Chapter Three
Gunner
I couldn’t believe the cutie in the button-up shirt actually followed me. I thought I was just letting out some nervous energy, flirting with him and making him scrunch his face up all funny like he did when I winked. But then I had to talk my big talk and shoot my mouth off about getting a bartending job, and now Malcolm was actually walking into the Steel Rose with me.
All right then, goody-goody. Let’s see what you’re up for.
The bar was dim, dingy, and dank, just the way I liked it. With some noisy rock band playing on the stereo and bottles of cheap liquor lining the wall, I felt comfortable there in a way I didn’t most places. No one was going to judge me for cursing up a storm or losing my temper. If anything, I’d just fit in better for it.
The Steel Rose seemed perfect, but that didn’t mean it was my first choice to launch my bartending career. I had gone into about twenty other bars already, places that offered a much bigger haul in tips. Ever since graduating high school, I had been working my job on a demolition crew, and I spent my days hauling old lumber and scrap metal from one dump to another. It was enough to pay the bills, but I was getting sick of the work and even sicker of struggling to put more than two pennies together.
Bartending seemed like easy money. I liked drinking, I liked hanging out with boozers and bikers, and I liked staying up all night. Easy, right? Except that every decent bar turned me away without so much as a second glance, claiming I was too inexperienced.
Fuck it. The Steel Rose was more my style. And if I could have some cutie to flirt with and let out some steam at the job interview, all the better.
I pulled up to the counter, patting the stool next to me to indicate Malcolm should sit. He looked down hesitantly to the seat, like he was inspecting it for stains or something, and then joined me.
“What are you having?” I asked, leaning forward on my elbow. “I’m buying.”
Malcolm blinked a few times behind his glasses, staring at the wall of liquor. It gave me a minute to drool over his sexy little body again. I wasn’t as filled out as a lot of the guys that I worked with, but I still had some solid muscle on my frame. Malcolm, though, had soft muscles and delicate hands and a face that looked so damn pretty I could barely believe it. I noticed his skin, golden brown and tender, and it made me want to rip open the collar of his shirt and bite and lick his collarbone until he was quivering beneath me.
But still, Malcolm just looked at the liquors with a straight back and steady breath. I could see plain as day how nervous he was, but outside of a tiny, soft tremble across his lips, he kept it under wraps.
A guy like that must unleash like a fucking animal in the sack.
“It’s really too early for me to drink,” he muttered to himself.
“I dared you to have a drink with me. Have a drink with me.”
He sighed, adjusting his glasses. “I guess a beer?”
A bartender wandered our way. He had a shock of sloppy red hair and muscles that were almost enough to distract me from Malcolm. “A couple of beers,” I said. “Whatever’s on tap.”
The guy nodded, taking a second to look Malcolm and I each up and down as he poured the drinks and handed them off. I leaned up on the bar a little, wanting to give him a good look at me and let him know I wasn’t intimidated. But when he met my eye, he just chuckled like he was dismissing me and returned to the other end of the bar without a word.
Whatever…
“I thought you were going to ask about a job?” Malcolm asked, placing both of his hands on the beer.
“Sure, after a drink.” I said it as coolly as I could, as though that were the right way to get a job at a bar, although I had no idea what I was talking about.
Still, I was really getting off on the way Malcolm looked at me. When he glanced over my way, I knew he was seeing a badass, the kind of guy you were scared to like. The bartender might not have given me a second glance, and the guys at work still called mespark pluglike I was a fucking kid. But behind his glasses, I could tell Malcolm was looking my way and seeing the man I actually was.
It felt good. Real good.
I took a drink of my beer. “What do you do?” I asked.
Malcolm gestured behind him. “I work at the library.”
“There’s a library over your shoulder?”
He smiled awkwardly. “Oh, sorry. No, the library where I work is just in that direction.” I stared at him a second. Then he shrugged. “West.”
Okay, so he was a librarian. Not surprising. Even if he had a stack of books under his arm, he still couldn’t really look much more like a librarian than he already did. I hadn’t been in a library in years and didn’t really know the first thing to say about them, but I did remember one thing for sure.
I remembered the librarian shushing me every time I opened my damn mouth.
“Quiet guy,” I said. “Quiet job.”
