Page 25 of The Rogue (Four Corners Ranch #11)

“I can drink to that,” he said, lifting up his beer.

She lifted hers and took a sip, then grimaced. “I don’t know that this is going to be my scene.”

“Well, what do you think? You going to dance?”

“Okay. I would like to dance.” She looked at the shot. And she picked it up, pressed it to her lips and knocked it back. She

grimaced, pulling her teeth back and hissing. “Good Lord.”

“You did it,” he said, admiring.

“I did. That was awful. How do people do that all the time? For fun.”

“I think all the time is maybe a stretch if we’re talking about functional people who aren’t college students.”

“That was vile.” But she grabbed the other shot and knocked it back too before he could say anything, making the same face

and the same noise as she swallowed it down.

She shook her head. “Okay. Yes. I am out. I’m here to have a good time.”

“Want to play some pool?”

“Yes,” she said. “I do. But let’s play for money.”

“Sure. Some nickels.”

He could tell that the booze was going to her head, and they made their way over to the table in the corner that was mostly

unused, because people were primarily focused on who they were going to go home with, rather than whiling away the hours playing

games.

She picked up the pool cue, and apparently he was so basic that he was held captive by the image.

It was such a cliché. A beautiful woman holding a pool cue, running her finger along it, except Rue had no sexual intent when she did that, and his body still responded.

Like she wasn’t his best friend. Like he hadn’t known her since they were little children.

“Let’s do this.”

She half stumbled as she bent down.

“Okay. You can break,” he said, setting the balls up and moving away.

She did break, inelegantly. “I need more to drink,” she said.

“Are you sure about that?”

“Hey, you’re my driver, right?”

“And you’re still a lightweight, right?”

“Hush, King. I came to indulge.”

He turned and headed toward the bar, muttering as he went. “I need to keep you from falling into the deepest recesses of a

dark pit, though...”

He furnished her with more shots, which only made her a worse player, which might have amused him if he didn’t feel so damned

tense about everything .

She was wobbly, like a baby deer, except her legs were hot, and he couldn’t help but think about it when he’d picked her up

at the bachelorette party what felt like a whole lifetime ago. And his palm had burned. She’d been engaged. It had kept the

rest of him from burning.

She was still Rue, so that ought to work.

It wasn’t working.

She went and got herself two more shots before they set up the next game and knocked them back before stumbling into position

to break.

She shot the white ball, and it hit the corner of the colored balls at the center as it bounced out of the table and rolled across the room, up against the boot of a guy about their age sitting down enjoying a beer. He lifted up the front of his foot and trapped the ball beneath it.

“This belong to you?” he asked as he bent down and picked it up, holding it toward Rue.

Rue smiled. “Yes. It does.”

“I consider myself lucky to have caught it,” he said.

Justice frowned. Great. He was going to be in the middle of this guy trying to pick up Rue. It wasn’t going to work. She had

just said that she wanted to play pool with him so—

“You want to dance?”

Rue’s eyes went wide. “I do.”

“I thought we were going to play—”

But the guy had grabbed hold of Rue and dragged her out to the dance floor. Justice just stood there feeling like a dick as

he watched Rue and that unfamiliar cowboy fast dancing to some honky-tonk. She was smiling, though. Laughing, though. So he

shouldn’t be mad. Because this was what they were here for. So he abandoned the table and went back to his beer, which he

drank slowly in the corner as he watched them dance.

“Hey there, cowboy. Did your girl abandon you?”

He looked down at the petite blonde who had just approached him. She only came up to his midchest even with her platform heels

on. “She’s not my girl,” he said. “She’s my best friend.”

“Really?” She laughed. “A guy as hot as you can be friends with women? That says a lot about your character.”

“I don’t know about that. Maybe it says something unflattering about the men you normally associate with if they can’t be.”

She made a knowing sound. “Touché. Do you want to dance?”

There was no reason to say no. So he told her yes and they went out to the dance floor, which brought him closer to Rue. Who

changed partners when the song switched, another guy approaching her and stealing her away from the man she had just been

dancing with.

He kept his eye on the proceedings. Guy Number One was looking irritated by what had just happened, and Justice didn’t like

the look of possessiveness on his face. Rue was just out to dance. Nobody owned her, not even him. He was just watching and

paying attention. He was more than ready to jump in if need be.

“She’s not your girl?”

He looked back at his partner. “No,” he said.

“You look very interested in what’s happening with her.”

“I am. She just got... She got dumped at the altar a week ago. So I’m a little bit worried that she’s here to make rash

decisions.”

“Isn’t that her prerogative?”

He frowned. “Yes. But I don’t have to like it.”

“Would you be that possessive and overprotective of a male friend?”

“Listen, if I wanted to debate gender politics I would be in a classroom not a bar. Also, she is the only best friend that

I have, so I don’t think we can test the theory.”

“Fascinating, though.”

If this had been another night, and another situation, this was the kind of woman he would’ve found himself attracted to.

She was self-aware, she was funny. They would be able to have a conversation about concepts, not themselves, and have an enjoyable time until they hit the sheets, where they would have an even better time before saying goodbye.

But tonight it left him cold, and he didn’t want to get into the why of that.

The song ended and Guy Number One stole Rue back.

“What I don’t like is the fact that they’re acting like she’s a bone they need to fight over,” he said.

“Fair,” she said. “I can go ask her if she’ll go to the bathroom with me and pretend we’re friends.”

“That’s nice of you.”

“Hey. Us women have to stick together, because you guys are shady as shit.”

He couldn’t argue with that. It was, in fact, why he was so bothered by the whole situation. Not because he thought her legs

were hot.

“Fair enough.”

Suddenly, one of the guys took a swing at the other one, and a ripple of unease washed through the dance floor as everybody

tried to move away from what was about to become a brawl.

He let go of his dance partner, and looked over at Rue, who was standing there with a shocked and horrified expression on

her face. Guy Number One—who had just been hit—jumped up and tackled the other guy, and they were kicking and rolling around

on the floor, when one of them hit Rue, causing her to stumble and fall onto her rear.

He was off like a shot.

He ran over to where she was and picked her up, holding her face in his hands. “Are you okay?”

Her eyes were wide as saucers, her lips parted slightly. “Yes,” she said.

“Good.”

He moved over to where the two jackasses were still brawling, completely unaware that they’d knocked Rue over.

Justice reached down and grabbed them both by their shirt collars, lifting them up. “Now that’s enough,” he said, holding

them both back. He was bigger than both of them, but wrangling two idiots was definitely being powered by adrenaline.

“Stay out of it,” one guy said.

“Yeah. This had nothing to do with you.”

“Actually, she’s mine. So it has everything to do with me.”

He saw a look of absolute terror filter through the other man’s eyes. Good .

“Well, hell,” he said. “She left easily enough when you guys were playing pool over there.”

“You made a mistake,” Justice said. “That’s all right. I’m going to let you off with a warning. But you see, you knocked her

down to the ground. You could’ve hurt her. I don’t care if you smash your own dumb faces in. But you hurt my lady and we have

a problem.”

“Sorry, ma’am,” the one guy said, practically tripping over himself to make amends to Rue.

Justice growled, “Go on about your business. Stay the hell away from her.”

Then he released his hold on the two chuckleheads before moving back toward Rue. He put his arm around her waist and pulled

her up to his side.

Rue looked at him, her eyes bright, her cheeks pink. “Hey,” she said, her words slurred. “Now how am I going to have sex if you scare off the... the penis?”

He felt like he had been socked in the gut. “You’re not having sex with either of those guys.”

His rage was beyond irritation. It was a bone-deep, possessive rejection that he had never felt for any woman ever. Even still,

he recognized it.

It wasn’t about what he thought she deserved or what he thought might put her in danger or anything half so gallant.

She was his .

And he wanted her.

Hell. Damn. Shit. All of it. All. Of. It.

“You’re not the boss of me,” she said. “I can have sex with whoever I want. I could have sex with both of them if I felt like

it.” Both of them stopped and turned to look at her.

“You fucking can’t,” he growled, taking her by the hand and dragging her through the dance floor.

“You’re making a scene!”

“ You’re making a scene,” he shot back.

Suddenly, the woman he’d been dancing with appeared. “I have to go to the bathroom,” she said to Rue. “Do you want to come

with me?”

He shot her a look. “We’re fine.”

The woman crossed her arms and stuck her chin out. “I’ll let her tell me that.”

“He’s fine,” Rue said, shoving his shoulder. “He’s just a dick. He’s cockblocking me.”

“You can hang out with me for the rest of the night if you want,” the other woman said. “I guarantee I won’t cockblock you.”

“It’s fine. We just need to have a talk.” Then it was Rue’s turn to begin to drag him out of the bar.

He let her; Lord knew she wasn’t actually propelling him forward on her whiskey-shaky legs. And then they were out of the

loud, crazy bar and into the cold night, freezing air heavy with cigarette smoke, individual strains of conversation that

much more apparent than they had been inside.

“What’s the matter with you?” she asked.

He knew what was the matter with him. He just hated it. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to admit it to her.

He was still pissed he’d admitted it to himself.

“Those guys were making jackasses of themselves, and one of them hit you. What did you expect me to do?”

It was part of what had made him mad.

“I’m not a child ,” she said. “I didn’t need you to step in the middle of that. They were two grown men, and they both wanted...”

“They were treating you like you were some kind of steak, fighting over you like feral dogs.”

“Well, that’s what I wanted,” she said, outrage pouring through her. “It’s what I wanted. I wanted to be fought over. I wanted

to feel pretty. I wanted to get fucked.”

It was like she’d taken a torch and run it clean through his midsection. Hearing that word on Rue’s lips... like that.

It was enough to push him over the edge. She couldn’t give that to them .

If Rue wanted it hot, sweaty, dirty...

Do you hear yourself right now?

This was the problem. She’d been on her way to safety. Safety from all this, safety from him. Her re lationship with Asher had kept his mind from going here, and now? If he had to watch her hook up, it was going to drive him over the edge.

“By one of them ?”

She stumbled back. “It doesn’t matter. I just need to do it. I need to get it over with. I didn’t drink all those shots of

Jack Daniel’s so that you could storm around acting like my angry older brother and ruining my buzz.”

“That’s exactly why I can’t let you behave that way. You’re drunk.”

It was a good excuse, anyway. It was one he could rally behind, unlike the other thoughts and reasons tumbling around inside

of him.

“You knew that I planned to get drunk,” she shot back.

“I did. But I also didn’t expect that you were going to actually... I just thought you were going out to loosen up a little

bit.”

“So this is only fine for you.”

“Dammit, Rue. I know what I’m doing. I am an experienced rake, okay? You can’t make these kinds of decisions tipsy when they’re

not decisions you’d make sober.”

“That’s stupid. You don’t get to be in charge of what I want. Of what I think.”

“I’m the one guiding you here. It was time for me to step in. It was obvious that you needed an intervention.”

“That girl you were with didn’t think so. She was worried about the way you were treating me. Even she thought you were being a possessive asshole.”

“I’m not being possessive. I’m being protective. You don’t know this bar. And this isn’t you.”

That was a lie. A lie. A lie. But he couldn’t tell her the truth.

“I’ve been to this bar a thousand times!”

“Not like this.”

“You’re ridiculous! You don’t get to say who I am. I’m tired of who I am. That boring, responsible good girl hasn’t gotten me anything. She hasn’t gotten me anywhere. I’m basically the

same age as you. Where do you get off treating me like I’m a babe in the woods? I’ve seen the same shit you have. I had the

same kind of terrible childhood.”

She hadn’t, though. She didn’t know. Which was his fault and he knew that. But there were things he didn’t like sharing, not

with anyone.

Though he knew her trust issues were the same as his. Rooted in the heart of the way their parents had treated them, and hell,

she was homeless because of it. But he was just... he was just so mad .

Mad about the idea that his beautiful best friend would go home with someone who absolutely didn’t deserve her because some

other guy who didn’t deserve her had hurt her feelings.

“You deserve better than this,” he said.

“All right,” she said, tilting her face up. “I deserve better than random bar guys?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Okay then. Are you going to have sex with me?”