Page 36 of Beautiful Rush
12
Deacon
Oh hell, no. Heads swiveled as the beauty in a tiny black dress and biker boots strutted past them to the tune of Slayer’s “Angel of Death” blasting from the jukebox. Her eyes were on my face as I stalked toward her, a wicked smile turning up the corners of her lips.
“Are you trying to get me into a fight, baby?” I hooked my finger in the skinny strap holding up her dress, although calling it a dress was a stretch. It was short and silky, trimmed in black lace and barely reached mid-thigh. She’d paired it with the cross she always wore and smoky eye makeup that made her look sexy and sultry. She looked like a femme fatale in a film noir. An assassin sent to seduce her mark before she stabbed him in the heart with his own fork.
“Would you fight for me?” she asked.
“To the death,” I growled. “Would you be my ride or die?”
“Until my last breath.”
Did we mean the things we said? Time would tell.
My lips ghosted down her neck and across her collarbone. Her body shivered in my arms and she let out a low moan that went straight to my cock and most likely every other guy’s cock in this bar. It was probably safer to stay in her apartment. I had never been possessive before, and no woman had ever aroused my jealousy, but with her everything was different. When we were together, I didn’t think straight. It was dangerous to feel this way, to be in a bar full of people, my senses so heightened that all I could see washer.
I took her hand in mine and led her to the stool in front of my beer, peanut shells crunching under our boots, the scent of stale beer and sweat hanging in the air. It was our first foray into the wild since December and Keira’s first real date. She had wanted to tick off another item on the list of things she’d never done. Hit a dive bar. So here we were at a dive bar on the Lower East side which was less dive bar and more like a kitschy curiosity shop. I thought she’d appreciate it. Skulls and saint statues lined the dusty wooden shelves behind the bar festooned with multi-colored Christmas tree lights. Bonus points, a motley crew of hairy bikers in black leather cuts had rocked up on their Harleys earlier and were shooting pool in the back room.
“How did you get here?” I leaned my hip against the bar, so I was facing the door as she settled onto the stool and tugged down the hem of her dress.
“Subway.”
I wanted to bash my head against the wall for not picking her up. “I told you to take a taxi.”
She shrugged one shoulder. “The subway was faster.” She helped herself to a handful of maraschino cherries from the plastic garnish tray behind the bar and lined them up on a cocktail napkin like a row of cheerful soldiers. “How did you get here?”
“Subway.”
She gave me a smug smile and ripped the fruit off the stem with her teeth.
“I’m a guy and I’m not wearing a skimpy dress.”
“I have pepper spray in my bag and a mean right hook.” She cocked her fist and I let out an exasperated sigh as she ate her maraschino cherries and told me to chill, like I was overreacting. I was NYPD. I have seen the worst of humanity. Rapes, muggings, shootings, domestic violence. Horrific things and sad things that wrenched your heart and blackened your soul if you thought about them too much. To do my job, you had to deal with the situation and move on, put it out of your head so it wouldn’t eat away at you and haunt your dreams. For the most part, I was good at compartmentalizing. But sometimes it was not that easy to ‘chill,’ not when you cared about someone and wanted to keep them safe. So yeah, maybe with her I overreacted, seeing danger where there wasn’t any, but on top of the skimpy dress and her general attitude of giving zero fucks, she was carrying a Louis Vuitton bag. She was a mugger’s wet dream. I pushed those thoughts out of my head. She was here and she was fine.
The bartender, a beefy guy with a shaved head and facial piercings, stopped in front of us to take our order. Keira hastily folded her cocktail napkin to hide the stockpile of cherry stems as if she didn’t want to get caught stealing. It made me laugh.
“What can I get ya?” he asked in a thick New York accent.
I ordered another beer and she asked for a dirty martini with extra olives.
“Missed you, Kosta.” She gave me a smile that could light up this gloomy dive bar. Light up the whole fucking city.
“Missed you too,” I said as if it had been years instead of just a few days since I’d last seen her.
The bartender set our drinks in front of us and I handed him a twenty. Keira lifted her glass by the stem and clinked it against my beer bottle, some of the martini sloshing over the side of the glass. “Here’s to our undercover affair.” She winked at me. “I feel like the mistress. It’s fun.”
I quirked a brow before drinking. “Who’s the wife in this scenario?”
“You’re married to your job.”
She wasn’t completely wrong about that. I was stuck in this assignment until we gathered enough intel to make the charges stick. I was assured it wouldn’t be much longer. But I’d already been offered a position on the Gang Squad after this assignment ended and I was planning to take it. My job was always going to be a big part of my life. “Are you a jealous lover?”
“Maybe I like it this way. Maybe if we saw each other all the time, whenever and wherever we wanted, we’d get sick of each other.”
“Or maybe we’d get even closer.” Ooh, I was venturing into scary territory for her.
“You’d learn all my flaws and weaknesses and annoying habits.”
