The monster stormed over to the bar, set down his plastic axe, and wrapped two long arms around the devil. The way she flinched at his touch told me everything I needed to know.
“I thought I’d lost you!” the gladiator needled her. “Come on. I’ve got a ride waiting for us outside, and if we hurry—”
“She’s going to stick around for a while, bro,” I interjected loudly. “The lady just ordered a drink.”
The man’s giant head swung slowly my way, on a thick, corded neck. The expression on his face was cool. Calm. Placid.
But just beneath the cracks in that facade, I could sense deadly disdain.
“Let’s go, baby,” he smiled thinly, without looking away. “It’s late.”
The woman flinched again, as the man’s fingers flexed against the flesh of her exposed shoulder. Before he could pull her toward the door however, I clapped my hand over his wrist.
“I said, she’s not going anywhere.”
The gladiator’s steel blue eyes shifted slowly, incredulously, to his wrist. And fuck me, it was athickwrist.
“You have about two whole seconds,” he swore acidly, “to make another decision.”
In truth there was no decision to make; bartender code was sacrosanct. This woman had walked into my bar and ordered an angel shot, which meant she was asking for my help. There was no way in hell she wasn’t getting it.
“Last chance.”
The gladiator hissed the words through clenched teeth, while I debated the best and quickest way to drop him. The guy was a fucking giant, no doubt. He was only marginally taller than me, but he was thicker overall, with designer muscles so swollen and juiced up they looked like they’d come from the end of a needle.
Damn.
The distractingly beautiful devil stared back at me with pleading eyes, as I let out a sigh of internal frustration. Why did the hottest girls always have to date these giant meatheads? Was there some unwritten law? Did they have some kind of fucked up meet-and-greets on the regular, that I didn’t know about?
A multifaceted debate raged in the warped recesses of my fucked up mind. Elbow to the nose, or good old kick to the groin? Either would work, really. But just how much damage could I do to that pretty boy face, before this asshole and his lawyers ended up owning my bar?
A little voice reminded me that I seriously didn’t need this shit. In fact, I should be doing everything to avoid it.
But then the gladiator’s fingers twisted, eliciting a sharp cry of angel pain…
And my decision was made for me.
~ 2 ~
SAWYER
I’d spent a lot of Halloweens at The Refuge, and I’d seen a lot of weird things. BDSM Dora the Explorer. AFifth Elementcostume made entirely out of toilet paper. One year we’d caught an Egyptian pharaoh and a cheerleader going at it in the handicapped stall, their collective screams so loud it drowned out the jukebox.
But I’d never walked out the kitchen holding a platter of wings, only to find a two-hundred-fifty-pound man, sailing past me.
Much less a man dressed as a Roman gladiator.
CRASH!
The poor asshole landed sideways across two wooden chairs, both of which splintered instantly beneath his weight. Glass shards skittered across the floor. Broken chair legs flew in every direction.
“Stay down, asshole!”
Maybe Carter was speaking Greek or something, because the guy was up and on him in a matter of seconds. Punches flew. Punches landed. A devil - beautiful and sexy, head to toe - tilted her head back, and screamed.
Fuck!
I tossed the tray to one side and grabbed the guy, just as he reared back to hit my friend again. The reward for my efforts was a hammerfist to the face. My eyes turned to water and everything went glassy. There was more shouting, more screaming, and the next thing I knew I was trapped in an armbar. The hold was so tight, so expertly locked, all I could do to keep my arm from snapping off was to move with it, running alongside him.
