Chapter Four
Excuse me?” I said, setting my beer down. “No way in hell am I staying here tonight. I need to go home and feed my dog.”
Lie. I didn’t have a dog, but he didn’t know that.
This was just a desperate bid to escape.
I couldn’t stay here with him. He wasn’t safe from me.
Clearly there was some deeply disturbing shit going on in his life.
Someone in his position probably wasn’t thinking about sex; they were more concerned with survival.
I’d always had an issue with being a little too blunt, and I didn’t trust myself not to proposition him if I couch-crashed.
Jakob frowned. “You don’t have a dog.”
I froze. Danger. Danger, Will Robinson. “Uh, yes, I do.”
He prowled over to me, stopping close enough that the toes of our shoes touched. If he was trying to intimidate me, he failed spectacularly. His broad shoulders filled my sight, and I had to physically restrain myself from reaching out to touch his chest just to see if it was as hard as it looked.
“No, you don’t,” he said, low and insistent. “You live in a tiny studio apartment in a building that doesn’t allow pets.”
I forced myself to step away from him. Lusting after a potential stalker isn’t mentally healthy, Krista. “How do you know where I live?”
“Charley asked me to check you out when you applied for the bartender position.”
An image of him rummaging through my underwear drawer flashed through my mind. I found it far less disturbing than I should have. “And you were going to tell me about the fact that you’ve stalked me when?”
He sent me a flat look. “I didn’t stalk you. We check out every new arrival to Kearny, especially people who will have access to the club. You think we haven’t had undercover feds try to slip into town? We had to know you weren’t law enforcement before letting you into our bar.”
Okay, fine, that made sense.
“I’m still not staying here,” I said.
He picked up his beer, but instead of taking another sip, he turned and dumped it down the kitchen drain.
He set the empty bottle in the sink and faced me, crossing his arms over his chest. My gaze dropped to where his biceps strained against the sleeves of his shirt. Just one good flex and they might rip.
Flex, damn you.
“Daniel thinks we’re fucking,” he said, unaware of my mental gutter dive. “How would it look if you slunk out of here five seconds after he left? He’d know something was up.”
“Then I’ll stay long enough to convince him.” I looked Jakob over. Between his spartan apartment and no-nonsense persona, sex with him would probably be both mind-blowing and time-friendly. “What should we say, half an hour?”
He dropped his gaze and looked me over in return, the ice in his eyes melting. “Two, at least.”
My mouth went dry. Focus, Krista, we’re just talking hypotheticals here. “Why the need for so much deception?”
A muscle along his jaw jumped out in sharp relief. “You don’t need to know.”
From the look on his face, there was nothing else I could say to make him talk.
Both of us had been through SERE school—survive, evade, resist, and escape.
The military had trained us to endure interrogation and keep our mouths shut.
I wasn’t going to get anything out of him about why Daniel broke in or any revelations about who Mike is.
At least not without duct tape, a set of pliers, and a soundproof room.
This was MC business. Since I didn’t wear their leathers, I didn’t get to know. And really, it was probably best I didn’t. The answer might lie in the Kings’ illegal activities, and I had no desire to be an accomplice to any of their crimes.
I took another swig of beer. “Well, this isn’t how I saw my night going.”
“How did you see your night going?” he asked, his voice gaining a rough edge.
I blinked, caught off guard. Daniel wasn’t here anymore.
There was no one to perform for, but Jakob’s hardcore persona was slipping away in front of my eyes, replaced by something much more tempting.
His pale gaze took me in slowly, languidly, his focus lingering over my breasts and the swell of my hips.
Holy shit, maybe he was thinking about sex.
I saw an open challenge in his eyes when they lifted back to mine, like he didn’t expect me to answer him honestly. I’d never backed away from a fight in my life, and I’d be damned if I started now. He wanted to know how I saw my night going? Fine. I’d tell him.
“Worst-case scenario, I go to bed alone and horny,” I said.
His eyes bored into mine. “What is best case?”
I set my beer down and sent him a sly smile. “Best case is us breaking my bed frame.”
In a blink, my butt landed on top of the kitchen island. He’d lifted me onto it like I weighed nothing. It was sexy as fuck, but I winced when I hit, my battle scars reminding me that I couldn’t have a single pain-free moment to myself.
His hands stilled and fell to my waist. He must have seen me flinch.
“It’s my goddamn leg,” I said. “Ignore it. I’m trying to.”
Instead of kissing me, like I hoped he was about to, he turned away.
I reached out and snagged the back of his shirt. “Where do you think you’re going?”
He sent me a look over his shoulder that had no right to be so devastating. “I’m getting you that aspirin you asked for.”
I released him. “I’ll allow it.”
He chuckled, a low rumbling sound like distant thunder, and pulled open a kitchen drawer.
I took the aspirin from him a minute later and popped two in my mouth, swallowing with a sip of beer. “You know, I think I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen you laugh.”
He stepped between my legs and planted his hands on either side of my hips, crowding in close.
A little line appeared between his brows as he stared down at me, and I got an up-close-and-personal view of his fuck you face.
The intimidation tactic was only slightly ruined by the way his eyes shone like he was secretly amused.
“And you were going to tell me about the fact that you’ve been stalking me when?” he asked, throwing my own words back in my face.
“Ha ha,” I said, but I was struggling not to smile. “It’s not that. I’m just… aware of you when you’re in the bar.”
“I don’t laugh much in the bar,” he said.
“No, you don’t.”
There was a story there as to why, I could feel it, but if two minutes ago had taught me anything, it was that I wasn’t going to get answers from him that he didn’t want to give me.
Fine. I didn’t need them. It’s not like I wanted his whole life story or had planned our marriage vows out in my head.
I didn’t even want to be his girlfriend.
I just wanted to strip him naked and do terrible, debauched things with him over the course of a marathon weekend that made both of us walk funny for the next week.
I reached out and grabbed his shirt again, this time using it to pull him closer. He braced his hands on the counter, biceps straining, and came to a full stop with his mouth an inch away from mine. I growled in frustration and tried to close the distance, but he straightened away.
“Wouldn’t want to touch you without permission,” he said.
I gave him a flat look. “You just picked me up and put me on your counter.”
“I was getting a crick in my neck looking down at you,” he said. “This is different.”
From the small grin he wore, I could tell he was at least partially joking, but the fact that he remembered what I said to him in the bar and was subtly telling me that I was now in charge of any contact between us was hot as hell.
If I told him to stop, I had no doubt that he would back away and wouldn’t try anything with me again.
The thing was, I wanted him to try everything with me.
My focus fell to his lips. “Consider this permission granted to touch me as much as you want for the rest of the night.”
It was like I’d thrown a switch. The words barely left my mouth before he was on me.
His lips crashed into mine. Our chests bumped together, my breasts flattened against the hard planes of his pectoral muscles.
I reached up, desperate to grab hold of something, and wrapped my arms around his neck.
He leaned into me harder, and my butt slid a little over the marble counter, away from him.
From his low growl, he didn’t like that.
One big hand landed on my ass, and he dragged me back to him, the motion an inaudible command of, Get the fuck back here.
He might have looked like some half-frozen Viking raider, but he kissed like he was on fire. His lips were hot and demanding on mine. My head spun as I tried to keep up with him. This wasn’t foreplay; he’d gone straight to fucking me with his mouth.
I nearly moaned when he broke away.
He stayed there, lips tantalizingly close, the warmth of his breath rushing over my skin. “Will it hurt if I pick you up?”
It took me a second to remember how to speak. “Yeah, but walking will hurt more.”
I tightened my arms around his neck and hooked my feet behind his back, and he dropped his hands to my ass and lifted me off the counter.
The apartment blurred around me as he turned toward his room.
I took full advantage of the position I was in and pressed my nose to his neck, breathing in his cologne.
On instinct, I parted my lips and gently bit him.
He made a low sound of masculine approval and pulled me closer, dick straining between us.
The world tilted as he set me down on the bed.
I sank into the mattress, his added weight pushing me deeper.
God, I’d missed this. The feel of warm skin beneath my hands.
The sight of a man rising above me. I hadn’t had sex since before I’d moved to town, and four months of abstinence had left me hypersensitive to touch.