Except she’d marked herself with my words.
Like she’d wanted to be mine.
My cock couldn’t forget it, and I couldn’t forget the way her neck tasted when I’d lost control. I needed to have her once, needed a reminder that I didn’t have time for the shit she pulled, especially when there was no way her body would be as good as her bait.
When we walked back into Heathen’s, she grabbed a few of her things she’d left near the bar. “I think I’ll go call Bastian.”
She purred his name, and the sound of it sliced through me like a knife sliced skin. “You’re a fucking instigator, I swear.”
The dim lighting of the bar allowed for some privacy to the untrained eye. A few customers idled around, drinking, minding their own business. The regulars were there, some leaning on the lip of the polished mahogany bar. The family and I had designed a space where people went to feel at home and lose themselves. It felt familiar with its wood floors and soft rock hits playing in the background on weeknights. The weekends, when college was in session, got rowdier.
The bar wasn’t grimy, but it was lived in, worked over into a comfortable space. The college kids loved it, the ones out of college frequented it, and it held an almost iconic place within the city.
To me, it was my first successful venture as a businessman, and it had blossomed into other profitable bars throughout a couple of cities. They made for perfect gathering places for the family or a place to unwind when I needed it.
A place no one questioned anything I did, even if it was shoving Katie.
I grabbed her by the elbow and yanked her toward the back door of the bar.
She stumbled as I shoved her forward and smacked the swinging door open so she could fall through. “Are you kidding me?” I heard her say.
I moved after her into the back storage room. Bottles lined the shelves as the motion light overhead flickered on.
She turned to face me, her wavy bob flaring out as she did. “Don’t ever freaking push me, Rome!”
“You’re fine.” I rolled my eyes. “You basically walked back here yourself.”
She scoffed. “What happened to screaming at Georgie for manhandling me, huh? What happened to ‘no man should put his hands on me’?”
“Except me.” I eyed her up and down, taunting her with the something we’d always known was between us. “Definitely not Bastian.”
“Well, Bastian and every other man on the face of this earth seems to at least flirt with the idea of being with me, Rome. You’re hot as hell one minute and cold as ice the next.” She crossed her arms over her chest, and it exaggerated her cleavage, exaggerated everything I shouldn’t have.
“I’m not interested. My dick might be, though.”
Her gray eyes narrowed. “Right. You saying that’s all I’m capable of?”
“A better man will show you that’s not true. I’m just not him.”
“Whatever.” She waved a hand like the conversation didn’t concern her, like it was a fly buzzing around her head. “Are you going to tell Mario and Bastian you blew my relationship with Georgie tonight? Because that’s really all we should be discussing.”
I crowded her into the wooden table that was up against the back wall. “Fine. It needs to be discussed, anyway. First, Bastian knows you were baiting Georgie?”
“Of course.” She put her hands on my chest to stop my approach.
“That fucker is pissing me off more and more. Second, I’m not telling them shit. You ruined it the minute you walked in here and he put his hands on you.”
“I thought he was out of town. If I’d known he’d show up, I wouldn’t have—”
“You wouldn’t have come here?” I smiled. “Why, Kate-Bait? You scared to bring your boys here? We heathens aren’t that bad.”
She rolled her eyes. “The Heathen’s bar boys are fine. No one gets involved except you.”
“If he hadn’t put his hands on you, I would have let it slide.”
“I can handle a man’s hands on me.”
I gripped her hips in response, and she hissed when I squeezed and then lifted her up onto the table. “A man like that on a body like yours is a waste.”