Pagan (The Henchmen MC 8)

Lovely.

Just great.

Well, at the very least I could do away with one small bit of the shame I was feeling.

I pulled slightly back, finding him waiting for me to look at him, those sexy, dark eyes of his still heavy-lidded in his own unattended to desire. I almost lost my nerve. Hell, I almost wanted to reach between us and give him a hint of what he gave me.

But I shook my head slightly and opened my mouth to finally, finally ask his name.

That was when we weren't alone anymore.

"Hey!" a male voice yelled from the mouth of the alley, making Niro's brow raise as he released me enough to turn, slipping an arm around my lower back, and facing the voice.

"Fuck off," Niro said, voice almost bored-sounding, but firm.

And had the man standing there not been so drunk that he was a little wobbly, he might have taken the threat in it.

"Naw, man. I've been looking for you everywhere."

There was a deep exhale from Niro as he released me, making me do a horrifying stumble without the support, something I was sure he didn't see as he was already moving toward the end of the alley.

As for me, well, I wasn't feeling overly comfortable being in a dead-end alley with two biker-type guys blocking me in, so I followed his path and slipped behind him to the side just as he was almost toe-to-toe with the drunk guy who, I realized now that we were closer, didn't have a biker cut on.

"And why's that?" Niro asked, voice stupidly sexy even to my orgasm-sated system.

"I heard you were the tough guy," the drunk guy slurred. His eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, his skin flushed with however much booze was in his system.

"Alright," Niro invited further explanation.

"Yeah, well, I'm here to show you that you're not going to have that title for much long..."

He lost the rest of his sentence because, in a move that was almost too fast for my eyes to catch, Niro half-turned back, curled a fist, cocked his arm, and slammed it into the drunk's face. But alcohol being a numbing thing, the drunk guy didn't back down like he maybe should have considering one punch knocked him into the wall and would have knocked him down otherwise. No, instead, he charged Niro.

And then all I saw was red.

Literally.

Red blood flying everywhere.

It was right about that moment as well that a crowd started to form, half and mostly-drunk men cheering on the utter bloodbath Niro was creating.

Me? I was perfectly fine with cinematic gore. I didn't so much as blanch when I saw movie blood. But, well, I got light-headed when I stubbed my toe once and tore my toenail off. I wasn't good with real life blood.

On top of that, I wasn't exactly comfortable with masculine violence. I mean, really, was there any woman who was? It always made your belly wobble, made you genuinely fear that that anger might shift and turn and find a new target. You.

Then the whipped cream and cherry placed above all of that was the fact that I just let that fearsome beast of a man finger fuck me in an alley.

Which needed to be a five-dollar wine-soaked memory in about one hour.

So I did the only smart, prudent, me-like thing- I freaking ran.

And I didn't look back.THREEKennedy- 6 days later"Earth to Kenny," the slightly effeminate voice called from behind me, making my entire body jerk, and the scissors I had been pulling out of cleaning solution clatter to the floor.

It was one of those days. The 'nothing can seem to go right' days. My phone charger died while my phone was on it the night before, so my alarm didn't go off, making me wake up almost forty minutes late. And of course it couldn't be one of those mornings when you woke up and your hair was doing that endearing bed-sexy thing. No, it was a rat's nest, so I had to take the time to wash and style it. Time which I obviously did not have given that I woke up late. But my job demanded I didn't show up looking like crap. Then I got to work, finding Benny waiting out front for me, looking apologetic already, and I knew it was a pile-on day.

Turned out that the back window had a brick through it from some asshole teen or something. Which, well, wasn't a huge deal once we cleaned up the glass and sealed it. There would be no new window for a long time since I couldn't afford it, but it was in the stock room, so it didn't matter.

It was just one thing on the long list of bad stuff happening that particular morning.

See, me, I owned a salon.

That was a truly generous word for my business.