Yet…
His fingers lingered a little longer than necessary.
And stroked. Stroked right beneath the edge of her skirt. Touched smooth skin. Dammit.
Her skin was way too soft. “You should fucking cover up,” he growled at her. “It’s cold outside.”
Amused laughter greeted him. Her laughter. “You should focus on more immediate problems.”
He’d never taken his gaze off the immediate problem. So when the bald biker before him lunged for the fallen knife, Cass was ready.
The fool never made it to the knife. His face did connect with Cass’s boot, though, as Cass kicked the prick hard and sent him flying back. The would-be attacker slammed into a nearby table.
Cass’s crew cheered.
The table wasn’t meant to hold the jerk’s weight, clearly, and it broke with a loud creak and a crash. The attacker’s ass landed on the floor.
Did the jerk have the sense to give up? To turn tail and run?
Of course, not. The idiots who came, trying to take down Cass so they could claim the glory of killing the leader of the Night Strikers, never had that sense. Instead, the attacker grabbed a broken table leg, and, with a roar, the SOB was back on his feet. He drew back the hunk of wood, holding it behind his head, and he barreled toward Cass.
“Uh, tell me you’ve got this…” Agnes began, her words sharp with tension. “Cass? Cass!”
He had this. He launched forward, going in hard, and he rammed into the idiot before the biker could take a swing. Cass’s shoulder hit the guy’s torso, all of the breath whooshed from his prey, and Cass took that prick down.
Thunderous cheers broke out. The crowd closed in. Very, very tightly.
Cass kicked away the broken table leg.
“Strike! Strike! Strike!” The chants filled the air.
Hell. He was gonna have to give the crowd what they wanted.
Cass rose to his full height. He rolled back his shoulders. Shook out his hands. Got loose and ready. “You want to come at me?” Cass challenged the creep who thought the best way to attack was from behind. “Then you come at me directly. You don’t sneak up behind me like a coward. You hit me, face to face.” Cass smiled.
“Strike! Strike! Strike!” His MC members stomped their feet. Whistled.
The bald biker rose to his feet. Fury twisted his face. The golden nose ring gleamed.
Cass let his smile stretch. “You hit me face to face,” he repeated. “Just like I’m about to hit you.” Then Cass drew back his fist and attacked.
She couldn’t see a damn thing.
Agnes Quinn huffed out a breath even as she rose to her feet—on the bar. Yeah, she was standing on the bar. Not dancing on it or anything cool like that. Just standing in her high heels as she craned to see around the crowd and make sure that Cass Striker was not, in fact, getting his ass kicked.
Because, sure, he was supposed to be big and bad.
But the jerk who’d been sneaking up behind him—with a knife—had been bigger. As in, while Cass clocked in at six-foot-three—yes, she knew his exact height, she’d done her recon work on him, after all—the biker with the shaved head and dark skull tats looked to be around six-foot-six. Maybe six-seven with his boots. And the dude was big. Not big as in muscled, but big with lots of extra weight and padding on him.
Since both men were so tall, she should have been able to see something. Especially from her high perch. But the crowd had closed in, and Agnes was pretty sure the fighters had to be on the floor.
Please, please, don’t let Cass be pinned on the floor.
Her jaw locked. Okay, enough of this bullshit. She was a Fed, after all. Things had moved helluva fast, and she’d already shouted twice for everyone to stop. She’d been ignored both times. Agnes didn’t enjoy being ignored. She also was not going to just stand there while a major assault went down. Time for her to call a halt to this mess, now.
She put her fingers to her lips and blew. Loud. Hard. Unfortunately, her whistle didn’t really cut above the crowd. When she grabbed a bottle of whiskey from the stunned bartender and smashed it onto the floor, well, her continued whistling and the crash finally drew eyes to her.
Stunned gazes to which she yelled, “Stop, now, because I am a?—”
