Most of us had committed felonies.
Though, those felonies had been committed for a good reason.
In Sin’s and my case, if you counted saving a girl a good reason.
Sin had literally broken a guy’s spine because that guy, a fellow drill sergeant, had decided to take it upon himself to show a female recruit a little extra special attention. Extra special attention that was not wanted that had almost killed her.
Sin had gone off like a bottle rocket, very similar to what I had done.
“What makes you think that it’s someone I know?” I grumbled.
“Because the moment that she walked through the door, you looked like your heart was just ripped out of your chest and shoved up your ass,” Sin joked.
I shot him a withering glare.
One that didn’t affect him in the least.
He looked at me with a grin on his face, then turned his eyes back to the bar.
“She’s pretty,” he murmured softly.
She was.
In fact, I hadn’t realized that the damn woman could physically get any more attractive.
But I was wrong.
She’d gotten some hips and ass on her since I’d last seen her.
I’m not saying that she didn’t look pretty as hell before, but now? Now she was all woman, and that was making my dick harder than hell.
I needed to get laid.
But the problem was, even now, all these years later, I didn’t just get hard for any woman.
I got hard for her.
Always for her since the damn day I saw her.
Even sitting in that courtroom, getting sentenced to years in prison, I’d been staring at her with a hard-on.
Who the hell has a hard-on when they are getting sentenced to twenty fucking years?
Patrick Moore Wheat, that’s fucking who.
“She’s fuckin’ gorgeous,” I grumbled. “You need your eyes checked if you think she’s merely pretty. That’s the face and the body that got me into trouble all those years ago. Remember, she was fuckin’ seventeen when I saw her the first time.”
“I was thirty-six when I first saw the girl that’s twisting my dick into a knot. And she was fuckin’ eighteen. So, I’m not doing much better than you. At least you were closer to her age,” Sin grumbled.
He had a point.
“You only spent a few years in prison, though,” I pointed out. “I had twelve.”
He hummed under his breath. “How old is she now?”
“Twelve plus seventeen is…” I waited, hoping he’d fill in the blank.
He flipped me off.
“Twenty-nine in case you can’t add up that high,” I joked.
He sighed. “I think I’ll go have a drink.”
I tensed as he moved away, walking straight to the bar where my girl was sitting.
My girl.
Son of a bitch.
She wasn’t my anything.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I had to stop thinking about her.
“Hi, who are you?”
Why had I heard Sin’s question all the way the fuck over where I was standing?
That’s when I looked over at the end of the bar to see the music in the process of changing songs.
Shit.
That was why.
“I’m drinking alone,” came Swayze’s reply. “Go away.”
My lips twitched.
I would’ve laughed, but I didn’t want her attention on me.
The music started up, and whatever Sin said in reply was lost.
I moved toward the bar where the old man, the one that usually worked the door taking the cover charge, had taken my place.
“Thanks, Kenny,” I said as I rounded the end of the bar.
Kenny looked up. “It was good being back. But shit, my feet hurt, and I was only back here long enough to give you a dinner break. I much rather my space by the door.”
I slapped him on the back as I retook my spot behind the bar where I’d made it my home away from home since I’d gotten out and walked to the man holding up two fingers for another shot.
After I poured it for him and he said thank you, I moved to the middle of the bar and listened to Sin’s conversation with Swayze.
“Your eyes are very different,” Sin drawled. “What’s that called?”
She didn’t answer.
But I knew.
Heterochromia. I’d looked it up a couple of years ago in the prison library.
“What’s that tattoo on your shoulder say? I can’t read it all,” Sin continued as if she hadn’t ignored his last question.
That had me looking over to see the tattoo.
I’ve loved you at your darkest. Romans 5:8
I looked away, jaw clenching.
What the fuck was that supposed to mean?
I picked up a glass and started to polish it.
“Can you get me another beer?” I heard Swayze say.
And good goddamn.
Her voice was even huskier than it used to be.
A voice that sexy didn’t look like it should come out of a woman that appeared so youthful. So unaffected by life.
But Jesus, did the woman work it.
I looked over at her to see that she was staring down at her hands. She hadn’t even looked up yet to see who she was talking to.
I poured her another beer from the tap, guessing on what she’d ordered based on the color of what was left in her glass, and then set it down in front of her.
“Thanks,” she mumbled.
“Welcome.”
Her head snapped up so fast that it would’ve been comical had I not been so pissed off that she was in my goddamn bar.
The one where I now worked when I wasn’t needed with Lynn and the others.
She narrowed her eyes at me and took a defiant gulp of her beer.
“What are you doing here?” she barked.
Sin snorted loudly from beside me.
“He owns the bar now, darlin’,” Sin interrupted our stare off.
Her inhale was deep.
“What?” she asked.
“He. Owns. The. Bar,” Sin repeated it slower.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “I fucking heard you the first time. When the hell did that happen? This is my favorite bar. I think I would’ve noticed a change in ownership.”
Would she have?
Obviously not.
“When was the last time you were here?” Sin asked the question I wanted to ask.
“Umm.” She hesitated. “About two months or so.”
“So obviously you probably didn’t notice the change in ownership seeing as he’s owned it now for about three weeks.” Sin shrugged.
I had.
Originally, I had been working at a strip club closer to Kilgore, but I had my eye on this bar. When Lynn had offered to allow me to buy it, I had.
Though, it’d wiped my savings out.
Luckily, it came with a loft over the bar that would give me a place to stay. And I still got income from Lynn as well. I wasn’t totally broke as I probably would have been had Lynn not helped.
“Shit,” she grumbled as she finished off her beer, not stopping until it was all the way gone. “Shit, shit, shit.”
She fished out a twenty-dollar bill from her front pocket and tossed it on the counter.
When she stood, she practically pushed Sin and snatched the blazer off the barstool that Sin had been sitting on.
“Asshole,” she mumbled as she started walking out.
“Can you watch the bar for a few minutes?” I asked.
Sin grinned. “Sure.”
I followed the stomping woman outside.
“You shouldn’t drive after downing two beers bigger than your head,” I said softly.
She whirled around, the darkness preventing me from seeing the ire in her eyes.
“I’m not driving, thank you very much,” she grumbled. “I’m going just across the road. I have a loft over my office.�
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Office.
That was right. I’d heard from the rumor mill that she’d taken over her stepfather’s business and moved it.
I just hadn’t realized that she’d moved it to Souls Chapel.
What were the fuckin’ odds?
I turned woodenly to see where she was pointing and felt my stomach sink.
There would be no avoiding her now.
How the fuck…
“I didn’t know that you’d bought this bar. Or I wouldn’t have come over here,” she mumbled as she started to walk across the street.
I caught her before she could even take two steps.
My hand closed over her wrist, and my fingers curled around the fine bones there.
Just as she whirled around, anger in her eyes, a pickup truck sped past.
The force of his passing blew her hair into my face.
She smoothed it back down, and when I looked into her eyes, it was to see them wide and curious.
“Sorry,” she said softly. “I’ll look this time.”
The fact that she was so blasé about nearly getting run over by a fuckin’ truck pissed me way the hell off.
“You need to pay better attention,” I grumbled, letting her wrist go as if she’d burned me.
She rubbed her wrist, as if I’d harmed her, and I immediately felt bad.
She smiled and didn’t say another word, this time looking left and right three times before she hurried across the street.
When she disappeared around the side of the building, I told myself not to move.
But this part of town, downtown Souls Chapel, was pretty seedy. Only the low-income and shittier businesses frequented this side of town.
So, against my better judgment, I walked across the street and into the dark alley just as I saw her pushing through a metal door just past a large dumpster.
She looked over her shoulder as she was about to pass over the threshold and saw me standing there.
She froze, staring at me with trepidation.
“Thank you for taking care of my sister.”
“It was the least I could do.”
With that parting comment, she went inside and slammed the door. The lock clicked moments later, leaving me standing in the dark, looking at the closed door.
The real question wasn’t why the hell I was still standing there, but why the hell I wanted her to come back outside.
Son of a bitch.
I was so screwed.
The woman had already sent me to prison for twelve years.
I really should stay away from her.
But like the last time, all she needed to do was look at me with those eyes and I was a goner.
CHAPTER 7
What’s next? Santa can’t say ‘ho, ho, ho’ because it’ll hurt your mom’s feelings?
-Swayze to a prosecutor
SWAYZE
Pulling my hair up into a high ponytail, I walked outside, groaning when the wave of hot, humid heat hit me straight in the face.
Today was my ‘long run.’ I was running seven miles today, working my way up to thirteen and a half marathon that was set in October, and the very last thing I felt like doing was going out for a run.
However, this was something that I’d wanted to train to do since I was a young teen.
I would accomplish it, even if it killed me.
Even if I had to run on two hours of sleep just to make sure I got my mileage in that week.
Pulling out my phone, I searched for the podcast I wanted to listen to—a podcast about nutrition for runners and maximizing training plans—then walked farther out of the alley.
After stretching my calves on the brick building of my office, I walked to the edge of the alley and faced the opposite direction of town.
This way would take me to the lake, and not very many people traveled it this early in the morning.
That meant that I wouldn’t almost get run over by a car, or be attacked by any stray dogs.
After I was done stretching my calves, I pushed play on my phone, put my earphones in, and then stowed my phone in the carrier around my waist.
Once I was ready, I cued up my watch and started out.
My podcast started out, and I was laughing about the woman’s reaction to peanut butter on a race day when I felt more than heard someone coming up behind me.
I swallowed hard and turned to look.
Nothing was there.
Turning my head back around, I was just turning the corner of the road that would head to the lake when I all but ran into something solid.
Something solid in the middle of the street, in the dark, where no people should be.
My pulse skyrocketed.
Before I could fall to the ground due to the collision, strong arms encircled my hips, and pulled me in tight.
“Shit!” I cried out, my hands going to sweaty, muscular, bare shoulders.
“You okay?”
And even over the podcast in my ears, I could hear that dark, deep and menacing voice.
All my terror fled as if it never were there to begin with.
“You scared the hell out of me,” I grumbled.
“Why are you running in the dark?” he growled, pulling out one of my earbuds so that I could hear him better.
I knew he hadn’t done it for any other reason other than that.
“I’m running in the dark because if I don’t, then I don’t have time to run at all,” I explained, wondering if I should be pushing myself away from his sweaty chest.
Normal people would, right?
But hells bells.
I liked the way it felt being in his arms.
“I don’t care,” he growled. “You should really be doing this a safer way.”
I did push away then.
Or tried to. He didn’t let me go.
“I could’ve been anybody,” he said, squeezing me into him a little tighter. “It’s not safe out here for you to just be running without paying attention. What if I were a robber? A man wanting to rape you?”
I had my small twenty-two pistol in my hand and was pressing the butt of it up against his throat when I said, “I would’ve shot you. Right in the fucking eye.”
He stilled, feeling the cool metal of the handle, and even though it was too dark to see him clearly, I knew that his eyes were wide.
“Is that real?” he rasped.
I felt a distinct hardening of a certain part of his anatomy and knew that he was just as turned on now as I was.
“Yes,” I answered. “Why would I carry a fake gun?”
He let me go, then reached for my hand and placed the earbud that he’d taken out of my ear into my palm.
“Where did you stow it?” he asked curiously.
I put it back in the small pocket that I carried it in when I ran and then told him where it was. “Near my right hip. There’s a pocket that most people use for a key. I use it for my gun.”
His hand went up, and all of a sudden it was on my hip, right where I’d just told him that I kept my gun.
It wasn’t ‘intimate’ by any means, but damned if it didn’t turn me on anyway.
Having his hand on me at all was enough to have me panting in excitement.
Or maybe I was panting due to exertion. Whatever the reason for my panting—and for now I was blaming it on exertion—I needed to get out of here.
Having his hands on my body didn’t take away from the fact that he didn’t like me.
And being in his presence made me want him. A lot.
Hell, it felt just like it did that first day that I’d seen him. We’d been electric then, and the feeling sure hadn’t changed with space and time.
If anything, it seemed like it had built up.
“You know how to use that?” he asked curiously.
In answer, I turned around and jogged away, shoving my AirPods in as I went.
I looked down at my watch and cursed. Not only had his sudden appearance startled me so much that I hadn’t
stopped my watch, but now I only had less than an hour to finish this run, get my shower, and get to work in time to meet a client.
I ran harder than I’d ever run before, and still the man caught up to me and looked barely winded as he held pace at my side.
We didn’t say a single thing after that.
Not one single word or look passed between us.
The only ‘almost’ touch was when I stopped at mile three and a half and turned around.
He hadn’t been expecting me to stop, so when I stopped and turned, he ran past me.
He had to put on the brakes and haul his ass around in the opposite direction and catch up to me. Which he did quite easily.
I ignored him as I moved, feeling the hollow ache in my hip start like it always did.
The ache intensified to a dull throb, and then to a sharp stab by the time I arrived back at my office/place.
I came to a sudden halt right outside the front doors of my office and leaned over, my eyes closing thanks to the pain.
The scrape of a shoe on concrete had me turning to look at the man that’d held a steady pace with me the entire way.
He was already walking across the street toward the bar.
Except, when I expected him to go inside, he walked to a bike that was right outside the alley that led to the back of the bar, swung his leg over it, and settled his fine ass onto the chrome and black beast.
He started it up with a roar, and even over my podcast I could hear the throaty rumble of it.
Had he always ridden a motorcycle?
As he pulled out onto the street a few seconds later, I looked away and then limped back up to my apartment.
Once there, I took a shower, got dressed, dried my hair, and then applied a small amount of makeup before slipping into my favorite jeans.
Even though I was a lawyer, and was probably expected to wear nice clothes, I didn’t bother.
There was no reason to.
I’d learned the lesson of pretending to be someone who I was not a long time ago.
Now, I dressed to impress myself. Which was why I slipped on the faded jeans that felt comfortable as hell, a yellow t-shirt that said ‘thank you for leaving me alone’ and my favorite pair of tennis shoes.
Though not as comfortable as sweatpants would be right now, I was relaxed in them nonetheless.
Limping my way back down the stairs and into the alley, I walked around the back of the building to the back entrance where I produced my keys and slipped inside the building.
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