Page 18 of Bartender Mate

But Radon shook him off.

“Sure,” Radon drawled. “I am happy we found her. Now we can stop looking.” He continued to pick up debris off the ground, hiding what I knew would be a flaming face at the offer of intimacy in public, as he tossed the refuse into the waste bin. “But she ain’t breaking her back to be with us, now, is she? Nope. She’s over there–glaring at the lot of us, just as hard as she did at the Hunters–like we are the scum that rode in on her back tire. Like we don’t have the right to exist. I don’t want a fourth who doesn’t want you, or me, or any of us.”

“She may not realize what she wants right now,” sighed Quasar, my sunshine, as he sat down in one of the chairs and dropped his head in his hands. “But she’ll come around. Don’t you worry, Radon.” He shot a pointed–if rather drunken–smile of remembrance at our standoffish mate. “We wore you down, didn’t we?”

“Don’t remind me,” Radon replied, crossing his arms over his chest and refusing to return the smile. “Biggest mistake of my life.”

Quasar winced.

“You don’t mean that,” I snapped at Radon, only willing to let our sullen mate go so far in his pursuit of misery.

I knew he couldn’t help it–this moment would cut too close to home–however he didn’t get to lash out at Quasar. My sunshine mate shot me a rueful smile as he shrugged off the hurt of Radon’s careless words.

“No morning sex for you,” Quasar teased and turned his back on our mate. “No sex for mean males who don’t appreciate their incredible mates who absolutely called it and then ensured they saw sense. Eventually.”

“Oh, how will I ever live?” Radon snatched the can from the ground and went to the otherside of the bar, pointedly keeping his back to us.

“With blue balls, apparently,” Quasar lamented.

“Don’t let him get under your scales, Q.” I pulled out the chair next to him and lay my hand over his, pulling my sweet mate close to press a kiss to his lips. “It’ll all work out.”

“He’s still so angry. Resents the bond. Did you feel it?” My mate leaned into me, regret lacing his words. “I thought…”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “In moments like this, he does resent it. Can’t stand to feel trapped in a situation which could cause us–and by extension, himself–more pain. There is a lot of history to work through in that dark and troubled soul of his. You sense it as well as I do.” I pressed my fist to my chest where my heart beat with the love, pain and joy of my mates. “We can’t heal all of it. Radon has to face some of that darkness alone, then decide who he’s gonna be in the face of it.”

“I know.” Quasar offered me a small but heart-felt smile. “I just wish we could do more to help him through it. Wish he didn’t feel the need to fall back on going it alone.”

I sucked in a thoughtful breath as I watched Tess shoot small, guarded, but decidedly curious looks in Radon’s moody direction. “Maybe this time he won’t be alone. Maybe this time he’ll find his reflection.”

7

Tess

Damn it, I had it bad. The sort of insta-lust you could spend a whole month locked in a dark room with a box of your favorite toys and still not be able to eradicate. For some stupid reason, I was also preternaturally tuned in to the spatial orientation of the inhabitants currently invading my space. Well, three of them, at least. I gritted my teeth and kept stomping around the bar, ostensibly to clean up.

What I was really doing, however, was making sure my lady bits didn’t stage a coup. They were seriouslythis closeto taking control of my feet and launching me like a cat in heat at the purple-skinned hotties. My libido wasn’t being picky, either. It just wanted me to mount any one of the trio and hump away.

Aside from the one who’d yanked the arm clean off Claw–couldn’t be too torn up about that, the fucker who’d beat on his own flesh and blood had had it coming–the three strangers had taken their cue from me and seemed to be keeping their distance. For now.

That didn’t mean I’d gotten the place back to myself.

Oh, no.

Nothing in this crazy life could be that simple.

As soon as the Drakon Hunters cleared out, the Stellar Misfits had followed me right back into Last Chance Bar and gotten to work at my side, setting everything to rights. In fact, despite the hostility I’d sensed between the current leadership, the motorcycle club worked together like a well-oiled team. Their easy camaraderie put me in a foul mood, to be honest. I was trying to wrestle control back from a gang of bikers, sure, but not so I could hand it over to their enemies.

To make matters worse, the bikers were being incredibly respectful. They weren’t pushy or overbearing, not like Axle’s lot would’ve been. In fact, the Misfits listened to my instructions and did whatever I asked. It was infuriating. And the madder I got, the more the group seemed to defer to my authority, while politely ignoring the constant string of curses being uttered from my mouth.

No matter how hard I tried to tune out the overwhelming experience of so many strangers in my space–not to drink, but acting as though they had a stake in my livelihood–there were three intruders I just couldn’t seem to ignore.

Awareness of the purple throuple dragged on my senses like a livewire attached to my middle, sending little zaps of complaint whenever I ventured too far away. It was annoying as fuck. A deliciously spicy mix of danger and desire, like a swarm of bees, thrummed in my stomach. Everytime one of them got too close, that swarm got a little louder, a little moreinsistent, setting my teeth on edge.

Why the hell–in a room full of bad boys in leather and a strange fascination with alien cosplay–had my libido latched onto them?

That trio were already spoken for. They’d made no secret of their affection for one another and they were clearly in some sort of intimate relationship. I had no problem with that, of course, but I was nobody’s unicorn, thank you very much. And the life of an Old Lady was definitely not for me.

So, if I didn’t plan on acting on this insane attraction, then why the fuck was I so wet? I didn’t think I’d ever felt this wet in my whole fucking life and yet no one had even laid a finger on me.

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