He wanted to get out of here with her, take her home. She’s leaving all right…with me.
He’s a bad man with bad intentions, or at least he was.
Not me. I just want to protect her, show her what I can do for her. Show her that she might actually like me if she gives me a chance.
Now it’s time to take that chance.
I walk around front of the bar, look at my reflection in the glass and make sure there’s no blood near my mouth, on my teeth. At this hour the line is much thinner and I’m inside in well under two minutes.
The second I pass through the door I see her two steps in front of me, moving swiftly to leave as she taps on what appears to be the Uber app on her phone, but I don’t have enough time to see it clearly to be sure.
Thinking fast, I turn my head away from her and sidestep the opposite direction right in her path.
“Ah!” she screams as if she just saw a ghost. I was expecting more of an oomph like the wind got knocked out of her but that’s not what I get. She gives me my worst nightmare instead.
Is she repelled by me seemingly like everyone else that meets me when I’m unprepared, not yet having turned on the practiced charm that I’ve perfected over a lifetime?
Can she see past the veneer of an extrovert I’ve created, my facade crumbling revealing an introvert with some…unusual habits?
“I’m sorry,” she says, clutching her chest just below her neck. “You scared me. I thought you were someone else.”
“I’m nothing like him. Not at all.”
Her whole body goes still as her eyes study me, as her mind processes my socially awkward answer.
“What I mean is I’d never let a woman leave a bar alone at this hour without making sure she was safely in an Uber or taxi.”
A moment passes and her eyes widen before she says, “What makes you think I’m talking about a man?”
“A woman as beautiful as you most surely wouldn’t be able to go anywhere without a line of suitors following her.”
“Now I’ve heard it all,” she says, pushing past me, but I reach out and grab her forearm as she does.
“Sam,” I offer.
“Please, Sam. Let go of my arm.”
Hearing my name roll off those pillowy lips has my cock begging to lose its spend right here and now, but I fight it, hold it back and instead immediately let loose.
She steps outside into the night and I turn and follow her, frantically tapping on her phone with her index finger. “No, no, no!” she says as I watch the screen go blank.
Just as I’m about to open my mouth to tell her my buddy went home without me, I think about how she’ll associate me with the man who was bothering…and will never do so again. Wracking my brain, I go with the second thing that comes to mind.
“If you need to borrow my phone you can.”
Looking left and then right I see it. How did I miss it? Her movements aren’t fluid and it’s then I realize just how much she’s had to drink. Reaching for my phone her balance betrays her and I slide in, putting a hand on her hip and keeping her upright.
My grip tightens immediately, possessiveness for her and her safety ripping through me in a way unlike ever before. Being that she’s intoxicated she doesn’t notice just how firmly I’m holding her.
“I think I might be drunk.”
“You don’t know?”
“It’s my twenty-first birthday and the first time I’ve ever drank.”
“Your friends? Are they here?”
“My friends?” she slurs her words for the first time as she starts to laugh and then immediately her expression pinches and sorrow overwhelms her expression. “Don’t really have many of them. Many as in none.”