Just before she opened her mouth to say more, our drinks were placed down in front of us.
“I’m not sure you’re ready for me,” she confessed the moment her ‘Papa’ walked away again.
I took a drink of my beer, nearly groaning at the taste.
Shit, that was good.
I hadn’t had an ice-cold beer in so damn long.
“Good?” she asked after I took my second sip.
“The best,” I admitted. “Haven’t had a beer in a really long damn time.”
“Or a girl,” Swayze teased.
My lips twitched. “Or a girl.”
“Do you have a girlfriend?” Swayze wondered.
My eyes were caught on her breasts as she swung around to face me on her barstool, her legs going to the rungs on the barstool between us before she leaned forward, giving me an even better view.
My eyes automatically went to the space between her breasts.
Then to her nipples, which were hard.
“No girlfriend,” I admitted. “Don’t have time for one. Nor would I have come onto you if I did.”
“Why don’t you have one?” she asked, moving her hands to rest on her knees.
I licked my lips. “I have a sister that needs special care. When I’m not doing something, I’m at home with her.”
“Special needs?” she asked.
I nodded. “My sister is thirteen and has Down syndrome. My mother is… non-existent.”
Swayze wrinkled her nose. “Your mother doesn’t help? With her own child?”
I snorted before taking another sip of my beer. “My mother doesn’t help herself. How could she help her own child?”
Swayze’s eyes were curious as she took a drink.
“And that makes you responsible?” she asked.
“It makes me what it makes me,” I shrugged. “Enough about me, though. Tell me about you.”
She wrinkled her nose again.
Damn, it was cute when she did that.
“I’m here meeting my father on my mother’s request. Apparently, he has a ‘birthday’ present for me. I would rather pluck my eyes out with a thousand pinches of my own fingernails. But my mother urged me to be nice, so here I am. Guess who didn’t show.”
I leaned slightly to the side.
“If you hadn’t showed, I wouldn’t have met you,” I told her. “Now where would that have left me?”
• • •
SWAYZE
“If you hadn’t showed, I wouldn’t have met you,” he rumbled softly. “Now where would that have left me?”
The man next to me had no clue just how powerful he was with that voice of his.
Not only was he sexy as hell, but his voice was to die for.
He was tall. Much taller than my five feet two inches. If I had to put a number on it, I’d say he was at least six foot three.
He had a sharp, angular jaw that made me want to run my fingers along it, and ice-blue eyes just like my half of one.
He was tan, as if he’d been spending quite a bit of time in the sun, and he had smile lines around his eyes and mouth.
I couldn’t quite tell what color his hair was, though.
Brown at least, but hell, maybe black. It was buzzed so short that there was no telling at this point.
“What color is your hair?” I blurted, unable to stop myself.
His eyes sparkled with amusement as I deftly sidestepped his earlier comment.
“The lady at the driver’s license place put brown,” he said.
“But…” I knew there was more.
“But technically it’s black. It lightens up a bit in the summer, giving it a dark, coffee brown appearance. But I would consider it black.”
I eyed the shortened stubble.
“Now that you’re out, are you going to let it grow?” I asked curiously.
He shrugged. “Probably not. Shaving it means that I don’t have to pay some chick thirty dollars to give me a five-dollar haircut.”
My lips twitched.
“You sound like you would know,” I teased.
“I would,” he grunted. “I wasn’t allowed to shave it when I was younger. I had to keep it neat and trimmed. Couldn’t have a beard. Couldn’t look ‘scruffy’ at all.” He ran his big hand over the length of his jaw, his fingers scraping along the stubble there. “My mom hated it when I got scruffy. When I didn’t look ‘clean’ and ‘acceptable.’ But she also wouldn’t pay for my haircuts. Meaning I had to pay someone to do it. And I just don’t see how a five-minute haircut can cost thirty bucks. When I was younger, thirty bucks broke me.”
“Your mother sounds like a tool,” I grumbled.
“She’s somethin’,” he groused.
“Maybe we can hook your mom up with my dad and get rid of them both?” I joked.
His eyes gleamed. “My mother would have to get her ass out of the house, off the couch, or possibly out of bed to do that. Unless you just want to send him over to her, allow him to break in, and maybe they can meet that way. Just give me a heads up first, though. I’ll need to get Auggie out of the house first.”
“Auggie is your sister?” I asked.
He nodded. “My one and only.”
My lips curled into a smile.
He sounded like he loved his sister a lot.
I wondered what it would be like to have a brother or a sister.
My mother and father had me and immediately divorced.
When my mother met my stepfather, Errick Marrin, they’d unfortunately not been able to have any more children.
Which sucked, because if anyone deserved children, it was my stepfather.
When I’d called him ‘dad’ the first time, he’d almost teared up.
“She’s my sister,” the man at my side confirmed, finishing off the last dregs of his beer. “Damn, I’m out.”
I raised my hand at my grandfather. “Papa! Can we have another one?”
My grandfather raised his hand in confirmation.
“He anything like your dad?” Trick asked curiously.
“Nope,” I said. “Nothing. He’s got everything where my dad has nothing. If you would meet my father, you’d understand. It’s like nothing was passed down from father to son. Where my grandfather has smarts, my dad has unsmarts.”
“I don’t think unsmarts is a word,” he teased.
I shrugged. “It needs to be one. And my father’s picture needs to be in the dictionary right underneath of it.”
“He sounds special.” Trick grinned as he stood. “I’ll be back. Have to use the restroom. Watch my beer for me, will ya?”
I gave him a thumbs up and watched him walk toward the back hallway.
When my grandfather came back over with Trick’s beer and my Coca-Cola, he gave me a sharp look.
“Don’t get to thinking about what I think you’re thinking about,” he said before taking off.
My grandfather had no freakin’ clue what I was thinking about. If he did, he’d send me home right now.
Because after watching that hot man walk away? I wanted nothing more than to jump his bones.
See, I wasn’t the typical girl.
I’d lost my virginity at fifteen. It was kind of hard to live a sheltered life when your mother was working her ass off and your father was a fuck-up. It was only when my mother met my stepfather that things started to settle down for me.
I suddenly had structure at home. My mom was there to reinforce that I came in the door at my curfew. Or hell, my stepfather getting up in the morning early to make sure that I actually went to school.
Needless to say, I wasn’t the type of person that was a prude.
I’d had sex before. I knew how good it could be.
And I had a feeling that Trick would be able to do it better than most.
When Trick finally came back from the bathroom, I was practically dancing in my seat as an urgency to press my lips against his took me over.
Seriously, the man had kissable lips.
“Ahh, thanks for watching it for me,” Trick said as he came back. He picked up his beer and leaned against the bar top, next to the seat between us and his. “I swear, this beer is so good.”
My lips twitched.
We spent the next two hours talking about anything and everything.
And my father didn’t show up throughout it all.
So when Trick announced he needed another bathroom break, I didn’t question the urge to follow him.
Swiping the peanut shells off of the bar top and onto the floor, I waved at my grandfather. “I’m done waiting. I’ll see you tomorrow night for my birthday dinner?”
He winked and gave me a thumbs up, but never moved from his spot mid-bar where a woman was talking to him about her woes.
He didn’t notice, either, when instead of going out the front, I went down the length of the back hallways toward the bathrooms.
Having used it on my own twenty minutes before, I waited outside of the men’s bathroom for Trick to come out.
When he did, he grinned when he saw me.
“What’s up?” he asked, rubbing his hands dry on his jeans.
“I…” I couldn’t stop myself then.
Instead of telling him what I wanted, I decided fuck it, and showed him instead.
I launched myself at him, pressing my lips down onto his.
He caught me by placing his hands on my ass and pulled me in even closer.
The hot length of his erection didn’t go unnoticed as he ground himself into me.
I pulled back with a gasp, my hands on his face, and stared at him.
“What the hell was that?” he rasped, moving deeper into the darkness of the hallway, pressing me against the nearest wall.
“That” I ran my hands up his chest, “was three hours of frustration.”
He laughed, and then he was kissing me again.
I’d just gotten into it, really loving the tingling feeling he was giving me, when I heard it.
“Where the fuck is my daughter?”
The bellowed words that could be heard over the bar’s music had me stiffening.
Catching on to my obvious tension, Trick let me slide to my feet.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
I swallowed hard as disappointment rolled through me.
I wouldn’t ever be seeing Trick again, and I really liked him.
Son of a bitch.
“That’s my dad,” I admitted. “The asshole shouting out at the bar.”
He paused at my words. “He sounds like a real peach.”
We’d just separated even more, me taking a step backward to slide around Trick, when the lights were now blaring in the hallway and my dad was staring at me accusingly from the mouth of it.
“You little slut,” my father growled upon seeing me.
Trick and I weren’t even kissing anymore.
Hell, we weren’t even touching.
He was at least a foot and a half in front of me.
“Sure, Dad,” I grumbled as I sidled out farther into the hallway. “Me standing next to a man makes me a slut.”
“You’re sixteen and a little bitch, aren’t you?” Dad crossed his arms over his chest.
I felt Trick stiffen behind me.
“Seventeen,” I corrected him. “My birthday is today, remember?”
“Seventeen,” Trick practically hissed from behind me.
“And he’s what, twenty-one?” my dad pushed. “That’s statutory rape, motherfucker.”
I growled in frustration. “Age of consent in Texas is seventeen. And we weren’t doing anything. We were standing next to each other. That was it.”
I looked over my shoulder at Trick, hoping to see understanding.
There wasn’t any.
He was staring at me in shock.
Shit.
That made me feel kind of bad.
Maybe I should’ve told him I wasn’t eighteen yet.
But a girl that had led the life I had? I was way older than my years.
That was for sure.
“I’m sorry,” I mouthed.
Then I was walking toward my father.
When I got there, he grabbed my wrist in a punishing grip and tugged me inside his office.
CHAPTER 2
I am looking for a married woman, betrayed or disappointed, with a desire for revenge, who wants to sell her husband’s Harley for cheap.
-Trick’s secret thoughts
TRICK
Seventeen.
Seven. Fucking. Teen.
What in the holy hell?
That girl did not look seventeen.
Young, yes. But not seventeen.
She was in a bar, drinking for Christ’s sake!
Holy hell.
I’d almost fucked up royally.
I’d spent the entire night next to her, talking to her, looking at her, listening to her. She hadn’t ever once indicated that she was underage.
Though, just sayin’, but in Texas, legal age of consent was seventeen. If I had done anything, it wouldn’t have been illegal. As she’d said.
But still. Seventeen.
I was twenty-one.
That was four years difference.
And at our age—more accurately, her age—that many years was a big deal.
I walked back up to the bar and ordered another beer, mind reeling.
Seriously, out of everything that had happened, that could’ve been disastrous.
“See you’ve met the fruit of my loins,” the bartender said as he brought me another beer. “He’s something special, right?”
I grimaced. “Your granddaughter seems to really dislike him.”
“That’s because he’s an asshole,” the man said. “Name’s Jugg. If you need another beer, holler.”
Jugg.
What an odd name.
Then again, Swayze was an odd name, too.
But I liked it.
A lot.
Too bad she was goddamned seventeen!
I drank my beer and had just gotten it down to about a quarter of the way filled when something urged me to stand up.
I frowned when I looked around, spotting Shawn at the opposite end of the bar practically mauling the blonde next to him.
Jugg was at the end of the bar, too. He was serving a new woman that’d just sat down. There was a man beside her, and they both looked very concerned.
Everything else in the room seemed normal, but my sense of danger had been finely tuned when I was in Iraq.
I knew when it was around, and my senses were screaming that I needed to get up and move.
I did, walking toward the back room.
I wasn’t sure what propelled me in that direction, but I knew as I got closer, that the danger had somehow included Swayze.
I wasn’t sure how, but it was a gut feeling that I never, ever would’ve ignored.
Sidling up to the closed door, I closed my eyes and listened.
There was no talking.
No nothing.
Just as I was about to walk away, about to pull myself not only out of the hallway, but out of the freakin’ building altogether, I heard it.
A rough sounding, meaty thump.
It was one of those sounds that I could always, always pick out in a group of sounds.
Flesh hitting flesh.
Something sick entered my soul then.
I hadn’t seen anybody enter or exit the hallway since I’d retaken my seat.
There were only two options here.
Either Swayze was beating the shit out of her dad, or her dad was beating the shit out of her.
The song playing went off, and the bar went momentarily silent.
That was when I heard the whimpering.
Without conscious thought, I opened the door and pushed inside.
What I saw had me calling out for Shawn and hoping that he would hear me.
I moved before I even realized what I was doing.
All it took was one glance at the person on the floor for my heart to react before my brain.
It was the curly blonde hair stained with bright red that was my trigger.
Boom.
CHAPTER 3
I’m not always a bitch. Sometimes I’m asleep.
-Swayze’s secret thoughts
SWAYZE
Six months later
Former Marine Patrick Moore Wheat pleads not guilty to manslaughter.
Wheat was just getting off leave when he ruthlessly beat a man to death in his own bar.
More to come on Channel Six news when we come back.
I quickly turned off the television, sick to my stomach all over again.
I stood up stiffly, still to this day, six months later, sore from the beating that my father had inflicted on me.
“You ready, baby?” my stepfather asked, looking at me from the carport door.
I swallowed hard and walked toward him, my conservative outfit making me feel dumb as hell.
My mother said that it looked nice, though, so I kept it on despite my discomfort.
“Ready,” I replied softly, no longer able to say anything above a husky whisper thanks to the damage to my vocal cords that my father had inflicted when he’d punched me in the throat.
“It’ll be okay,” my mother assured me. “You’ll see.”
When we arrived at the courtroom thirty minutes later, my heart lurched in my chest at the sight of him.
God, even in the orange jumpsuit he was wearing, he still looked beautiful.
His jaw was clean shaven, but that was the only thing left about the man that I’d met in the bar that day.
It was my fault he was in jail right now.
About to be in prison.
Because he’d all but given up on all the bullshit that had been laid at his feet since his arrest.
The moment that he’d been taken in, it had started.
Apparently, my father had been mixed up with some people that had wanted him where he was. And they’d taken offense when they’d lost their mule. Their mule that had hidden some drugs and couldn’t be asked where they’d been hidden.
And, to let their ire be known, they’d bribed, blackmailed, or downright threatened every single person that might be able to help Patrick out.
Everyone but my stepfather and mother.
Jailbait Page 2
