Sucker Punch
SLADE
The punch catches me across the jaw and snaps my head hard to the right. White flashes behind my eyes. The taste of copper fills my mouth.
My body responds before my brain does.
I spin and my fist connects with his face.
Full force, no hesitation, the same instinct that’s taken down men a lot more vicious and in better shape than the likes of him.
The crack of it is loud enough to cut through the bar noise.
He goes back into the pool table hard, balls scattering across the felt, as he grabs the edge to keep from going down.
I close the distance in one step and get him by the collar.
There’s a roaring in my ears that isn’t entirely from the punch. Last time I got in an altercation was on ice skates with an opposing team captain ready to murder me. That fight didn’t even raise my heart rate.
But my blood feels hot as it pounds through my veins right now.
Hockey is one thing. But this asshole disrespected my wife.
I pull my fist back.
All it will take is one more, right on the jaw. He’ll go down and stay down.
Before I can finish the fight, the bar erupts.
Tanner springs into action, pulling me back by my good shoulder.
Walker plants himself in front of me, and there are raised voices and a bar stool going over and bodies pressing in from every direction, and someone has Boone by the waist, hauling him back, and John Sutton is coming around the bar shouting, and then Lila is in front of me.
“Slade.” Her voice cuts through everything. “Come with me. Right now.”
She takes my hand.
I follow.
The hallway is dim, lit only by a pink neon light buzzing on the wall.
Lila pulls me through a door marked Staff Only into a storage room barely big enough for the two of us.
We’re surrounded by shelves of bottles and cleaning supplies and a single bare bulb she pulls the chain on, throwing everything amber.
“Sit,” she says, pointing at a crate.
I sit.
She comes to stand between my knees and digs into her purse. Of course she has a first aid kit in there. It’s a small one, neat and organized, stocked with gauze and alcohol wipes and a couple of bandages.
She works carefully, with that small line between her brows that means she’s concentrating, and I watch her face while Boone Hutchins’s voice rings in my ears.
Slade Rhodes, married? I give it a year. Less.
He doesn’t know anything. He’s a drunk idiot in a dive bar and he doesn’t know anything about me or my wife or what’s happening between us. He was swinging blind and he got lucky and I know that.
But the clock is still running. I’m still going to leave for Denver and Lila will be in Marble Falls, and our deal will be done.
“When I said I wanted to see a bar fight,” Lila says, interrupting my dark thoughts, “I didn’t mean you had to start one.”
“Didn’t start it,” I grunt. “But I would have finished it, if you’d let me.”
“And then what, face a lawsuit?”
I shake my head. “Ain’t how things work around here. A man doesn’t go running to the courts every time he gets a boo-boo. Not even a soft-bellied good ole boy like Hutchins.”
The alcohol wipe stings against the cut above my eyebrow and I don’t flinch. But the disgust surges up inside me remembering his words.
Trading in wives.
Like she’s something disposable. Like what’s between us is something you can just throw away.
But isn’t that what I’ll be doing? Throwing all this away?
My gaze tracks across Lila’s face. The tender, worried look in her eyes.
I’d bet every dollar I have that Boone Hutchins has never had anyone look at him the way my wife is looking at me right now. And he never will.
I almost feel sorry for him.
And then I’m real fucking glad that asshole will never know tenderness like this. It’d be pearls before swine.
Lila is very quiet as she cleans up my cut.
“You don’t believe that shit he said, do you?” I ask, suddenly anxious.
Does she really think I’d cheat on her? I’ve seen her jealous before and I don’t want her spending one second of sleep worrying about what I’m doing in another city.
She has no idea that she’s it for me. That somewhere between a country road and a pink bunny costume and a three-legged dog, she became the only woman I want for the rest of my life.
“Of course not,” she says.
“You won’t have anything to worry about when I’m in Denver,” I tell her.
“I know,” she says simply. “We’ll be divorced by then.”
Those words hit me harder than any sucker punch to the jaw.
I don’t want a divorce. Not now, not in nine months, not ever.
My hands land on her hips as she stands between my legs. I just want to touch her. Reassure myself that she’s not going anywhere. That she’s mine.
“Are you okay?” I ask her.
“Me?” Her gaze flickers down to mine. “I’m not the one who got hit.”
“It’s nothing.”
She gives me a skeptical look. “You look pretty pissed for ‘nothing.’”
“Disrespecting you like that? Yeah, I’m pissed. And then to put a hand on you?” I nearly growl. “Guy’s got a fucking death wish.”
Lila reaches up and pushes my hair back from my forehead. Slow. Gentle.
“Does it hurt?” she asks softly.
“No,” I say.
It doesn’t. Nothing hurts right now. I can’t feel anything except her fingers in my hair and her standing between my knees and the warmth radiating off her body in the small cold space of the storage room.
I take her wrist and press a kiss to the inside of it. “You take such good care of me.”
Her fingertips stroke along my jaw, cool and soothing against the angry bruised skin there. “I like taking care of you.”
Just like that I feel the rage beginning to dissolve. The need to draw blood, to crush my opponent, slowly receding.
She leans in and presses her lips to my cheek.
Then the other cheek. Her hair tickles my skin.
Her scent floods my senses. She kisses the uninjured corner of my mouth next, feather-light, careful of the split lip, and I feel that one everywhere.
On my skin, in my chest and lower, a heat spreading outward from that small careful contact.
She is so gentle with me. More than I deserve.
“Lila,” I murmur against her skin.
Her hands slide down from my hair to my face, cupping my jaw briefly, thumbs grazing my cheekbones. Then down my throat, feeling my pulse thrum under her fingers. Down my chest, her palms flat and warm through my shirt. Further still, down my stomach, past my belt buckle.
Her hand rubs slowly up and down my dick through my jeans and I feel her smile against my skin.
“You’re very grumpy,” she whispers in my ear, “for someone with a hard-on.”
“I’m starting to feel better.”
Her hand wraps around me through the denim. She strokes slow, base to tip, her thumb pressing in at the tip. My hands find her hips and pull her closer.
“Let’s see if we can keep that trend going, shall we?” she murmurs.
She holds my gaze.
And sinks to her knees.
Her fingers work my belt buckle. After she undoes it, she finds my zipper and pulls it down slowly.
I reach down and touch her face. “Baby,” I murmur, “what are you doing?”
She looks up at me from under her lashes, those warm brown eyes sparkling, kneeling between my boots on the storage room floor like she’s exactly where she wants to be.
She offers me a teasing smile as she says, “I think you can figure it out.”