Inked in Lies (The Fallen Men 5)

I loved it.

I’d spent enough time there over the years before working there with the biker babes––Harleigh Rose, her sister-in-law, Cressida, Hannah, Maja, Cleo, and Loulou––that it had actually helped morph me into the woman I was now.

Hippie and rock.

Natural and studied.

Mellow and electric.

So the fact that my fiancé hated the place didn’t just rattle me.

It irritated the fuck out of me.

Which was why we were there on date night when we really, really shouldn’t have been because Jake was always such a grump at the bar.

I was trying one last attempt at acclimatizing him.

“Stop pouting,” I teased him, sliding a hand down the crease of his inner thigh, wishing, not for the first time, that he’d try wearing a goddamn pair of jeans for once instead of his requisite slacks. “I’m not wearing anything under my skirt, and if you’re a good boy and actually crack a smile, I might just let you fuck me in the bathroom later on.”

Jake pursed his lips as he shook his head at me, but there was a small twinkle in his brown eyes that belayed his reluctant amusement. “Are you trying to get me killed? There are four men by my count in here right now that would probably have my head if they caught wind of me fucking you in the bathroom.”

I bit my lower lip as I swept the bar quickly then shrugged saucily. “I count six.” I winked at him. “You do have a point. The Fallen can be a teeny bit overprotective, but a little danger is kind of sexy, don’t you think?”

“Lila…” he said in that way he had of drawing my name out as if he wanted to give me the time to take back what I’d said. “Sometimes, you really are too much.”

Too much.

That was Jake’s constant refrain when we differed on something.

I was too flirty with customers.

Too sexy in my rockabilly get-ups.

Too loud when I laughed.

Too aggressive when I initiated sex.

Too, too, too much.

I rolled my eyes at him. “It’s a good thing you’re gorgeous, you know? Or I wouldn’t put up with the stick up your butt.”

Again, his lips twitched.

It was little gestures like that that gave me hope for my fiancé. Clearly, he liked my over-the-top self enough to want to marry me, but there was something in him that wouldn’t quite accept that level of life and living for himself.

He wanted to be close to the fire but not feel the burn.

I was hoping with time and patience, one day, we could burn together.

“I’m a lucky man,” he said sincerely, those wide, brown eyes loving as they hooked on mine.

I hummed when he punctuated his statement with a kiss, fisting my hand in the back of his short hair, trying to hold him to me for more.

He broke off with a laugh and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “Lila, you’re getting lipstick all over me.”

I grinned. “Good, lets the ladies know you’re mine right off so I don’t have to break their fingers if they flirt with you.”

He chuckled, and it made me feel like a hundred bucks to earn that from him.

Maybe, as Harleigh Rose said, Jake wasn’t perfect for me.

But not all of us could find our soulmates like she had.

After years apart, decades of loving each other in one way or another, my girl H.R. was finally with the love of her life, Lionel Danner, a now retired cop who handled himself like an old school gentleman and looked like a young Clint Eastwood.

She was a lucky bitch.

But Jake was good to me.

He was good for me.

He anchored my wild heart to the and reminded me to be reasonable.

Practical.

Molly and Diogo liked him.

Hudson thought he was boring, but honestly, Huds thought everyone was boring if they had a nine-to-five job or wore a suit.

Milo liked him well enough, because they both worked in finance, but Milo wasn’t the kind of guy to take umbrage with anyone.

Ares, the boy The Fallen had adopted last Christmas who lived with Zeus and Lou most of the time, King and Cress sometimes, and the Booths the rest, he didn’t say anything about Jake at all. Then again, he didn’t have to. I’ve never met anyone with more eloquent eyes than my Hispanic pseudo brother.

And those large, dark eyes were frames of gentle contempt whenever Jake was brought up. Boy was only ten, but he was being raised by a roundtable of knights in leather on chariots of chrome defined by their own very set and anti-societal set of morals.

Oliver…well, Oliver had once threatened to punch Jake because he overheard him asking me to stop with the tattoos. He was a hothead sometimes, my Oliver, but he meant well.

And the entire Booth family knew how much my tattoos meant to me.