by Bethany-Kris
“Lambay, three fingers,” the man told the bartender.
Gabbie arched a brow, her mouth working before her brain did. “An Irish whiskey, huh?”
Before the bartender even replied to the man to confirm his order, his gaze turned on Gabbie. She swore in those few seconds, as his profile turned into the full view of his face, the club faded into the background.
It was just her and him.
Green eyes meeting brown.
His profile didn’t do him justice. At all. The curve of his lips when he smiled went a little deeper, showcasing dimples on each cheek. Thick, dark eyebrows lifted slightly, one arching a little higher than the other at her question. Perfect white teeth flashed in his grin, and those intense eyes of his drifted over her quickly, drinking in the dress that looked painted onto her body before his gaze snapped back up to her face.
He really was a handsome lad.
Sexy.
“I prefer it,” the man said, his tone like brown sugar. Dark, deep, and sinfully rich. “If there’s anything the Irish know, it’s their liquor.”
Gabbie flashed him a smile. “Tell me about it; personal knowledge. Isn’t it obvious?”
There was no hiding the lilt in her tone—the hint of an accent that, despite her efforts to try and subdue it, was still there. An Irish accent.
The man winked, unashamed. “Can’t tell at all.”
She laughed. “You’re a horrible liar.”
“I never really need to lie, though.”
Huh.
“Gabbie,” she said.
He put a hand out when she offered hers, and the second his fingers wrapped around hers, she swore the heat that sparked between the two was enough to make her draw in a sharp breath. She couldn’t tell for sure, though, because she was a little too focused on the way he was looking at her.
He liked what he saw.
So did she.
“Michel,” he replied easily.
Gabbie wasn’t innocent when it came to men, but she also wasn’t very forward. Growing up as the daughter of an Irish mob boss meant almost everyone knew who the feck she was in these parts. Just her last name was enough to send a man running away from her lest he find himself in hot water with her family or da.
This man, though?
He was still there. Either he didn’t know who she was, or he didn’t give a feck. She liked that far more than she should.
She really liked the way he was looking at her in that moment, too. Grinning in that way. Like he was the cat looking at a saucer of cream, and he was ready to lap up every single drop of it. She wasn’t going to lie and say she didn’t like it because she sure as hell did. He wasn’t too bad to look at, either.
“I was going to look for my cousins,” she said, “but I was thinking maybe another dance would be good.”
Michel make a noise under his breath, and glanced over his shoulder. “Shit, I … I’m supposed to be working right now.”
“You work at the club?”
And he didn’t know who she was?
Unlikely.
He shook his head, saying, “Not exactly.”
What did that mean?
“But you know what,” Michel said, grabbing the tumbler of whiskey when the bartender slid it over to him, “fuck work. I found something better.”
Gabbie drew her bottom lip between her teeth, asking, “Oh, did you?”
“Looking at her, yeah.”
He offered his hand, and she took it again. The same heat from earlier sparked through her hand, and up her arm. This time, though, it traveled through her body and straight down to the spot between her thighs. She couldn’t take her gaze off Michel, either, or the way he tipped that glass up to swallow the three fingers of whiskey in one go.
He didn’t flinch.
Didn’t make a sound.
She knew that liquor was harsh.
And damn, she liked that, too.
Michel wet his bottom lip, taking away the remaining whiskey with a single, sexy sweep of his tongue. She had the greatest urge to reach up, and see what his lips might feel like when they were pressed against her fingertips.
Or even better, against her mouth.
“A dance?” he asked.
Gabbie nodded. “You got it.”
She slipped off the stool at the bar to follow him, her fingers weaving in with his as she stayed close to his back. She really liked that view—the way his muscles moved under the silk, and the way the lights shadowed his features when he glanced back at her.
Then, the crowd swelled.
Someone hit Gabbie from the side, sending her to the floor. Michel swung around, his strong arms already reaching out to catch her, but he was just one second too late. She hit the floor alongside someone’s glass that shattered as soon as it hit the tile.
“Gabbie,” she heard Michel say.
Concern wrote heavily across his handsome features, and the first thing she wanted to do was apologize for ruining … well, whatever this was. Although, he simply looked like he was more worried about getting her up from the floor. He called her name again, but it sounded faint. It was too far away even though he was right above her.
She knew why, too.
The pain in her arm.
The blood dribbling to the floor.
Feck.
Blood always made her—
Everything went dark.
THREE
“Here, lad, a blanket.”
Michel took the item from the Irishman lingering near the doorway, and used it to act as a pillow. “Grazie, and you are …?”
The guy, whether it was the fact Michel thanked him in Italian, or asked his name, tipped his chin up a bit. Almost like he wasn’t going to reply to Michel’s question at all, but then he did, muttering, “Aidan Casey.”
Casey.
That name sounded familiar, but it wasn’t really bringing anything to the surface for Michel. It felt like something he should know—if this was New York, he’d already know who the fuck the guy was just because he had to if someone was important. He wasn’t as accustomed to those rules in Detroit.
“He’s me annoying cousin,” Gabbie mumbled.
Michel’s attention went back to where it was needed, and honestly, where he wanted it to be the most. Gabbie, just waking up from her spill, blinked up at Michel. With her head elevated on the blanket, she was now angled just enough to stare straight at him.
He smiled.
“Your what, again?” he asked.
Just to see …
“Me cousin, you wagon.”
Michel’s smirk deepened a bit—he’d been insulted before, but he couldn’t remember a time when he’d been insulted by a beautiful woman, who was also Irish, in a slang he didn’t understand for the life of him. “You know your accent gets a little deeper when you’re confused, right?”
Gabbie’s brow dipped in the sweetest way, and her green eyes lifted to meet his again. “Probably. I’m not thinking about it as much then.”
“Blood makes you pass out, huh?”
A small sigh passed her lips, and she made sure to avoid looking at anywhere but her arm. “Maybe it does when it’s my blood, yeah.”
“Maybe,” Michel joked. Over his shoulder, he said to the cousin in the doorway, “There’s a first aid kit somewhere in this place, I imagine. Could you find it for me?”
“Aye, mate.”
Gabbie blinked up at the ceiling and then turned her head a bit to stare sideways at the line of stalls with narrowed eyes. “You brought me into the bathroom?”
“Apparently, someone was getting the shit beat out of him in the office, if what it sounded like was to be trusted,” he replied, trying not to grin at how disgusted she looked at the idea of being on a bathroom floor. “And this was just cleaned, so it seemed better than leaving you out on the crowded floor for everyone to stare at you once you woke up.”
Her pixie-like, button nose scrunched up before her gaze came back to him. It kind of struck h
im how delicate her features were. From the soft line of her chin, to her cheekbones. The spattering of freckles on her nose and cheeks continued down her throat, and disappeared below the plunging neckline of her dress.
He had the strangest urge to find out if those freckles just … kept going everywhere. He bet that would be a game of Connect the Dots that would not soon be forgotten.
“I figured the bathroom was the right choice, all things considered.”
Gabbie frowned. “That’s fair.”
Yeah, he thought so.
He’d been focused on getting her on the dance floor, and then seeing if he could convince her to let him take her home. And then some drunk fool in the crowd had to go and fucking ruin it. Michel didn’t think now was the right time to continue that conquest with Gabbie, but he wasn’t going to pretend like she wasn’t checking him out right then, either.
“Have you gotten your fill of looking at me yet?” he asked.
Her gaze snapped away from his throat where he’d left the top two buttons of his silk shirt undone. “You’re awfully full of yourself, lad.”
Michel smirked. “And yet you like what you see, bella principessa.”
“Was that … Italian?”
“It was, now let me look at your arm.”
Gabbie immediately turned her head away when he lifted her arm. The cut wasn’t so bad—at least, not as bad as he thought out on the dance floor. It wasn’t going to need stitches, and he’d grabbed what looked like a clean rag from a passing server to press it against the wound and staunch the blood flow. Now, it was barely bleeding at all.
“Not too bad,” he said, “maybe a Steri-Strip or two.”
“A what?”
“A kind of band aid.”
“Oh,” Gabbie whispered. “So, no hospitals?”
Michel gave her a wink, replying, “No hospital.”
“Good. I don’t feel like listening to my da bitch tonight.”
He thought to ask her about her father—and why the man would bitch at her for an accident—but a man darkened the doorway of the bathroom. Passing a glance over his shoulder, he didn’t recognize the guy at all.
“What?” Michel asked sharply.
“You the doc? I was told to find you—my friend said I could cop from you tonight if you were still around. Somebody saw you come back this way with the girl.”
Fuck.
All over again, Michel was reminded of why he came to this damn club in the first place. Work. A week of dealing for the Vannozzo Capo, and already, Michel was learning this was not like his previous trips down this path. Apparently, Sal just gave his name to anyone who asked for it, and his phone number, too. Along with that goddamn nickname of doc, like it was a joke for them, but it annoyed him more than anything else.
Michel was more than capable of finding his own customers. Or, that’s how he always used to do it when he worked for his cousins and family back home. Here, they didn’t give a shit who he was dealing to as long as he was getting rid of product.
A phone call from someone who wanted to score some coke sent him to this club, and after he’d made the exchange with the customer who hinted he probably had more people to buy, he headed to the bar. Gabbie distracted him from going back to the customer to finish any more transactions.
“Well, doc?” the guy asked.
Michel grunted under his breath, not bothering to hide the fire in his gaze as it turned on the man again. At the same time, the Irishman from before—Gabbie’s cousin—came back to the doorway with another guy he didn’t recognize. “Not tonight.”
“Damn.”
“Bye,” Michel barked.
The guy headed out of the doorway, but the other two men standing there hadn’t missed the majority of the conversation. He felt the way their eyes turned on him like they had something to say, but with Gabbie on the floor, they kept their mouths shut.
He didn’t know what it mattered.
Gabbie, on the other hand, asked, “Doc, huh?”
“Something like that,” he muttered.
“Here’s the kit, doc.”
Michel gritted his teeth, both annoyed and ready to get the hell out of there. A heavy weight had come to sit in his stomach, and he wasn’t sure why. Maybe because he’d felt out of place in this club from the moment he stepped inside it—the large Irish flag hanging over the DJ booth had been enough to say this club might not be a safe place for him to deal. The guy getting the shit beat out of him in the office was another clue.
But really, Gabbie just heard someone ask him for drugs … if she understood any kind of street slang when it came to dealing—and who didn’t understand it? That, more than anything, bothered him. If she wasn’t running from him before, she sure as hell would be now.
In the doorway, the two men muttered back and forth in a language Michel couldn’t understand. Gabbie stared at them, her brow drawing inward like she was trying to distinguish what they were saying but they talked fast.
Then, they left.
“What was that about?” Michel asked, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.
He went to work opening the first aid kit as her attention came back to him. Even though he wasn’t looking at her, he could still feel the way she looked at him. It was visceral, really. Like her stare was pinning him in place, and he couldn’t escape from it. Strange, though, because a part of him didn’t want to escape it, either.
“Territory,” she said quietly, “They were talking about territory.”
Bad sign number three.
Michel was putting shit together, and it spelled bad things for him. Right then, though, he was more focused on making sure Gabbie was good before he had to make a quick, safe exit from this club.
If he was in Irish territory—there was a major Irish family in Detroit—then he was not safe here. At all. It was common knowledge in the criminal underworld that Irish and Italians did not get along. They were famous for their feuds that lasted years, and were some of the bloodiest ever seen on the streets. He did not want to be a casualty if that was the case here, too.
“Let me get this cleaned up,” Michel said, not wanting to get lost in his thoughts again.
Gabbie stayed quiet as he worked on fixing her arm as best that he could. He used the alcohol wipes to clean the wound, and felt a stab of pain in his chest when she hissed from the sting. He made quick work of using a couple of Steri-Strips to close the wound, and then a large band aid overtop just to be safe.
Running this thumbs along the outer edge of the band aid, a warmth spreading fast and furious from her skin to his. He swore it traveled right up his arm, and straight down into his gut. He didn’t miss the way goosebumps bloomed on her skin from his touch, either.
Damn.
“Do you feel that, too?” she asked softly.
Michel met her gaze. “Feel what?”
“The warmth.”
Why lie?
“I do,” he murmured.
Gabbie’s tongue peeked out, and wet her lips. He’d be a horrible fucking liar if he said he didn’t watch her tongue glide across her lips and wonder what she might look like doing that while she was on her knees with his cock in her hands.
Yeah, he was so fucked.
“Oh, there you are! Aidan came to find me.”
At the feminine voice in the doorway behind him, Michel was quick to help Gabbie up from the floor. Once she was on her feet, and seemed steady enough, he could have let her go. Instead, he kept one hand at her lower back, and another on her arm as they turned to face the red-headed woman in the doorway.
Gabbie pushed her mess of red curls out of her face, and passed a nod to Michel. “I had a doctor to help me.”
Michel chuckled. “That’s not entirely true.”
She just smiled, and winked, knowing she was teasing him. Then, her attention went back to the woman. “Sorry I ruined our night.”
“It’s fine.” The woman still stared at Michel, but quickly went back to Gabbie. “I have a c
ar ready if you’re—”
“I think I might have Michel here take me home, actually.”
His fingers tightened on her arm—the uninjured one.
“Oh,” the girl said, eyes widening.
Gabbie laughed. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Aine.”
Aine grinned slyly. “You got it.”
Michel waited until the girl was gone from the bathroom doorway, and the two of them were alone again before he spoke. “So, we’re just going to pretend like you didn’t hear a guy ask me to sell him drugs, then?”
Gabbie peered up at him—green eyes glittering, and sin curving her lips sexily. “My father is Charles Casey, so if you think that bothered me … you’re messing with the wrong lass, Michel.”
That name …
Charles Casey.
It rang a bell, too.
Just not a loud enough one to make him think this was a bad idea. Oh, he was pretty sure taking Gabbie home was going to get him in some kind of shit, but hey … if it was worth it, then that’s all that mattered to him.
He’d figure out the rest tomorrow.
“I guess we’ll take my car, if you don’t have one,” he said.
Gabbie arched a brow. “I guess so.”
• • •
Michel stayed a step behind Gabbie as she walked over the white pebble walkway leading to the stairs of a brick brownstone. She kept peeking over her shoulder every few seconds to make sure he was still there, and each time, he grinned back at her. There was something about the way her cheeks reddened—making her freckles stand out all the more—that did good things for him.
And his cock.
The thing was … Michel would always be a gentleman first. He didn’t know anything different, and he suspected his father and mother would be highly disappointed in him, otherwise. So, it didn’t matter what his cock thought about the way Gabbie’s ass looked being hugged by that short, shimmery dress. She could change her mind at any time about inviting him home with her, and that was all there was to it.
At the buttery brown door of the brownstone, Gabbie fiddled with her keys, and glanced up at the brass numbers attached to the brick.
“Nice place,” Michel noted. “Quiet.”
