When he tried to sit, I kicked the stool out from behind him, using more force than was necessary. It skidded across the floor before toppling with a loud clatter.
“Need you, too,regularJury,” Glitch called, piling on to Ophelia and Judge’s joke.
Jury gave him the finger even as he spoke to Lo. “What can I say? They’d be lost without me.” He put his hand on the bar next to hers. So close, their fingers nearly touched. “I’ll be back for that drink.
Again, I should’ve sent her home. Especially if she was gonna be a distraction to Jury and Haze.
But again, I didn’t.
Standing, I reminded Jury, “We’re closed till Friday. You want a drink, come buy one then.” As I spoke, I leaned over the bar to grab one of the menus stashed behind it without looking away from the dumbass flirt.
I didn’t know Lo had moved at the same time to rest her elbows on the bar. Not till her soft gasp right next to my ear ricocheted through my head before settling in my dick. Whatever fight I had against getting hard disappeared when I turned my head without thinking and found her face right next to mine. I met her wide eyes before my gaze automatically dropped to her parted lips.
She jolted away with a laugh, but not before I got a nose full of her scent.
It was almost tropical. Like fruit and cream and something more that I wanted to bury my face in. Something that hardened my dick to the point of pain.
Her voice was steady—minus a trace of residual laughter—when she said, “Sorry.”
That was it. No blush. No snark. No sign that she was affected at all. Just asorryand a laugh.
Meanwhile, my body was reacting like I’d never been around a pussy, much less in one. It didn’t make a damn lick of sense, but I wasn’t sticking around to sort my feelings out in a unicorn diary.
Slapping the laminated menu onto the bar top, I didn’t even look at her as I ordered, “Study this. I’ll be back.”
I figured I would have to drag Jury away, but when I started across the room, he followed. I waited till we’d put enough distance between us and Lo before quietly muttering, “Take it no one filled you in?”
“About?”
“That she’s an undercover detective.”
“We went over it at our meeting on Sunday.”
“And you thought the smart thing to do with that knowledge was put yourself on her radar like you’ve got nothing to hide?”
Just the possibility that the newest bullshit could ooze out to impact those around me was enough to kill my hard-on.
Jury didn’t seem to be facing the same internal battle.
He glanced over his shoulder before smirking. “Been a while since I’ve been arrested. And she looks like she knows her way around a pair of handcuffs.”
I ignored the burn in my gut. “You get that means you’d be cuffed,notthe other way around?”
Didn’t know a lot about Jury’s love life other than it was basically nonexistent. On the rare occasion he got involved with someone, he kept it casual like I did. ’Cause also like me, he’d been burned bad, and it’d left the kind of wounds that festered till they formed a black rot where the heart should be.
But right then, I was realizing I really didn’t know a lot about his personal business. ’Cause my point didn’t make him backtrack.
He doubled down.
“I’m good with that. I’ll even kneel if she asks nicely and calls me a good boy.”
I’d been riding with Mayhem for a while, though I wasn’t patched in as an official member. I liked my solitude. I liked my rules, not other people’s. I liked my bar that took up the majority of my focus. But I also liked the camaraderie and brotherhood of the club enough to consider them family.
That said, I was on the verge of shoving all that camaraderie, brotherhood, and Jury himself through a fuckin’ wall.
And apparently, I wasn’t gonna get a break.
“You talking about Lo?” Haze asked as we entered the hallway. I’d caught enough the day before to know he was supposed to be moving the device in his hold around, but he wasn’t. It stayed stationary as he leaned to the side to see around us.
