Sawyer's lips tipped up then, but it wasn't a smile. I was pretty sure he wasn't the kind of man capable of smiling. It was more like a sneer. "He's a smart kid. Great with digging up leads. Fucking fantastic with computers. Can find shit that none of my other guys can. But he's a kid. He's soft. No training. He belongs in the guts of the office, not on the streets getting his fucking ass handed to him. He didn't like that. He split. Got his own game. And..." he waved his hand to Barrett's body in a way that would have seemed callous and unfeeling if there hadn't been pain in his eyes.
"And got his ass handed to him," I finished for him, feeling the guilt settle in low in my belly. While there was certainly a chance that Barrett was handling other cases while working on mine, cases that might have been dangerous, my instinct was telling me that whoever the guy was before, he belonged to Third Street. So if he belonged to Third Street, it was my fault that he got his ass handed to him. It was my fault, and Sawyer was sitting there looking like he felt the guilt. "You couldn't have prevented this. He's not a kid. He's a grown man."
"Do I look like the kind of man who can't prevent something if he really wanted to?"
Yeah, well. He had a point.
"Then why didn't you?"
"Does Barrett really seem like the kind of guy who likes being told what to do? I might have wanted to prevent this from happening, babe, but my brother would never forgive me chopping off his balls like that."
"Yo," a deep voice said, no... boomed, from behind me, making me jolt violently, my heart going into overdrive.
"Tig," Sawyer said to him but at me as he took his feet.
I sucked in a breath and followed suit, turning toward the voice and finding the largest man I'd ever seen in my life. Literally. He was six and a half feet easy with shoulders that were so wide that I was pretty sure he needed to turn sideways to fit through the doorway. He was solid muscle with a slight beer gut underneath his tight black exercise shirt. He was good looking in a giant kind of way, with strong masculine features, light brown eyes, and a deep mahogany color to his skin.
Tig and Sawyer were talking in hushed tones but my movement drew Tig's attention. His eyes did a slow inspection, but it was almost clinical, not sexual.
Sawyer waved a hand. "This is Barrett's not-fuck-buddy."
My arms folded over my chest, my eyes lowering. "That's rude."
"So is not introducing yourself, babe."
"You didn't introduce yourself either," I snapped. "I put two and two together."
"Sawyer Anderson," he said with an exaggerated bow, then waved a hand at Tig. "Tig you-don't-need-to-know-his-last-name. Happy?"
"Somehow I doubt you have the capability to make anyone happy," I said before I could stop myself. Tig's laugh was a sound that filled the small space, making it feel like it vibrated up into your skin from the walls and floors and reverberated through all your cells in your body. I felt my lips tip up in reaction to the sound. My eyes slid over toward Sawyer to find that he had really nice, straight, white teeth. I knew this because he was actually smiling.
"Like it when a kitten shows her claws," Sawyer said, his eyes warm. "You got a name?"
"Obviously."
"Gonna tell me or make me run your plates on that sweet Porsche?"
Of course he would know that was my car. I sighed. "Elsie Bay."
Tig, who had started across the room toward Barrett, froze mid-stride. "Of Edward Bay?"
"The one and only," I said and even I could hear the bitterness in my voice.
"You called my office," Sawyer said as Tig moved behind me toward Barrett. It almost sounded like an accusation.
"Yes. I was looking for a PI."
"And you picked Barrett over me? Babe, I've got ten years of experience on him. What the fuck were you thinking?"
"Arrogant much? If you must know, Barrett seemed really tech-savvy and less intimidating."
"Don't you think that maybe having a intimidating private investigator is the way to go? Especially if you got yourself wrapped up with that piece of shit that had you up against the wall when I first got here?" Yeah, well, hindsight was twenty-twenty and all that cliche stuff. Though I was still convinced I made the right choice seeing as Sawyer was not only intimidating, but a cocksure asshole. At my stubborn silence, Sawyer sighed, shaking his head like I was an idiot. "Well, like it or not, I'm tapping out Barrett and stepping in. Don't know what the fuck you got yourself involved in, but make damn sure I will find out. I'm gonna be visiting my brother in a hospital room for a good three days and I want to know why. So you can go ahead and try to hide in a gated community behind security guards, but mark my words, babe, I'll get in and I'll get my answers."
I was just opening my mouth to snap when Tig was suddenly beside me, Barrett in one of his arms like he weighed nothing. Which, well, was somewhat true. His other huge hand lifted and moved out toward my neck. I felt myself stiffen, unsure, but all he did was brush the hair away and run a finger down the column of my throat gently, way too gently for someone so massive. "Ice and ibuprofen," he said, dropped his hand, and moved with Barrett toward, then out, the door.
I watched him go before looking back at Sawyer whose piercing eyes were on me, looking right into my soul. Then he wasn't by the door, he was stalking across the room toward me in such a predatory way that I took a few steps back before Barrett's desk stopped me. He kept coming until the toes of his shoes touched mine, his face mere inches from mine.
"Keep your head down until I can figure your shit out. Get your nails done. Have twenty dollar cocktails with your girlfriends. Don't poke your fucking nose in any more of this. I don't have the time to be visiting your clueless ass in the hospital too."
With that, he was gone.
I sank down onto the desk for a second, my heart thumping against my ribcage so hard it was almost painful. My hand rose to the lowest point of my neck and settled there and I realized for the first time that there must have been a bruise there. That was how Tig knew I needed to ice and take pain medicine. Great. That was just great. I would need...
"Get your tight ass in your sweet fucking car and get home," Sawyer's voice barked at me from the doorway. I yelped and jumped to see him standing there, looking decidedly displeased.
"Jesus," I gasped, putting a hand over my heart.
"Now Elsie. I don't have all night to stand here and watch you get all hysterical. Do that shit at home."
"You're such an asshole," I snapped, getting off the desk, snagging my purse off the floor and looking around for my keys.
"Under the pile of shit in the corner."
My brows scrunched together as I moved across the room to where he indicated, not seeing a single key sticking out. But lo and behold, when I moved the papers, there they were. "What, you have x-ray vision too?" I asked, storming over toward the door and slamming him hard in the shoulder to get him out of my way so I could step outside.
"I don't want you involved in my case at all."
"Too fucking bad."
"Fine. Then you're fired and so is Barrett."
"Porsche. Now," he growled, advancing toward me again and damn if I didn't retreat. Again. "I'll be in contact like it or fucking not." When I didn't immediately move, he took another, more threatening, step forward. "You don't get in the fucking car, I'll throw your ass in it."
Somehow, I believed him.
"Fine," I snapped and turned to storm across the street. I turned back suddenly to find he was still standing there, watching me. "I hope he's alright," I said and watched as his hard face softened.
"He'll be fine," he said in a voice that was almost... reassuring.
Before I could rethink my idea that he was just a heartless, arrogant, dickhead, I ran across the street, threw myself into my car, and got home like I was told to.
Then I iced my neck and took some ibuprofen, also like I was told to.
And then I decided that Sawyer was right; I needed to keep my head down. I needed to get my nails done and sip o
verpriced drinks and let people who knew what they were doing handle things for me from now on.
I might have been stubborn and determined, but two run-ins with very dangerous guys and an innocent guy getting caught in the cross hairs, yeah, I wasn't stupid. I needed to step back.
So that was what I was planning to do.
SIX
Elsie
So the next night, I did what was expected of me. I came home from work; I ate a light meal of yogurt and almonds (pretty much the only food I kept in the house in case of a late night snack craving); I showered; I slipped into a skintight deep purple dress with lots of leg and a fair amount of cleavage; I got my hair extra dolled up; I made my eyes smoky and my lips tinted; after I sprayed on some liquid bandage, I slipped into sky-high silver heels.
I tried my hand at covering up the bruises on my neck. After a night of sleep, I woke up to a room temperature icepack on my neck and really vivid purple and blue bands and fingerprints on my throat. Problem was, I didn't have the kind of makeup one needed to cover bruises like I had. I had a little greenish concealer for when I was hormonal and got a breakthrough pimple or something that I needed to mask the redness of. But I didn't have the yellow tones I would need to cover what I had going on. Besides, if my teen experiences with trying to cover up hickeys was anything to go by, I knew makeup was rather useless on bruises anyway. So for work, I tied a funky scarf on and called it a day. It looked appropriate with work attire.
The silver and purple scarf I tied around my throat that night, yeah, well... it didn't exactly look right. Who wore a scarf with a club dress? No one. No one did anything that stupid. But what choice did I have? I couldn't cover it with makeup and I couldn't leave the house with strangulation bruises on my throat either. I thanked my lucky stars that it was a long scarf, tied it tight at the throat, then left the ends to dangle, one down the front, one down the back.
It would just have to do.
On a sigh, I walked through a mist of perfume, grabbed my clutch and cell, and headed out the door.
Chaz's wasn't the kind of place you expected to see a bunch of silver-spoon men and women. In all honesty, it looked like and usually was, a biker bar. That being said, it was about all Navesink Bank boasted that had a genuine bar atmosphere. There were upscale restaurants we could head to that had a bar area, but it just wasn't the same. When we all turned twenty-one, we started going to Chaz's just because we knew it would piss off our parents that we were slumming it. But, in the end, it was somewhere we genuinely liked to go.
The outside was nothing to write home about, just a brick building with a simple sign. The inside had been redone, all the woods stained dark, the walls painted a deep color, the back bar boasting a whole plethora of unique looking bottles. They added a cocktail menu that, while not twenty dollars a round, was still overpriced. I guess that was the pink tax seeing as the beer was cheaper than you'd find almost anywhere else.
The clientele was a unique mix of bikers, middle class men and women, college kids, and well, me and my friends.
The music was always of the top-forty variety on the weekends and there was plenty of room to dance or scope guys.
"What's with the scarf?" Bea, a friend who was really not a friend at all, asked as I walked up and air kissed two of the other girls who were actual friend-friends. Bea was thin to the point of concern, making me wonder since adolescence if her "vacations" she took every year or so were actually vacations at all or trips to eating disorder clinics. She had a crop of short dark hair that worked with her pixie-face and huge gray eyes. To put it mildly, bones sticking out aside, Bea was freaking gorgeous. She was gorgeous and rich and she really liked the things that came with being gorgeous and rich, like gorgeous and rich boyfriends that she constantly cheated on with 'downtown strange' as she called them. Meaning, guys she met at Chaz's, fucked in bathrooms or cars, and never thought of again.
She was a real peach, let me tell you.
"Oh, just something different I'm trying out. Hey Rome," I said, quickly trying to turn my attention away from her. "I didn't know you were coming."
I didn't know because for the past couple of days, I had been really hit or miss about answering his texts. It was something he was too cool of a guy to comment on, but the flash of hurt on his face said it hadn't gone unnoticed. I sidled into his side and rested my chin on his shoulder for a second.
"Sorry I suck. I've been crazy at work this week." My stomach twisted painfully at the lie and I tried hard to ignore it.
His arm went around my waist, hand settling into my hipbone and squeezing. "No worries. Got some stuff going on at work too."
"Maybe we can get together and dish. Not tomorrow though," I said, curling my lip and he laughed, dropping his arm as I moved a step away, somehow feeling less comfortable with being too touchy-feely with Roman after all the comments Paine had made about him and me. It had honestly never crossed my mind before that what I had been doing was inappropriate at all, because it was nothing out of character for me. I was touchy-feely with friends. But I had also never even stopped to consider that maybe Roman didn't see it the way I did.
"Your dad isn't that bad," Rome said, giving me a head shake.
"My company had a better last quarter than his did. The numbers just came in."
"Alcohol!" Rome called out. "Get this poor woman some alcohol!"
I threw my head back and laughed, the movement making my throat hurt, but it felt good to feel good for a minute. Things had been crazy for weeks. I had been so determined to get answers, to figure out the truth, that I had only really been half-living, half-involved in everything around me. Right then, standing in Chaz's in my ridiculous outfit, with three good friends and one not-good, but familiar friend, I felt present. I felt present and okay for a change.
When I reached out for the very blue-looking drink in a stem glass the waitress brought over, I felt my smile falter and fall slightly as I made perfect eye contact with a very unamused looking Paine. My hand closed around the stem of the glass and the waitress moved away, seemingly unconcerned that I hadn't thanked her. But then again, the bar was packed. The bar was packed and I somehow made immediate eye-contact with someone I had been trying not to think about for the past several days. I say trying because, well, there were times when he would pop up. Like... in bed at night. And... in the shower.
See, that one session the night he was in my house seemed to unlock a long-buried need for constant sexual satisfaction. And because that session involved me thinking about Paine, anytime I got the urge to spend some time with my vibrator, his image immediately popped into my head.
It was a problem.
It was especially a problem because the second our eyes locked, I felt a flush overtake my entire body. I felt my sex clench and my breasts get heavy. I felt every shift of the fabric of my dress on my suddenly hypersensitive skin. I felt the sense memory of his lips press into mine.
To put it simply, our eyes locked and I was turned on.
I was starting to feel like some kind of freaking nymphomaniac. It was unsettling.
But not quite as unsettling as the way Paine's eyes looked me over, lingering a minute on my legs which sent a thrill through my body. I liked my legs. They were a testament to the weekly hot yoga sessions and three-times weekly cardio sessions at the gym that kept them looking like they did. They lingered again at my chest, but more briefly, then at my scarf. It was then that his brows drew together like he was confused. Which was understandable. He had sisters and word was that he got around, so he knew women didn't wear freaking scarves with dresses, but whatever. For all he knew, it was the hot new thing in Milan. But by the time his eyes got back to my face, they looked tight and angry.
Confused, turned on, but confused, I looked quickly away.
"Else, you okay?" Rome asked, his breath warming my ear in a way that felt oddly too intimate.
"What?" I asked, jerking back slightly. "Oh, yeah. I'm fine. Sorry. Scatterbrained," I explaine
d, waving my free hand while bringing the one holding my drink up to my lips for a long sip.
"Gotta leave the office at the office," he advised. "You're gonna be here, be here, right? Have a couple drinks, unwind, forget about all that shit."
"You're right," I agreed, silently thanking the foresight to call a cab and not drive to the bar. I needed booze and I needed a lot of it if I was going to be in the same bar with Paine.
Twenty minutes and two and a half drinks later, I was laughing at something Rome said, loving the fact that once he got a couple drinks in him, he loosened up and actually had a rather risque sense of humor. My arm was up and out at my side with my almost empty drink, my head thrown back, my laugh loud and uninhibited, when suddenly my aloft wrist was tagged in a firm grip and I was being pulled.
"I'm borrowing her for a minute," Paine's tense voice informed Rome whose face fell as his eyes landed on me.
"Um, Paine, I'm here with my friends..." I started, wanting to wipe that look off Roman's face as I realized for the first time that Paine was right; he wasn't fully aware that he was not and would never be my boyfriend.
"Two minutes," he said, pulling my wrist harder as he pried the drink out of my hand and passed it off to a Bea who was too surprised to do anything but take it from him.
"Oh, um, I'll be right back," I told Rome, eyes begging him to understand as Paine turned and started walking, dragging me behind.
"Paine what is your proble..." I started to ask as he pulled me outside and walked down the small alley between the buildings. He pushed me up against the wall, hard enough to make me stiffen, wondering how safe I was with him after all.
Before I could open my mouth to try to either diffuse the situation or start yelling about his treatment of me, his hand was at the side of my neck, yanking at the knot I had tied there and whipping off the scarf so fast that I couldn't bring my hands up to stop him. "Jesus fuck," he growled, balling up the scarf in one hand as his other raised toward my neck. I felt myself flinch; I wasn't sure if it was just a knee-jerk response after being choked or because I genuinely felt fear right then, but I flinched. Hard. And Paine noticed. His eyes flew up to my face, the tightness around his eyes softening. "Babygirl, never. I'd never put my hands on you that way," he said and punctuated the statement as his hand closed the space and gently stroked up the side column of my neck. The whisper-soft touch sent a shiver through my body, seeming to end in a strong tightening at my sex. His hand flattened around the side and back of my neck and he leaned forward, resting his forehead against mine. "Who did this?"
Savages Series Boxed Set Page 52