It didn’t help that she was wearing low-slung jeans that clung to her every fucking curve, that the shirt she was wearing did the exact same thing while showing off her entire mid-section. She was walking sex. Though not a fucker in the room would dare stare at her for longer than a second. Not if he wanted to keep his eyes. Men looked at her when she was on stage, and there was nothing I could do about that except fuck her in the bathroom of the strip club the second she left the stage. And I’d done that. More than once.
“She wants to see my filming setup, and I was thinking of doing a little feature on Old Lady life for my channel,” Freya continued, her voice the sweetest fucking thing I’d ever heard.
Her ocean eyes darted to Hansen who was holding his beer and watching our interaction with obvious amusement and satisfaction. “As long as you’re okay with that?” she added quickly. “I know that the ways of the club are meant to be all mysterious and hush-hush, but we’re not talking about that. Mostly we’ll be talking about beauty routines, outfits and shoes.”
Hansen grinned. It was warm and easy, and for a split second, I hated him for it. “I’m okay with it,” he replied. “Mostly because I know that my wife would likely skin me alive if I said anything different.”
Freya beamed at him. “Great!” Her gaze moved to me. “Okay, well, I’ll see you at home later then?”
Home.
Fuck. That was a knife to the heart.
“Okay, but you’re gonna have a prospect on you,” I forced the emotional shit away, keeping my voice to be cold and dismissive. She didn’t blink at my tone because she was used to it from me. She trusted me. Despite the fact I was lying to her.
I was a piece of shit.
But that had been established long ago.
She rolled her eyes but did it with a grin that made my cock even fucking harder. My grip tightened on her ass, causing her eyes to flare with need, with hunger. I nearly threw her over my shoulder to find the nearest bed I could fuck her in.
I resisted that urge. Barely.
“Alright, I’m heading home now then.” She licked her lips, knowing she was driving me fucking crazy.
I just nodded because I couldn’t fucking talk.
She grinned again then placed her hands flat on my chest, tilting her head up toward me. She was short, even in the heels she always wore—which she even wore to the fucking grocery store—so I had to bend down for her to lay her lips on mine.
She tasted like strawberries and fucking Freya.
Again, I restrained myself from fucking her right there.
Her eyes were lazy when I finally pulled back. “Later,” she murmured.
“Oh, fuck yeah, babe,” I promised, my voice low.
She winked at me, lingering with her body pressed against mine for a beat before she turned her back on me. Fuck if it wasn’t a pathetic thing to think, but I missed her already.
As Freya walked away, Swiss came from behind the bar to stand next to me.
“A woman with an ass like that and that kind of fire in her eyes...” He didn’t finish that sentence, his eyes lingering on her ass for much too fucking long. Finally, just before I was about to rip his head off, he looked back at me with a knowing grin. “A woman like that is gonna ruin your life, brother.” He chuckled as he walked forward and clapped me on my shoulder. “And there ain’t a damn thing you can do about it.”
She’d already ruined my life.
I’d eventually ruin hers too.
FREYA
I’d known something was wrong the second Hades had walked into the house.
He hadn’t said anything. He hadn’t needed to. Something had changed about him. Something that made my stomach drop and my blood chill with fear. He hadn’t touched me when he walked in. It was a loss, or at least that’s what it felt like. For the past few months, whenever he walked into a room, his hands would be on me, his lips would be on me. Even if he’d only been gone for five minutes.
Hades might not have been a man of many words or a traditional kind of romantic, but he said fucking everything in those little gestures that weren’t little at all. A huge chasm opened up inside of me when he walked into the house, ruffled Sirius’s head absently, watched me work in the kitchen for a minute then walked toward the living room. I hadn’t even spoken; I’d had no clue what to say. My spatula was frozen in the air as I watched him walk slowly across the room, to the open doors, lighting up a smoke as he stared out into the desert. He hadn’t moved from there.