The Answer Was Me

Beck POV "So," Lainey said. "What would you like me to do first?" I didn't answer right away. I couldn't. The answer was me. I wanted her to do me. That was the first thing in my head, and the second, and the third. I wanted her on her knees behind this bar with those jeans still on and that pretty mouth wrapped around my c*ck. I wanted her bent over the cooler I had just finished stocking, with my hand in her hair and her bare ass in the air. I wanted to find out if she was loud. I wanted to find out right now, before we opened, with the door unlocked. She stood there with her first-day smile on, waiting. She had no idea. She had come in half an hour early, in boots, because I had told her closed shoes. She had put a can of pepper spray down on my bar like a woman who was used to looking after herself. And his scent was fresh on her mouth. He had kissed her on her way out the door. That last part did what a cold shower would have done. It put my head back on straight. I swallowed. "Why don't you look around first," I said. "Get a feel for the place. Then you can check the stock." "I can do that." "It doesn't get too busy. But some of the men don't like to wait." "Nobody does," she said. "I'm faster than I look." She came around the end of the bar. That put her on my side of it, in the narrow run between the taps and the back counter, where two people can't pass without one of them turning sideways. She trailed her fingers along the bottles as she went, reading labels, moving her lips a little while she counted. She was three feet away. It had taken her about a minute and a half to get there. I had been wrong about the twenty-six hours. They hadn't been nearly enough. Then I remembered this was Cedar Ridge. The whole town knew by now. By four o'clock, everybody in the pack was going to come through that door to get a look at her. Some of the men really don't like to wait. I wasn't going to like watching them try. She learned the bar in twenty minutes. I watched her do it. She found the well, the ice, and the bar towels. She opened every cooler once and didn't open any of them twice. She asked me four questions, all of them good ones, and she didn't ask any of them again. "Where do you keep the backup kegs?" "In the walk-in. Through the back, on the left." "Do you run tabs, or cash out every round?" "Tabs. Everybody's good for it." "Everybody?" "It's a small town." She nodded and kept moving. Then she turned around to check the taps, and I was in her way. That run behind the bar was never meant for two people. She stopped short, about a foot from my chest, and tipped her head back to look at me. "Sorry," she said. "You're fine." Neither of us moved. I could see the pulse going in her throat. I could have counted her eyelashes. She smelled like soap and honey, and under that was something that had nothing to do with soap. My wolf put his whole weight against my ribs. I turned sideways and put my back against the cooler. She slid past me with her eyes down. Her shoulder brushed my chest, barely, through two shirts. I felt it for the next ten minutes. At four o'clock I flipped the sign. "You can keep your things in the back room," I said. "There's a hook by the door." She looked down at what she had brought. It was a set of keys and a jacket. She was nervous. She was hiding it well. Her smile was steady, and so were her hands. Anybody else would have seen a woman who had done this a hundred times. But I could hear her heart from across the room, going like a rabbit's. She had lined up the same row of glasses twice. She kept touching the bar top with her fingertips, like she was making sure it was still there. I wanted to reach out and settle her. It would have been easy. One hand between her shoulder blades. I could have told her that she had this, that nobody in this room was going to give her a hard time, and that I would break the arm of anybody who did. My wolf was already leaning toward her. He didn't understand why we weren't touching her. He hadn't understood for five days. I took one step. The door opened. It was like watching somebody flip a switch. Her shoulders came down. Her chin came up. The nerves went wherever she kept them, and what was left was all bartender. "Hi there," she called. "Come on in. Sit anywhere you like." And they came in. Walt was first, naturally. Behind him were Gene and the man from the hardware store. So was Opal Finch, our librarian, who had not ordered a drink in my bar in eleven years. So was half of Alder Lane. They filed through the door one after another, all of them looking anywhere except at me. It was one minute past four on a weeknight, and I had a line.