Chapter 7 Erin #2
“Didn’t picture you in a dive bar.”
“Didn’t picture you stalking me,” I shoot back.
He chuckles. “This is close to where I do business.”
I arch one brow. “Figures.”
“How long have you worked here?”
“Three nights.”
“Enjoying it?”
“No.”
There’s a long moment of silence which makes me look up only to see him watching me closely, with a curious glint in his eye.
“How did the lawyer meeting go?”
I blink. “That’s none of your business.”
“And the moody teenager?”
I fake a smile. “That’s none of your business too.”
“Why did you send the shirts back?”
I prop my hands on my waist. “I didn’t need them.”
“You could have donated them to Goodwill.”
“Yes,” I concede. “Yes, I could have. I didn’t think of that.”
A smile pulls on one corner of his mouth. “Too annoyed at me to think straight?”
I tip my head to one side, unable to completely stop a grin from forming. “Something like that.”
“I’ll get your shirt back to you,” he says, his gaze drifting over the skin-tight dress I’ve borrowed from a fourteen-year-old.
I bristle slightly. “Don’t worry about it.”
“It’s at the dry cleaners as we speak.”
“Well, thanks.”
His gaze burns into me so deeply I have to look away, then my eyes catch on the empties scattered about the premises.
“Excuse me,” I say, making my way out from behind the bar to collect them up.
I gather up as many as I can between my fingers, the way I’ve seen much cooler barmaids do in the movies, stopping for one more at the far end of the bar.
I smile timidly at the older, portly man who looks like he hasn’t washed in a few moons, and reach for his glass. I have one finger to spare.
“Hey, sweetheart,” he slurs.
I smile again but it’s forced. “Hi. Can I get you anything?”
“How ‘bout your number?”
I swallow and curve my pinkie over the rim of his empty.
“I’m sorry, no.”
“Aw, c’mon,” he whines. “Don’t play hard to get now.”
A hand slithers around my waist and pulls me into the space between his parted thighs.
I startle at the intimate contact. “Let go of me.”
He pulls me a little tighter into an obvious erection and my stomach lurches.
“Hey now, you been parading that hot ass around all night—”
I’m about to call for Bobby when suddenly, the glasses have slipped from my fingers, smashed into pieces on the floor, and the man is flying across the room.
My head snaps to the side to see the stranger now standing beside me, his body braced, jaw solid and fists curled.
Rewinding back through the shock, I vaguely recall seeing him vault off his bar stool, grab the guy by the collar and hammer a brutal punch into his jaw.
The guy landed on a table on the far side of the room, slid onto a wooden chair and is now crumpled on the floor like wet cardboard.
The bar is dead silent.
I pan my gaze from the man on the floor to the one by my side, my mouth open in shock.
“What the hell? Why did you do that?”
He flexes his hand slowly, then pushes it into his pocket. “He touched you.”
“Yeah. So? I had it handled.”
His jaw works from side to side.
“Doesn’t matter,” he rasps. “He touched you.”
Something dark inflates inside my chest, then Bobby’s footsteps on the unwashed tile make me turn.
“Everything okay?” he asks.
I shrug a shoulder in disbelief. “Fine. Just casual bar violence.”
Bobby looks at the stranger, then down at the unconscious guy on the floor. “He deserved it?”
The stranger shrugs then coasts his hazel gaze to me. “Ask her.”
My eyes widen in surprise. “Um, yes. I suppose he did.”
Bobby nods to another guy watching from the edge of the room. The two of them drag ‘wandering hands’ out of the bar, dumping him on the sidewalk. He was the picture of a sleeping baby. Not a cut on him. Even to a novice like me, the punch was clearly targeted and precise.
Still, it shouldn’t have happened.
I turn to the stranger. “You can’t just knock people out like that.”
“Watch me.”
“You’re going to get me fired.”
He softens. “You get fired when I say you get fired.”
I almost flinch at his words but sarcasm gets the better of me.
“Oh, right, so you own this place?”
Something snaps behind his expression. He steps into me, making me skitter backward until my spine hits the bar. He follows close, his chest almost touching mine.
His voice drops, low and gritty, and he speaks roughly into my ear.
“Do you know what that kind of adrenaline does to a man’s dick?”
My eyes flash wide open. Did he really just say that to me?
He continues in an eerily calm, unquestionable growl.
“It confuses the body so much that when it sees something it wants, it is primed to get it, no matter what. So I suggest you step away from me now, before I order everyone the fuck out of this establishment, bend you over this bar, and make you come so hard you forget your own name.”
I stop breathing, because he didn’t just say that.
When he doesn’t move an inch from my ear, I realize he is not bluffing.
Pressing my back into the bar, I slide out from beneath his rigid and imposing body.
Free of the weight of his stare, I gasp for air and scurry behind the bar.
When I turn around, his eyes are black, his fisted fingers flexing. Then he whips his jacket off the bar hook, shoots me one last glare and walks out of the door.