Bad Boy I Can't Resist

Prologue - The Bar

Jax

Iwasn't supposed to be here tonight.

Four hours of supply negotiations in Galveston. A hotel room waiting across town. A life that had gotten quiet enough that I'd stopped noticing the quiet.

Then she walked in.

And something I'd been keeping perfectly still started moving.

"She's such a stunner, isn't she?"

The admiring words come from the barman, who has constantly been refilling my glass for the last hour.

He's leaning over the damp mahogany counter, a graying rag clutched in his thick hand, his eyes locked onto the front entrance.

He's obviously noticed that I was drawn in by the woman who had walked in half an hour ago.

I look away from the woman long enough to eye him. The barman smiles back sheepishly, and I wonder why I feel like smacking the obvious smitten look off his face. But I couldn't blame him either, a woman like her would always make men stare.

My eyes go back to tracking her, and just like the first time, her red hair is the first thing that catches my attention in the dim room.

Even with the low lighting, I could tell it's a deep, true red.

It's the exact, heavy color of autumn light hitting river water at dusk, rich and thick enough to make a man look twice just to make sure he's seeing it right.

She moves through the room, and the heavy Gulf humidity outside follows her in like a shadow, but she doesn't seem to notice.

She moves as if she owns the space without needing anyone in this miserable room to confirm it.

But her eyes are doing something her body isn't.

They're looking for the exit.

I know that look. I've seen it in brothers who came home carrying things they couldn't put down. Seen it in men sitting in hospital waiting rooms at three in the morning. Seen it in my own reflection more times than I want to count.

The body stays. The mind is already halfway gone.

Something in my chest tightens. Not because she's beautiful. Because she looks lonely. And loneliness has always been harder for me to ignore.

There's a fluid, unhurried grace to the way her boots strike the floorboards, a rhythmic cadence that tells me she's used to directing people rather than following them.

She is, without a doubt, the most stunning woman in the room, and she is completely, utterly indifferent to that fact.

The symmetry of her face, the sharp, clean line of her jaw, and the utterly feminine sway of her hips seem like second nature.

I look down at her clothes as she begins walking toward the bar.

It's not provocative by any stretch of the imagination; it has no deep cut or short hem.

The charcoal-gray, ribbed knit dress she is wearing hits well below her knees, but it's clingy enough to elicit a slow, heavy visceral reaction in my gut.

The fabric maps out every single ridge and curve of her frame, tracing the full, round slope of her breasts against the knit before nipping in sharply at a waist I could probably wrap my hands around.

Below that, her hips flare out in a smooth, dangerous line that makes the flat beer in my stomach feel too hot.

I pull my eyes away.

I don't pull them away.

The long sleeves cover her arms completely, but the tight collarbone line reveals skin that looks pale and soft under the amber bar lamps.

For a moment, she makes me forget that a few minutes ago, I'd thought it was a bad idea to spend the night away from Moonrise after finishing my business meeting in Galveston.

After spending a grueling four hours over supply logistics that left my head pounding, I had thought a little drink won't hurt, but the moment I stepped in, the pounding got worse, and I regretted my decision.

However, watching her cross the room, I'm glad I'm here at this minute. The faint, rigid line that appears between her dark brow as she moves closer makes me wonder what she's thinking, and I fight the urge to cross the room and smooth it out.

Watch it, Jax. A little voice in my head whispers, but I ignore it.

"A girl like that would probably never give me a second glance." The barman says again, obviously undeterred that I haven't given him a response earlier. "But you're on a different level."

I keep my jaw clamped shut and let my thumb trace the wet ring my glass has left on the wood. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Look at her," he murmurs, his voice dropping into a conspiratorial tone, "she's always going to be attracted to a man who seems dangerous. Like you do, chief."

The barman shifts his weight as he slides a fresh coaster across the timber. "I would give anything to look like you do."

I almost scoff out loud at that. I look down at my own reflection in the dark amber of my glass. Dangerous? I wouldn't call myself dangerous, despite the heavy black ink stretching up my forearms and the thick, jagged ridge of silver scar tissue cutting through the tattoo on my left wrist.

I look broad, yeah. My shoulders are wide enough to block out the neon light behind me, and my face has a hard, weathered set that comes from thirty-six years of ignoring warnings, but I don't go looking for blood and am not close to being dangerous.

I had once belonged to an MC club; the Moonrise patch used to be a permanent fixture on my back, but the most dangerous things I had ever done involved risking my life and standing up when my brothers in the club were challenged.

I will stand up to keep people who matter to me safe and will defend them with my last breath.

It's simple arithmetic, it's the code, and just keeping my people alive.

The thoughts vanish when I see her step into my peripheral vision. She's coming straight toward the bar. My heart begins to race dangerously against my ribs, a sudden, hard thudding that catches me completely off guard.

I can't control the reaction, and it speeds up even more when she stops exactly one barstool away from me, her charcoal knit dress brushing against the lower rail of my stool.

Her smell immediately fills my nostrils.

It is unique, raw, and completely intoxicating.

It smells like wild clover crushed under heavy leather boots right after a hard summer rain, mixed with a sharp, crisp note of bitter orange.

It's clean, cold, and entirely out of place in a room that smells like stale tobacco and floor wax.

The scent evokes a sudden, sharp ache deep in my chest. It makes me think of wide-open spaces, of boundaries crossed, of things that don't belong to the dark.

My knuckles turn white around my glass as she gets closer, her shoulder turning slightly toward me.

I can now see that she has blue eyes that read the room in seconds.

I watch her chin lift slightly as her gaze sweeps from the dark booths in the back to the neon beer signs humming over the pool tables before finally settling beside me.

I keep looking at her sideways, my eyes tracking the subtle rise and fall of her chest as she makes herself comfortable.

"Hey there." The barman calls out overly cheerfully. "What are you drinking tonight?"

She doesn't even look at the liquor shelves. She just points a slim, pale finger toward my glass, gesturing to the bartender with a short, decisive movement.

"I'll have the same thing he's having," she says.

Her voice is a low, smoky rasp that vibrates straight through the wood of the bar and into my palms. It's smooth, but there's a gravelly edge to it that tells me she's either exhausted or she doesn't spend her days talking softly.

The barman nods quickly, his eyes widening slightly as he reaches for the bottle of neat rye I've been working on.

He pours the amber liquid into a heavy shot glass, the stream clear and steady under the dim lights.

The drink is placed directly in front of her, the glass making a sharp clink against the mahogany.

I watch as she nods her thanks. To my absolute surprise, she doesn't sip or smell it. She wraps her fingers around the glass, lifts it without a single beat of hesitation, and downs it in a single shot. Her throat moves in one clean, swallowing motion.

She sets the glass down with a firm thud. No wince. No pause. Just gone. The way people take medicine. The way people swallow bad news.

My stomach drops. She's not here to celebrate.

Her lips part as the heat of the rye hits her. Then she flashes a smile toward the bartender, a smile that seems completely friendly on the surface but has a devastating, sharp edge to it.

I didn't miss how the barman colors brightly, a dark, dark red creeping up his neck into his cheeks as he holds her gaze.

"Keep the drink coming," she says, her dark blue eyes gleaming under the amber lamp.

The barman clears his throat, mumbles something incoherent, and immediately reaches for the bottle again.

I keep looking at her sideways as the minutes crawl by, the silence between us stretching out like a live wire.

She doesn't say a word to me. She just sits there, her posture rigid, downing several of the drinks back-to-back.

The second shot goes down just as fast as the first. The third one follows five minutes later, her pale fingers spinning the empty glass on the counter until the wood is covered in small, wet circles.

It's as if she's drinking to forget something, or she's drinking to find the courage to do something stupid. Either way, it's a bad look on a woman who looks like she has too much to lose.

When she reaches out her hand for the fourth drink, my brain stops calculating. My hand moves before I can give myself permission to stay out of it and remind myself that it's none of my business.

I reach out instinctively to stop her, my large, calloused palm coming down gently but firmly over the top of her shot glass, blocking her fingers from lifting the rim.

"You've had enough," I say. My voice is lower than usual, and it's a deep, rough growl that sounds like gravel scraping together.