Neither of us said anything for a moment, and then he reached out and grabbed my hand. “Let’s go.”
Macayla
It took me a second to yank my voice past my heart that had lodged itself in my throat because Vic didn’t just grab my hand. His fingers entwined with mine, and it was intimate—sending goose bumps skipping across my skin.
“Go? Go where?” I managed to get the strangled words out after stomping my heart back into my chest.
Vic tugged, drawing me closer into him as he headed through the crowd.
“Vic.” I tried to jerk free, but his grip only tightened. “Let me go, Neanderthal, before my knee meets your balls,” I hissed, trying to keep my voice low so the patrons around us didn’t hear me.
He glanced over his shoulder, his brows lifting. “We’ve been there already. You know the outcome.”
I did. It was me pressed up against him with a gun to my head. But this was different. We were in a bar. A jam-packed bar with the Chief of Police watching us intently from twenty feet away.
Vic dragged me through the crowd, using his body as a bulldozer to clear the path for me.
A couple people touched my arm and said something as I passed, but I couldn’t hear what, so I just smiled.
Where the hell did Addie go? I was scanning the bar, looking for her when my eyes landed on Darius. He was on his cell, standing under the “Exit” sign and staring right at me. Oh God, was he calling Callum? Darius had to know who Vic was. Was he calling in reinforcements? But Darius wouldn’t do anything with the Chief of Police here, right?
Why was I worried about Vic? I should be worried about my own self-preservation.
Vic stopped at the far end of the bar and threw up the flap. He pulled me behind the counter before closing it again.
“Babes? You good?” Brin called, moving down the length of the bar toward us, her brows knitted as her eyes shifted to Vic, then to his hand in mine. “Gate,” she said.
He nodded and placed his hand on the swinging door that led into the back of the bar.
“Mac?” Brin repeated.
Vic stopped.
I so didn’t want a scene, and I also didn’t want to lose my new gig, so I smiled at her. “Landlords. I’ll just be a minute.”
Brin looked at Vic again, and then I was being pulled into the back as Vic completely ignored the “Staff Only” sign. Not that a “Staff Only” sign would stop Vic. A “Danger. Keep Out. Explosives” sign wouldn’t stop him.
The door swung closed behind us, muting the sounds of the bar. I yanked my hand from his, although it was more likely he had simply let me go, and leaned my guitar against the wall.
I crossed my arms over my chest, and despite wanting to stand my ground, I found myself backing away.
“Don’t move,” he ordered.
I continued to back away. “You can’t just drag me wherever you want, whenever you want.” I tried to keep my voice steady, but it came out a raspy, quivering, pitchy mess. Because I was unhinged. Unsettled. And yeah, heated. Whether it was still from the exhilaration of being onstage, or that Vic did something to me, I didn’t know. Okay, I did know. Vic did something to me.
He stalked toward me, the sound of his combat boots on the floor matching the drum of my heart.
“Are you scared of me?” he asked, closing the distance between us.
Yes. “Of course not.” But I continued to back away from him until my spine hit the iron gates that led into the wine cellar.
“The throbbing in your throat says otherwise.”
It was throbbing and jumping all over the place, and yeah, maybe part of it was that he scared me, but it was a different kind of scared. It was me being scared of my reaction to him. Of the sweet pulsing between my legs when he was watching me onstage.
He stopped inches away from me. “Breathe, Rainbird.”
Shit. I sucked in a lungful of air, barely processing what he’d called me.