Читать книгу Asa - Jay Crownover - Страница 10

The following weekend came and went without any kind of incident. I wasn’t sure if that was because Royal had taken my warning to heart and stayed home, or because Rome’s friend Dashel—Dash—Churchill was officially on the payroll. There was no way anyone would be stupid enough to tangle with the massive wall of muscle that hardly spoke but glowered like a pro. The guy’s scowl was enough to shut down even the slightest bit of misbehavior, and while the break in having to be the bad guy was nice, I was worried the guy’s dark and brooding demeanor could scare off potential customers.

Rome was fairly hulking, and on the quiet side as well, but there was something about this other ex-soldier that indicated, loud and clear, that at some point in time not too long ago, the man had been a stone-cold killer and was not to be messed with. Even Dixie, who could get along with anyone and everyone, was giving the new recruit a wide berth, even if she was also giving the brute an interested side eye when she thought he wasn’t paying attention. All the ladies in the bar seemed to think the caramel-skinned behemoth with his mixed ancestry and impenetrable dark gaze was easy on the eyes—not that he seemed to give a rat’s ass about the female attention.

It was slow for a Monday night, so I had sent both of them home early and let Avett close down the kitchen. There was no sense in paying them to hang around when there was only one person at the bar. I knew Zeb Fuller pretty well. He was friends with my brother-in-law and the rest of the crew I spent most of my time with, and he was a regular at the Bar. He was another beast of a man that emanated a whole lot of don’t-fuck-with-me. It must be something about the clean mountain air that allowed the men in the state to grow into giants. I wasn’t small by any stretch of the imagination, but more often than not, I found myself eye to eye or having to look up at most of the guys that made up my social circle. It was just one more incentive to keep my ass in line. There were way too many guys around that were very capable of kicking my ass six ways to Sunday if I screwed up again.

Zeb had a pensive look on his face and was absently stroking his beard. Since moving to Denver, I had learned quickly that the three B’s ruled all—beards, beer, and babes. The mile-high had a plethora of all those things, and when in doubt a conversation could always be started by picking one of the holy trinity. In a pinch, the Broncos always worked as a substitute B as well. Zeb had the beard, he didn’t drink beer, and I knew, since he was at the Bar spilling his guts all the time, that his current babe situation was stuck in neutral because the girl he was hung up on seemed clueless to how he felt about her. She was also the older sister of one of his best friends, Rowdy, who wasn’t exactly thrilled with Zeb’s interest in his sibling.

I was finishing wiping down the bar and restocking the cooler while Zeb sulked into his almost empty glass of Jack and Coke. I never thought I would be the guy that others went to with their problems. I wasn’t exactly sympathetic or patient with things that I thought were obvious, but ever since I stepped foot behind that bar, I felt more like a therapist than a drink slinger. What was even more shocking was that I liked it. I liked being able to see the situation from the outside and point out things from my own unique perspective. After all, I had screwed up enough for an entire army of people, so I figured I might as well put those hard lessons learned to good use.

“Why don’t you just ask her out on a date?” I tossed the bar towel onto the dirty-rag pile and picked up the remote to turn off the TVs. I was going to shut it all down at midnight since Zeb was the only customer and I knew enough to know he just wanted to talk, not to drink.

He looked up at me and frowned. “You’ve met Sayer. Does she strike you as the type to go on a date with a guy like me?”

Sayer Cole was a bit of a mystery. She was a lawyer, beautiful in a really elegant and refined way, and she had surprised our little group of misfits by coming to Denver and claiming one of us as her own blood. Rowdy never knew he had a sister after growing up in foster care, so the reunion had been rocky at best. Only now she fit in seamlessly with the rest of the wayward souls that made up the tight-knit unit my little sister, Ayden, had been so fortunate to marry into. I was also lucky that they all took me into the fold based entirely on the fact that Ayden wasn’t going to give me up. She might not like me very much all of the time, but she loved me unconditionally, and that was enough for the rest of the group to welcome me with open arms.

“She’s nice. She seems pretty cool with whatever comes her way.”

Zeb pushed his empty glass at me and ran his hands through his unruly hair. The guy was a contractor, built things for a living, so it kind of fit that he reminded me of a modern-day lumberjack.

“I’ve been flirting with her, teasing her and dropping hints since the day we met. She’s smart. If she was interested she would pick up on what I’m laying down.”

“Maybe.” I braced my arms on the bar and leaned across from him. I gave him a steady look and asked seriously, “But don’t you think she’s probably a little more used to formal invitations from someone that wants to take her out? Everything about Sayer screams country club and formality. Maybe she just doesn’t get what you’re after.”

He blinked at me for a second and then leaned back on his stool. “You think?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. She hired you to work on her house even after you told her you served time. She let you be around Salem’s sister when we all know she’s protecting that girl like a mama bear, so she obviously trusts you and is comfortable around you. Maybe she’s waiting for you to up your game. Not all ladies are gonna start pulling off their clothes and crawl between the covers because you smile at them. I heard you tell Rowdy once that you weren’t afraid of doing the work if the lady is worth it. Sayer is worth it.”

She really was. She had helped me out of a hard spot not too long ago, and when Rowdy’s girlfriend had needed a safe place for her little sister to recover from a really terrible situation, Sayer hadn’t hesitated to take the girl in. She was as kind and generous as she was lovely. She deserved a guy that was willing to go the extra mile for her even if that guy kinda resembled a tattooed Paul Bunyan.

Zeb pushed up off the bar and lifted both of his dark eyebrows at me. “I question taking romantic advice from a guy that’s repeatedly turning down the hottest piece of ass I’ve ever seen. That’s just wasteful, man.”

I rolled my eyes and crossed my arms over my chest. “That’s the whole point: she’s not a piece of ass, and I don’t know why she’s suddenly acting like she is. Besides, any chick that can throw me in jail when I piss her off is off the table.” What I really meant but didn’t say was that I knew I was bound to screw up and piss her off. That was just what I did.

Zeb grunted. “I think I’d risk a night in lockup for her. Saying no to all of that is like a Herculean feat. Someone should nominate you for sainthood.”

I laughed drily and followed him to the front door so I could lock it behind him. “The halo would burst into flames if they got it anywhere near my head.”

He gave me a hard look. “You know I don’t think you’re half as bad as you seem to think you are, Asa. Trust me, I know better than most about screwing up on an epic level, but I’ve never let that define who I was going to be for the rest of my life.”

I might have bounced in and out of jail since I was a teenager, but I had never had to spend more than a few weeks at a time locked down. Zeb, though, had served several years behind bars for his mistake. The difference between us was that Zeb had broken the law because he felt like he didn’t have any other choice. I broke the law because I wanted to. The law got in my way, prevented me from getting what I wanted or what I thought I needed, so I ignored it and pretended like it didn’t matter.

“Some people screw up, and then some people are screw-ups. I fall firmly into the second category.”

There was no other explanation as to how Ayden and I could have half of the same genetic makeup and be so vastly different. Granted there was a good chance I absolutely took after my scumbag of a father, a father we didn’t share. Yet we were so opposite I often had to wonder how we had been brought up in the same house and lived the same hard-knock childhood. I had no clue how she could be as together, as composed and steady, as she was. I don’t know how she had found a space in her new life for me or how she had stayed by my side when I was dying. I knew she had every reason to walk away from me, but instead she had done everything in her power to save me and she had given me a new life of my own. One I was terrified I was going to rip to shreds any second now.

Zeb shook his head a little and yanked the door open. “I think you need to cut yourself some slack.”

I shrugged. “Maybe.”

I shoved him on his shoulder out the door and closed it in his face. I liked Zeb. We had a lot in common, but he didn’t know the whole story, didn’t know some of the really terrible things I had done. He didn’t know that when I died, when everything went black and I knew I wasn’t coming back to rejoin the mortal coil, every single, terrible, awful, horrible thing I had ever done in my life floated before me live in vivid color.

The way I used Ayden. The way I had never stopped her from doing what she was doing, which I did so that I could get what I wanted. The sex, the drugs, all of it a kaleidoscope of regret so hard and heavy I was sure it was dragging me to hell. I loved my sister more than anything in the world and yet I hadn’t ever been able to stop myself from treating her like a pawn in one of my games. Watching what I did to Ayden, what I allowed her to do for me, was worse than every blow from the baseball bats the bikers had wielded. Seeing the heartbreak in her whiskey-colored eyes when I finally caught up to her after years apart was enough to make me glad I wouldn’t ever be opening my own eyes again.

On top of that, there were the old ladies I scammed and the bikers I ripped off. There were the cars I stole and the men I knew my mom was sleeping with to pay our rent while I did nothing to stop it or help the family out. There was the debutante I had charmed into giving me her college fund, which I promptly wasted on a backroom poker game. There was the elderly gentleman looking for a companion that I had convinced not only that I was gay, but that I was interested in him, convinced him just enough to get him to write me a check so I could pursue my passion for photography; needless to say, I wasn’t gay or a photographer, but his ten grand had gone a long way in funding my next scam. The number of people I had screwed over was endless, and as their faces rolled like a movie behind my eyes as life leached out of me, I knew I was getting what I deserved.

When I had woken up, had seen Ayden looking down at me while I struggled to realize that even the devil in hell didn’t want me, I realized something bright, sharp, and clear. I was an asshole. I was a bad man that had done bad things and I was always going to be that guy, but I never, never wanted to hurt my sister again. I never wanted her to have to worry about me, never wanted her to have to suffer for me or lose anything because of me ever again. I was always going to be a screw-up, but I was going to actively try to avoid causing any more damage, and so far it had been going pretty well. I just had to hold on to those memories, those regrets and that remorse, tight enough that my hands would be too full to ever do the devil’s work again.

I pulled the cash drawer out and put it and the sales receipts in the safe that was in Rome’s office. I made sure all the cameras were on, especially the ones in the parking lot that he had recently installed. I got jumped one night after work by a bunch of kids with a vendetta that had actually led to my arrest and a legal headache that had taken longer to deal with than it should have because of my past. So now I was hypervigilant and always made sure the eye in the sky was watching my every move.

It was a little after one in the morning. The parking lot was mostly empty except for a few cars that were left over from people that hadn’t wanted to drive home after drinking or local neighborhood cars that Rome let borrow a slot. The Bar wasn’t in a terrible part of town and I was now pretty used to keeping odd hours since I didn’t get out of work until well after most of the world went to bed. I kind of liked the quiet of it all.

It was cold out. Being from the South like me, it had taken a couple of winters to get used to the frigid mountain air. I didn’t love the chill. My dislike of winter was enough that I was seriously considering buying a car even though the studio apartment I rented was barely two blocks away from the Bar. That was another thing that had changed after I came back to life. Now I could care less about things. I used to want the best of it all. The nicest clothes, the flashiest ride, the biggest house, and of course the prettiest girl. I wanted everything I had never had growing up and I wanted to show it all off and prove my worth. Now I wanted nothing. The less I had, the less there was to lose.

I was rubbing my hands together briskly and blowing into them to try and warm them up when headlights suddenly illuminated me and a vehicle rolled into the parking lot and didn’t stop until it almost reached me. The lights cut out and the driver’s-side door swung open. I would’ve worried, tensed up and walked the other way, if I didn’t recognize the ancient SUV and the female driver. Royal was always going to be prettier than any of the other trophies I used to flash around back in my heyday … prettier even when it was obvious she hadn’t been sleeping well.

I pulled the collar of my shearling coat up around my jaw and stepped around the door to where she was sliding out of her seat to the ground. She looked like she had just come from the gym. She had on some kind of stretchy skintight pants and a big sweatshirt. Her hair was tangled in a messy knot on the top of her head and her eyes looked a few shades darker than their normal sweet chocolate color. She also had on running shoes instead of her typical sexy footwear, and she was shivering in the night air.

“You’re out and about late.” I tried to keep my tone even. She was unpredictable and I never knew which way she was going to go with things. I was used to being able to read people like an open book, but she kept turning the page on me. It was always surprising and unexpected.

She pulled the sleeves of her sweatshirt down over her fingers and looked up at me in a way that made my dick twitch hard behind my zipper. It should be legally prohibited for anyone to be that effortlessly sexy.

“I was at the gym because I haven’t been sleeping well. The powers that be cleared me to go back to work at the end of the week as long as I keep seeing the department shrink for the next three months.”

I thought she would sound happier about that fact than she did. “That’s good news … isn’t it?”

Her shivering turned to outright shaking, and I knew it didn’t have anything to do with the cold outside. Against my better judgment I reached out and hooked an arm around her neck and pulled her against my chest. I pulled open the sides of my coat and let her burrow into me while she shook uncontrollably. I felt her hands snake around my sides and search for warm skin below the edge of my shirt on my lower back. I jolted and I wanted to tell myself it was because her hands were like ice, but that wasn’t it. Her touch made my skin ripple in excitement.

“I’ve never worked a shift without Dom. He’s like my other half. They’re assigning me a temporary partner to work with until Dom comes back.” She pulled away so she could look up at me through her silky lashes. “Only they didn’t say when Dom comes back, they said if. I don’t know if I can do what I do without him.”

I felt her fingers dig into the hollow right at the top of my ass and I had to fight down a full-body shiver.

“You love your job.” I knew it was true. Even though she was acting wild and off the tracks lately, she was so much of what she did for a living. “You don’t need your partner in order to be a good cop, Royal.”

We stared at each other silently for a long moment and then the corner of her mouth kicked up in a grin that made my gut tighten and turned my blood thick. I needed to let go of her and get to getting before I did something stupid.

“Did you miss me this weekend, Asa?”

That was a loaded question if there ever was one. Of course I had noticed she wasn’t around, but I had steadfastly refused to acknowledge how her absence made me feel, so I sighed and asked her, “What are you doing here so late?”

She cocked her head to the side and her eyes narrowed just a fraction. Her fingers dipped below the waistband at the back of my jeans, and I had to suck in a breath through my teeth, which hurt because the night air was freezing.

“I don’t know. Every time I can’t seem to figure out where I’m going lately I always end up wherever you are.”

I swore and went to take a step away from her, but her hands just dipped lower and tugged me closer. “You need to get your compass fixed, then. It’s pointing you in the wrong direction, Red.”

Suddenly it went from being below zero to feeling like we were standing on the surface of the sun. My breathing went shallow and a little erratic as her gaze went all liquid and melty.

“The more you tell me that, the more determined I am to prove you wrong.”

Then she stood up on her toes so that she could put her mouth on mine, and it was all over. I knew it was coming. We had been dancing around each other for months. She was too pretty and too persistent for this not to happen at some point in time. She was also too kind, and far too good, to let someone like me put my hands on her. I wasn’t really what she wanted, but I was getting tired of trying to tell her that. Despite my best intentions, this inferno that raged between us was going to burn out of control and she had just lit the match and tossed it carelessly on the tinder.

Her hands found their way to my sides as her soft lips did their best to render me mindless and stupid with lust. I could inhale her. It would be so simple to just get lost in all the soft and sweet that made her delectable, but somewhere in the back of my mind all the ways in which this was going to go horribly wrong were poking at me. I raised my hands and gently cupped her jaw. I ran my thumb back and forth across skin that couldn’t possibly be that soft, and tried my damnedest not to let her lead me to a place I would never find my way back from. I pulled away from the exquisite brush of her mouth along mine just as her tongue darted out to trace along the sealed seam of my lips. It made me groan out loud. I was going to put a stop to it, I needed to end it now, but she was quick and took advantage of my reaction by slipping her tongue inside my barely parted lips, and then it was hopeless to stop the avalanche of desire that engulfed me.

After all, I never claimed to be an angel and even the devil could only play with fire for so long before he gave in to unholy temptation and danced in the flames.

I backed her into the open doorway of the car. I tunneled my fingers into her hair where it was tight against her head and I inserted a leg between hers so that our pelvises were flush against each other. I wasn’t nice. I kissed her like she had been after me to kiss her from the beginning of this game. I used my tongue. I used my teeth. I didn’t let her breathe and I didn’t give her any kind of space to move away from me as I crowded in on her. I reached around her and grabbed her very spectacular ass in one hand in a really classless move and made sure to manhandle it and her in a very obvious way.

If she wanted me how I really was, then she was going to get it. I had no problem letting the pretense fall away, especially when she was writhing and whimpering against me. I twisted my tongue around hers. I sucked hard on her lower lip until she gasped. I pressed my chest into hers until I could feel the rigid points of her nipples even through all the layers of clothes that separated the two of us.

I felt her fingernails dig harder into my skin where her hands were still trapped under my shirt. I thought maybe she was getting the point, that this was bound to be a train wreck and that her common sense was finally waking back up. But just as I was about to let her go, to pull back and get some much-needed breathing room so I could get my whirling thoughts back in line, one of those dangerous hands suddenly detoured drastically south and the next thing I knew she had her palm wrapped fully around the rock-hard erection that was straining the front of my jeans.

The contact was enough of a shock that I automatically reared back and moved to grab her wrist. She just grinned devilishly up at me and fluttered her eyelashes with false innocence.

“We’re in a parking lot, out in the open. You really want to go there with me, Red?”

Not to mention this little fiasco was being recorded for all of eternity and it wasn’t exactly a show I wanted prying eyes to see. I don’t think Royal was an exhibitionist either, but whatever was working in her complicated mind had her acting out in all kinds of hazardous and surprising ways. I growled her name when she slid her palm up and down, making my dick jump like a well-trained animal at her touch. One of her auburn eyebrows shot straight up and she stuck just the tip of her tongue out to taste her still-damp bottom lip. Goddamn if every single thing she did didn’t make me think of darkened rooms and lots and lots of naked skin.

“Why not? It’s the closest you’ve ever let me get.” She gave the turgid shaft a hearty squeeze, and that made my eyes roll back in my head. I was on the verge, right on the cusp of picking her up and throwing her into the SUV and just giving her what she had been asking for, when my phone rang.

Considering it was well past the middle of the night and the ring tone was the specific one assigned to my little sister, I had a mild panic attack and pried Royal loose from my junk and finally stumbled a few steps away from her.

“Ayd?” I couldn’t help the harshness of tone as I barked out her name.

“Oh my God, Asa, Shaw just went into labor!” My sister was screaming, so I had to hold the phone away from my ear.

“Okay … and …?” Shaw was Ayden’s best friend. The two of them were beyond tight and I knew it had been really rough for Ayden to move to Austin so that she could be closer to her husband when her best friend was expecting her first child. I calmed down when I realized Shaw was okay and there was no crazy emergency.

“You better get your ass to that hospital and be there in my place until I can get to Denver. Jet is booking a flight for us right now, but I still won’t be there until the morning. You need to be there for me, Asa.”

Jet was Ayden’s husband and also a really good friend of the baby’s dad. He would move mountains to make sure Ayden didn’t miss this major moment in Rule and Shaw’s life. I rubbed my hands through my hair and blew out a breath that fogged up in front of me.

“Shaw isn’t going to want me there, Ayd. She’ll want you.”

“I know that, but I might not make it in time, so you’re going to go to the hospital and substitute for me!” She was screaming and almost hysterical, so I knew there would be no reasoning with her. “You need to keep me updated on everything that’s happening while I’m on my way there. You have to do this for me, Asa.”

Rule was Rome’s younger brother. The entire Archer clan was bound to be on hand, not to mention all the other various members of the gang that worked with Rule at the tattoo shop he owned with Nash. The maternity-ward waiting room was going to be full of the Marked family and they really didn’t need me in the way, but I had promised myself I was never going to let Ayden down again, so I grumbled my agreement to go and hung up on her before she could keep screaming at me.

I looked at Royal, who was texting on her phone and chewing on her lower lip not at all like a mere moment ago she had had her hand in my pants. She looked back up at me with a crooked grin.

“Saint just texted that Shaw’s in labor.” I nodded and then frowned when my phone buzzed in my hand with a text. I thought it was going to be Ayden, so I was surprised when the message was from Rome instead.

Another Archer is on the way. Get your ass to the hospital.

It took me a minute to understand that I was actually wanted there for this big event. I looked up at Royal in confusion. “Rome wants me there.”

“Of course he does.”

I frowned at her. “What do you mean, ‘of course he does’?”

She made a face at me and moved to climb into the driver’s seat of the 4Runner. “You’re friends and practically business partners. Rule has Nash, Jet has Rowdy, and Rome has you. Everyone needs someone to lean on, and bringing a new life into the world is most definitely a big deal. Now come on, I’ll give you a lift down there.”

I was stunned speechless, so I just moved around the car and climbed in the passenger side. I slumped down once I was situated and stared straight ahead.

I liked Rome. I respected the hell out of him. He was also on my newly formed list of people I never wanted to disappoint. He had given me a shot when everyone else in the world seemed like they were just waiting for me to fuck everything up. I owed him a lot, but it had never occurred to me that somewhere along the line that had morphed into him relying on me and respecting me as well. It was kind of a foreign concept to me and I wasn’t sure what to do with it.

“One of these days you’re going to let me finish what I’m always trying to start with you, Asa.”

Royal’s voice was low and there was a needy thread in it that twisted and twined around my heart. That couldn’t happen. I couldn’t let her get to me; that would be bad news for both of us. It was time to stop pretending and let her see my true colors.

I leered at her and told her flatly, “Any guy that gets your hands around his dick is gonna finish, Red.” It was crude and unnecessary, but it made her be quiet for the rest of the ride to the hospital and I spent that time convincing myself it was for the best …

… Wasn’t it?