My Bad (Bear Bottom Guardians MC 4)

I wasn’t sure if it was the beard or the jaw that got me—probably both. I’d always been a beard whore, but shit. This man’s beard? It was amazing. Trim and tight against that perfect jaw that probably made women clench just seeing those angles.

And oh, God. Those lips.

“Ma’am?”

I finally looked past the man’s mouth to his nose and felt a twinge of amusement when I saw the crookedness of it.

It’d been broken. Many times before, based on the angle.

A sigh fell from his lips, momentarily bringing my attention back to their perfectness, and I blinked before finally meeting the man’s eyes.

They were a steely gray/blue that made me think of Travis Fimmel’s eyes from the TV show, The Vikings. But only when he was actually on the TV show and dirty. His eyes—Travis’s, not the man standing in front of me—always seemed to go a wintery gray the dirtier he got.

I swallowed and said, “I’m sorry. What did you ask me?”

He didn’t smile. Didn’t even crack one.

Instead, he stared at me steadily and repeated. “Are you who I need to speak with if I’m here to be seen?”

I tried to shake my thoughts into some semblance of coherency, but I couldn’t quite make it work.

Why, you ask?

Because he’d lifted his arm and leaned one strong hand against the doorframe, and I saw his muscular, defined bicep slip free of the too-taut fabric of his t-shirt. A defined bicep that had a tattoo running along the inner, sensitive flesh from armpit to elbow.

A sword.

That was it. A broadsword—or at least the hilt of one.

It was beautiful work and exceptionally done. The scrollwork alone was mesmerizing.

And, realizing what I was looking at, he dropped his arm, causing me to momentarily get myself back under control.

“What symptoms are you exhibiting?” I finally forced myself to ask.

He didn’t look like he was having any problems.

In fact, other than the cast—that was clearly beaten up and in need of either another re-do or taking it off completely—I couldn’t see anything wrong.

“It’s something that I’m not exhibiting…or at least I wasn’t.” He paused. “I’m not really sure that I need you any longer.”

I blinked, unsure where to go with what he’d just told me.

“Ummm,” I hesitated. “The symptoms disappeared when you came inside? So they’re intermittent?”

The man snorted, drawing my attention to his Adam’s apple.

“It was a constant thing for about six weeks until I literally just walked in this door and saw you standing there.” He paused. “Do you want to go out on a date with me?”

I stared at him with confusion and a little bit of awe.

He looked like it was the easiest thing in the world, slipping that last part in there about me going out on a date with him.

“I’m sorry,” I told him. “I don’t date military men.”

His eyebrows rose. “How do you know I’m military?”

The expression on his face practically dared me to tell him why.

So I did.

“The way you walk. The way your eyes constantly survey your surroundings. The way that you clocked every single exit since you got in here. Your unwillingness to let me study your tattoo. Let me guess, SEAL?” I spouted.

His brows rose. “Not a SEAL. What makes you think I’m not just a cop?”

I snorted. “I’m sure, once you’re done doing whatever you’re doing in the military, that’ll be your next career move. But for now, your demeanor practically screams military. You’re rigid.”

I would know.

Not only was my father ex-military, but every single man that I called ‘uncle’ was ex-military as well. My twin sister was military. My cousins and friends were military. There was no way in hell that this man wasn’t military.

What surprised me the most was that he didn’t have any tattoos on him other than the sword. If you were military, you were proud to be military. There were usually tattoos that supported that claim.

This man, though? He had no Army tattoo on his forearm like my dad or my sister’s army tattoo on the inside of her wrist.

Just nothing but smooth, tanned skin.

My eyes studied the man’s face a little harder. His beard was much lighter—and curlier—than his hair. He had straight white teeth and slightly slanted eyes that hinted at some Asian ethnicity way back in his bloodline somewhere.

His eyes that were currently watching me take him in with a patient glance.

God, those eyes were fucking amazing.

They reminded me of the days in the middle of winter when we got our one and only winter storm. The sky was a mottled gray with a small hint of blue around the edges. And goddamn, but those eyelashes of his were so long that any woman would be envious of them.

His eyebrows rose, and I noticed that those, too, were slightly white as well.

My mouth tipped up at one corner.