Page 66 of The Mafia's Surprise Gift

We danced until sweat clung to my bare arms in a light sheen, and a few curls across Jian’s forehead were damp. The noise of the bar came back to me in a rush as Jian kissed me for the final time and slid the cherry back between my lips.

“Is there a three-point difference this time?” he asked. He kept ahold of my hand and led me back to the bar. I dropped breathlessly onto the stool and flicked some of my long hair away from my sweaty face, accidentally brushing arms with someone seated next to me.

“Maybe not a three-point difference,” I decided as I ate the cherry. “But I’m the definite winner.”

Jian caught the bartender’s attention and quickly ordered fresh drinks as he sat. “Oh, really?”

“Yup. You’re disqualified.”

Jian raised one cheeky brow. “How, exactly?”

“We’re clearly different tongue classes. You were trying to take advantage of a lower rank because I can’t do that tongue thing.”

“The tongue thing?”

Warmth flared across my cheeks immediately, and I nodded. “Yeah, that thing where you ripple your tongue like a wave, back and forth, and you can press like two parts of your tongue together.”

“Oh, that tongue thing.” Jian’s smirk grew wider. “Should I stop doing that tongue thing?”

“No!” God, no. It felt amazing when he was using it on me. “Maybe only in cherry battles.”

“I said, are you going to fucking apologize?” a voice yelled sharply in my ear from behind me.

Alarm jumped down my spine like I’d been slapped, and then things happened so fast that I could barely track it. One second, a meaty hand sealed around my upper arm from behind and whirled me around. The next second, Jian had ripped that hand free and stood between me and an angry, burly man who was as tall as he was wide.

“Don’t you fucking touch her,” Jian snapped darkly. There was something deep and dangerous in his voice, like a velvet threat I’d never heard before. My heart immediately started to race, and an enticing heat rushed through my body.

“The fuck?” The drunkard swayed slightly and tried to jerk his hand away from Jian’s grip, but Jian was unwavering.

“I said, don’t you fucking touch her. Try to again, and I’ll rip off your fingers one by one, then shove them so far down your throat you’ll be wanking backward for the rest of your life.”

“She’s the one that fucking shoved into me. Fucking bitches thinking they can do whatever they want!”

“I—” I tried to speak, an apology on the edge of my tongue. Was this the person I accidentally brushed arms with? It hadn’t felt that forceful, and I looked him over for signs that maybe I’d spilled his drink. There was nothing.

“You should consider yourself lucky that she touched you, but we both know it was an accident. You’re in a bar. People bump into one another.” Jian’s voice was still dangerously low, and his grip on the burly man’s hand hadn’t moved despite his struggles.

He started to wince, and his drunken eyes narrowed. “She ain’t gonna fuck you,” he spat. “Whores like that spread their legs and give you one sniff so they can milk you for fucking cash.”

“I will give you one chance,” Jian snarled. “One chance to apologize, and I will let you walk away. I don’t want to ruin my date with bloodshed.”

“The fuck you gonna do?” The man guffawed loudly, and a small crowd was starting to form around us, a mix of curious onlookers and a few people who looked like they knew exactly who Jian was. After all, if Rocco owned this town, then his guards were just as well-known as he was.

“You’re just a scrawny rat, and your fucking bitch of a girlfriend needs to apologize to?—”

Despite Jian being shorter and much, much slimmer than this asshole, all it took was one solid punch from Jian, and the drunk, burly man froze mid-speech. He groaned, took one step back, and then began to fall.

Jian spun to face me, grabbed my hand, and pulled me up from my stool.

“Let’s go!”

We ran from the bar, making it halfway to the door before that mass of drunkard hit the floor with a loud thud. Gasps and cries rose from the crowd, and we still ran until we were outside.

The cooler outside air was refreshing, and I gasped deeply, unable to hold in my laughter.

“Holy shit! Are you okay?” My entire body was tightening like a corkscrew. Jian had leaped to my defense so quickly and then taken down a man twice his size in just one punch. All for my honor.

Wasn’t that just the hottest fucking thing?

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