He grinned back down at her until her hand appeared from under his cut and brushed over his short hair and down his beard before disappearing again. The second the brunette planted her cheek back on his chest, his eyes found Jet once more and his grin disintegrated.
With his gaze glued to Jet’s, he leaned over a little more, pressed his mouth to the woman’s ear and said something that made her hold onto him even tighter and her closed eyes open.
“You should be fightin’ me.”
“Maybe I don’t want to.”
“You shouldn’t want this.”
“But I do.”
A shiver slipped down her spine at that memory. Of what he said. Of how he said it. And the low timbre of his voice when he said it.
In actuality, Rook scared her.
Not because she was afraid of him hurting her, but because of how her body reacted to him. She feared the man could turn her to putty within his fingers.
A man who was a freaking ex-con.
Not just a convicted felon, but one with aggravated assault on a police officer not one, not two, but three times on his record.
She had read the incident report of what happened when he was fifteen, the first time he’d been charged with that particular offense. Though, not the first time he’d been arrested as a juvenile.
A felon at freaking fifteen.
When the slow song ended, Rook peeled the brunette off him, whispered more words into her ear and closely followed her to the end of the bar nearest the rear of Pete’s. His eyes were no longer on Jet but on the brunette’s ass as she led the way.
Jet downed the remainder of her drink and stared at the now empty floor space in front of the low stage since apparently no one wanted to dance to AC/DC’s Highway to Hell.
“Get you another?” came the deep, rumbly voice behind her. She twisted around to face the bar and the thirty-something, dark-haired, dark-bearded man who wore an equally dark knit beanie on his head, even as he worked.
The man was smoking hot.
If Dodge wasn’t a club member, she’d look at him in a different light. Quite possibly the light from the lamp on her nightstand as he laid in her bed. However, he belonged to the MC and also had a criminal record almost as extensive as Rook’s.
Some of his offenses were petty, some of them not so much.
Either way, he wasn’t for her.
Just like Rook wasn’t.
“You like working here?” she asked, wondering if, being a part of the club, he had no choice or if he did it because he enjoyed it.
“Love it,” he answered in a grumble.
Dodge knew who she was, even out of uniform, so she didn’t blame him for not being chatty with her the same as he would be with other customers.
But he was pretty to look at. “Why?”
“Lots of pussy.” He wiped the bar down in front of her with a rag even though she hadn’t left a mess. “And my place is right upstairs so it’s convenient.”
She could imagine he had no problem convincing any woman to follow him up those steps. None of them probably had to be three-sheets to the wind, either.
The man oozed bad boy. If he hadn’t been wearing his cut, with his rich voice, she would guess he belonged to a band. Just like Stella.
With their tattoos, their looks and the way they dressed, she could see the two of them hitting the road and stages across the country. But most likely the man with the curious dark brown eyes set on her couldn’t leave the state. At least for a while yet.
The truth was, even when someone was freed from prison, they really weren’t free. Dodge was most likely limited to whatever the conditions of his probation were.
Just like the man standing at the end of the bar, his eyes now turned her way again. Their way. He was watching the exchange between her and Dodge carefully.
Similar to how she had watched the exchange between Rook and his “dance partner.”
“Want another one or not?”
Jet ignored the impatience in the bar manager’s question. She didn’t care if her presence annoyed him. “Sure.”
With a single nod, Dodge swiped her empty glass from in front of her and went to make her another drink.
She dug into her front pocket of her jeans and pulled out a wrinkled twenty and attempted to smooth it out on her thigh. She didn’t need to look up to know who, in that time, had sidled up next to her. She did, anyhow, once she placed the twenty on the bar.
With a twist of her head, their eyes met and held.
She waited.
He waited.
And while they waited, her blood began to heat up and race through her veins.
“Why the fuck you here?”
That was enough to douse the fire roaring in her center and bring her back to reality. “Unfortunately, your greetings haven’t improved one bit, Rook. Hopefully, the one you used on the woman currently giving me the stink eye was a little more polished.”