Page 70 of Not So Goode
He snickered. “Come on, then.”
He took my hand and I power walked to the entrance. He opened the door and ushered me in, and I was blasted by smoke and noise and laughter and music and beer smell and man sweat and leather. It was dingy, low ceilinged, dimly lit. The air was fogged with smoke, despite the statewide nonsmoking ban which was common in most states, nowadays. Music thudded from speakers—"Boot Scootin’ Boogie,” Brooks and Dunn. The crowd was a raucous, rowdy, carousing wall of broad shoulders, leather and denim MC cuts, camouflage, beards, and hard eyes; the barroom full of laughing, yelling, swearing men was seamed through liberally with bottle blond and red hair, massive cleavage whether natural, pushed up by a bra, or surgically enhanced, along with tall boots and short shorts, and more than one lower back tattoo.
Yeah, no way I’d have gone in here on my own.
As it was, I suddenly wondered if maybe I could hold my pee a little longer.
Nope.
My eyes were turning yellow, as my dad used to say. I spied the ladies’ room and made a beeline for it, pushing my way through the tumult, and probably not making any friends with the elbows I was throwing. I made it to a stall, sat down, and was nearly thrown off my pee game by the graffiti on the stall walls. Heinous, evil shit. Like, seriously, who even thinks that stuff, never mind writes it on public property?
Finished, I washed up and exited the bathroom, stopping just outside the door to scan the crowd for Crow. I found him at the farthest end of the bar, bellied up to it with one boot up on the rail, big hard fist curled around a bottle of domestic beer, eyes roving the crowd, assessing. He saw me, lifted his chin, and jerked his head to indicate that I should join him. Well, duh. Like I’m going to join the crowd of booty-scootin’ boogiers? Nope.
I had to cross through the crowd, but this time I used about…oh, 85 percent less elbow. I still drew a number of dirty looks, mostly from the women if I appeared to be nearing too close to their man.
The men looked at me as I passed, mind you, but their looks were…well…equally dirty, but in a whole different sense of the word.
A giant of a man—six and a half feet tall easily and every bit as broad in a circumferential way, head shaved and tattooed with the likeness of a grinning skull that had a bright yellow serpent slithering between the eye sockets and gaping, grinning mouth—stepped in front of me, halting my progress.
“Hey now, sweet tits, where you goin’ in such a hurry?”
Want to make me see red? That’s how.
“Hey now, frog butt, why don’t you get the fuck out of my way?”
He snorted, amused. “Frog butt?” He looked around, a gesture meant to indicate his ownership of the bar. “You in the wrong place to be talkin’ smack like that, missy.”
“Only smack that’s happening is my hand across your face.” I glowered at him, hoping like hell my backup was on the way to enforce my ballsy shit-talking.
He guffawed. “You just try that, sweet tits.”
One thing to know about all of us Goode girls is that Mom taught us to not ever, ever take shit from men. A man gets in your face, you get back in his. He talks shit, you talk shit right back. Give as good as you get, and then give more. Most men are actually just cowards, and if you get in their dumb faces and make it clear you aren’t taking their crap, they’ll back down.
Some…won’t.
This guy wasn’t.
Mom prepped us for this, too.
I put my face in the big guy’s face, gave him my most evil, cut-you-to-pieces stare. “Call me sweet tits again, thunder dick.”
He bent to tower over me, trying to intimidate me with the extra foot of height and the well over a hundred pounds of weight he had on me. Here’s the thing. Doesn’t matter how big they are, their nuts all still smash the same.
Therefore: I kneed him in the big fat sac. Once. Twice. Reached up, grabbed him by the neck and leaned close, and put all my weight and momentum into a third upward scythe of my knee into his balls.
He propped himself forward, cupping his wounded…well, brain, such as it was. The only brain a lunk like him ever used, anyway. Now, leaning over, he was in the perfect position for me to give him my hardest open-handed slap. Not a girly, how-dare-you slap, either. A martial artist trained open-handed palm strike to the ear and jaw.
With a windup, and a twist of my body to add power, and follow-through, aiming my strike for theotherside of his dumb ugly head.
The big bitch went down.
And the bar was silent.
Crow was…right where he’d been. One foot hooked over to prop his toe on the ground, elbow on the bar looking equal parts tickled pink by my little display of badassery, and ready to pick me up and carry me outside and fuck me silly up against the wall.
I stepped over the moaning lump of empty bravado and sat myself primly in the chair beside Crow, who made an elaborate show of stepping into me.
He leaned over me, palmed the back of my neck, and slashed his mouth against mine. “That was hot as fuck, Charlie,” he murmured, and then kissed me hard enough that I saw stars and forgot to breathe for a few seconds.