Mixed with Trouble: A CASH BAR NOVEL

by Faiman, Hayley

  Balling my hands into fists at my side, I decide to let her do her thing, at least for now. Her eyes find mine and I watch as her lips slowly turn up into a small smile. She’s getting off on this, whatever it is.

  Shaking my head, I walk over to the bar and slowly lean back against the scratched up top, resting my elbows behind me.

  “Help you?” a man’s voice asks.

  “Molson.”

  A few moments later there is a Molson beer next to me, picking it up, I bring the bottle to my lips, my eyes never leaving Lea, not for a fucking second. Her gaze doesn’t leave mine either, and regardless of the purpling on her cheek, she’s a fucking beautiful sight to behold.

  She’s wild in a way that I never imagined she would be. Her arms slowly raise above her head, her tits pushing out as her back arches and a couple inches of her smooth stomach is exposed.

  She’s too young.

  I shouldn’t be looking at her the way that I am. My cock shouldn’t be hard beneath the denim of my jeans. Lea licks her lips as she slowly climbs down from the table once the song has ended.

  A couple of men try to stop her, but she ignores them, her eyes for me and me only. That right there, that makes my cock hard enough to pound goddamn nails. They want her. They can’t have her, because she’s mine.

  Then I recall her always having eyes for me, and me only. Anytime I was anywhere in a room, her gaze was always stuck to mine. I brushed it off as a kid with a puppy love crush. Now, I’m wondering if it was more. If she was always meant to be mine.

  Lea slides up next to me, leaning far over the bar. My gaze skitters across the room and every single man has his eyes glued to her ass. I smirk, switching my beer to my opposite hand and slowly slide my palm across her ass, gripping it tightly.

  A couple of the men have the good sense to avert their gaze once I make my claim. A few others don’t, their balls obviously bigger or maybe they’re just drunker than the others.

  A shot glass is set down in front of her and she quickly lifts it to her mouth, tipping her head back and allowing the liquid to slide down her throat before she orders another.

  “You have a problem following directions?” I ask, breaking the silence between us.

  She picks up another full shot glass, her gaze turning to me and I watch as she swallows that as well, slamming it down on the bar before her tongue peeks out to taste the leftover liquid on her lips.

  “I needed a drink,” she breathes.

  “You need to get your ass into that motel room and get some fucking sleep.”

  Lea shakes her head, her body leaning into me slightly, the smell of booze wafting from her breath. I shouldn’t like it, but mixed with her sweetness it’s a fucking aphrodisiac. She lifts her hand and places her palm on the center of my chest.

  “If I go to that room, I’m not sleeping,” she mutters.

  “You’re asking for fuckin’ trouble,” I grunt.

  Sinking her teeth into her bottom lip, Lea shakes her head. “Haven’t you figured it out yet, Baby?” she asks.

  I wait a beat for her to continue and when she does, I’m tempted to take her right here, right now, in the middle of this bar, no fucks given.

  “I am trouble.”

  LEA

  Baby’s eyes widen, then something else crosses his features. His face blanks and he shakes his head a couple of times before lifting the bottle of beer to his lips and draining its contents. I sway, taking a step back from him.

  His hand falls from my ass, the heat leaving and I find that I’m disappointed in the loss of his touch. Without much fanfare, he reaches out and wraps his fingers around my wrist. I attempt to tug my arm from his grasp, but he only tightens his grip.

  “Baby?” I breathe.

  He tilts his head to the side, dipping his chin slightly as his eyes roam over my face. “You look trashed.”

  “I am,” I admit.

  “Coffee?”

  “I want to dance some more, drink my worries away,” I slur.

  “Coffee.” He grins, his fingers squeezing me even tighter.

  I try not to get lost in the feel of his touch, as innocent as it is. It doesn’t work. I watch as he digs some money from his pocket, tossing it down on the bar, then he moves us out of the building. A few men call out, but he only has to give them a hard look for them to back away.

  Baby oozes danger. It’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever experienced. When I was younger, I knew that I loved him, that I yearned for him, but I never quite understood why.

  I thought it was because he was there for me when everything went to hell with Fish. Years later, the feeling has never faded, I wondered if it was something else. Maybe I’d only imagined it all.

  But now, seeing him, smelling him, being so close to him. I didn’t imagine anything. I was born to be his.

  Baby places his hand at the small of my back and guides me toward the diner at the end of the quiet street. It’s a greasy spoon, the neon light flashing, informing the world that they are open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

  Each step that we take, I fall a little deeper into the warmth that his hand gives me. He’s rough, rugged in a way that no other man could be, yet years ago I’d seen the softest sweetest side to him, it’s there, just below the surface.

  Once we’re inside of the diner, he guides me over to a table for two. The place is empty, the only noise being voices in the kitchen.

  This moment, it feels like a dream, no, it feels like a fantasy. Like the sweetest fantasy come to life. I shouldn’t be here, I shouldn’t have called him to rescue me, but he was who I wanted. He’s always been who I’ve wanted.

  “Why are you trashed?” he asks.

  I shrug. “I was going to have some fun. Tonight was too heavy.”

  Before he can respond to me, a waitress comes by and he orders two black coffees with a side of cream and sugar. Then he pauses before ordering me a stack of pancakes and a chocolate milkshake and some eggs for himself.

  It doesn’t escape me that he’s ordered what used to be my favorite breakfast. My heart skips a beat that he’s remembered, but I bite the inside of my cheek instead of saying something stupid about it.

  Once the waitress leaves, he levels me with his cool blue eyes.

  “Why were you at my apartment last week?” I chance asking, deciding to avoid the topic of Carter for the moment.

  “Went for a ride, needed to get away, somehow my bike went there. Don’t know why, don’t question her when she’s in a mood.”

  “Your bike has moods?” I ask, arching a brow, my lips twitching.

  He chuckles. “She’s female, ain’t she?”

  Shaking my head, I lift my hand to gather my dreads and tug them off of my neck as I inhale a deep breath. The room is spinning a little, my coffee can hurry up anytime now.

  “What’d you do to your hair?” he asks.

  Opening my eyes, I frown. “Why did you watch me?” I demand again.

  “Told you.”

  “Why didn’t you come up, tell me you were there?”

  He looks to the side, then slowly his eyes come back to me. “Thought about you a lot. Shit is unstable right now and I just wanted to see for myself that you were good.”

  “Unstable, like lockdown? Is my mom okay? The kids?” I rush.

  His brows knit together and he shakes his head. “It’s all good. At least right now. I don’t know, it’s been six years, babe. Why don’t you tell me the trouble you got yourself into this time?”

  “I’m not the fourteen-year-old that I once was,” I whisper.

  “Got eyes,” he responds. “Not the man I was six years ago either.” He shrugs.

  “We don’t know one another.”

  Reaching out, his index finger touches the hollow of my throat. “We don’t,” he agrees.

  “I’m not a good girl.”

  “Not a good man, you know that.” He tilts his head to the side, his eyes honing in on me, focused on me and his lips tip in
to a smirk. “Never thought you’d grow into a woman, Tiny. Never thought I’d see you that way. Knew you always had a schoolgirl crush, but fuck me, never thought in a million years my cock would twitch at the sight of you.”

  “And it does now?” I ask, arching a brow.

  “You know that it does.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  BABY

  The way her mouth makes a sweet little O shape after I confess my cock wants her, it’s the sweetest look I’ve ever seen in my life.

  Our food arrives and I smirk as Lea takes a healthy drink of her chocolate milkshake. Her eyes close and she makes a small moaning sound before she sits straight up and reaches for the syrup.

  I continue to keep my gaze focused on her pancakes, knowing exactly what she’s going to do next. She doesn’t disappoint. I watch as a river of syrup falls from the container and soaks into her pancakes, filling the plate until it’s almost spilling onto the tabletop.

  “Still a sugar addict, I see,” I murmur.

  Her eyes lift to mine and one of her shoulders lifts in a shrug. “Not everything about me is different,” she replies.

  “You’re going to need to tell me what happened, who the man was that I shot, and what kind of trouble you’re in. I’d prefer to know before we head back to the clubhouse in the morning,” I announce, lifting my fork and cutting into my scrambled eggs.

  Lea shoves a bite that’s too fucking big into her mouth and chews. I have something else I’d like to shove in that pretty little mouth of hers. As if she can read my mind, her cheeks tint pink and she swallows with a gulp.

  “Carter was a one-night stand that turned into a casual thing,” she begins to explain.

  Immediately my gut twists from her words, the way she talks about having a one-nighter, as if it’s something she did often. She doesn’t look at me as she continues with her story, and I try to stay calm instead of blowing the fuck up with every word that she says.

  “His dad wants something from the Devils. He said he only wanted me to set up a meet, but I know whatever he has planned it’s going to get ugly. I saw the evil in his eyes, Baby.”

  “What’s his father’s name?” I ask, unsure if I’ll even recognize it. We only have a couple of loose associates here in Alberta and they’re fairly recent, here just in case we needed them for Lea.

  She takes another drink from her milkshake, her eyes focused on mine, but I can tell she’s scared. Maybe it’s of me, maybe my reaction, or maybe she’s frightened of whoever this man is.

  “Phillippe Martel, Senior,” she stresses.

  I can’t hide my surprise. It’s impossible. How? Chardonnay has never mentioned her grandfather. Fuck, something is terribly wrong. Really fucking wrong.

  “How old was he?” I demand.

  Her eyes widen, something flashes across her face, but I ignore it. I need to know what I’m dealing with, what we’re dealing with.

  “Maybe seventies.” She shrugs.

  Shaking my head, my hand trembles as I reach for my phone. “Stay here, do not move,” I instruct.

  That man wasn’t Phillippe Martel, Senior. He either gave us that name to get our attention, or Chardonnay and her daddy aren’t being truthful. Something is definitely fucking up, and I want to know what it is.

  “You back yet?” Snake asks.

  “Can’t you simply say hello one of these times that I call you?” I ask.

  “Not at this hour,” he responds.

  Shaking my head, I look back at the diner seeing Lea through the window. Her eyes are on me, focused and sharp. She knows something has happened, something is up, but she has no fucking clue what and I’ll do what I can to keep her from finding out, at least about my involvement with the Martel family.

  “Lea met with Phillippe Martel, Senior. Apparently, she was dating his son, Carter. He’s who wanted a meet with you. Now, I’m totally fuckin’ lost because she says he was about seventy, and since the Phillippe Martel that I know is closer to fifty, I want to know what in the fuck is going on here,” I bark.

  I wait, patiently, through his beat of silence. “Shit,” he hisses. “Someone is lying.”

  “No fuckin’ shit,” I snort.

  “We know Phillippe Martel is a senator, so he is who he says he is, no doubt. The other man that Lea met and Chardonnay, that’s what we don’t know. What about the guy she was seeing, Carter?”

  “Casualty, cleaned up by your man in Alberta,” I explain.

  “You kill him?” he asks, sounding surprised.

  “Left a big fuckin’ welt on Lea’s face, shot him before he could ask who the fuck I was.”

  “Remember she’s Skinner’s kid,” he warns.

  Biting the inside of my cheek, I continue to watch Lea. She’s abandoned her sugary soaked pancakes and milkshake. Her eyes are focused on me and only me. There is a heat there, a yearning that I feel, too, straight down to my balls.

  Clearing my throat, I finally speak. “She ain’t though. Not really and she’s been mine longer than she’s been his,” I explain.

  “Baby,” he warns.

  “You’re my president, I respect you and the rest of my brothers but Tiny has always been mine. Since she was a fuckin’ kid, she was mine. Now she’s mine, except the rules have fuckin’ changed.”

  “Yeah?”

  He can’t see me nod, but I do all the same, my gaze still glued to the bitch watching me. The sexiest bitch I’ve ever laid eyes on. Not because she’s stacked, or because of anything else other than just plain mine and that shit makes her a downright fucking knockout in and of itself.

  “Yeah, Snake. She’s my Old Lady, she’ll be marked before we even make it back.”

  I don’t give him a chance to even breathe, let alone respond before I end the call and turn my phone off. He needs to focus on whoever the man in Alberta is, who Chardonnay is and whoever the fuck is a goddamn senator. He has a lot of shit on his plate and me?

  I have only one thing on my mind.

  Lea.

  LEA

  Baby walks in after he talks to, I assume, Snake on the phone. He doesn’t look at ease, in fact, he looks wound a tad tighter than he was before he walked out. I watch as he digs some bills out of his pocket and drops them on the table.

  “Time for bed, Tiny,” he murmurs.

  Sliding out of the booth, I take his outstretched hand and together, hand-in-hand, we walk out of the diner and toward the motel. A chill runs over my skin as the wind blows. Baby ignores my tremble and tugs me a little closer toward the motel.

  Once we’re inside, he lifts his chin toward the bed. “Towels and sheets. I had to pay for that shit separately.” He chuckles.

  “Want me to make the bed?” I ask.

  He looks from the sheets to me, then back down again. “I’m not sure how much help I’ll be, but I’ll try to help you.”

  With a nod, I walk over to the bed and begin to strip the ugly worn comforter off. I hold my breath, wondering exactly what I’ll find on the mattress, but shockingly enough, it appears unstained and fairly clean.

  Wordlessly we make the bed together, but I don’t bring the comforter back up, those things are disgusting, no way has it been laundered anytime this decade and who knows what’s on it.

  “I’m going to rinse off,” I say, grabbing a towel and heading toward the bathroom.

  Baby doesn’t respond to my announcement. Closing the door behind me, I don’t lock it. There’s no reason to, it’s only the two of us in this room. Starting the shower water, I wait for what seems like an eternity for the water to get lukewarm.

  Stepping inside, I’m thankful that there is a paper-wrapped bar of soap available. I’m surprised they don’t make you pay for that separately, too.

  Once I’m soaped down, washed off, and dried off, I wrap the small threadbare towel around my body and make my way back into the small room, my folded clothes in my hand.

  When I left my apartment, I didn’t expect to leave with only the clothes on my back. Bab
y looks up at me from his place leaning against the wall.

  He’s brought in a small bag that I assume holds a few changes of clothes and whatever toiletries he needs. I, on the other hand, have only the clothes on my back, and because I was an idiot, that doesn’t even include a bra.

  Without a word, he breezes past me, his small bag in hand and disappears into the bathroom. Dropping my clothes on the small bistro tabletop, I drape my damp towel across the back of the chair and hurry over to the bed.

  Slipping beneath the top sheet, I tug it up over my naked body, all the way to my chin. My buzz from earlier has completely worn off, my inhibitions nonexistent. This moment, naked in the same room as Baby, is a dream come true. Except now, I don’t know what to do.

  The bathroom door opens and I watch as Baby drops his stuff to the side of it before he walks over to the door. He slides the chain through to ensure it’s locked, then grabs the chair that doesn’t have my towel hanging on it, and shoves it beneath the knob.

  Once his security system is in place, I watch as he flips the light off. There is some more rustling around before he slides into the bed beside me. I hear something clatter against the nightstand and I assume it’s his phone.

  We lay there in silence, not a single word spoken. “You didn’t pack any clothes,” he announces.

  “I didn’t,” I confirm.

  “Good,” he grunts. “Think I want you naked for the foreseeable future.”

  “Baby,” I whisper.

  He turns, wrapping his arms around me before he pulls me across his body. I lay on top of him, my nakedness pressed against his entire naked body. I can’t see his eyes, but I can feel his breath and my whole body shivers.

  “Mitchell,” he says.

  “What?”

  “My name, it’s Mitchell. In bed, when we’re together, you call me Mitchell.”

  “Mitchell,” I test out.

  A smile appears on his lips, I can see his gleaming white teeth. “Like the way you say my name, gonna like it a hell of a lot more when you come saying it.”