CHAPTER 3

Knight didn’t know the name of the bar he ended up in, only that it catered to the techie elite, business-oriented and political types, not your Average Joe or those in the military, and it had a solid selection of brand-name whiskey he’d been drinking like water for the past hour. Shame he didn’t feel anywhere close to drunk, but he rather thought he could make it to buzzed if he emptied another bottle or two of Macallan twenty-five years.

As an Awakaned who specializes with his enhanced strength, he couldn’t really get drunk unless he really, really tried. At one hundred dollars a glass, price wasn’t an issue. Keeping his cover intact was the more pressing problem. He’d left Terraces wearing a suit, not a uniform, which meant he needed to steer clear of the bars he and his team usually frequented so as to not invite questions. A strange place put him on edge, but better than having to explain to people with too-knowing eyes why he was in such a shitty mood.

Knight chased the last dregs of whiskey in his glass before setting it down on the bar counter. He stared at the empty glass and tilted it from side to side, careful to keep his grip just shy of breaking. It’d been a struggle when he first got Awakaned. He’d ruined untold numbers of doors and pieces of furniture, not to mention weapons, during his learning curve. Sometimes he still thought the body he lived in wasn’t his own, but those moments were few and far between now, thank god for that.

“You want another?” the bartender dubiously asked as he braced himself against the counter across from Knight.

Knight nudged the glass closer to the bartender’s side. “Make it a double.”

“I feel like I should cut you off after the four you’ve already finished.”

“Should you, then?” Knight asked, not bothering to keep the bite out of his voice.

The bartender was younger than him, and certainly not wiser, but he was smart in the way of a man who peddled the answers to life’s many problems to drunk people. He knew when someone was done and when they weren’t. He poured Knight a glass filled right to the top without another word.

He’d finished half the glass when someone slid into the empty bar stool beside him, the one which had remained empty ever since he arrived. Knight was putting off a solid air of negativity that only a blind man would miss, and everyone in the bar had steered clear of his space without issue. Until now.

“Go away,” Knight growled.

“I’m not buying you a drink, I’m buying myself one,” a voice told him. Knight's ears picked up a faint accent that sounded like Russia by way of being mangled through Boston. The discordance was enough to get him to look over. He liked what he saw, despite his shitty mood, and couldn’t stop the faint stirring of want coursing through his veins.

It was a woman. Who was surprisingly dressed in cheap tight black dress, making her look like a hooker, but with her angelic innocent face, the result is quite unexpected. She's not looking at Knight, but at the bartender as the stranger wrangled a beer out of the establishment.

And stayed put.

In fact, she even angled her body toward Knight's. One foot resting on the bar stool rung, the other planted firmly on the floor. The position put her long, curvaceous body on display, and Knight found herself looking without meaning to, eyes drawn like a magnet to the stranger.

“Not buying what you’re selling,” Knight said pointedly when it became clear she doesn't have any plan of leaving. No matter how attractive the stranger was, Knight told himself he wasn’t in the mood, that he didn’t want what was very obviously on offer.

The woman gaze slid his way, annoyance writ clear across her very pretty face. “Fuck you, you couldn’t afford me even if I were selling anything. This was the only free seat in the entire goddamn place and it’s been a long fucking day.”

Knight glanced over his shoulder at the bar, surprised to see it had filled up even more since his arrival. That he hadn’t noticed the surge of people over the past hour made him annoyed with himself. It was one thing to become distracted while surrounded by his team, quite another to do it alone. His family always did manage to throw him off his game.

Knight rubbed at his face and chased the bitterness coming up on his tongue with the whiskey. “Fine.”

She just snorted. “Sounds like your day was as shitty as mine.”

“I didn’t come here for conversation.”

“The way you look, you might’ve done better to hit the gym, or hell, I don’t know, a shooting range.”

Knight looked back at her, not bothering to hide his irritation. Truth be told, he had thought about hitting up the reinforced training level at the AHDF headquarters to spar with anyone willing, but hadn’t cared for the idea of driving back there. Sitting in a car with his thoughts in traffic when he could be somewhere else with alcohol wasn’t appealing.

“I’m not in the mood to talk,” he said.

“Yeah, I can see that.”

She took a long drink of his beer and Knight couldn’t help but watch the way her throat moved as she swallowed. He idly noted a few freckles scattered across pale skin before he wrenched his gaze back up to the her face. Knight wasn’t the least bit surprised to see her smirking around the rim of her beer bottle.

“If you’re not leaving, then I am,” Knight said as he stood up, not in the mood for small talk, nor any talk, not with the earlier dinner conversation still eating away at his brain.

She put her beer bottle down and tilted her head back in order to look Knight in the eye. “Probably not the best idea. Driving while pissed off usually results in a shittier mood and possible road rage homicide.”

“I didn’t ask for your opinion.”

“Yeah, well, you get it anyway. Besides”—she leaned forward and slid hwr hand over the bar, coming away with Knight's drink—“I think you’re in the mood to fight or fuck, but no reason why you can’t do both at the same time. I’m up for it if you are.”

Knight watched as she downed the rest of the whiskey in one long, burning swallow, before setting the empty glass down. Knight kept watching as she used her thumb to swipe the sheen of whiskey off her full bottom lip after she finished. Knight tried very hard not to think about how that mouth would look wrapped around his cock.

He failed. Spectacularly.

“Really?” Knight couldn’t help but ask, pitching his voice a little deeper.

She dropped her hand to her knee, leaning forward a tiny bit. “If you don’t want to fuck me, then say so. I’ll find someone else willing to fuck me so hard I forget my name, but honestly? I think you might be the best person for the job.”

“You like it hard?”

“I like it to hurt.”

“Hurting someone doesn’t get me off,” Knight said quietly. Not like anyone was paying them any attention, what with the way he’d been throwing off do not fuck with me vibes all night.

She slid off the bar stool and onto the balls of her feet, the motion rocking her body up against Knight's without apology and with a wicked little smirk curving that plush mouth. When she spoke, her warm breath ghosted over Knight's ear. “Which begs the question of what gets you off, hmm?”

Knight' gripped the woman’s ’s hip with one hand, mindful of the pressure he put into the hold, and thought about shoving her away. He didn’t, because if he was honest with himself, Knight really liked what he saw.

“Let’s find out. My name’s Knight. Tell me yours.”

That smirk stretched into a smile, but Knight didn’t miss the way her pupils dilated, the green of her irises shrinking to a thin ring. “Kira. And trust me when I say you won’t hurt me.”

Kira pressed a filthy, whiskey-laced kiss to Knight's mouth. A frisson of something hot and hungry coursed down Knight's spine, pooling in his gut and making his cock twitch in his expensive suit pants. Knight slid his hand down Kira's dress just enough until he felt skin, digging his fingers into warm flesh harder than he normally would. Kira didn’t flinch, merely sucked in a nearly soundless breath and leaned into Knight's touch.

“We’re leaving,” Knight said, voice gone a little rough around the edges.

“About damn time.”

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