First thing he did was come straight up to me and pull me into his arms, his face going against my neck. I held my arms out to the side and stared horrified at Jonah who was grinding his teeth so hard I worried he wouldn’t have any molars left. I patted Trey’s back lightly and tried to ease out of his hold. This caused him to cup my cheeks.
“Baby girl, I was freaked, man. Word on the street is there’s a killer after my babe. Why didn’t you come to me? I would have kept you safe.”
I tried to push him back while glancing over my shoulder at Jonah who was positively furious if the scowl on his face and his hands in fists were anything to go by.
“Um, you know, I uh…”
“Simone, baby girl.” He wrapped one hand around the back of my head, the other on my ass smashing our bodies together.
The crowd whooped and hollered at the display.
“That’s it,” I heard growled from where Jonah was sitting.
“Trey, back up. We broke up a week ago.”
He pressed us closer and took a bigger, rather vulgar grope of my ass. Not the cute little side cheek grab like Jonah often did but a full on, down the center grope like Jonah did to me this morning only I’d been naked and panting for it then. With Trey in that moment, not so much.
I tried to shove Trey off. “Trey, let go of me.” I wedged my hands against his chest but it didn’t matter because Jonah had already ripped Trey’s hold off my ass and twisted his wrist and arm so fast I spun out of the way as Trey went face down over the bar.
Jonah leaned over Trey and spoke through his teeth. The music pumped loudly around us and our audience had grown to twice the size.
“Keep your filthy fucking hands off my woman,” Jonah bellowed. “Simone is no longer on your radar, got it?” He twisted Trey’s arm up his back a little harder ferreting out another cry of pain from my ex.
I had to get the situation under control and fast or I’d end up jobless anyway.
I pressed my hand to Jonah’s back. “Honey, it’s fine. Trey didn’t know I’d entered into a new relationship nor does he know that my new boyfriend is a testy FBI agent.”
“FBI? What the fuck, Simone. Dude, I didn’t know!” he cried out.
Jonah let Trey up and pushed him down the long skinny row where we worked behind the bar. “Stay at your fucking end and do your job.”
“What are you? Like, her bodyguard?” Trey rubbed at his wrist and up his arm.
“Yeah, something like that. Back the fuck off.”
“Dude, I was with her like a week ago.”
I crossed my arms and stepped in front of Trey. “You were with Melinda a week ago from what I heard. And you were with Sarah the week before that. Trey, we haven’t been in a romantic relationship in at least a month regardless of the actual date you ended things. And let’s not forget, you ended it. In a text. What kind of douche canoe ends a relationship in a text?”
“Baby girl, come on. You know I’m hard to tie down, and I gave you a lot of my time…”
“He can give me some of his time,” a buxom brunette who twirled a strand of her hair around her finger spouted off.
Trey, already distracted by a pretty face and a pair of pushed-up tits lifted his chin, winked, and said, “Be right with you, babe.”
I rolled my eyes and turned to Jonah. “He literally means nothing to me.”
“Hey, that’s fucked. You loved me. All the ladies do.” He waggled his brows and grinned that sexy smile making at least three of the girls at the bar swoon.
Though there was a line of other women on my side that were sizing up Jonah as well.
“Like I said, he one hundred percent means absolutely nothing to me.”
Jonah hooked me around the waist, plastered me against his chest, and took my mouth in a heated, delicious kiss. I went straight into a Jonah kiss haze getting lost in the moment.
“Damn, if my man kissed me like that, I’d be on my knees every night.”
“Hell, I’d happily go to my knees right now if he didn’t seem so into the blonde,” I heard another say from behind my back.
Jonah ran his hands down my side and back up to cup my cheek. He pecked me once and then a second time before he whispered, “Get to work, baby. I’ll be here waiting.”
“Swoon-tastic!” A woman smacked the bar.
“Lucky bitch!” Another said laughing.
I turned and poured the mouthy chicks and myself a shot of Patron Silver. Then I pushed the shots toward them. “Cheers to good fucking men.”
“And men that can fuck good!” One of them blurted back and clinked my glass.
“I’ll definitely drink to that.” I grinned at Jonah and he shook his head as I shot the tequila back.
As I worked, he monitored the club and Trey, who kept giving me sidelong glances every so often. I ignored him, served drinks, flirted with my man, and made some serious cash in tips.
Right at last call I heard a familiar voice call out, “Yo’ bitch, can I get some service around here?”
I spun around as Jonah sat up straighter in his seat.
My gaze clapped onto her totally black ones and I held my breath. Her hair was a deep blue-black, cheeks sunken in, and her normally pink pouty lips dry and cracked.
I couldn’t help the tears that filled in my eyes as I ran around the bar, flung up the little door, and smashed into my sister.
“Tabby,” I cried against her extremely thin frame. On average she was always thin, never kept much weight on but this was in the territory of unhealthy emaciated thin.
I pulled my face out her neck and kept hold of her shoulders in order to be sure she didn’t go poof and disappear.
“Where have you been? My God, Tab, so much has happened.”
She looked left and right and twitched a little. I frowned and watched as she rubbed under her pert, reddened nose. Her face was pointed and pixie-like though right now it was as if her skin was hanging on her skeleton by sheer force of will.
“I heard about you getting in trouble. Wanted to see you alive for myself. But now that I have, Si, I gotta go.” She blinked several times in quick succession.
“You’ve got to go, no! What do you mean?” I cried, fisting my hands.
“Shit to do, girl. Gotta keep moving.”
“Tab, please. There’s a really bad guy out there right now. He wants to hurt me and maybe all of you. That’s why we were all trying to find you. You needed to be warned…”
She flinched, twitched, rubbed under her nose, and looked around. “Can’t be held back. Got shit to do. Just needed to check on my sister, ya know? Make sure you were still breathin’ and shit.”
“Tabby.” I cupped her cheeks. “Are you using again, honey?”
Her eyes narrowed and she flinched, pushing out of my hold. “So, what if I am? What do you care? It’s my life. I’ll do what I want. And I fucking want to be free.” She rubbed at her arms and then looked around. “Gotta go, girl. Just checking in.”
“Mom needs to see you.” I tried the big guns. Mama Kerri was everything to us. Our mother. The woman who took care of us when the world had forgotten we’d existed. Our light at the end of every dark tunnel.
She shook her head. “No, no, nut-uh. She doesn’t want me around. I’m not good for her. No good for any of you. Got shit to do.”