“Good.” She gave a terse nod. “In fact, since he’s here anyway, I may as well enjoy his suffering. What are y’all ordering?”
“A Blue Moon, a Crown and water, and a dirty martini.”
Sam grabbed a glass and started pouring the drinks. “Give me a minute and I’ll bring them over. How’s my hair?”
Tessa laughed. “Uh-oh, it looks great, but what are you up to?”
Sam adjusted her shirt, letting the V-neck show off a little more cleavage than she usually revealed at work. “Torture.”
“Sadist.”
“Yep.”
Tessa smiled and headed back to the table, and Sam finished up with the drinks. She carried them over on a tray, making sure to put a touch more sway in her walk. She’d learned how to do it early on to get tips before she’d become the manager of the place, but she hadn’t lost the skill. And she wasn’t afraid to use it to torment the man who’d walked away from her.
When she stopped at the table, Kade looked up and grinned, all blond hair and broad smiles. “Hey, Sam, long time no see.”
She smirked. She’d just seen the couple a few days ago when they’d all gone to a music festival together. She and Tessa rarely went long between visits, but Kade didn’t seem to mind. “Hey, stalker boy, I presume the dirty martini is yours.”
He took the drink from her, not blinking at the nickname she’d given him last year when he’d been doggedly pursuing her best friend like a knight on a quest. She set the beer in front of Tessa and then finally turned to Gibson. She kept her smile poised, but it took everything she had to keep her composure when Gib looked up. He’d let his jaw go a little scruffy and the dark shadow of a beard only made him look more edible. But the look in his eyes sucked the air right out of her. Hunger flared in that deep blue gaze, open and naked, but he shuttered it quickly. “Hey, Sam.”
She swallowed past the tightness in her throat, completely forgetting her plan to look seductive and so over him. “Crown and water.”
She plunked the glass on the table without grace, causing some of the drink to slosh over the top.
“Thanks,” he said gruffly.
Silence ensued and Tessa cleared her throat. “Do y’all still have those potato skin things? I’m starving.”
Sam snapped out of her daze and turned to Tessa. “You bet. I’ll tell Angie to put in an order. She’ll be handling your table. I just wanted to come over and say hi.”
Gibson took a long gulp from his glass and then brushed a hand over his dark wavy hair, trying to smooth the unsmoothable. A move she’d learned was his sign of discomfort. God, this was so ridiculous.
And she was done with it. So things had gotten a little out of hand during that last training session. He’d been helping her out, bottoming for her so she could learn how to use a whip. They’d been through a few weeks of lessons and everything had gone well. All had been done under the assumption that he was a fellow dominant who would be guiding her from the bottom—a friendly exchange. He wasn’t supposed to get hard when she whipped him. And she wasn’t supposed to get so turned on at the sight. And they weren’t supposed to kiss. And she definitely wasn’t supposed to let him push her against a wall and put his hand beneath her skirt to get her off.
But all that had happened, and when she’d tried to take control back and take him to bed as her submissive, everything had exploded in her face. He’d snapped out of whatever spell he’d been in from the flogging and had told her that nothing could happen between them because they were both dominants. The training had ended right there—even when both of them knew that he’d gotten hard as a rock in the submissive role, that the more pain she’d given him, the more turned on he’d gotten. For whatever reason, he wasn’t going to take that role. Period. End of sentence.
She wasn’t worth the risk to him.
Fine.
“Is there anything else I can get y’all for now?” she asked, her voice coming out a little too bright.
“No, I think we’re good,” Kade said, cutting an annoyed look his brother’s way.
Sam headed back to the safety of the bar. The crowd was picking up, and she didn’t have time to waste trying to figure out an indecipherable man. She had a job to do. So for the next hour, she managed her bartenders, poured drinks to help them keep up, and made rounds of the floor to greet customers. By the time she made her second walk around the place, every table was taken and the noise of all those different conversations reverberated off the walls.
This was her favorite part of her shift. Managing the bar wasn’t always the most glamorous of jobs, but when the crowd was buzzing and the energy pulsing around her, she couldn’t help but feed off it. She cruised by the back corner, and a sharp whistle caught her attention.
She fought the instinct to ignore it. Nothing ticked her off more than being summoned like she was a dog that needed to come to heel, but a customer was a customer. She turned around and forced a tolerant smile at the two guys swigging cheap whiskey at a back table. “Can I help y’all with something?”
“Hey, sweetheart,” one said, tipping his ball cap up and revealing narrow green eyes. “I dropped my keys. Mind getting them for me?”
She looked down at the floor and the keys at her feet. She bent over, swiped them from the ground, and tossed them on their table. “Here ya go.”
His friend grinned her way and pushed the keys onto the floor again. “Maybe bend down a little slower this time, baby. I didn’t get a good view the first go-round.”
She straightened, irritation surging. “I’m not here to give you a show. Do you need a drink or what?”