next Friday night.” I needed a little time to get over that kiss and face him like a normal person.
“No. Tomorrow morning.”
He walked to the door before I could continue arguing, stopping with his hand on the frame and looking back at me. “And Charlie? Don’t think I’ve forgotten what I’m owed.”
Then he was gone.
I stood alone in my bar with my heart still hammering and my lips still swollen, listening to the drip-drip-drip of the bucket, and wondered what in the hell I’d just agreed to.