He wasn’t. Probably. Dylan gave his mouth a discreet wipe anyhow. Just in case.
While he’d been distracted, the bouncers had managed to collar the rest of the party. They dragged the group—about two-thirds shamefaced as their adrenaline tanked, and the others still ready for a fight—to the bar and lined them up against it.
The groom-to-be, still on the floor, flapped about in the mud of spilled whiskey, blood, and old grime. He still had a death grip on Mrs. Claus’s bikini top. At least he did until the Mrs. Claus in question stalked over, bent down, and snatched it off him.
“If you can’t afford it, don’t touch it,” she spat at him. He groaned woozily. She kicked him for good measure before the bouncer caught up with her and pulled her away.
Dylan glanced over at Alice. He nodded toward the bar as he pulled a pair of nitrile gloves out of his pocket.
“Now we get involved,” he said as he looked at the collection of bruises, cuts, and at least one missing tooth waiting for them. Well, they weren’t going to patch themselves up. Dylan snapped the gloves on. “Merry Christmas to us.”
The cops had finally turned up.
The Wolf Pack were going to spend the rest of the night in a jail cell, except for the groom-to-be. His head injury—the Santa hat replaced with a wad of gauze and a bloody bandage—was bad enough he’d earned a trip to the ER. He’d slurred a request for someone to ‘call Irene,’ but apparently none of his pack were ready to throw themselves on that grenade.
“How bad is it?” the bouncer with the gashed ear asked. He had his eyes squeezed tightly closed and clutched Alice’s gloved fingers as Dylan worked. “Is it going to need stitches?”
Dylan exchanged an amused look with his partner.
“It doesn’t look like it,” he said. The cut to the ear was shallow. It had bled dramatically but was already more or less stopped. A few Steri-Strips would do to hold it shut. “So you don’t like the sight of blood?”
The bouncer shook his head. His mouth turned down at the corners.
“It makes me feel sick.”
“Isn’t that a problem in your line of work?” Alice asked.
The bouncer opened one eye enough to check her out. People did that. Alice was a beautiful woman. It was probably a boon in her personal life, but professionally it could be a pain in the ass. Dylan put his hand under the bouncer’s chin and tilted his head to the side to break the eye contact.
“It’s just my blood that bothers me,” the bouncer said. He winced as Dylan worked on his ear. “Other people’s blood doesn’t. So I mostly try not to let them hit me.”
“Good plan,” Alice said.
There was someone behind Dylan. He felt the presence at his shoulder a second before Somerset snorted.
“It is,” Somerset said. “More people should live by it. Like your partner.”
Dylan smoothed the butterfly strip down on the bouncer’s ear and nodded at Alice to finish the dressing. He turned around to look at Somerset.
Up, at Somerset.
Most of the time, it didn’t bother Dylan that he was on the shorter side. He didn’t have anything to prove. Most people, though, weren’t a solid wall of Somerset. It wasn’t just that the man was tall, he wasbig.Broad shoulders and chest, thick thighs in old, work-soft denim.
And, an annoying little voice in the back of Dylan’s head noted pointedly, ‘bother’ wasn’t the right word. Being shorter than Somerset didn’t bother him. It turned him on, all hot ears and sticky mouth and an ache in his balls that made him shift uncomfortably.
“What?” he said.
Somerset put his thumb under Dylan’s chin, the touch rough and imperious, and unceremoniously tilted his head back. The casual contact made Dylan’s brain completely switch off. He stood there like an idiot while Somerset studied the damage someone had done to his face. It didn’t help that Somerset’s eyes were so distractingly beautiful, teal blue so pale it was almost gray, except for a darker sky-blue ring around the irises.
“That’s broken,” Somerset said after a second.
“I…” For one singularly stupid second, Dylan thought Somerset meant his heart. Which would have been a bit dramatic. His heart was, at worst, a bit bruised and battered. It had been stepped on a few times, but it was fine. It did the job. Dylan had stepped on enough people’s hearts—-or more likely, their pride—that he couldn’t complain.
His latest breakup hadn’t even been bad. Paul had transferred somewhere with better weather. It had been amicable. In a weird way, what stung the most was that it didn’t sting at all.
However, there was absolutely no reason that Somerset would know—or care—about Dylan’s romantic life. They were friends. Friendly. But it was casual friendly over beers in the bar, not genuine conversation friendly.
Luckily, Dylan came to that realization before he said anything. Because the man obviously meant Dylan’s nose. It felt like it was about the size of a fist, never mind the throbbing heat, so it was probably hard to miss. “I… um. Yes. I had noticed.”
