1
KEATON “MOOSE” BURNETT
Fight or fuck. That was my choice for the night.
I’d chosen the second one.
I was at Fog, a cigar lounge on the outskirts of New Gothenburg, hunched over a bottle of beer in a dim booth while watching the crowd grind lewdly in their version of dancing. The lighting in here gave everything a green glow. This place was interesting because it didn’t know if it wanted to be high-end or a seedy club, and as a result, I was able to afford to drink here. I wasn’t sure if I’d made the right decision. I’d been eyed by a few guys, but they didn’t have the nerve to approach me. They weren’t my type, either.
Too skinny.
Too twinky.
Too pretty.
I preferred a man who could throw me around, which was damned near impossible to find because I was already a big dude. There was a reason the guys at the park called me Moose. Finding someone who wanted to fuck me? Hell. It was a dream.
Maybe I should’ve gone for the fight option.
Derek Uhlig ran a fight club on one of his properties. Once a month was amateur night. Anyone could sign up and get in the ring to win cash. I’d joined in when I could, but I’d recently gotten a job at the lumber mill, giving me a halfway decent living. I didn’t want to push my luck, especially when I needed every piece of my body to work.
Now, I was reconsidering.
Bodies ground against one another on the small wooden dance floor, moving with the music. Their asses swayed with the beat, their mouths attached to strangers’. The smell of weed, sweet tobacco, and alcohol filled the space—intoxicating. This was one of the few spots in the city where it was legal to smoke inside. My beer bottle sat heavily against my palm.
There weren’t many nights where I wasn’t on sister-watching duty. Little Ginny was more like my daughter than my sister because Mom was so useless these days.
“Well, well, well, aren’t you a conundrum?” A silky voice wormed its way around me as a slender man with thick eyeliner and shoulder-length brown hair slid into the opposite side of the booth, gliding across the leather. He grinned, flashing a pointy incisor. “Sexy and big, staring murder at all the pretty men around the lounge, like you can’t decide if you want to fuck or devour them.”
I frowned, my hold tightening on my beer bottle. “What the fuck is a con—con—conun—” I couldn’t say the word. I could hear the sounds in my head, but they got stuck on my tongue. I certainly didn’t know what the hell it meant. I glared. “What the fuck ever that word is.”
The corner of his mouth curled, and acid boiled in my stomach. Was he making fun of me?
“You don’t know what conundrum means?” His amusement drove my embarrassment deeper and it was sharp as theswitchblade I kept in the side of my boot. “Are you all brawn and no brain?”
Yeah, he was mocking me. Asshole. I gritted my teeth and bared them at him. “Fuck off before I sink my fist into that pretty face of yours,princess.”
The man gasped and slapped a hand to his chest, his glittery fingernails sparkling under the lights above us. “Rude. Fucking homophobe.” He shot to his feet and sauntered off, but his retreat didn’t get rid of the sourness he’d left behind.
I wasn’t homophobic. Fuck him. He was a prick making jokes about me. And I wasn’t stupid.
I took an angry swig of my beer and glared around the room. I didn’t come here to be insulted. I wanted to getfucked. Was that too much to ask? Yeah, it was.
Groaning, I rubbed my face. Maybe I should give up for tonight and go home. My beer was running low, anyway, and I didn’t have any cash left. I’d only started the new job as a logger a month ago. One paycheck under my belt wasn’t enough to justify drinking all night.
“Another?”
A new bottle of beer settled in front of me as a man slid into the opposite side of the booth. He was different from the last guy in every single way, and it was difficult to keep my eyes off him.
In the low lights of the cigar lounge, it was hard to see the color of his eyes, but it wasn’t so difficult to catch the subtle dark red of his hair. Natural? I wasn’t sure. It certainly looked like it. Auburn. That was the word for it, right? I’d heard one of the smart guys at the trailer park mention it because his girlfriend’s hair was that color. A cigarette hung from the stranger’s lips, and he took a puff before blowing a smoke ring into the air. He gripped a glass of amber liquid that he set on the table between us as he yanked the cigarette from his mouth.
“Hey.” He smiled. “You looked lonely, so I thought I’d pay you a visit.”
I sniffed and the deep scent of his cologne tickled my nose. I couldn’t put a name to the smell, but it reminded me of an herb Mrs. Carmine used when she cooked for me and Ginny, my younger sister. “You’re in luck. It won’t take much to be better than the last dude who sat down. He’s blessed I didn’t kick the shit out of him.”
He raised his eyebrows, mouth quirked. “What can I say? Some people lack integrity.”
I paused. Another dude who spoke too good for me. Integrity? What the fuck? Would he make fun of me, too? It was better not to tell him I had no idea what he was talking about. Pressing my lips together, I gave him a nod as I pushed my old beer to the side and took a sip of the new one. “Name’s Moose.”
