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K endra

I sighed as I stared up at the blinking neon sign.

This was a part of the city I never ventured into, but right now I didn’t have much of a choice.

Rent was due in a few days, and I didn’t have the money to pay my landlord.

Not only that, but I was certain he wasn’t going to take any more of my excuses.

He’d said that the last time I was late with rent was the last favor he’d ever give me.

That pretty much meant that I was out on my ass if I was late again.

My electricity and water bills were already past due, too.

Every other place I’d checked into hadn’t wanted to hire a girl like me.

One without a resume or any sort of stable work experience.

One who couldn’t get a single positive recommendation from any of my previous bosses because I’d pissed off every last one of them.

I wasn’t exactly a delicate fucking flower.

Fuck them. They were all assholes anyway.

So, here I was. Standing outside The Salty Dog, watching as the lowlifes of New York City wandered through the filthy door that seemed to be at least fifty years old.

I stared more closely at the entryway, realizing that the bar’s patrons had carved messages into its wooden surface with knives.

I looked harder in the fading light, reading all the carved words, and I wondered if any of those people were still alive today.

There were notes of love and hate, but by an overwhelming majority, most of them were messages of lust.

I pulled back my shoulders and quickly adjusted my bra, ensuring that my cleavage was on point just in case anyone was interested in looking. Then I pulled the elastic band from my dark brown hair and shook it out, running my fingers through the long, soft strands.

I needed a job.

I’d been a bartender before and knew what they looked for: pretty, young, and available. I’d be whatever they wanted me to be so that I didn’t end up living on the streets of Brooklyn. I needed the money, and I’d do whatever I had to do to get it.

When I was finally ready, I reached for the door, opened it, and walked inside. As soon as I strolled into the bar, I could feel a number of eyes staring at me.

At my tits.

At the way I swayed my hips back and forth.

At the cherry blossom tattoo peeking out from the low neck of my tank top.

Men outnumbered women here by a fairly wide margin, and that was more than obvious with just a single glance.

This was a dive bar at its finest, that was for sure.

I’d been here a few times before, so it was vaguely familiar.

Mainly with past boyfriends that hadn’t quite worked out for some reason or other.

Most of them had said I had an attitude problem. Others I’d threatened with a knife.

Whatever.

I was just more woman than they had expected. No one could handle me.

I took a seat at the bar and watched the scrawny redheaded bartender scramble back and forth to serve whiskey and beer to the men clamoring at the counter.

There was a jukebox in the corner playing some Metallica loud enough to be annoying, but soft enough that the conversations screaming all around me could still be heard.

There was a small dance floor stuffed in the corner where the few women who had dared venture into this place were grinding on their picks for the night.

Cigar smoke swirled around me, and I wrinkled my nose in disgust.

Gross.

This was the type of bar where they didn’t follow the rules. Like no smoking in a public establishment.

Or sex.

Cause that was totally happening on top of the pool table right now.

I turned away with a snort. The man next to me cocked his head in my direction, and I could almost feel his eyes on the tops of my breasts.

I was wearing a black lacey tank with a rather low-cut sweetheart neckline that made me feel all sorts of sexy, and it had definitely not gone unnoticed the moment I walked in the door. My choice of top had been intentional.

“What brings a pretty little thing like you around these parts?” the man asked, his voice gruff. I sniffed the air, catching a whiff of body odor along with that overwhelmingly fragrant cigar smoke. Classy.

“I’m thirsty,” I answered curtly.

The man wasn’t particularly attractive. His hair was dark blond and stringy, almost as though he hadn’t showered in a week.

He smelled like smoke, and when I turned my gaze in his direction, I realized he was the one smoking a cigar.

He smiled and revealed a particularly grisly set of yellow crooked teeth.

Yeah. A definite catch to bring home to Mom.

I rolled my eyes and looked back at the bartender. He caught my gaze and smirked with a certain sense of arrogant amusement, his stare rolling from me to the man sitting by my side. He chuckled at me, entertained by my misery as I dealt with Smokey the Dirty Bear beside me.

“What are you drinking?” the cigar smoker asked.

“Whiskey. Or bourbon. Not that Fireball shit though. Tastes like ass,” I replied.

My new friend snorted back a laugh and shook his head.

“You’re not like most chicks, are you?” he chuckled.

“Nope. Definitely not,” I answered and leaned back against the chair.

The man crooked a finger at the bartender, and the cocky bastard finally decided to saunter over to serve me and Mr. Cigar Man.

“Two Jack Daniel’s. One for me and one for the pretty lady here,” my overly talkative neighbor ordered. He was rather proud of himself as he did it.

The bartender appraised me with a look far more smug than I expected from a man that looked like him.

His nose was too big and covered in freckles, and he was pretty skinny compared to most of the men who frequented a bar like this.

One good punch to the center of his nose and a chick like me could take him out with ease.

“Hi there. I’m Kendra,” I began as I held his hazel green eyes with mine. Seemingly unaffected by my perusal of his features, he poured two oversized portions of whiskey that were definitely more than a single shot. He slid one in front of me and the other to the dirty man beside me.

“Richie. Nice to meet you,” he answered, his cool stare still calculating as he tried to assess me.

“I hear you’re looking for an extra bartender,” I started, taking a guess that this man wasn’t only a bartender but the owner of the bar too.

“I am,” he answered.

“I’d like to apply,” I continued.

“I don’t typically employ pretty girls here. Usually, they can’t handle a place like this for very long,” he answered cautiously. His eyes narrowed just the slightest bit. I met his look with as much challenge as I dared.

“These men don’t scare me,” I replied.

“They should,” another voice said to my left.

I turned my head to see who had spoken and found myself gazing up at a massive hunk of a man.

Dark mahogany hair hung to his shoulders, thick dreadlocks that were decorated with a number of colored beads.

He lifted his head, and the dim light illuminated his dense beard.

His eyes appeared to be almost jet black, and I felt myself sucking in a nervous breath of air when they met mine.

For a moment, I forgot all about the bartender and the filthy, cigar-smoking man. The only things that mattered were me and this huge man standing right next to me. Almost touching me. I wondered what it would feel like if he did.

He was fucking massive, standing at maybe six and a half feet tall.

Wearing a black t-shirt and dark wash jeans, he leaned against the bar and towered over me.

His biceps were thick, unadulterated muscle, and for a second, I found myself thinking about how those arms would feel as they slammed me up against a wall.

About how those thick fingers would feel as they slipped between my thighs and rolled over my clit.

How a man like him could get me to scream his name with nothing more than a single thrust.

My nipples hardened into tight little peaks, and I was suddenly thankful for the thick pushup bra I’d decided to wear tonight. My panties felt damp, and I shifted in my seat. What the fuck? What was wrong with me? Why was I reacting like this?

“I can handle whatever these men throw at me,” I snorted, doing my best to cover up the rampant arousal that was quickly building inside of me at this man’s simple presence. Fake it ‘till you make it, right? That was my life motto.

“Can you now?” he asked, his tone rather arrogant and nonchalant at the same time.

The more he spoke, the more my body seemed to react to him.

I felt myself growing warm, and I squirmed in my seat just a little more than before.

He stared at me almost as though he could see right through me, like he knew exactly what was happening to my traitorous little body.

He lifted his face a tiny bit as he sniffed the air, and I could have sworn I saw the black pupils in his dark eyes dilate just a hair, almost as though he could sense my inner turmoil.

I felt my cheeks warm with embarrassment. He couldn’t smell my arousal. That wasn’t possible. I told myself that over and over, but for some reason, I didn’t believe it. Taking a deep breath, I rolled my shoulders back in a gesture of confidence and stared him down.

“Fuck, yes, I can,” I finally answered, taking care to layer as much brash confidence into my voice as possible.

“Pretty little girls like you should know their limits,” he warned.

“Overconfident, steroid-abusing pricks like yourself should accept that their tiny little dicks are just going to leave a trail of disappointed and very unsatisfied women for the entirety of their sad little lives,” I countered.

I leaned back and cocked an eyebrow in his direction, daring him to challenge me and waiting for him to inevitably back down.