CHAPTER FOUR
Colt
Monday was the longest damn day of my life.
Why? Because the bar was closed and I couldn’t see Charlie.
I’d sat on my porch in the cold with a cup of coffee and thought about her. Her wit, her charm. Her damn fucking curves.
Oh, and how she’d let me make her come all over my fingers.
I’d spent the night between cold showers wanting her and hating how badly I wanted her. The showers hadn’t been enough to make my damn cock stand down. They had only made me angry and wet.
I thought about it all day Monday. All night. And most of Tuesday morning while I was running a cut site for a client. My crew knew I was tense and so did my brothers. Another crew was there and the friction was high. Which just added to my tension.
I wished I had followed my gut instinct and simply headed to the taproom. Woken Charlie up and taken her.
But now it was quitting time, and I was headed off the mountain. Dirty and sweaty with a cut above my eye because I hadn’t been paying attention. I knew I’d hear it from my brothers — the cut, the distraction, all of it — but at the moment I didn’t give a damn.
I was on my way to her.
As I pulled into the parking lot, four more trucks pulled in behind me. My brothers.
Landry and Ridge, my two older brothers rarely came into town, much less to a bar.
Landry was the oldest who we all measured ourselves against whether we admitted it or not.
He was married now and had that kind of settled contentment that came from a man who’d found what he was looking for and knew it.
Ridge was like me. He had that edge of darkness running through him. I’d joined the military because of him. He’d left home because he’d refused to live in Landry’s shadow. We didn’t talk about what each of us had brought back. We didn’t need to.
Then there was Dane. The one who was steadfast and responsible. He hated being a lumberjack, preferring to work with wood another way. He made furniture during the off season and now had a steady following. I knew he would stop logging soon.
Sutton and Grant were the ones who showed up to the bars for fun — Sutton had been that way since before any of us could remember. He was recently married to his best friend, Arabella, and slightly less cocky but still the first one to say the thing nobody else would say.
Grant was the youngest, happy-go-lucky, our mother’s favorite even though she’d never admit it, and the one who’d somehow come out of the same family with the fewest edges.
When all five of them showed up, it meant it had been a bad day all around.
I didn’t say anything about it. Neither did they.
“Bar’s open,” Sutton announced when we walked in, as if this were news.
“Thank you, Mr. Observant,” Dane said.
“You’re welcome.”
I ignored my brothers’ chatter. Charlie was behind the bar and that’s all I needed to know. She looked up when we came in, her eyes widening a little. The McAllister brothers didn’t just walk into a room, they made an entrance. My brothers nodded and headed to the booth in the back.
Charlie finished the pour she was making and served the drink.
I stopped at the end of the bar, watching her walk toward me.
The sight of her hit me the same way it always did.
Made a little of the darkness flee. The tightness of my shoulders ease.
I hadn’t expected that from her — the way just being in the same room as Charlie Jones made the thing running underneath my skin slow down.
She didn’t say a word, just headed to the storage room. I followed.
“Sit down,” she ordered pointing to the office chair behind a beat-up wooden desk.
“It’s fine,” I said, but sat down anyway. Anything to be close to her again. I felt myself growing calmer just by being near her. Well, mostly calm. My cock was having its own reaction.
“It’s still bleeding.” She took a first aid kit off the shelf and sat it on the desk. I watched her find what she needed with the efficiency of someone who’d done this before. Then she looked up at me.
She stepped between my knees without seeming to think about it and brought the antiseptic wipe to the cut and I held still and let her work.
“It shouldn’t leave a scar.”
“I’m used to it.”
“Mmm.” She leaned forward and placed a bandage on the cut.
Something about the simple focus of it—no fuss, no performance, just her taking care of me…
I hadn’t expected how that made me feel.
Nobody took care of me. I didn’t let anyone close enough for that.
But her standing between my knees, her fingers light against my face, like it was the most natural thing in the world.
I wasn’t sure which of us moved first.
One moment she was putting on the bandage and the next my hand was at her waist, pulling her down to straddle my lap. We both groaned. Her softness against my hard cock. Even through two layers of denim, it was enough to make all my good intentions go up in smoke.
My mouth crashed down on hers, my tongue thrusting deep and hard, the way I wanted to thrust my cock into her pussy. My hands found her hips and pressed her down harder. She started grinding against me, which was going to be a problem if she did it much longer. Like thirty seconds more.
I grabbed her ponytail and pulled her head back, right where I wanted it. My hand came out and encircled her throat—not hard, just enough to feel her pulse jump under my palm.
She moaned into my mouth, her fingers tugging at my hair. My other hand slid inside her shirt, cupping one breast. I pushed my hand under the cup, finding her hard nipple, pinching it between my thumb and fingers That made her grind against me harder.
“That’s it, baby,” I whispered right before I bit her bottom lip, then sucked it into my mouth to ease the pain. “Take what you need.”
I honestly didn’t know what would have happened if Grant’s voice hadn’t cut through the silence in the small room. I probably would have bent her over the desk and taken out my frustrations of the day — the cut, the other crew, not having her in my bed last night — out on her sweet, curvy body.
“Charlie? You’ve got customers.”
We both stilled, our mouths still locked together. I pulled back slowly. “I’m going to kill him.”
She giggled and it was like sunshine on a rainy day. Unexpected. Real. But, oh, so Charlie. “He could have just started pouring beers,” she murmured.
That almost made me laugh, but I was too turned on to do so. My cock was too hard and she felt too damn good. I eased my hand from her throat and my hand from her shirt. I pressed a soft kiss to her forehead before easing her away. I stood up, adjusting myself with my hand.
She watched and smirked. “Your brothers are going to notice.”
“The whole damn bar will notice, sweetheart. Let’s go.” I pushed her gently toward the door. The sooner this night was over. The sooner I could call in my bet.
Because there was no way I was going home without Charlie in my arms tonight.
My brothers had settled in around the back section. Charlie moved through them efficiently, taking orders. I watched her more than I was listening to my brothers.
“So,” Sutton said, when Charlie had gone back behind the bar. “It’s Tuesday.”
“Yes,” Landry said.
“Unusual night for a family outing.”
“Yes.” This from Grant.
“Almost like something happened today that made several of us think checking in was a good idea.”
“Sutton,” Landry warned as Charlie approached with the beers we had all ordered. I reached and placed my hand on her hip. I couldn’t help myself. She gave me a smile and moved back to the bar.
“I’m just noting the circumstances.” Sutton picked up his beer and took a swig. “Like how long it took to for Colt to get his cut bandaged by the pretty bar owner.” He looked at me with enormous innocence. “Anything to add?”
“No,” I said.
“Nothing at all?”
“No. Not even how the bet is going?”
Dane looked between us. “What bet?”
“There was a pool game Friday,” Grant said. “Colt lost.”
“Colt doesn’t lose pool,” Dane said.
“Colt lost this one.”
“On purpose,” Sutton said, grinning.
I said nothing.
Ridge looked at me from across the booth. Something passed through his expression — not amusement exactly, but the closest thing for my brother. He gave me the slight nod that meant he’d filed the information and wasn’t going to make it into anything.
“She seems capable,” Landry said, with the particular finality of the oldest brother closing a topic.
“She is,” I said.
We drank and talked about the site we’d worked at today and the crew that had rubbed each of us the wrong way.
There was nothing we could do. The site was too big for us to handle in the time frame the owner wanted.
There had been friction from the start — the kind that came from two operations with different methods sharing space and equipment access.
The evening was normal. Or as close to normal as six McAllister brothers in the same room ever got.
Then the rival crew came in around nine.
No doubt here to blow off steam, same as we were and had ended up in the same bar by the particular bad luck of small towns where there weren’t many options.
They were loud and loose and the kind of men who thought the rules were negotiable.
I’d seen the type. I’d been the type, in different contexts, in different countries.
My brothers noticed them too. Nobody moved. Nobody said anything. For an hour, everything was fine.
Then one of them went to the bar.
He was big. Not as big as Ridge, but big enough to think it mattered.
It didn’t. He ordered a beer and I watched him look at Charlie the way men looked at women like her.
Curvy, delicious looking women they wanted in their bed.
I watched her handle the first approach and the second and I stayed in my booth because she was handling it and that was what she did.
Then his hand closed around her wrist.
I was out of the booth before I knew I’d moved.
The room narrowed. That old familiar tunnel vision, everything irrelevant falling away, only the distance between me and the problem mattering. I felt my brothers move behind me — all five, simultaneously. The rival crew heard it too.
I came to a stop behind the man. “Let go of her,” I said.
He turned. Took me in and made the wrong decision. “We’re having a private conversation.”
“Not anymore.” I kept my voice level as best I could. “Let go.”
He didn’t.
I pulled him up by the collar.
What followed was fast and loud. He swung, I stepped inside it, and the room went sideways. The regulars headed for the exits knowing what it meant when six McAllisters stood up at once. The other crew came off their stools. They outnumbered us, but we had been fighting together since childhood.
Landry handled two of them with the calm authority of a man who’d made peace with his own strength.
Ridge was simply effective in the way Ridge was effective at everything — quiet, complete, leaving no follow-up required.
Sutton talked while he fought, which was genuinely unnerving.
Grant moved fast and clean, the way youngest brothers did when they’d spent a lifetime fighting older brothers. There was no better training than growing up a McAllister.
Dane was where he needed to be when he needed to be there.
I had the one who’d grabbed Charlie. He was good.
Better than expected. We slammed into a table and I winced.
Not from the force but from the fact that Charlie was going to be pissed her bar was being destroyed.
I got my arm around his throat and held him there until the fight went out of him and he made the sound men made when they understood it was over.
Then I heard it — the solid crack of a bottle connecting — and turned, letting the man go.
Charlie stood behind me, a bottle of whisky in one hand, and a man from the rival crew holding his head.
“Charlie,” I growled, reaching for her and dragging her behind me. She looked at me with an expression that was equal parts satisfaction and defiance
Every protective instinct I had arrived at the same moment as a feeling I didn’t have a clean word for came over me.
Impressed didn’t cover it. Furious didn’t cover it.
The combination of both, looking at her standing there with a bottle and that expression, was something I was going to be thinking about for a long time.
“Get behind the bar.” I shoved her toward it as another man came at me.
“I just—”
“Now, Charlie.”
She went, but she kept the bottle.
It only took a few more minutes before it was over. The rival crew made their calculations when they saw how it was going and called it a night.
The door shut behind the last of them with a thud.
While we hadn’t exactly destroyed the bar, it was in worse shape than when the night first started. We all stood there next to the bar, breathing hard. Sutton had a split lip and it looked like Dane was sporting a black eye.
All of us would be feeling our age just a little in the morning.
Charlie took in the damage to the room, hands on hips. “You know this means more repairs for Colt.”
“He’s up to it,” Sutton laughed slapping me on the back. The laughter worked through the rest of us, until even Ridge’s mouth moved slightly, which was as close as Ridge got to a smile, much less a laugh.
“Out. All of you,” Charlie ordered.
They looked at me. “Go,” I said.
They went. I didn’t move until the door shut behind them.
Then there was just me and Charlie.
“You hit a man with a bottle,” I said walking toward her.
“He was about to blindside you.”
“I had it.”
She snorted.
“You could have been hurt.” I stopped in front of her and looked at her and thought about the last six weeks coming here, nursing a beer until closing time just so I could watch her.
I thought about the kisses we’d shared, the feel of her hot pussy against my fingers, the sound of her trying not to moan when I’d made her come.
The taste of her. The feel of her breast beneath my hand tonight.
I knew what I wanted. Full, complete surrender. Tonight.
“I’m done waiting, Charlie Jones.” And just like that, my patience was gone. I leaned forward and put her over my shoulder.
“Colt McAllister, what do you think you’re doing?” She pounded me on the back.
“Collecting on my bet. Now settle down.” I gave her ass a firm smack, then rubbed it with my hand.
I headed for the door. She hit my back again. I allowed it.
In the parking lot, Grant’s truck was still there, and he was leaning against it as if he had all the time in the world. “Need some help?” he called out.
“Yeah. Lock up for her.”
Grant grinned. “Sure thing, big brother.” He whistled as he started back inside.
That was my younger brother. Two steps ahead of all of us and twice as pleased about it.
Charlie huffed. “This is kidnapping.”
“Nope. It’s called calling in the bet.” I set her on her feet beside the truck and opened the passenger door.
She got in.