Page 83 of Sweet as Sin (Bad Habit 1)
He seemed distracted, not even offering a smile or meeting my eyes, and I sensed there was more to his mood than the solemnity of the occasion. He kept stealing glances at Nico across the room, then frowning and shaking his head, as if in answer to some silent question he’d asked himself.
Trying not to worry about what the problem might be, I shot a final glance at Ethan, said a silent prayer he wouldn’t ask Kenji anything more about me, then turned to A.J. “Should we go over there?” I motioned to a nearby sofa. A.J. nodded, then walked away as abruptly as he’d walked over. I saw Nico watching us and sent him a one-shouldered shrug. His guess was as good as mine at this point.
When I got to the sofa, A.J. was pacing in front of it. With his shaggy blond hair, loping stride, and bulk, he reminded me of a lion. A jittery lion. His hands were on his hips, his gaze on the floor. He hadn’t bothered with a suit for the occasion. Neither had Nico, for that matter. I supposed head to toe black counted as dressing up for a rock star, even if it was jeans and a leather jacket.
A.J. stopped pacing and lit a cigarette. He exhaled a cloud of smoke and fixed me with an intense stare. Even in heels, I had to crane my neck to look up at him: the man was a giant. On one side of his neck, a tattoo peeked above the collar of his black T-shirt. I couldn’t make out what it was.
“Your girlfriend,” he said gruffly. “The blonde.”
I didn’t know what I’d been expecting, but that definitely wasn’t it. “Chloe?”
He nodded curtly, his eyes hard. Something in his demeanor put me on edge. I remembered how Chloe had said he’d been mean to her at the flower shop, and I prepared myself to hear something bad. Was he going to have the balls to talk shit about my friend? At Avery’s wake?
“What about her?”
He licked his lips. In an accusing tone, he demanded, “What’s her deal?”
Oh, no. Oh, no he didn’t. I had to remind myself to maintain my shit, because this was not the time or place to get into an argument with the surly drummer from Bad Habit.
I spoke softly, holding his gaze. “Her deal is that she’s the sweetest, kindest, most loyal person I’ve ever known in my life, and if you so much as speak a negative word against her, I’ll . . . I’ll . . . I don’t know what I’ll do but it won’t be pleasant.”
A.J.’s brows shot up. He sucked hard on his cigarette, blew smoke into my face, and folded his arms across his chest. He stared at me down his nose. “Did you just threaten me?”
I waved the cloud of smoke away. “You’re damn straight I did. No one talks shit about my girls.”
His eyes were a gorgeous golden amber, the color of aged whiskey. Though his face was stone cold, there was a hint of warmth in those eyes. I suspected he was laughing at me.
“I can see that. Guess I’ll have to be more careful in the future.”
“You do that.” I mimicked his posture, crossing my arms over my chest.
We stared at each other. He took another hit from his cigarette. I noticed his knuckles were scarred and abnormally large. The back of each finger was inked with a small tattoo. The only one I got a good look at was a flower with initials on each petal. A.J. saw me looking, transferred his cigarette to his other hand, and shoved the hand with the flower tattoo into his pocket. Weird.
“Are you always this feisty, or am I getting special treatment because you’re still mad about me and Brody walking in on you and Nico in his bedroom?”
My face went molten. I’d been doing a relatively good job up until that moment ignoring the fact that he’d seen me naked. With my hand wrapped around his friend’s dick.
Ugh.
“I wasn’t really that mad about that. Totally embarrassed, but not mad. I know it was an accident.”
Examining me, A.J. drew a thoughtful hit on the cigarette. Like a dragon, he exhaled the smoke through his nose in two long plumes. “It was. And thanks for calming Nico down. I think if you’d asked him to, he’d have ripped out both our throats on the spot. In case you couldn’t tell, he’s more than a little obsessed with you. Never seen him like this before.”
It was
then that I noticed it. A.J. had the faintest echo of a Slavic accent in his voice, a certain way of pronouncing his vowels that sounded vaguely communist bloc. How interesting. I thought a change in the course of conversation was in order.
“Just out of curiosity, where are you from?”
His reaction was so unexpected it took my breath away. He stiffened. The warmth in his eyes turned into an arctic chill. Bristling, he leaned toward me as if he were about to grab me around the neck. “Nevada. Why the fuck do you ask?”
I had the good sense to be terrified, at least. This was not a man to be trifled with. But I didn’t step back, though I suddenly, desperately, wanted to. “Your accent.”
A.J. leaned even closer to me. “I don’t. Have. A fucking. Accent.” He enunciated each word, each syllable, his gaze burning mine.
All the tiny hairs on my neck stood on end. An intuition that A.J. had his own set of dark, dangerous secrets blossomed in my stomach, setting my nerves alight. “Ookay,” I said on a shaky exhalation. “But even if you did, I won’t mention it to anyone else. Your past is your own business.”
“We weren’t talking about my past. We were talking about you hearing something that’s not there.”
