Inked in Lies (The Fallen Men 5)

He was closer than he’d ever been before.

I held my breath as my man sat still beside me and the other closed the final gap between us to press his mouth over mine.

Everything faded.

The bar, the collection of bikers that had grown in number who might have been watching us, the music building to a climax, the man who put a ring on my finger sitting right beside me watching.

All of it.

And what remained was sheer, unbroken elation.

The feel of Nova’s silken lips, the top slightly fuller, the bottom plush as it slipped between mine and lightly sucked on my upper lip.

My mouth tingled almost painfully, a thousand bee stings.

Then he growled softly, so softly, against my mouth before fisting a hand in the hair at the nape of my neck so he could tug my head back and to the side.

His lips never left mine, pressing firmly, opening my mouth, tongue sweeping inside on a wave of heady, whiskey flavour and something lightly spiced, totally Nova.

I could smell him, that smoke and spice and leather.

I could feel him, his hard hands, one in my hair, one on my face, palming the entire side of it in one calloused palm, his knees turned into mine, thigh pressing deep into my groin so that the heat and pressure of him made me swoon.

It couldn’t have lasted long.

A minute, max.

Probably less because a minute is a full sixty seconds, and I thought, truly, a minute of those lips on mine, that five o’clock shadow scratching my skin, I would have died.

So surely less.

Suddenly, Nova was pulling away, Jake’s hand on his shoulder, shoving at him.

And then Nova was standing, hand locked on Jake’s, which was still on his shoulder, so that my fiancé was pulled with him, up and slightly over the table, dragged halfway across me.

Nova was breathing like a stuck bull, so heated I imagined steam curling out of his nose as his chest heaved and his eyes burned into Jake.

Something passed between them that made the air flare then go flat.

Nova suddenly dropped Jake’s hand and took a step out of the booth.

Jake immediately righted himself and hauled me onto his lap, both arms protectively wrapped around me.

“You want her,” Jake said, each word a whip lashed at Nova. “And now you can’t have her. You should have loved her while you had the chance.”

Shame burned through my post-kiss haze followed swiftly by anger. I ripped Jake’s arms off me and scuttled to the end of the booth, standing to face both of them.

“Go home,” I ordered shakily to Jake. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Lila––” he started, but I shook my head almost hysterically and told him the truth.

“You wanted this. You live with the consequences. And right now? I do not want to see you.”

I looked at Nova who was still breathing hard, still holding himself rigid like a bull about to chase down his matador.

“And you,” I said, quickly because I couldn’t look for more than a moment into the intensity of his expression. “I don’t want to see you either.”

Without waiting on either of them, I turned on my wedged heel and hurried into the back to the women’s bathroom where I instantly locked myself in a stall, put my head between my legs, and deep breathed.

Fuck, I thought.

“Carajo,” I swore out loud then shoved at the closed door and cursed again loudly.

“¿Estás bien?" a smooth, lyrical voice called to me from somewhere in the bathroom.

I froze, unused to the sound of Spanish in Entrance, B.C. There were a few speakers throughout the city, but not many. Most of the immigrants were French, Indian, Persian, or, the majority, Asian.

The female speaker repeated her question.

“Yes,” I replied softly. “I’m fine, thank you.”

A pause.

“You don’t sound fine,” she continued in Spanish. “Why don’t you come out of there and I’ll buy you a drink. You can unburden yourself on someone with much life experience.”

I hesitated, staring down at my purple painted toenails in my kickass shoes.

“I sense it’s boy trouble,” she added with a smoky laugh. “This I can most certainly help with. Let me buy you a drink. Us girls must stick together, hmm?”

I sighed heavily and heaved myself off the toilet, unlocking the stall to open it, revealing the woman on the other side.

She was stunning.

So gorgeous I actually sucked in a shocked breath at the sight of her deeply curved, lush, brown body tucked into a skin-tight, white dress with a zipper that went from the bottom of her cleavage all the way down to her calves.

She smiled at me with her full, painted red mouth parted to reveal perfectly capped, white teeth, and when she moved closer, it was on a cloud of rich perfume.

But her beauty wasn’t what held me arrested as she stopped a foot away from me and held out her heavily jeweled hand to shake mine.