Because this man was deadly. I’d only seen him from afar up until now. He had tattoos covering every inch of his skin, including the corners of his face and his forehead. He had dark features but skin almost as pale as mine. His jet-black hair was inky, silky and brushing his shoulders.
And the muscles.
Don’t even get me started.
Muscles were a given around here. Especially since all the older members were murdered and the club consisted of mostly new patches.
But muscles weren’t what made him dangerous.
There was something about him that made me steer well clear while sober, even though he did his best to separate himself from civilians, I’d observed that when I caught glimpses of him, glimpses were all I got. There was something about him. Like a snake, the deadliest one that could kill you within seconds.
I nodded. “Yes, I find you very cute,” I continued. “In a, ‘I’ll kill you and your whole family without blinking type of way.’”
He stared at me. His face was empty.
It was chilling.
Or it would’ve been had tequila not been burning in my belly. And had I not already been chilled by the grave before.
I’d had sex with a dead man earlier today.
And it had made me feel more alive than ever before.
I was craving more of the grave.
Hence the tequila and talking to a man who might’ve been death himself. Or the Devil’s bestie.
I glanced down at his cut. At the patch that read ‘Enforcer.’ “Ah,” I said. “So your actual job is to kill people without blinking.” I nodded, more to myself than to him. “Makes sense. Snakes kill the best. Effective. Don’t notice them until they’re sinking their teeth into you. And by then, it’s too late.”
I tried to shrug, forgetting that my elbow on the bar was the thing holding me up and it slipped into dead air.
I would’ve taken a header right into Hades’ crotch had a firm grip not caught me.
My entire body—drunk or not—reacted. It was the snake. Not sinking its teeth in. But there was no way to touch a snake without being seconds away from fangs sinking into your skin.
My eyes met black irises.
“Careful,” Hades murmured. “Fallin’ down around here, people don’t tend to get up lately.”
I stared at him, trying to understand whether it was a threat or a warning. Or just some stupid badass shit these bikers said to make them seem more badass.
I didn’t get the opportunity to come to a conclusion. Because another set of hands fastened around my bare shoulders, wrenching me back out of the snake’s grasp.
I reacted to those hands too.
Though they didn’t belong to a deadly snake, the venom from the contact entered my bloodstream too.
My stool swiveled so I was face to face with Liam. No, Jagger.
He was mad.
And with that simple eye contact that was so far from simple, I realized that I was mad too.
Furious.
“Do not do it, say it or swear it,” I hissed at him.
He blinked once, the only ripple in his fury. “Come again?”
I straightened, my body relaxing when Hades was no longer touching me. No matter how attractive he was, there was no way his grip felt comforting.
“Do not come here with that look, that testosterone and that misplaced sense of authority over me,” I snapped. “I’m imagining that you’re going to attempt to drag me away, lecture me about getting drunk, talking to snakes and pretty much doing whatever is outside your approved actions for women you fuck. Here’s a newsflash from Caroline Hargrave, right on the ground…fuck you.” I gave him a hand gesture communicating the same message for good measure.
I would’ve sworn I’d seen Hades smile from my peripheral, but of course that was wrong, snakes couldn’t smile.
Liam did not smile.
His face emptied, with a blankness that was chilling.
“I’m not going to attempt to drag you anywhere,” he said, voice flat.
And then, before I could react, he struck.
Maybe there was more than one snake around here.
The glass I was drinking from toppled to the ground with a smash that made no one in the room jump. Glasses breaking were a soundtrack in the clubhouse just as much as ACDC was.
No one blinked at the fact that I was being dragged across the room, kicking and screaming, by a stone-faced biker capable of murder.
A few of them clapped.
Claw grinned.
Swiss raised his beer.
Most of them barely noticed.
As if men dragged women around the place all the time in these places.
Savages. All of them.
I screamed at the common room in general before Liam thrust me into his bedroom, slamming the newly repaired door. Some prospect had done it earlier today.
“You’re drunk,” he hissed.
“That’s usually the desired effect while drinking tequila,” I snapped. My eyes ran over him and I was ashamed at the hunger that prickled the bottom of my stomach, merging with the fury in a cocktail that somehow wasn’t displeasing as it should’ve been.