by R. Cayden
No way I could live above a place like that. I liked order, and calm, and quiet, and I would have none of those things if I lived above a dive bar.
At least it explained why the apartment was so cheap. Once I realized it was another wasted trip and that I was still failing at finding a new home, the exhaustion of the search overwhelmed me, leading to my pathetic scene on the street outside. I just felt so defeated by the whole thing, like I’d be stuck living in overpriced, noisy apartments forever.
Damn it, Malcolm. Who cries about something like this?
But I couldn’t tell any of that to Trouble. He was the same age as me, but with his cocky attitude and cool charm, I immediately felt like he had all the power. He wouldn’t be scared off by some rowdy bar. Hell, he might even have been standing there to view the apartment himself. With the sleeves of his jacket pushed up, I could see the tattoos of barbed wire and flowers trailing up his arm. Trouble would probably end up a regular at that bar, I figured, if he wasn’t already.
“My name’s Gunner,” he said, stepping forward. I noticed the way his tight jeans hung low off his hips and then tried to act like I didn’t notice that.
“Malcolm.”
He gestured toward the for rent sign above the bar. “That place doesn’t work for you?”
I shook my head quickly. “Not quite,” I muttered.
Then he noticed me glancing at the bar again. “What?” Gunner asked. “You don’t want to live above a joint like this? I bet a sexy little prince like you could have a lot of fun at the Steel Rose.”
Sexy?
Was this guy flirting with me?
I considered running away. Naturally, I had shown up fifteen minutes before the realtor was supposed to arrive. I was always punctual to a fault, a habit my mother had instilled in me. I could have disappeared right then and never thought another thing of it.
Then Gunner took another step toward me. My heartbeat quickened, and I nervously took a half-step backward. I could see his black tee-shirt, stretched thin across his pecs, and I knew his muscles were probably ropey and firm beneath his jacket. More than this strength, though, it was that look in his eyes that made me nervous.
Like I was a treat, and he was going to devour me.
“I don’t think so,” I said, taking another half-step backward and finding the brick wall behind me. “I’m a quiet guy.”
A quiet guy. Damn it. Why did I always have to open my mouth and embarrass myself?
“I bet I could get you to make some noise,” he said.
Then he bit down on his thumb, and he grinned at me again.
Oh hell.
“I should get going,” I said quickly. I felt trapped between the wall and Gunner, and something about that was making me feel all kinds of weird ways.
At least I wasn’t crying anymore.
Anyway, I had work to do, deadlines to manage at my library job, and errands waiting on my to-do list. I was a responsible person, and I did not have time to stand on a street corner while some ridiculously hot guy with a scary vibe played cat-and-mouse with me.
“I get it, Malcolm.” He said my name like he was saying a dirty word. Malcolm. “You’ve got your nice white collared shirt, pressed and tucked into your pants. You’ve got your thick glasses and your perfect loafers without a scuff on them. And now you’re looking at me, and you’re looking at that bar, and you’re scared.”
“I’m not scared.” I said it quickly, almost like I was snapping at him. I always got flustered when strangers acted like they knew me.
Especially when they were right.
Gunner held his hands in the air like he was surrendering, then licked his lips. “Scared, but feisty.”
“I’m not scared,” I repeated. “There’s nothing to be scared of. It’s just a bar. I’ve been in a bar before, Gunner.”
It was true. There was one gay bar in town where I used to go with the last guy I dated and another little café I liked to frequent on the weekends. I guess technically the café wasn’t a bar in the traditional sense, but they had a full liquor menu, and I always ordered a glass of wine with my meal.
“If you’re not scared, then prove it.”
“Prove it?”
“I dare you to come in and get a drink with me.”
I cleared my throat. “You dare me?” I said skeptically. “Listen, I’m sure it’s, like, your favorite bar—”
“I’ve never been there before,” he interrupted. He took another small step forward, and when I stepped back, my whole body pressed against the wall.
“Then why are you here?” I asked.
“You’re looking for an apartment. I’m looking for a job.”
“At this place?”
He shrugged. “Sure. What, you don’t think I look like a bartender?”
It wasn’t that he didn’t look like a bartender. From his unkempt black hair to the slight shadow of stubble on his jaw, I was sure he would look comfortable spinning bottles and slinging drinks. I just would have pictured him charming the regulars at some gay bar with his cocky, flirty winks. As I watched a gruff, silver-haired man wander into the Steel Rose, I couldn’t help but think Gunner just looked a little… young for that place.
I blinked, trying not to get distracted again by the way his jeans hugged his thighs. “Sure,” I said. “You totally look like you could work at this bar.”
His grin got bigger when I said it, like I had just given him the biggest compliment in the world. “Come on then, Malcolm,” he said, turning toward the door with a wink. “Check out my new place of employment with me.” He paused in the doorway. “I double dog dare you,” he added with a sparkle in his eye.
And damn it if he wasn’t so damn full of himself, I followed him right inside.
Chapter Three
Gunner
I couldn’t believe the cutie in the button-up shirt actually followed me. I thought I was just letting out some nervous energy, flirting with him and making him scrunch his face up all funny like he did when I winked. But then I had to talk my big talk and shoot my mouth off about getting a bartending job, and now Malcolm was actually walking into the Steel Rose with me.
All right then, goody-goody. Let’s see what you’re up for.
The bar was dim, dingy, and dank, just the way I liked it. With some noisy rock band playing on the stereo and bottles of cheap liquor lining the wall, I felt comfortable there in a way I didn’t most places. No one was going to judge me for cursing up a storm or losing my temper. If anything, I’d just fit in better for it.
The Steel Rose seemed perfect, but that didn’t mean it was my first choice to launch my bartending career. I had gone into about twenty other bars already, places that offered a much bigger haul in tips. Ever since graduating high school, I had been working my job on a demolition crew, and I spent my days hauling old lumber and scrap metal from one dump to another. It was enough to pay the bills, but I was getting sick of the work and even sicker of struggling to put more than two pennies together.
Bartending seemed like easy money. I liked drinking, I liked hanging out with boozers and bikers, and I liked staying up all night. Easy, right? Except that every decent bar turned me away without so much as a second glance, claiming I was too inexperienced.
Fuck it. The Steel Rose was more my style. And if I could have some cutie to flirt with and let out some steam at the job interview, all the better.
I pulled up to the counter, patting the stool next to me to indicate Malcolm should sit. He looked down hesitantly to the seat, like he was inspecting it for stains or something, and then joined me.
“What are you having?” I asked, leaning forward on my elbow. “I’m buying.”
Malcolm blinked a few times behind his glasses, staring at the wall of liquor. It gave me a minute to drool over his sexy little body again. I wasn’t as filled out as a lot of the guys that I worked with, but I still had some solid muscle on my frame. Malcolm, though, had soft muscles and delicate hands and a face that
looked so damn pretty I could barely believe it. I noticed his skin, golden brown and tender, and it made me want to rip open the collar of his shirt and bite and lick his collarbone until he was quivering beneath me.
But still, Malcolm just looked at the liquors with a straight back and steady breath. I could see plain as day how nervous he was, but outside of a tiny, soft tremble across his lips, he kept it under wraps.
A guy like that must unleash like a fucking animal in the sack.
“It’s really too early for me to drink,” he muttered to himself.
“I dared you to have a drink with me. Have a drink with me.”
He sighed, adjusting his glasses. “I guess a beer?”
A bartender wandered our way. He had a shock of sloppy red hair and muscles that were almost enough to distract me from Malcolm. “A couple of beers,” I said. “Whatever’s on tap.”
The guy nodded, taking a second to look Malcolm and I each up and down as he poured the drinks and handed them off. I leaned up on the bar a little, wanting to give him a good look at me and let him know I wasn’t intimidated. But when he met my eye, he just chuckled like he was dismissing me and returned to the other end of the bar without a word.
Whatever…
“I thought you were going to ask about a job?” Malcolm asked, placing both of his hands on the beer.
“Sure, after a drink.” I said it as coolly as I could, as though that were the right way to get a job at a bar, although I had no idea what I was talking about.
Still, I was really getting off on the way Malcolm looked at me. When he glanced over my way, I knew he was seeing a badass, the kind of guy you were scared to like. The bartender might not have given me a second glance, and the guys at work still called me spark plug like I was a fucking kid. But behind his glasses, I could tell Malcolm was looking my way and seeing the man I actually was.
It felt good. Real good.
I took a drink of my beer. “What do you do?” I asked.
Malcolm gestured behind him. “I work at the library.”
“There’s a library over your shoulder?”
He smiled awkwardly. “Oh, sorry. No, the library where I work is just in that direction.” I stared at him a second. Then he shrugged. “West.”
Okay, so he was a librarian. Not surprising. Even if he had a stack of books under his arm, he still couldn’t really look much more like a librarian than he already did. I hadn’t been in a library in years and didn’t really know the first thing to say about them, but I did remember one thing for sure.
I remembered the librarian shushing me every time I opened my damn mouth.
“Quiet guy,” I said. “Quiet job.”
He nodded, then took a drink of his beer. It left a little foam on the top of his lip, perched there like he was daring me to reach out and wipe it off.
So I reached out and wiped it off. What else was I supposed to do? His lips were so soft against my thumb, I would have thought I was stroking a piece of velvet. It’s when I licked the foam off my thumb that I really got my reward, though.
Malcolm let out a little whimper.
He likes it.
“What about you?” he asked, leaning up against the bar awkwardly and looking flushed. “What do you do?”
“I tear shit down,” I said, gulping from my beer. “I’m on a crew, and we deconstruct old warehouses, factories, industrial equipment, that kind of thing.”
“Wow,” he said, looking sincerely impressed. “That’s not the kind of thing I could do. It sounds…” He trailed off, his finger making a little circle in the air while he tried to find the right word.
“It’s fucking fun, is what it is,” I finished for him, taking another gulp from my drink. “You should see some of the equipment we use, too.”
“Like what?”
“Everything from a wrecking ball to a rotary hammer,” I answered.
His eyes lit up. “That’s amazing. Using that kind of specialized technical equipment requires so much training. Your crew must have a lot of respect to let you use a wrecking ball. That sounds really dangerous.”
I cleared my throat. “The first time you see a wrecking ball in person, it almost looks small. But then you see the kind of damage it does.” I let out a slow whistle. “It’s not something you’ll forget anytime soon.”
I didn’t tell him that the first time I saw a wrecking ball in person was also the last time I saw one in person. There was a different crew that handled the big jobs. Most of our work had more to do with tearing down moldy plaster than with crashing through industrial lots, but every now and then, we helped out with the kind of job I was describing. I just couldn’t bring myself to tell him that spark plug was usually relegated to cleanup duty and nail removal.
We chatted a little more, with me tossing flirtations his way and Malcolm looking scandalized and taken aback every time. I could have sworn steam was going to start coming out of his collar—he looked so damned turned on by the whole thing. I hadn’t come across a guy who was so fun to flirt with in ages.
I definitely want to be the one to unleash on him.
A part of me started to wonder why Malcolm was sticking around for so much of my bullshit in the first place. A dare might have gotten him through the door, but whatever grace period that had gotten me here was nearly over. The fact that he was still sticking around meant I might actually be able to get somewhere with him.
A date and a job. That sounded like a pretty solid afternoon.
I finished my beer, and the bartender with the sexy eyes wandered back our way. Pulling myself up a little on the bar, I offered him my hand.
“Name’s Gunner,” I said.
He took it, gritting his teeth while he did. “Brick. You want another drink?”
I wasn’t sure if it was his sharp eyebrows or what, but it almost looked like Brick was glaring down at me. If a bigger guy at work started giving me that glare, I would have known to turn my eyes to the ground and avoid the trouble. With Malcolm across from me, though, I didn’t want to give an inch.
“Actually,” I said, puffing up my chest a little, “I’m looking for a job. You hiring?”
He cocked an eyebrow back my way. “What, you want to work here?”
“Yeah,” I said, “I want to bartend, if you’re hiring.”
Brick chuckled, shaking his head back and forth as though he didn’t believe it. “Trust me, kid,” he said, turning to walk back down the bar. “This isn’t the place for you.”
I opened my mouth to object, but he was already done with me. I felt a wave of anger and frustration, and all my muscles tensed up. The asshole didn’t even consider me or ask if I had any experience. He just dismissed me right out of hand, and that pissed me the fuck off.
Even worse than that, he did it right in front of the cutie I was trying to pick up.
What the hell.
I turned back to Malcolm, swallowing my anger in an attempt to keep it cool. I ran a hand through my hair, then cleared my throat one more time. “No big thing,” I said. “I got some other places in mind.”
I tried to read his expression and figure out how much face I had lost. Behind his glasses, it looked like he was trying to do the same, his eyes assessing me up and down. Knowing better than to stick around when I’d just been embarrassed, I jumped to my feet.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get out of this dump.”
Malcolm shook his head quickly. “I really have to get back to what I was doing,” he objected. “It’s my day off, but—”
Before he could finish his sentence, I linked my elbow with his. Malcolm made a little yelping noise, but when I started for the front door, he shuffled along to keep up, following me out onto the street.
“Wait, where are you going?” he finally asked, pausing in front of the bar.
I hadn’t really thought about it. All I knew was that I wanted Malcolm to keep hanging out with me, to keep looking at me the way he was looking at me. He might have had a busy
day of errands or whatever, but I just had a crappy, empty apartment waiting for me and a job I didn’t want to go to in the morning. Malcolm was a distraction from all of that—a very sexy distraction.
“To the park,” I said abruptly. “Just a few blocks away. What, you don’t want this date to end already, do you?”
“Date?”
“I bought you a drink, didn’t I? You telling me that’s not a date?”
He blushed a little and turned to look at the sidewalk. I was sure his life in the library didn’t give him many opportunities to run off with a guy like me. The more I stared at him, though, the more I needed him to come along.
I needed to see that look in his eyes, like he was scared to want me.
Like I was powerful.
Like I was a risk.
“Come on,” I said. “Or do I have to dare you again?”
Chapter Four
Malcolm
I didn’t why it felt so impossible to turn down a dare from Gunner. It wasn’t like we were children in a playground or anything. We were both grown adults, and grown adults didn’t dare each other to do things.
Except that when he did dare me, my cheeks got warm, and I felt kind of dizzy. He looked me straight in the eye, and he got that cocky grin on his face, and I wanted to say yes. I wanted to show him I wasn’t an uptight librarian, scared to take a risk, even though I actually was very scared by him.
I was scared by how arrogant he acted and how sexy his smile looked on his smug face. I was scared of what I would do with him and just as scared that he would turn away from me, moving on to some other random guy the second he figured out I was actually kind of a stick in the mud.
Damn it, I thought. I need an apartment, and I need to run my errands, but I don’t need this.