I took a swig of the drink and set it down with a thunk on the bar. I ran my hand through my dirty-blond hair and looked at Royal out of the corner of my eye.
“So this is what you do now? Get drunk, rile up the natives, take half your clothes off in public, and just generally act the fool? ’Cause I gotta tell you, after two weekends in a row of it, I think it’s probably time you find another bar to haunt.”
I saw her shoulders slump and she matched my side-eye look.
“Why didn’t you tell those guys I was a cop?”
I sighed and turned to face her. I really wished she wasn’t such a looker. It made trying to be level-headed and rational around her that much harder.
“Because even though you can carry concealed legally because of your badge, you still can’t be drinking while carrying a loaded weapon. That’s illegal and a headache you really don’t need.”
“All of a sudden you’re concerned with others being law-abiding.” A little bit of her sass was coming back and that was a nice change from her maudlin moping that had settled around her since I pulled her off the dance floor.
“No. I don’t give a flying fuck about others being law-abiding, but you’ve got a job you like, friends that care about you, and you’re way too young to be flushing it all down the toilet. Even if that seems to be your new mission in life. You need to get your shit together, Royal, before you’re too far gone to fix the mess you seem so eager to make.” She was barely twenty-three. That seemed a lifetime younger than me, even though I had a couple more years ahead of me before I hit the big three-oh.
“That’s funny coming from you.”
Second time I had heard that in less than an hour. Maybe I just needed to keep my nose out of it and let everyone learn their own hard lessons just like I had been forced to do. I picked up my drink and took another slug.
“Get it together or don’t, but this is the final warning about bringing that nonsense into my bar. You want to go down in flames, I guess that’s your call, but I’m not going to watch you burn.”
Something flashed across her eyes, something so sad and lost it really made me want to reach out and comfort her, but touching Royal was like touching a live wire and I already had a hard enough time keeping my mind out of my pants and my hands to myself when I was around her. She blinked those long-ass lashes at me, stuck her tongue out to flick it across her bottom lip, and I forgot how to breathe for a second. She did it on purpose. I had no doubt.
“One of these days you’ll come home with me when I ask, Asa.” She leaned over on the bar stool a little and put her hand on my thigh. My fingers tightened around the tumbler in my hand so hard I was shocked the glass didn’t break.
“Is that why you’re here? Is that what the show is all about? You really want to make that kind of mistake?” My drawl was thick enough that the words were languid and heavy sounding. I felt blood start to race under my skin and I had no doubt that my eyes were probably glowing bright gold in my face. It wasn’t often someone made me uneasy, threw me off my game, but Royal had done it more than once in our short acquaintance.
She pressed her weight forward and stopped when her mouth was just a fraction away from mine. I could almost taste her. In fact, if I stuck out just the tip of my tongue, I would be tasting her. I clenched my teeth to stop that from happening, even though I was pretty sure she would taste like candy and fire.
“It seems like all I make anymore are mistakes. At least making that kind of one with you would be fun.”
She used her leverage on my leg to push herself upright as she slithered off the bar stool in one seamlessly sexy move. It made me bite back a groan.
“If you don’t want me here, I won’t come back.” She tossed her heavy hair over her shoulder and gave me a steady look out of her dark brown eyes. “I really thought you would make this easier.”
I didn’t say anything as she walked away, steady on those killer shoes and missing her shirt even though it was winter in Colorado. She was obviously sober enough to drive, but I had no idea where her head was at otherwise.
Dixie locked the door behind the redhead and wandered over to the bar. She grabbed herself a bottle of Bud Light, which of course was sacrilegious in this Coors Light–dominated bar, and refilled my scotch.
“I don’t know how you’ve managed to turn her down more than once.” She shook her own strawberry-blond curls and grinned at me. “I’m not even into chicks and I think I would do her if she asked. She’s pretty amazing.”
I muttered a few swearwords under my breath and tossed the second round back in one swallow. It burned a little and I had to blink.
“She’s a cop, a cop that has arrested me. I have better self-preservation instincts than that.” In my experience, cops were not my biggest fans, and I really couldn’t blame them. I set the empty glass down on the bar and climbed to my feet. It was late and I needed a hundred cold showers. “Besides, she doesn’t actually wanna fuck, she just thinks she does.”
Dixie snorted. “That’s not what it looks like to me.”
It might look pretty cut-and-dried from the outside. Royal was pretty, I was pretty, and we definitely had a spark, but I hadn’t lasted as long as I had screwing over everyone whose path I crossed without learning how to look deeper, how to see the danger looming, and it was obvious to me that Royal was dangerous in more ways than one.
“That’s a very pretty girl with a very ugly hurt, and somehow she got it in her head that she deserves to be punished, to hurt even more.”