With a chuckle, he studied my chest. “Not even by a long shot. Or maybe I’m just a nipple man, because I love the way yours respond to me. All I have to do is look at them, and they get hard and tight and pert, like they’re happy to see me. It makes me hard and tight right back, very happy to see them. And size...hell, all I need is a mouthful.”
He bent his head down and sucked me in, proving it. It was some kind of breaking point for me. “I want you so much,” I sobbed, clutching him.
“I know,” he muffled around his mouthful. “I want you too.”
“No.” Grasping his hair, I pulled him off my breast and made him look at me, dead in the eye. “I mean, I really want you. I want to be with you, Knox. Tonight.”
I stared after City as she finished filling her napkin holder and moved to another table. Feeling as if the wind had been knocked out of me, I wondered why the hell I’d agreed to go anywhere with her, especially Bentley’s grave, where we’d probably bond.
She needed to stay away from me.
And I needed to keep her away from me.
Except, it just wasn’t my damn night. As the club opened, she didn’t avoid me whenever she came up to the bar to fill her orders. Sometimes she took her business to one of the other two bartenders, but if I was right there, she rattled off whatever she needed as if I were any other coworker. But I could see it in her eyes. She was rocking some serious pity.
What made matters worse was that I knew she wouldn’t push me away if I went to her. If I sought comfort, she’d comfort me.
Yet, I refused to touch her, even made sure our hands didn’t brush during money exchanges.
The only distraction that kept me from going insane with how there she was—right fucking in front of me, touching distance away—was the small issue Asher had. About as soon as the doors opened, women began to pour in.
Even Ten noticed, pausing by me and muttering, “Is it just me, or are there a ton of chicks here tonight? It’s not Thursday.”
No, it wasn’t Thursday, and yes, there were definitely a ton of women. They gathered around the bar area too, not waiting for a waitress to come to them, but bringing their orders straight to us.
“And they all seem to be Incubus fans,” I noticed.
“What?” Ten whipped his head toward the crowd, where about twenty different women were just milling around, sipping from their assorted drinks, and...were they all staring at Asher?
Ten broke out belly laughing. “Oh, my fucking God. You’ve got to be kidding me. Holy shit, this is too good to be true.”
“What?” I asked, slightly startled I was even curious enough to care what he was talking about.
He set a hand on my shoulder and leaned confidentially closer. “Last night, Hart sang some song about this chick he saw singing karaoke a couple months back. Girl had a boyfriend, but she left him with a raging hard-on, and he’s been obsessed with finding her again ever since. Anyway, in the song, he had some lyric about her wearing an Incubus T-shirt and singing—”
On cue, a new karaoke song began, playing a popular hit. I glanced toward the stage, to find three ladies preparing to sing. And they were all sporting different versions of Incubus on their shirts.
“Let me guess. It was All About that Bass?”
Ten groaned. “Aww, hell no. Please don’t tell me all these fucking women are going to sing that one song all fucking night long? Stab me now.”
I glanced toward Asher, who was frowning in confusion at the stage, just as one tone-deaf woman started to butcher the opening line.
“No, no, NO!” Ten wailed, covering his ears. “I’m going to slaughter Hart for this.”
I tipped my head toward Asher. “I don’t think he gets it yet.”
“Hart!” Ten bellowed, storming Asher’s way. “You son of a bitch. Look what you’ve done.”
Asher whirled to him, utter confusion on his face. I couldn’t hear the conversation that followed, but it consisted of Ten raging and waving his arms in wild anger, and Asher’s expression of bewilderment morphing into horror.