“You sound like your dad,” I replied gruffly.
Tyler turned to face the floor, catching what I’d spent the last five minutes staring at. Sam and Ophelia were still chatting, but she’d scooted a good foot away after catching a glimpse of me and I couldn’t tell if that was out of pity or guilt.
“Sometimes I forget that you have real feelings in here.” He poked at the center of my chest. “Sam isn’t trying to steal your girl, Pike.”
“I know.” I sighed, lifting the beer to my lips. “But it doesn’t really look like he has to.”
“You’re reading into it because you’re worried.”
“Maybe.” I shrugged. Ophelia glimpsed over her shoulder at Echo and I again—then to our left at the two women still lingering next to him. A muscle in my jaw ticked. “Who are your friends?”
Tyler blinked slowly, culpable passiveness sending his tongue into the side of his cheek. My friend might have been a dog but he was loyal like one too, and much like his brother, he could read intention on my face like it was written out in permanent marker. “Do you actually care?”
“It’s a bit rude of you not to introduce them,” I said. “Wouldn’t want to give that impression.”
He shook his head. “You’re not dragging me into this.”
With a huff of annoyance I pushed him back against the bar, extending my hand out toward the girls standing there. “I’m Frankie,” I said to the raven-haired one, then her blonde friend, who quickly traded places with Tyler and ended up beside me with her own little palm extended.
“Elle,” she squeaked.
Perfect. Trade one letter for another. Elle was a good foot shorter than me in heels, and had full, red cheeks like cherries and pinched little lips. There was a perfectly round beauty mark right under her nose and I spent a second too long looking at it because I couldn’t tell if it was real or drawn on.
She was best friend’s little sister cute, veritably bubbly, and entirely too young for me to even be entertaining a conversation with. Like, first year out of college young. Which was more concerning to me than anything. I knew I couldn’t be mistaken for twenty-something, and neither could Tyler.
Despite it, and because my internal intentions were clear, I noticed her razor-pointed nails were curled around a nearly empty drink, and I offered to buy her a new one.
“Were you in the Army like your friend?” she asked.
“Yes,” I answered.
“Do you live around here?”
“I don’t.”
“Work around here?”
My head shook back and forth.
“Just visiting?”
“Just visiting,” I confirmed distractedly, peering out of the corner of my eye toward the booth where I’d left Ophelia.
“You’re not much of a talker,” Elle acknowledged.
I chewed on the end of my tongue. I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing except being petty and retaliatory. I had no interest in wooing another woman into bed with me. This was partially to prove to myself that I could if I wanted to, but at the end of the day, I really, really didn’t. “Can I be honest with you, Elle?”
She shifted on her heels, pressing further into my side, her breasts skimming the thin material of my dress shirt. I disliked it so much that a log of unease lodged itself at the base of my throat and every muscle in my face struggled to stay neutral.
“Of course,” she replied.
“I don’t go out to bars and pick up women, especially not ones that are as young as you, and I don’t intend to start doing it tonight.” She twirled two little black straws around in her drink, right where her cleavage was spilling out of her dress. “You’re very pretty, and there’s a fuck ton of guys here your age that would lose their minds if you gave them even a second of your attention.”
“But you’re the one that bought me a drink,” she pointed out. “Very contradictory, Frankie.”
I grinned softly. “Because yours was empty.”
Again, my attention flitted toward the booths where I caught Ophelia, this time looking directly at me. Returning some of that fiery contention I’d felt inside myself minutes earlier. Her brows pinched together, lips pursed. I would bet she was leaving little semi-circles of frustration on the skin inside her closed palms. The look of possession she wore, the warning of something volatile brewing beneath an otherwise beautifully collected woman—that excited me. I wanted to stoke that ember until it ignited into something more.
“I only date older men,” Elle said matter-of-factly. “The ones my age are boring, quick on the trigger, and can never get me off.” She slid one of those pointy nails down the outside of my arm and I bristled like a fucking porcupine warding off a predator.
“Your confidence in me is flattering, and misplaced. And a tiny bit concerning, Elle,” I said gently, peeling her fingers off my arm and closing them into my other hand like a Venus fly trap. “It’s not going to happen with me.”
She flipped my left hand over. “No ring.”
“I’m not married.”
“Gay?”
I rolled my eyes and shook my wrist out of her hold.
“Oh, I see.” She took a step backward, seemingly reading me with a scan of her darkly lined eyes. “You’re hung up over someone. Either she broke your heart, you messed up, right person, wrong time, or the one that got away,” she guessed. “I’m not here looking for commitment, Frankie. You can take all that middle-aged, sad, military man frustration out on me as a token for your service.”
If that weren’t already a pathetic enough bargain, she saluted me eagerly, sending a splash of vodka soda onto the floor between our feet.
“I have a bad track record,” I mumbled.
Tyler scuttled away with Elle’s friend, and Mateo was somewhere in the masses of dancing bodies in front of the DJ with Tally. Sam was the last person I wanted to wave a flag to for rescue, but it didn’t matter anyway, because the table where he and Ophelia were sitting was vacant. My blood cooled instantly as I whipped around looking for them, dying to be wrong about my assumptions and worried about the person I was about to become if I wasn’t.
I loosened the tie around my neck until it hung at my chest, shucking the buttons open with forceful pinches. A sweat had begun to bead at my nape and I wasn’t certain if it was the crowded club or my body responding to my woman falling like sand through my grasp.
A cool, wet glass graced the back of my neck and I turned once again, assuming I’d have to ward off Elle for a final time, but was met instead with an amused, albeit cold Ophelia where the girl was standing seconds before.
She raised an eyebrow, waving in the direction of the crowd. “If you’re looking for the blonde, she just got picked up by her parents.”
“Where did you go?” My tone was immediately aggressive and I couldn’t take it back.
She breathed out a sigh of disbelief, jingling the glass of water and its half-melted ice cubes in front of my face. “Coming to get the drink you got too distracted to bring back to me.”
“You seemed pretty occupied yourself, O. Didn’t want to interrupt.”