Inked in Lies (The Fallen Men 5)

He tipped his head to the side and stroked his short beard with tattooed fingers. “You got an old heart and a rebel kinda mind. I’m thinkin’ you didn’t like school anyways, didn’t feel good there with those people who smiled so fake and fuckin’ nice like the world isn’t a bad place and they aren’t bad people.” He leaned closer, forearms on the table, big, craggy face so close to mine I could see the smile lines in his cheeks and the creases beside his hard eyes. “Feel like you understand shit but no one understands you.”

My knee set to bouncin’ beneath the table, a jittery nervous habit I’d never been able to kick. I wasn’t used to this. Lila’d once told me in her sometimes-creepy childhood wisdom, that I was like an iceberg. So many people saw the surface 10% and assumed that’s all I had to offer when the real me was mostly submerged in murky depths.

I hadn’t realized until that moment how horribly vulnerable it felt for a practical stranger to sense my vastness.

He smiled thinly, a memory in his eyes, stale pain stamped on his features. “Not judgin’ ya, kid. Just sayin’, there’s no real beauty without some serious depth, yeah? It’s admirable as fuck what you’re doin’. Respect the hell outta it.”

My heart was tappin’ out a staccato beat in my chest, too fast, too outta tune with my natural rhythms. So I sucked in a quick sip of beer to steady it and plastered my signature grin between my cheeks. “Hell, man, I must be pretty as shit to get you to call me beautiful.”

Zeus tipped his long-haired head back to the ceiling and shook with belly deep laughter before rightin’ himself and grinnin’ outright at me. For such a physically terrifyin’ guy, he was kinder than most men I’d ever known. “Gotta say, man, you gotta be the cockiest motherfucker I ever met, and that’s goddamn sayin’ somethin’.”

“It is,” a man named Bat agreed with a smile that was more plastic than flesh. He had the broken and glued together look of a man who’d been through hell yet hadn’t quite come back. “But he’s right. Betcha think you could pull anyone of the women in here, eh?”

I slouched back in my chair, legs splayed, hand dangerously close to my junk. One’a the sexy college girls, a redhead, wet her glossed lips with the tip of her pink tongue.

“Yeah, man,” I drawled, mouth curled to the left in a smirk meant for her. “I damn well can.”

Zeus, Bat, and the two other guys, a huge-ass blond named Axe-Man, and a quiet, First Nations guy called Kodiak, burst into loud laughter, drawin’ the eyes of all the girls at the table who basically let out a collective swoon.

Like takin’ candy from a baby.

I sat up in my chair and leaned my forearms on the sticky tabletop. “Fifty bucks.”

“To get the girl’s number?” Kodiak grumbled.

I cocked an eyebrow. “Hey now, let’s not make this too easy. Fifty bucks I’m hookin’ up with her behind the bar in the next twenty minutes.”

Axe-Man grunted. “Kid, you do that, I’ll give ya a c-note.”

I grinned at them wolfishly as I kicked my chair back. “Done.”

“Hey, Casanova,” Zeus called out as I started to turn. “You lose, you clean the garage free’a charge for a month.”

I jerked my chin up in agreement and swaggered over to the table of girls. The redhead, blushed nearly as red as her hair, and I wondered if she’d flush the same straight down to her toes when I put my tongue on her.

I stopped beside the booth, leanin’ against the edge of it with a small, wicked grin as I stared down at the women. The redhead was right beside me, so she had to crank around awkwardly in her seat to look at me.

I winked at her when she made the effort. “I’m bored.”

She blinked, surprised by my approach. “Oh?”

One of her friends, a gorgeous Indian woman, spoke up with flirty sass. “Oh yeah, what are we supposed to do about it?”

The grin spread wider between my cheeks. “I’m so glad you asked, gorgeous. See, I was sittin’ over there with my buddies shootin’ the shit, and all I could hear was the sweet sound of the laughter comin’ from this table. So,” I knocked my knuckles against the tabletop, “maybe you invite me to sit down, and I’ll have a reason to laugh too.”

“Wow,” the sweet, auburn haired girl breathed under the rush of laughter from the rest.

“Smooth,” the other girl approved. “I’m Daksha, why don’t you take a seat…?”

“Nova,” I offered with that smile women seemed to like, a wolf poorly disguised as a sheep. “Nova Booth.”

* * *

* * *

Her tongue was sweet in my mouth, but Katie’s, the redhead, felt even better against my neck, licking at my beating pulse. Daksha moaned as I palmed her tit through the opening in her blouse, and Katie giggled softly as I pulled her tight with an arm around her waist, hand to her ass on my other side. They were so soft, curves pressed to my edges, fragrant like desserts at a picnic in the park. There was so much to love about women, the headiness of their vulnerability when they gifted it, the darkness of their desires when they unleashed them.