He was ignoring me.
The Fallen MC had officially owned The Lotus for three weeks and the brothers were around constantly. They’d been stripping out the old, stained upholstery, the cracked linoleum floors and lopsided stage to replace it with all new, all wicked cool stuff. The booths were now black velvet with glossy blood-red tables, the bar was made up of faceted sections of mirrored glass so that it sparkled under the lights and reflected distorted visions of the girls dancing on the new massive and greatly improved main stage as well as the three smaller stages amid the floor seats. We had top-shelf liquor behind the bar, three new dancers that were so sexy even I drooled over them, and a manager named Maja who was tough as nails but also wicked cool.
This was all good—great, really—because I wanted The Lotus to succeed and when we’d reopened after two weeks of renovations, there was already a ton of business. It was the good kind—horny men with cash in their wallets and loneliness in their eyes, and bachelor and bachelorette parties from the right side of the tracks as well as the wrong.
And Maja, she liked me.
I’d been nervous even though I’d tried to hide it behind my usual sassy contempt when she’d approached a few of the serving staff while I’d been behind the bar. She’d taken a good hard look at me with hard, wise eyes for so long, I’d started to sweat.
Then she’d said, “Cute earrings, where’d you get ’em? I’ve been lookin’ for feathers like that for an absolute age and no luck. You tell me your secrets and I’ll give you a Friday night bar shift.”
So, I’d told her where I got the earrings and we’d gone together on Friday afternoon before my shift to get her a pair. She was cool but maternal. It was a weird combination but it worked for me because my mother was neither.
Loulou’s life was kicking ass but for one thing.
Zeus was finally everywhere and he was nowhere.
He was in the club nearly every night, holding court in the same booth as the first night he’d appeared like some kind of underworld god doing dealings with mortals. Bikers, businessmen in smart suits with slicked hair, and random civilians came to speak with him and it was clear in every interaction that Zeus was the one in control.
He sat in the deep shadows, the red and blue neon lights cutting his brutally constructed face into even harsher lines. His sheer size seemed magnified by the darkness, by his riotous brown-and-gold hair and the thick lines of black ink turning his dark skin into fallen angel wings. There was casualness to his posture as he sat straight-backed and spread out, yet his huge hands were always nonchalantly on display like a man who placed a gun on the table to make a point. They were his weapons, huge God-given weapons of sheer violence and force that anyone who looked at them knew it.
He was breathtaking in every sense. Terrifying beyond comprehension and so gorgeous, it was a physical blow to the senses.
People watched him nearly as much as they watched the dancers.
I know I did.
I fell helplessly into his orbit, a small, insignificant planet sucked up into his gravitational pull. Through the night, I watched him and not once, not one time, did I catch him watching me.
At first, I was so hurt it felt like a second cancer, this one a sticky, fibrous mass melding my lungs shut so my breath came through thin and wheezy. I circled through The Lotus three nights a week without the usual joy and freedom I’d felt each time I walked through those doors before.
I felt spurned worse than a lover because Zeus had never been that. He’d been in some sense more than that. He’d been my guardian monster, the saviour who had first taken a bullet for me and then saved me from living through my first round of cancer alone.
He’d been, quite simply, my everything.
And now, it seemed, I was nothing to him.
Now, it was a Saturday night, the busiest night at the club we’d had since Debra sold it off and moved to fucking Jamaica.
When word got out that The Fallen were spending time at The Lotus, the seats filled to the brim each night from open to close. Most of them were criminals just like before but a higher caliber, the kind that made their lackeys take the fall and kept themselves from jail by greasing endless hands.
It was great for making tips, especially for a girl like me who didn’t mind tossing an effective hair flick or bat of my eyelashes in the right direction to earn just another couple dollars added to the total of each bill.
These new criminals weren’t as grabby and offensively disgusting as the old clientele but they were something worse. Entitled. A few girls had learned this the hard way but acquiesced easily, both because it was their job to but also because they were paid well for their time and attentions.
I wasn’t a dancer so I had no obligation to sit on anyone’s lap. Some of the wait staff were more generous with their bodies, but I was seventeen years old at the end of the day and I had a boyfriend.
So no laps for me.
Of course, these entitled men didn’t know that and, more, they didn’t care. Even though at least a small group of The Fallen had been there every night since we’d reopened, it was obvious that a few of them had been assigned to look after the girls and they were put to good use at least once or twice a night.
“Two-hundred dollar tip and all I hadta do was let the guy kiss my feet,” Ruby told me as she swung up to my spot at the bar in her glittery red sequined bra and hot pants. “I told him to come back and see me regular. I mean, that was the easiest money I ever made.”
I laughed with her even though one eye was still on Zeus. He was sitting with a guy who had been in once before to see him, a man I recognized because he’d been a regular here back when it was seriously sketchy. Quentin Kade was a drug dealer from Whistler who sold drugs to the ski bums, Australian snowbirds and wealthy vacationers there. The dancers liked him for the tips but they tried to avoid going to one of the semiprivate curtained booths with him because he liked to get rough and often left bruises along with his generous tips.
What was Zeus doing with a man like him?
“You are so not listening to me,” Ruby accused me.
“I’m so not,” I agreed easily, sliding an iced water across to her. “What do you know about The Fallen?”
“Loulou…” she cautioned. “I told you, don’t get involved in that shit. In fact, I specifically remember telling you to get outta here before they realized who you were and did you take my advice?”
“No, so what makes you think I’m going to take it now?” I asked with a wry grin.
She snorted, lifting her heavy fluorescent red hair from her pale neck so she could fan the sweat off her chest. “Fine but I get to say I told you so when you get fucked over by one of them, deal?”
My heart clenched but I agreed.
“The Fallen are the shadow puppeteers of the entire North American west coast. About ten years ago they had some problems in their ranks that started a shoot out in a fucking church of all places.” She snorted into her water, too preoccupied to notice my flinch. “They’ve had some problems with bad drugs lately. Not sure if it’s the MC or not cooking them up, but the high and mighty mayor hates them something fierce and he tried to get the town to turn against them last year at a town meeting. Now that was funny.”
I remembered it. Not the meeting because Bea and I hadn’t been allowed to attend, but I remembered the fury my father felt at the drug-related crime, at the fact that the same motorcycle club involved in the First Church Shooting were still ruling strong and true in his town. My dad had worked for years to gain his office and he was absolutely not going to let “thugs” out-influence him.
“Yeah, yeah, I know that stuff. Tell me about the men,” I told my friend.
Her eyes shadowed and she leaned forward in the universal girl friend gesture that signaled “real talk.” “Who’s got you asking?”
I shrugged one shoulder and plucked a glass from the drying rack to polish. “I’m curious.”
“Curiosity killed the cat, Loulou.”
“Yeah, well, this cat has cancer, so she’s not really concerned at playing it safe,” I retorted. “Are you going to tell me anything or what?”
Ruby’s slick red mouth pursed with hurt and I realized I was taking out my irritation on her.
“I’m sorry, babe. Bad day.” I reached over to take one of her thin hands in my own. Needle marks scarred the backs just as they’d scarred mine.
“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.
“Saw you flirtin’ with Garro. How come I never see you waitin’ on me with that pretty smile, huh? I promise I’d treat you sweeter than him.”
“Hands off the merchandise, Mr. Kade,” I told him with a winsome smile because I was used to grabby hands and arrogant criminals.
Quentin wasn’t an unattractive man, slim all over in a way that looked like he’d been compressed between two walls as he grew, he was still mildly handsome if you looked at him in profile. He wore expensive, designer clothes and he smelled rich, musky and artificial. It was obvious that he believed his wealth and reputation would get him whatever he wanted, even human flesh.
His narrow face creased up in laughter. “’Course, there’s always a price for sweet merch like you. Tell me and I’ll pay it, see if we can’t put this ass to some use, eh? Just ’cause you can’t get Garro doesn’t mean you have to go without.”
He and his posse of men laughed like he was a stand-up comedian.
My smile grew strained. “No price. It’s like the Mastercard commercial says, some things are priceless.”
“HA! Got a sweet behind, girl, wouldn’t say it’s priceless,” he snorted.
“No,” I agreed because it was a fantastic ass but I wasn’t that arrogant. “But my self-worth is, and while I don’t judge anyone for doing it, I don’t sell myself for sex.”
The good humor fell through the false bottom of his charm and his mouth grew hard. “You think you’re too good for me, or something?”
Fuck. I hated the ones who made it about their own inadequacies. Couldn’t a girl just reject a man based on her lack of desire to be wooed or taken?
“I don’t.” I smiled again. “Like I said, I just don’t go in for that kind of thing. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got rounds to make.”
“Yeah, showing off that ass to see who’s gonna be the highest bidder,” he sneered, shoving his face into my neck so he could lick a slimy trail up to my ear where he whispered, “Trust me, it’s gonna be me who takes you home tonight.”
I planted my hand in his shoulder and shoved, all politeness forgotten in my haste to get away from him but his hands had curled into my hips like heavy anchors so I couldn’t move.
“Kade.”
The one word echoed through the room like thunder.
It was a warning that the lightning wouldn’t be far behind.
Zeus, the God of Thunder, was finally paying attention.
“Back off, Garro. Get yourself another girl for the night,” Quentin laughingly called over his shoulder.
But his bluff wasn’t good enough. I could see the fear spark behind his eyes and the thin crown of sweat that bloomed high on his forehead.
“Let the kid go, Kade,” Zeus said again, his voice a low rumbling force that had Quentin’s hands flexing anxiously on my skin.
I took advantage of his fright to scramble off his lap and put a huge partition of space between us. It took me a minute to realize that I’d subconsciously come to a stand still beside Zeus.
“A woman tells you to let her go, do it,” Zeus growled, taking a step ahead and to the front of me, shielding me from Quentin’s sight.
I didn’t know or care if he was conscious of the protective gesture, it sent hope fluttering to life in my heart.
“This is a fuckin’ titty bar, Garro. Can you blame a man for trying? Or is that particular girl you got an issue with me taking?”
“Yeah, I fuckin’ well can because this titty bar is property of The Fallen and if you don’t know this by now, Kade, listen close, yeah? You fuck with the The Fallen, you court death. Simple as that.”
Even though I was slightly behind him, I could see the cruel cut of his smile across his face, as if the idea of Quentin defying him, of courting that death, turned him on.
A dark shiver rasped like a calloused finger down my spine.
“Now, if a girl wants your attention, go for it. I hear you try to corner another one of my girls, you’re banned for life. And, Kade, I don’t just mean from this bar.”
I chewed on my lip because I got it. Quentin Kade was one of the biggest drug dealers in the province. The Fallen was one of the biggest producers and distributors of weed in the country. If Kade got cut off, he’d be crippled.
“Yeah, got you,” he said, face twisted with wounded pride and bitter anger. “Just like I got that you don’t give a fuck about getting my business anymore.”
“Just spent way too much of my fuckin’ time tryin’ to get that through your head so gotta say, glad you’ve finally got the message.”
Something feral and nasty slithered across Quentin’s narrow face, something that looked a lot like evil.
Zeus crossed his enormous arms over his chest and tipped his chin up. “I’d say it’s time for you and your boys to move on for the night.”
“Yeah, I’m fuckin’ beat,” Quentin agreed with a grin that was more of a grimace.
As soon as they left, I took a step toward Zeus, eager to thank him, wanting to touch him.
He took a huge step away from me before I could gain any ground and spun to face me. “I’m lettin’ you stay on because at least here I can keep an eye on your crazy ass, you get me? This is what you get when you flirt with dangerous men, little girl. You’re too fuckin’ young to know what you’re dealin’ with here and honest to Christ, I wish you’d go back to your pretty, ordered little world and stay the fuck outta mine.”
“Zeus,” I breathed with what little air was left in my compressed lungs.
“Got two kids already, Louise, you think I got time for a third?” he asked with a cruel raise of one scarred eyebrow.
I opened my mouth to say something but there was no air left in me, only hot blood that coursed through my veins like flames. It was impossible to believe that my saviour could so suddenly have turned into a demon.
“Believe it,” he whispered darkly, and I wasn’t sure if I’d spoken aloud or if he’d read the disillusion fragmenting the dreams at the backs of my eyes.
I watched in mute horror as he turned and walked away from me.
