Judge (Shady Valley Henchmen 1)

“What?” Detroit asked when I let out a humorless chuckle.

“That’s one of my old C.O.s,” I said, jerking my chin across the room to where he was bent over a table.

Detroit followed my gaze and nodded. “And that’s my brother he’s with,” he told me before wandering off to join the table Slash had taken over.

Detroit’s brother looked just like him, if maybe a couple of years younger and a little less bulky.

I imagine the blood was worse between them than I realized if they were going to be in the same room without so much as greeting each other.

With that, I joined the guys at the table. It wasn’t long before some of those college-aged girls left the college-aged boys to their own devices and joined us.

“Amir. Jasser Amir,” a voice said, making me turn to see my old prison guard walking past, giving me a raised brow when he looked at my company… and the cuts they were wearing with their one-percent badges displayed proudly on their chests. “Interesting company to keep,” he added, heading back to his table with Detroit’s brother.

“You good?” Slash asked, making me look over.

“What? Yeah. I think I just need air for a second,” I said. “Fucking music,” I added, wincing at the twangy shit that was playing.

Without saying anything else, I made my way out, leaning against the wall out front, and looking off at the sky for a moment.

What the fuck was wrong with me?

I should have been in there chatting up one of the chicks at the table. Or even the knockout at the snack station. At the very least, I could have just been enjoying a night out with my brothers.

Instead, there was this dark-ass mood hanging over me.

Almost as if sensing where my thoughts were about to go before they actually went there, a slamming noise caught my attention, making me lean to look down the small alley between the pool hall and the bar.

And there she was.

Like I’d fucking conjured her up.

She’d just finished tossing something up into the dumpster, so her gaze was away from me for a bit, giving me a minute to get a good eye-full of her.

Her uniform was the same as the night I’d taken her out of the bar. Leggings, t-shirt, sneakers.

This time, though, her hair was left to cascade down her back in a million shades of yellow and gold.

My fingers itched to reach out, to let the silky strands slide through my fingers.

Letting out a deep breath, she moved away from the dumpster, but didn’t immediately go back in the employee door.

No she turned her head up and looked at the sky above her, a movement that made her shirt strain across her chest, and I became almost painfully aware of the pebbles of her hardened nipples pressing against the material.

My cock hardened almost immediately at the memory of touching the velvet-smooth skin of her breasts, of working those nipples into tighter peaks with my fingers, of tracing them with my tongue, and sucking on them with my lips.

As if she heard my thoughts, her head whipped over in my direction.

I was able to see the surprise and something akin to, I don’t know, upsetment, before she banked it down and replaced it with a blank stare.

“Can I help you with something?” she asked, chin jerking up like a queen talking down to a peasant.

Huh.

That was… unexpected.

I mean, not that I knew what I expected. But if I expected anything, I guess it would be that she would be happy to see me.

Which, after what happened, was probably pretty fucking delusional.

“Dell…” I said, taking a step forward.

Which made her take one back.

“Don’t… don’t talk to me like you know me,” she said, voice a little high-pitched, like she didn’t have enough air to get the words out.

“Baby,” I said, taking another step into the alley even as her brothers’ warnings to stay away from her sounded off in my ears. “I think I know you better than any other man ever has, don’t you?”

Again, there was a flash of something before it was gone, trapped under a look of complete and utter fucking disinterest.

I’m not gonna lie. That was a gut-punch to my pride.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she insisted, tone bored, dismissive.

The fuck was this?

She was just going to pretend we didn’t fuck?

Who the hell did that?

“Baby,” I tried again, taking another couple steps forward.

But before I could say anything else, the door was flying open.

“Dell, I’m drowning in here. What are you… oh,” the other bartender said, trailing off when she looked at me.

“I’m coming right now,” Dell said, slipping in past her coworker who moved out instead, doing a quick once-over of me.

“They got you pretty good, huh?”

“It’s not quite a dick-skin hat,” I said, getting a big smile out of her, “but it wasn’t pleasant.”