The door was still swinging when the woman let out a wail that said Munch's skills in that department hadn't gotten rusty.
"Munch?" Fallon asked, lips twitching.
Taking a deep breath, I prepared myself to have no reaction to my words.
"He likes munching on muff," I supplied tone dry.
There was a split second of heat in Fallon's gaze before he let out a chuckle that had no right to be as sexy as it was. "Who the fuck says 'muff' these days?"
"It was from a song or some shit," I said, shrugging. "Anyway. Back to you. Being in my clubhouse. Uninvited. Leave."
"I'm not leaving until we compare notes on the shooting."
"Wanna bet?" I asked, aware of my men standing, moving inward in case I needed them.
"Danny," Fallon said, tone softer than I expected. The sound shivered over my skin, making goosebumps rise on my arms and across my chest.
Damnit.
He had no right to affect me like that.
"Fallon," I shot back, though my tone wasn't anywhere near as soft as I folded my arms across my chest.
"You're going to potentially let your club get taken out because you're a fucking stubborn ass?" he asked, and his tone wasn't soft anymore.
"My club can take care of itself."
"Not against a damn near invisible threat, it can't."
"Do you have information to share with me?"
"I'll share if you share," Fallon said, shrugging.
I had to agree, right? That was what my men would expect. To put my personal distaste for him aside to potentially protect the club as a whole.
"Fine. What?" I snapped when he glanced around the room.
"You can use the kitchen," Grandpa suggested, reading Fallon better than me, it seemed.
"With Munch?" I shot back, snorting. "No."
Silently, I added, And all the apartments are occupied too.
And then the bastard I trusted more than anyone else in the world went right ahead and betrayed me.
"There's the basement," he suggested, face so blank that I couldn't tell if he was picking up on something, or if he was just stating the next logical place to have a private conversation.
"Fine," I hissed, chest going tight. "But your men stay here with my men," I demanded.
"Seems fair," Fallon agreed as he started to follow me.
Was I imagining it, or had his voice gone tense too?
Wishful thinking, probably.
He had the upper hand and he knew it.
If he told his men that he'd fucked me, he'd be the hero, and I would be the butt of jokes. If I told mine that I'd fucked him, the reception wouldn't be nearly as warm.
So there was no reason for him to be tense.
It was just me projecting my own growing anxiety.
It was a strange, foreign sensation. I'd never been prone to it before. I was usually running headfirst into the problem rather than giving myself time to get anxious about it.
I hated him more than I already did for that.
I charged into the center of my little basement apartment, whipping around to find Fallon standing just at the bottom of the steps, glancing around. He, like Grandpa, focused on the bed. Only with him, I couldn't figure out if he was looking because he thought the pink was ridiculous, or if he was having flashes of images about things we could do in that bed.
Again, probably just me projecting.
What the hell was wrong with me?
"This is where you live?" he asked, and I thought I caught a hint of distaste in his voice.
"Right. Because you live in the fucking Taj Mahal."
"What's with the attitude?" he asked, shaking his head at me.
"Just responding to your attitude."
"I don't have an attitude," he insisted. "There are apartments above the bar. Why would you be stuck in the basement like some thirty-five-year-old loser with no social skills?"
"It's private," I said, wanting to stay annoyed, but he really was being conversational. I was just on-edge because of what we'd done the night before. "You might not have a problem shacking up on top of one another, but I've had enough of that. I need space to breathe."
"And plan to open a bar," he said, moving forward to fiddle with my pile of books stacked on a TV dinner stand beside the bed.
"Don't touch my stuff," I demanded, voice tight.
This time, when he looked at me, I was sure there was a flash of heat in his eyes mixed with a teasing smirk that I wanted to slap off his face.
"Touchy," he said, turning, and sitting down on my bed.
"I didn't say you could sit down."
"And yet..." he said, waving toward the bed.
"Do you have any information to share with me?" I asked, refusing to be baited, not wanting him to think he got the better of me because of the night before.
"I have a long list of people I don't think it was. At least not organizations that would want to fuck with us. I figured we could compare that list, see if you have any beefs with syndicates we get along with."