Chapter 2 #2
It’s an innocuous question, but there’s something about the way he asks it that makes my fists clench at my sides. Preparing to defend them and myself if necessary. “They do.”
“So…you’re a Hawke?”
I swallow thickly, letting that question play in my head for a moment, because it’s a loaded one. They’re as close to me as my family by blood, but I don’t bear the name or look anything like them. That’s something that has always been evident yet never important to anyone in the Hawke brood.
We are Hawkes—by birth or by choice, no matter our skin color or the last name on our driver’s licenses.
“Yes…”
Even though I’ve failed them too many times to count recently, they somehow still trust me to protect their investments. To protect them. Because they love me and have faith in me even when I don’t have any in myself.
“They are family.”
He nods slowly, then shifts to step around me and make his way back to his seat at the bar, but he pauses with his shoulder pressed against mine to lean in until his lips feather over my ear, sending a little shiver through me straight to my core.
“The offer still stands. Anytime you want to pin and straddle me again, I’m more than happy to let you. ”
My knees waver slightly, and that heat I could see in his gaze rolls over me like licking flames. Though he appears unaffected by this electric charge coursing between us.
Bastard…
Men like him—beautiful and confident, arrogant and cocky—are basically waving a giant red flag in the air.
I don’t need any red flags in my life.
He brushes past me and returns to his stool, sliding onto it and immediately grabbing his beer to down the rest of it. His Adam’s apple bobs with his heavy swallow, and as he sets the empty glass on the bar top, his hand trembles slightly.
Maybe not so unaffected?
It could just be from the adrenaline of the situation, but the way he surreptitiously reaches down and adjusts his cock behind the zipper of his jeans makes me smirk.
I shouldn’t be so pleased by that revelation…
Red flags, Bishop.
Red fucking flags.
Tommy hustles over with a new beer for him. “On the house. I saw what happened. Thanks for the help.”
Hell.
Now everyone’s treating him like he’s a hero.
I can admit, in that moment, maybe he was a bit heroic, but there’s something about him that just doesn’t feel right. That hasn’t felt right since I saw him the night Allegra got sick.
There’s too much power in his body.
Too much strength in his frame.
Too much confidence in the way he looks at me.
A cunning I can see swimming in that blue gaze.
I need to keep an eye on him.
We all do.
That means I might have to play nice with him, even though every instinct I have is screaming to stay away—for both of our protection.
* * *
GAGE
It takes all the willpower I possess to stay seated on the stool and not look over my shoulder to see if the stunning woman who made my cock hard by pinning me to the club floor is still looking at me.
But I don’t have to see it.
I can feel her intense gaze sweeping over me.
Taking me in.
Assessing me.
Analyzing every little move I make.
I reach for the new beer the bartender brought me, willing the tremble in my hand to go away, and take a long sip of the cool liquid, hoping that it might calm my libido and my racing heart.
Because damn…
I never thought getting taken down like that by a woman could be so fucking hot, but with her—good God—I almost came in my pants the second I realized who was straddling me and wrenching on my arm.
The pain she inflicted only made me harder and more interested in the woman I should be avoiding, who made it very clear she doesn’t trust me and isn’t interested in anything I have to offer.
Except maybe my exit from the club and her life.
Which would be better for both of us.
I sense her approach, my entire body stiffening in anticipation, and the stool next to me scrapes against the floor before she takes a seat on it.
It’s a true struggle fighting the grin that pulls at my lips.
She didn’t walk away…
Maybe she couldn’t.
The same way I can’t seem to stay away from the club—or her.
She motions toward the bartender for something, and he brings over what appears to be soda water with lime for her.
Slender dark fingers with short nails painted a deep red wrap around the glass, but she doesn’t take a sip, peeking at me out of the corner of her eye. “This isn’t your first time here.”
I slowly turn my head toward her.
It wasn’t a question.
She noticed me the other night, too. I wasn’t merely imagining her intense gaze on me, and that should make me want to leave even more than the attention that’s already been drawn to me tonight.
But that jasmine scent wraps around me with her this close and prevents me from moving.
“No”—I shake my head—“it isn’t.”
Her fingers drum against the glass lightly, matching the beat of the music thumping through the speakers. “You were here a few nights ago.”
I nod. “I was. That was my first time.”
She raises a dark brow. “How’d you find us?”
Fate…
Good. Bad. Or otherwise.
Fate seems to have brought me to this place at this time, knowing she would be here.
I allow the grin to spread across my lips. “I asked around for the best club in New Orleans, and I was told that The Hawkeye Club was the only place to go.”
She nods slowly, her head tilting slightly, as if she isn’t quite sure she’s buying my explanation and might be able to see the truth if she looks at it from a different angle, even though I deliver it as smoothly and confidently as possible.
A moment passes where something unspoken passes between us—an acknowledgment that she suspects I’m lying and I know it.
She finally lifts the glass to her lips and takes a sip. “So, what do you think?”
“About what?”
“The club.”
I grin, never looking away. “It’s beautiful. Fantastic vibe.”
“And the girls?” She tries to keep it out of her voice, but there’s a tension there, something I can’t quite place. Surely, not jealousy. “What do you think of them?”
I keep my eyes locked on her stormy dark bourbon ones. “There’s one I’m very interested in.”
She dips her head, averting her gaze, and takes a much longer sip of her drink before she clears her throat. Her slender yet muscular shoulders and arms tense as she scans the club.
The incident certainly got her worked up, but this seems like something else. A rigidity and unease that goes far beyond two drunk men getting a little handsy with a stripper.
“You seem to be on edge tonight. Is something going on?”
Her head whips in my direction, her eyes hard, suspicious, and maybe even annoyed. “You mean besides the fact that one of my girls got grabbed by a total creep and I didn’t get here fast enough so you had to step in?”
And there it is…
The real reason she’s upset.
I smirk, turning slightly on my stool toward her. “That really rubs at you, doesn’t it? That I took care of the situation before you could.”
She presses her lips together in a firm line, her jaw tensing.
A chuckle slips out before I can bite it back, and I take another sip of my beer, never tearing my eyes away from her. “It does.” I set the glass down on the bar top and lean toward her. “It really bothers you that someone else stepped in.”
My observation causes her to shift on the stool. “My father has run security for the Hawkes longer than I’ve been alive.”
“And that means it automatically becomes your job?”
Drumming her nails on the bar top, she releases a long sigh and shakes her head. “No. I wanted it to be. I could have gone to law school or been a doctor like my brother. I had the grades for it, but I stayed in the family business.”
Why?
She’s clearly intelligent, focused, driven—and the type of student who had grades good enough to get her into those types of schools. Yet, after experiencing the way she took me down so easily tonight, I can see how it may have been the right career move for her to work with her father.
That move was effortless, and on a man who has at least fifty pounds and a foot on her, she made it look like child’s play.
This woman is a force of nature, like a fucking hurricane that can’t be brought to submission by anything or anyone.
She will always come out on top and be in control.
Or at least try to be.
And tonight, she wasn’t.
For those few moments it took that fucker to grab the dancer and for me to intervene, she wasn’t doing what she’s best at; she wasn’t doing her job.
Or, at least, she thinks she wasn’t. But I know she was keeping an eye on the other three guys near the stage, watching out for the girl on the pole.
And it’s impossible to watch, let alone be in, two places at once.
My chest tightens, and a dull ache forms there watching her struggle with what she sees as a failure.
I lean back, giving her some space as she shifts uneasily in her stool, trying to gather herself back to the stoic, controlled woman she undoubtedly typically is.
A new song starts, signaling a change in dancers on the stage, but I don’t even so much as glance in that direction. The only woman in this entire place that could hold my interest is sitting beside me right now.
She releases a long, slow breath, and her shoulders straighten, as if she’s rebuilt that wall of strength that only moments ago had cracked. Staring into her drink, she swirls it aimlessly but peeks at me again. “So, are you new to town?”
Apparently, we’re done talking about what went down tonight and the relationship she has with the Hawkes.
I nod. “I am.”
“Will you be staying for a while?”
There’s the slightest dip in her voice, something someone else might not have noticed, but it’s the kind of thing I always pick up on.
A tiny fissure in that wall she’s rebuilt—or at least, attempted to.
But if I mention it, she’ll bolt and shut down completely.
I shrug as nonchalantly as I can, trying to keep my expression neutral. “That depends.”
Her gaze shifts over to meet mine. “On what?”
“On how some things play out…”
“What sort of things?”
“My job, mostly, but also something personal…”
That beautiful umber skin darkens even more on her cheeks, the only sign this woman is ever likely to give me because it’s one she can’t control.
She didn’t miss the fact that I meant her, but the real question is what she will do with it.
It would be better for us both if she ignored the flirtation, pushed away this spark between us and wrote it off as something not to explore.
I hold my breath, waiting for her to act. Waiting for her to make the decision to slam the door shut on me so that it won’t remain in my hands that seem desperate to hold it open.
She considers me for a moment, and for a split second, I see a glimmer of interest in her eyes that makes me think she might bite.
But it’s gone just as quickly.
Replaced by a steely resolve I don’t like being on the opposite side of.
Casually, she brings her drink to her lips again, and I can’t help but focus on the way her throat moves as she takes a sip from it.
Fuck.
My palm itches to wrap around her smooth dark skin, to feel her gasps of pleasure rumbling beneath it.
I shift on the hard stool, trying to relieve some of the tension building in all the wrong places.
She sets the glass down and runs a fingertip around the rim. “What do you do for work?”
“I fix things.”
Her dark brows rise. “What kinds of things?”
“I’m a mechanic.”
Those intense eyes automatically dip to my hands.
I hold them up, showing her all the calluses. “Mostly motorcycles, but I love to get my hands on anything with an engine.”
This woman’s runs fast and hard.
She vibrates with the kind of power that’s always been an aphrodisiac for me, and she doesn’t even seem to know it. Her bottom lip disappears under her teeth for a second, and when she releases it, she flashes me a little half-grin that does dangerous things to my willpower.
“And what else do you do, besides work on engines and hang out in strip clubs?”
I chuckle low. “You make that sound like a bad thing. I’m giving your family business, aren’t I?”
Her eyes darken as they lock on me. “Is that the only reason you’re here?”
There it is.
The question she should be asking, what she’s been wondering about since the moment she saw me the other night.
She doesn’t trust me.
Not even a little.
I slide on the stool, moving closer to her until my knee brushes against her thigh. The music thumps around us, and I lean in so she can hear me over it while also ensuring no one else walking by might. “I noticed you the other night, too.”
Her back stiffens. “Did you?”
Nodding, I slant even closer. “All these women you have on the poles, dripping with sex, making men tremble and fall to their knees for a single second of attention, but the only one who drew mine was you.”
“Really?”
The disbelief in her voice hangs in the air between us.
An unspoken challenge permeates her question.
I raise a brow. “Want me to prove it?”
She mirrors a raised brow in response, and I chuckle, moving in until my lips ghost over her ear.
“You were standing in the northwest corner of the club, watching everything and everyone, taking stock, sizing everyone up, including me.” Her breath hitches.
“You were wearing a steel-gray T-shirt that showed off all of your beautiful skin and muscles that I imagine you earned doing something like martial arts. Probably Jiu-Jitsu, given the hold you put on me.” She stops breathing completely.
“You had on a pair of dark jeans that clung to you like they were painted on, and all I could think about was tearing them off you.”
I pull back slightly to see her half-hooded eyes locked on me, her lips parted slightly, as if I stunned the breath right out of her.
A second passes.
Another.
Then she lets out a rush of air from her lungs and quickly looks away.
She clears her throat and takes a sip of her drink. “Point proven.”
I chuckle and down the rest of my beer, then slide off the stool and toss another twenty on the bar.
The bartender approaches and shakes his head. “I told you it’s on the house.”
I incline my head toward him. “That’s for you. See you next time.”
She rises off the stool beside the one I just vacated. “You’re leaving?”
“I have somewhere to be.”
The tiniest hint of disappointment crosses her face. “You didn’t even tell me your name.”
“You didn’t ask.”
An annoyed huff slips from her lips, and she crosses her arms over her chest again, as if she needs the protective barrier it creates. “Well, I’m asking now.”
“Gage.” I grin at her. “Gage Newhart.”
I turn to walk toward the entrance, knowing full well I’ve failed in my effort to keep my attraction to this woman under control.
“You’re not going to ask mine?”
Her question stops me in my tracks, and I twist back and wink at her.
“I already know it.”
Before she can say anything else, I stalk out of the club, forcing myself not to look back.