The laughter shook the table, hard and loud.
Bailee’s smile faltered, confusion flashing across her face, pain edging in behind it. Bear’s chest tightened. All he wanted was to reach across the table, smooth his hand over the back of her neck, ground her. Instead, he sat in silence, desire and worry threading through him while the noise swirled around.
After a couple more rounds, and Buck and D-Day’s overdramatic rendition of the infamous lasso takedown, Zorro buck naked, towel lost, dignity long gone, Bear had enough. He wasn’t about to let Bailee drown in whatever shadows had stolen her smile.
He shifted closer, nudging her with his shoulder, his voice pitched low so only she could hear. “Dance?” The word carried more than it should have, heat curling in his chest at the thought of pulling her against him, feeling her move with him, just once.
Her eyes flicked to the dance floor, the crowd swaying to a pulsing beat, then darted to the pool tables glowing under green lamps. Her mouth curved, sharp and tempting. “How about a little friendly competition?”
Friend. Christ. He had no interest in being her friend in any shape or form. The word roared through him with a ferocity that slammed straight into his chest and lower, a punch to his heart and his dick at the same time. He’d told Zorro back in Rio, when his buddy had been twisted up over Everly, that Bailee was nothing more than a dick ache. A complication.
But she was more than that. Ancestors help him, so much more. “Is there such a thing?” he asked, voice even.
She wasn’t just toned and distracting in a tailored blouse or the ache that kept him up nights. She was Lakota, like him, carrying the blood of a people who had survived loss after loss and still stood. He didn’t know what battles carved that edge in her voice or what shadows lived in her impossibly blue eyes, but he sensed the depth of it, an old, fierce current that matched the one in his own veins. That recognition gutted him, sharpened every glance she gave him, and made her challenge feel less like a game and more like the start of something he wanted with a hunger that terrified him.
His body answered before his mind could catch up. The proud line of her shoulders, the sway of her hips, the curve of her mouth, every part of her carried the unmistakable beauty of his people, unflinching and strong. It was in the dark silk of her hair, in her snapping gaze, in the way she moved with a command that made the men at the bar stumble over themselves. She was temptation wrapped in heritage, the embodiment of a Native woman who knew her own power, and it pulled at him with a force that was primal, undeniable, a history they shared.
But beneath the hunger, there was something deeper that held him just as fiercely. He felt it in the marrow of his bones, that unspoken recognition of legacy, of ancestors who had fought to keep their people alive, of bloodlines that had endured when everything else tried to strip them away. In Bailee, he saw not just the woman but the survival of a people, the echo of drums, and the steady strength of those who came before. She was fire where he was silence, voice where he was stillness, yet together they carried the same root. That bond, that shared inheritance, burned hotter than any desire, making him want her not only as a man but as a Lakota who finally saw his match.
Her mouth curved again, softer this time, less challenge than invitation. “Let’s play and find out.”
She leaned toward him, and his heart contracted as something in her eyes reached out to him, captured him. She was smoke rising from a banked fire, by choice. He wanted to know why, but if he asked, he would have to admit his own reluctance. A relationship was a two-way street, and he’d never opened that road to anyone, not his Grandfather Ray, not his team. All the years of his mother nearly breaking herself to keep them alive, the loss of his brother, the disappearance of his sister, every piece of it lived knotted inside him, a weight he had never shared. Yet the promise of her, what they could have if those walls fell, choked him up in ways as foreign as running from a battle.
Was it the alcohol loosening her, or was she simply weary of fortifying herself? Instead of armoring up, she let the moment stand. For one breath, two, he felt it, the shift. It gave him the kind of hope he had buried every time she crossed his path, a surging force as terrifying as it was irresistible.
The air thickened. Not just attraction, though the Great Spirit knew that burned in him every time her body brushed close. This was deeper, older. Mind and flesh and something beneath both, the kind of pull carved by the ancestors themselves.
He’d felt it only a handful of times in his life, that wordless recognition when one Lakota meets another and silence isn’t emptiness but belonging. Seeing it in her, in the tilt of her chin, in the silver fire of her eyes, undid him.
In body, in mind, and in spirit, was Bailee the woman to cut him open, spill him into her waiting hands, accept him, and bring him the peace he had never known? Or would she strip him down to sinew and bone, take the soul from him, and keep it, leaving him alone and hollow, his beating heart walking away.
3
Bailee let go of the illusion completely. She wasn’t in control and it had nothing to do with alcohol. He was getting to her.
She needed to move. “Let’s take this to the battlefield.”
For a moment he didn’t move. The silence of his eyes carried more than desire. It carried heritage, a weight as old as the plains, as unyielding as the ground itself. She’d had relationships before, all of them surface, and now she knew why. She finally understood the power of Dakota Locklear. He was of her blood, tied to her through generations of people who belonged to the earth, who belonged to each other. There was nothing else like it on the planet. His gaze struck deep, into the part of her that ached for her people with a pain that never went away.
Her pulse stuttered. She shoved the thought down and rose, grateful for the excuse of motion. Grabbing a cue, setting it against the side of the table, she racked the balls with sharper force than necessary, each clack of wood and ivory a cover for the tremor in her hands. If he noticed, he didn’t show it. He just watched, steady and devastating, that silence following her like a touch.
Her whole body reacted when he moved in close. “Are you all right?” he asked, the heat of him almost unbearable. She didn’t want to meet his eyes, but oh, did he make her weak.
“Bailee?” He reached out and slipped his fingers under her chin. “That look in your eyes makes me a little crazy.”
Her knees almost buckled when she met his gaze. That look stripped her down more than words ever could. How could she pretend otherwise? Her lies stacked into walls meant to keep her safe, but instead they boxed her in, keeping her from stepping toward him, trapping her in unrelenting heat.
“I’m just shaking in my boots and trying not to show it,” she managed sarcastically. “How about we lag to see who goes first?”
His face shuttered, and she wanted to take her words back and her defensive tone. She shut him down and it hurt like hell. How was she supposed to concentrate? Buck came over, and the team followed. She couldn’t possibly lose her shit now.
“Another?” he asked, holding out a bottle. She took it and knocked back about half. Blitz did the same for Bear, but he shook his head.
“Shot. Tequila straight.”
“I think we have ourselves a match here?” Buck drawled.
Bailee set the bottle on the ledge that ran around this section of the bar. She grabbed two balls and handed him one.
