“I didn’t mean to sound like my mother.” She laughed. “I get more than anyone that you gotta do what you gotta do with the time we are given on this earth. You feel you have to do something, even if I think it’s a bad idea, I’m gonna support you and more, I’m gonna urge you to go for it.”
I hated talking about the cancer while I was Loulou but a tidal wave of sorrow and fear swallowed me whole as I looked into my friend’s empathetic eyes. She didn’t know much about my life outside the club, other than the fact that I had cancer, but she knew what it was like to wonder how long you’d live, to wonder if you were strong enough to survive.
She knew what it was like to be dying.
I blinked past the hot well of tears. “Don’t make me ruin my makeup,” I whispered hoarsely.
She ran her thumb over mine and squeezed. “I’ll just say this, okay? You can love an outlaw and he can even love you back, but that doesn’t make him any less an outlaw. You get me?”
“I got you,” I told her, jumping up over the counter slightly to press a kiss to her cheek. “Now, get back there and get dressed for your next number or Maja will be at you.”
Ruby shuddered in mock horror as she slid off her stool and strut away, drawing a dozen eyes to her ass as she did.
I laughed softly at the familiar spectacle before turning my eyes back to Zeus. Quentin was still talking as one of the bikers led him away, his face twisted with impatient passion, but Zeus seemed unmoved, one arm dangling over the booth clutching a nearly empty glass of Canadian whiskey.
I knew he drank Forty Creek Double Reserve because Felicity, one of the bartenders, had bragged to me about it the other day. How he only ever asked for her to bring him his drink. How he made sure to tip her big and how, the other day, he’d told her she had a damn fine smile.
A damn fine fucking smile.
Hearing it made me want to take a knife to her smile and turn her into a female version of the Joker. How would Zeus find her smile then?
I shook my head free of the jealousy and decided to take action. I’d given him three weeks of faux distance, but I wasn’t going down without a fight. Not now, not when Ruby had just reminded me that I might not have much time left.
And what time I did have left, I wanted to spend with him.
In fact, if I was being honest with myself, I would have traded the next fifty years for one good one spent with him.
I reached on my tiptoes for the top-shelf liquor and poured him a glass, neat.
“That for Garro?” Felicity asked me, sliding up to the bar with an empty tray. “His brother Nova is joining him with a Johnny Walker Blue. I was just coming to refresh them.”
“I got it covered,” I told her, quickly pouring out a measure of the whiskey and then sliding both drinks onto my tray.
My red-headed co-worker laughed at me condescendingly. “Honey, trust me, you wouldn’t know how to handle a man like that.”
I smiled at her with all my teeth as I walked around the bar and slid past her. “Let’s just see, shall we?”
He clocked me before he looked over at me. I could tell by the way his great big body tensed subtly, a rolling of immense muscles that brought to mind a predator about to strike. My belly quivered at the thought.
“Gentlemen,” I said in a practiced purr.
I say practiced because I had. I was a good student and a competitive dancer. There was no way I was going to rebel and not do it properly, so I’d watched about fifty classic outlaw movies, read a ton of books, and watched Scarlett Johansson’s interviews on YouTube until I had the throaty roll of my vocal cords down pat.
Even as focused as I was on Zeus, I couldn’t help but stare at his Fallen brother. He was without any doubt the prettiest man I had ever seen in my life. As I slid his drink across the lacquered table, I took note of the wicked way his pink lips curled up at the corners, of the roguish hank of wavy hair that fell across his forehead. When my gaze reached his, I blinked, half-blinded by the beauty of his thick-lashed brown eyes.
“A refill for you, handsome,” I said breathily. Not because I meant to but because I was still recovering.
He beamed at me and it truly didn’t seem possible that a man so pretty could exist in real life. “Thanks, gorgeous.”
I recovered my wits when I felt the change in atmosphere emanating from the man to my right. The feel of his fury against my skin excited me.
I kept hold of Zeus’s glass because despite his obvious displeasure, he still wasn’t looking at me.
“Canadian whiskey,” I murmured, dangling his refill from my fingers, swirling it around under my nose. “Something my grandpa might drink.”
I was watching carefully so I saw the heat waves of irritation roll off him.
Nova laughed. “The girl’s got a point.”
I laughed with him, leaning one hand on the table so that my cleavage was closer to them both, but it was Nova who took an appreciative look.
The air solidified so suddenly, I felt paralyzed in the concrete mass of it.
Zeus looked up at me slowly, the shadows sliding from his face in a loving caress. His eyes glinted like the edge of a well-honed blade, silver and filled with deadly intent as he spoke in a sinuous rumble that was deceptively soft. “Take a sip of it, little girl. Let’s see how well you swallow the fire down that delicate throat, how you like the burn of it in your belly. I think I might like the sighta ya with tears in your eyes as you try to take what I give you.”
My belly heated for a different reason as I felt those eyes like a hand at my throat, squeezing just right.
I squeezed my thighs together and noticed the way his eyes darted down to watch me before he could help himself. His clenched jaw and fisted hands gave me the confidence to laugh lightly and tip the glass at him before bringing it to my lips.
Watching him, I traced my tongue over the rim of the rocks glass. His slashing brows drew down over his eyes, shadowing them but not enough to conceal the gleaming hunger there.
Confidence warmed my insides. I parted my lips, opened my throat and let the burning liquid race down my gullet. It was probably one of the most seductive moments of my life, a powerful man caught up in my snare…
And I utterly ruined it by planting a hand in my belly as I bent over to cough furiously as the liquor tore a strip off my throat and seared my gut. Through my hacking, I heard Nova’s bright laughter and Zeus’s lazy, dark chuckle.
When I recovered, my eyes were filled with tears and my skin was redder than spilled blood. I was more mortified than I’d ever been in my life and floundering with how to handle it with any sort of class when Zeus’s soft words penetrated my haze.
“Teary-eyed n’ pink-cheeked with the effort to take it all for me. ‘Preciate the effort, kid.”
I blinked at him because he’d managed to both soothe my ragged pride and gently tell me off at the same time.
“I’ll get you another,” I rasped.
His eyes were heavy on me as he nodded. “You do that.”
I turned on my heel before I could embarrass myself further, both angry and thrilled with the incident. Zeus had flirted with me. Sure, he’d been a prick about it. But the intent was there, the hunger in his eyes had little to do with missing dinner and everything to do with eating me for dessert.
I was distracted as I made the rounds of my section so I didn’t react quickly enough when Quentin Kade pulled me into his lap.