Prologue #2
The thought of someone else walking up to her, taking her and claiming her, made me look around again.
I knew every biker saw it, too. When Griffin, one of the bikers I knew, who came in from Vegas, got up, I knew he was going to approach her.
And fuck me, I couldn’t let that happen.
I wasn’t stupid. I had eyes. Griff was a good-looking guy.
I’d seen him with the ladies. Hell, just a couple of months ago, we’d been each other’s wingmen for a set of sisters that had come in for a drink and were staying at the ski resort in town for a wedding.
I knew just how well he did with women.
My girl’s attention drifted up to the screen of the old TV, watching the game with little interest, almost like she was killing time. Her lips were painted a pretty red color, one I wanted to smear with my fucking mouth. I wanted to wear her lips on my skin.
No, this woman wasn’t his. She was mine. If even for just a night. The thought left a bitter taste in my mouth I wasn’t going to overthink.
Without a plan, I hopped off the barstool. I’d done this countless times. Approaching women had never been tough for me. Every step I took towards her felt poignant. Life changing.
Life changing? That made my steps falter, and I froze.
Life changing? There was nothing life changing about approaching a woman.
I wasn’t that kind of man. Never had been.
Couldn’t be. Not when I was cursed. Yet…
I swallowed in that instant. Only six feet from her, I stared at the beautiful yet clearly exhausted woman.
Jesus, she was pretty. There was a softness around the hard-ass edgy tough girl vibe she radiated I wanted to protect.
Shield from the world. I felt possessiveness wash through me like never before.
Shit. What is this? Am I getting the flu? It had to be. Anything else, like love at first sight, would be fucking asinine for a man like me. She must have felt me because she turned, and without an expression, our eyes connected, and just like that, I knew life would never be the same.
One look, and I was a damn goner.
Everything inside me wanted to coax a smile from her. Hell, even an eye roll. But she didn’t give me anything. She simply looked right past me before her attention swept back to the screen as she slowly continued to sip her beer. Like I was nothing more than a fixture of the bar she’d noticed.
That… that had never happened before. Not even in my awkward yet cute prepubescent stage.
I leaned against the bar, knees almost weak as I let that settle.
What the hell is that? I felt Marie’s gaze on me but ignored it as I tried to get my crap together.
I had an overwhelming need to touch my chest, as if the organ I had been born with and lived with for over three decades was suddenly deciding to act weird. Or start working for the first time?
She’d looked right through me as if she hadn’t felt what I had! And for some reason, that pissed me off. I scratched the erratically-beating spot.
Off night. I shrugged it off. My head had been in a funky space, and Marie talking about the curse had fucked with me.
That was all. It wasn’t the stunningly beautiful woman or how something inside of me, deep down to the marrow of me, recognized her as something more than a warm body I wanted to snuggle close to after fucking her until both our voices went hoarse.
Fuck this. I was about to turn and get back to my seat when I saw Griff’s bearded ass start to look in her direction again. I frowned and turned.
The hell I would sit around and let him take her from under my fingers.
Before I knew it, I closed the few feet between us, and she turned again. Her bored gaze kissed mine for a moment, and I knew I didn’t have long before she turned around again and pretended I wasn’t there.
“Austin,” I said, extending my hand. She didn’t even blink.
“Not interested,” she answered easily and without emotion as her attention returned to the TV, leaving me stunned as hell.
“Not…” I started to repeat as I took the empty barstool next to her. “How would you know?”
“Oh, I know.” She sighed like she was exhausted.
I should have walked away.
It didn’t matter that this visceral reaction was flowing through me like it was lighting me up from the inside out. Not when all my usual self-defense red flags were shouting at me to retreat. Go home and pretend I never saw the beautiful vixen.
But I didn’t.
I couldn’t. Not when the thought of never seeing her again felt like the wrongest thing in the world.
Instead, I sat there staring at her. Silently and probably creepily begging her to look at me.
I wanted to say something fucking smart or funny, things that usually slipped past my lips with women, but that didn’t seem right with her.
“Guess you’re the kind of man who needs an explanation?” She turned to look up at me again. Fuck, sitting there, I was still taller than her, but her eyes… Jesus, her eyes unmanned me. With one look?
“I don’t usually, no.”
“I bet you don’t,” she said, and this time, her lips quirked upward just a smidge. It was hardly a smile, but the hint of one was there. “Guy like you probably has to fight girls off you.”
“Excuse me?” I blinked. This was not going at all the way I’d thought it would.
“Good-looking guy, most eligible bachelor in town.”
“Most eligible… Do I know you?” That earned me a laugh. Probably not a sincere one, but the sound still made me feel something, and if I had been standing, I was man enough to admit it might have made me a little weak in the knees.
“Probably not. I’m Elizabeth. My sisters call me Liz. I’m as local as you are.”
“Wait, you grew up here? In Moonlit?”
“Yup.” She nodded. Her gaze was tired yet a little more intense than a few moments ago. She lifted her bottle and took the last long dreg of her beer.
“And you live here?”
“Yep.” She nodded again, setting the bottle on the counter and making me lose her gaze again as she stared off in front of her. “So, if you thought you were trying to pick up some strange—“ she started to say as I lifted my beer to my lips.
“Pick up some strange?” I repeated without thinking because it seemed sitting next to the most intriguing yet uninterested woman turned my brain into mush.
“Pussy,” she clarified. I coughed, shocked at her bluntness. She carefully patted my back, like a trained professional would. Unbothered and unfazed. “I’m not your girl,” she laid out with a look that should have made my balls draw up and make me run away. She wasn’t mean about it, just… honest.
Refreshingly so.
I’m not your girl. Her words repeated in my head, and I wasn’t going to dwell on just how much I didn’t like the sound of that. Mine. My girl! that possessive voice I didn’t recognize shouted inside my head.
“What about a dance?” I found myself asking. I wasn’t usually a dancer, but I knew my way around the floor.
“A dance,” she repeated, and I watched with rapt attention as her head turned slowly.
“You want to dance?” The emphasis on the word you made me sit a little straighter.
Like she could see through all my bullshit and didn’t have any problems calling me out.
But I nodded, and as the thought of her in my arms marinated even longer in my head, a smile grew on my lips.
Fuck, I wanted to slow dance every night for the rest of my life with her if she let me. What the hell is that? I wondered. I cleared my throat and tried to go for nonchalant. I shrugged.
“A dance never hurt anyone. But if you don’t want to—“
“I didn’t say no,” she muttered and sighed. When she turned her incredible body towards me, I made sure my eyes stayed on hers even if the fuckers wanted to soak in every little curve and angle of her sinfully delicious body.
“Fine. One dance, then I gotta go.”
“Okay.” I winked, feeling like I had just won the goddamn lottery. “One slow dance,” I countered, hopping off the stool and extending my hand.
“I never said slow—“
“But you already greedy, kitten,” I said just as her finger touched my palm.
“Oh no. See, we’re not doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Nicknames.” She pulled her hand from mine, or tried to.
“You said I could call you Liz,” I reminded her, and she rolled her eyes. Fuck, why was that attitude of hers so damn hot?
“I said that’s what my sisters call me, not that you could call me that,” she clarified, yet she still let me lead her to the makeshift dance floor.
When we got to the slightly busy floor, I turned back to look at her.
She was tall for a woman but still just reached my shoulders, and for the first time in my thirty-six years, I wondered what it would be like to have her rest her head on my shoulders.
I could picture the scene so easily: The two of us on a couch after a long day, her head tucked into my side, hand on my chest as she told me about her day.
The image was so fucking innocent it shouldn’t have left me feeling like the breath had been kicked out of me.
It was innocent but intimate. Real. I shook the thought away.
This is just a dance, I reminded myself.
Dance with her, thank her for it, maybe kiss the top of her hand before making sure to pay hers and your tab, and get the hell back home.
Maybe stop at Onyx’ place to see if he needed help painting his glittery-as-hell kitchen again.
Or the gym. The gym could work. A hard workout would help whatever pent-up shit was swirling inside my head, making me think I wanted more from not just a woman but a local.
“We going to dance or—“ she started to sass, taking my momentary silence as me changing my mind. A grin grew on my face. I was a sick, sick man. I really fucking liked that spunk of hers.
“Okay, Elizabeth,” I drawled, my voice a low rumble. I pulled her body against mine. “Fine. No nicknames.” For now, I thought to myself. I wasn’t the kind to give women nicknames other than babe or sugar when I was serving at the brewery and trying to get the tip jar a little heavier.
Yet with Elizabeth in my arms, I wanted to have a mile-long list of nicknames just for her.
“No nicknames but two slow dances,” I found myself negotiating just as I lost sight of her face when I tucked her body against mine and we started to sway to the slow sultry beat of the song.
“Whatever.” Her mumbled response brushed against my neck, and my dick had a hard time staying down. “As long as you don’t step on my toes,” she muttered.
One song drifted into two then three. By the end of the night, when the dance floor was empty and Marie tapped me on the shoulder that it was last call, I knew I’d fucked up. Elizabeth, whoever she was, was going to be the end of me.
I was a goner.
Hook, line, and sinker.
The question was, what the hell was I going to do about it?
I’d watched my older brother Merritt fall last year.
I’d seen my best friend, Bash, pine for the girl and knew it was inevitable that he and Raven would end up together.
Shit, how long had I been giving Onyx crap about finally making a move on Kandy?
But I was different.
The exception, not the rule.
I didn’t do love or shit like that. Yet as I walked Elizabeth to her car and gave her my phone number instead of my best line to get her to ask me back to her place, I knew my life was never going to be the same. Life changing.
Fucking hell.