Forbidden Shifts Read online

  It seems pretty accurate. I smirk. Yeah, this is definitely the place.

  It’s even worse inside than it is outside, but in a more charming way than its exterior might suggest. Big signs advertising beer light up the room where the bulbs do not. I can barely make out a pool table on the other side of the room. Old, abandoned machines that may or may not have sold lottery tickets alongside their cigarettes—how old is this place?—decorate the other side of the room. In the far back, directly across from the door, is the bar. It looks like it’s made of damaged wood, and no one’s sitting behind it.

  I must have picked the wrong hour to come…

  No.

  My eyes start to adjust to the dim haze of the bar. Muscular men sit in rickety stools and stretched across furniture that looks weak even from a distance. A lot of the men cross their arms over their chests, revealing tattoos rippling across their muscles. I narrow my eyes in lust, looking at them and then looking around the room.

  They’re all dangerous men, to an extent. Maybe. Or maybe they just think they are. I can’t see a clear leader, though, so I feign disinterest. That’s the only type of man I’m interested in. Plus, I came here for a job. I walk through the bar, my feet quiet on the old carpet. Who even uses carpet in bars anyway? This place is shady— it looks like something that might’ve been closed down for crime back in the ‘80s. I like it.

  I make my way across the floor, feeling eyes drag across my body as I walk. I keep my head high. I’m not scared of these people. I’m not scared of anyone; I’ve never had a reason to be, and I will never allow myself a reason to. The wood of the bar is hard beneath my hands as I smack my palms against it. There’s still no one directly tending the bar, not here. I can see empty glasses standing in cases behind it, the bottles of booze put up on shelves even higher so that they’re difficult to steal from. Not that their height would make it any sort of a challenge. My eyes drift up, looking from Captain Morgan’s to Jack Daniels to pretty much everything, and then everything in between.

  An arm wraps itself loosely around my shoulders, and I cough. I shrug my way out of it, but the arm goes back with a chuckle.

  “Excuse you,” I say, turning to face the man. He looks like a generic biker, like the ones I saw on my way out the door. There’s nothing special about him, and by the way he stands outside the bar space— instead of in it— he doesn’t work here. Not what I’m interested in, not right now anyway. I want a job, and then the best, and then the second best. In that order, little else. “Get your hand off of me.”

  The man smirks. He’s way too close to me. I can tell by his breath that he’s inebriated, and he’s only getting closer, so I do what any self-respecting girl would do.

  I kick my leg out and jab him right in the nuts with my heel-covered foot. He shrieks in a pathetic way; I kick him again, taking advantage of that. I’m not in the mood for this.

  “I thought I told you to fuck off,” I say.

  Another voice pipes up, its tone low and jovial from…laughter? What the hell is wrong with this guy? “I think that’s what he was trying to do, girlie.”

  The voice comes from behind me, and I turn around to face the speaker, to tell him to die in a fire, to—

  My words catch in my throat. Being speechless is unlike me, but so is this overwhelming feeling of desire. Waves of lust crash over my body as I make my way from his muscles to the thick stubble on his jaw, all the way up to his dark eyes and his hair. He’s standing behind the bar, as I’d hoped he would be, but even if it wasn’t, he stands with an air about him like he’s used to having people do what he wants. Oh, yes. Just because I’m not looking for commitment doesn’t mean I don’t know what I want. I do, and this man is definitely it.

  My hands go to my hips, and I glare at him. He’s hot, but as of now that’s about all he’s got going for him. And the guy called me girlie? Ass.

  “You work here?” I ask.

  It’s pretty obvious he does, but I want to make sure this guy isn’t just standing back there because he thinks it’ll make him look important.

  “What do you think?” He raises a brow, and I almost hiss at him. I can’t help it, it’s just the way I am. My hands don’t move from my hips, but they clench into balls at my sides. How dare he?

  I need to focus on why I came here in the first place, douche bartender or not. He can’t be the boss, so it’s not like it matters anyway. But still, he’s hot, and I want to be with him. And anyway, pretending like he’s the one I want to deal with—and not just one of the things I want—will probably get me ahead. So I purse my lips and say: “I’ve been looking for you.”

  “Have you?” He laughs. “What’s my name, sweetheart?”

  Ugh! There’s something about this guy that makes me want to, to…to jump him. And to hurt him. In the usual way and the sexual one, too. “Hell if I know,” I say, quickly adding, “and hell if I care. I want a job.”

  “And you think being rude to an employer will get you hired?” He turns his back to me, and I watch the muscles in his shoulders ripple as he moves. He goes to the sink behind the bar and picks up a glass from the left of the sink, putting it under the water and washing it carefully. He looks tense.

  “Someone like you? Maybe,” I lean myself farther over the countertop. My top falls open, my cleavage pressing together to give him a view. He turns, no doubt about to ask me what I mean by that, but he freezes with his mouth slightly open. His eyes roam over the exposed expanse of my flesh.

  “We aren’t hiring,” he says with a grin, moving closer to me. He brings his hand out, running his fingers down the slope of my neck, closer to my chest. I slap his hand away before his hands can trace my tits, and this time I do growl at him. It only gets a laugh from him, though, and it pisses me off even more.

  “I don’t care,” I say, looking around the room. People are roaming around, bottles in their hands. Or they’re just sitting, still, depressed, the table in front of them occupied by glasses of booze. The place is a wreck, and there aren’t many people here anyway. “You clearly need a waitress.”

  “Like I needed the last waitress who stole from me?” he barks.

  “Implying I’m a thief?” I glare at him so hard my eyes hurt from it, and I feel a headache brewing in the back of my head. Eyes roam over to us and I sense people staring. We must be getting loud. I don’t care. I like it, so I raise my voice louder. Just to see how uncomfortable this guy can get. But, deep in the pit of my stomach, I realize he’s not uncomfortable at all.

  It just turns me on even more.

  The way this guy is staring at me pisses me off, though. He’s not even reacting. His voice is steady and his eyes are glinting with a steely calmness. But then that changes. His voice rises, too, and I watch something in his eyes break as I start yelling at him. “Don’t fucking scream at me.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do,” I shout back at him. My hands have dropped from my hips and I’m just pissed.

  “I’ll tell you exactly what,” he growls deep in his throat, and I blink for a second in shock. The swinging door at the side of the bar opens, and he comes out from behind the expanse of wood, his eyes fiery and intense.

  “No way,” I see, noticing him walking towards me with purposeful steps. So I do the only thing I can think of. There are people farther down the bar, drinking, taking swigs from bottles and from glasses. I take a step back and grab one of their bottles, smashing it over the countertop and pushing the sharp remains toward this douche. “Stay away from me.”

  He doesn’t. He’s fucking crazy.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” He stops a few feet away from me.

  I stop, too, my arms shaking as I threaten him. And then he lunges at me, taking the bottle in his hand and twisting it away from me. It falls back to the counter, shattering into even more pieces, but he doesn’t let me go. His arm twists mine behind my back as he pushes me toward him, and suddenly I’m chest to chest with this mad man.

  “Let m
e go,” I say.

  He does nothing of the sort. He just pushes himself up as close to me as he can go, even though his skin is already touching mine and my personal space is well and truly invaded. He grins down at me, his eyes flashing as they drag across my skin.

  “That isn’t going to happen.” He smiles at me. His voice is deep with a hint of something hidden below the surface of it, something dark. It makes my toes curl and I look up at him, his tall frame towering above mine.

  “I said let me go, or I’m going to stab you.” Even though I lost my bottle, I mean it. I’ll find a way. It’d be a shame to mess up this guy’s beautiful skin, but I doubt it’d be the first—or even the fourth—scar he’s gotten in his life. Plus, there’s something about him that tells me he’s the sort of guy who gets stabbed sometimes. Maybe it’s because he’s an asshole.

  His smile uplifts into a huge smirk, only further proving my point that this entire thing fucking blows. But then he says the right couple of words that send my arrogance tumbling back down to my stomach, and then a little bit farther past that.

  “I wouldn’t do that,” he says. And before I can ask just why the hell I shouldn’t, he adds, “That’s a pretty good way to get fired.”

  It takes me a minute to process his words. “So you’re saying you just hired me?”

  I can’t believe it. I wasn’t actually expecting this to work; I know you have to go through the whole application process and then do your best at an interview (if you even get one) and hope you have a shot. I thought this might get some attention at a run-down bar like this, but actually being hired on the spot?

  I guess the hot ones really are always crazy.

  He frees my arm, letting it drop to the side as he moves away from me. I’m already missing the touch before his back is turned. I sigh and try to calm my frantically beating heart.

  He calls behind him as he walks out the back door, “Don’t make me regret it.”

  “I might,” I mutter. He leaves me to figure everything out on my own.

  Jerk.

  ***

  After some brief arguing with a guy who seems way too comfortable here, and a few exchanged swears, I figure out that I’m supposed to start up work immediately. I go to the back, through the door just past the bar. Inside, there’s a small room that looks like it shouldn’t fit anything in it, much less what it actually does. There are a few shelves loosely attached to the walls, with clear mason jars full of things like cherries and mint leaves and a variety of other goodies. A lot of the shelves are placed low, too low, so low that I worry touching them will send the jars crashing down to the ground; some of them are too high, and I wouldn’t be able to reach them without grabbing a crate to go searching through the jars’ contents. I don’t bother doing that, although there are plenty of unopened crates I could use as stools if I felt like it. And I’m not short, either; it’s obvious to me that back here is where pretty much only that guy – whose name I still don’t know – goes.

  I rummage through a bunch of stuff, looking for an apron or a shirt with the bar’s logo on it—anything I can use to look like a legitimate employee. There used to be a waitress working here, and, shady as this place is, I still don’t believe she came to work in just her shirt and jeans. Finally, I find an oversized apron. It’s ridiculous on me, but it’s actually not that bad-looking. I tie it on and look through the reflection in the mason jars.

  It looks good on me, so I leave it.

  If I didn’t, well, there’s a corner of this room I could have thrown it in.

  I leave the small closet-type thing and go back out to the bar. It’s more cozy roaming around behind the bar itself than just getting drinks for people. But that doesn’t work out in my favor. A hand rests at the small of my back, grabbing onto me and pushing me toward the hard, wooden surface of the bar when I turn.

  “What are you doing?” a familiar voice growls.

  I bristle at the implications in his voice, but I say nothing for a moment. Finally, I say, “I still don’t know your name, you know.”

  He chuckles low in his throat, and his hand at my back twists around to my stomach. I can feel the heat of his palm there, and there’s something about it that’s so devilishly good, in a way it shouldn’t be.

  I shake, trying to twist myself out of his grasp. He doesn’t allow it. Instead, he grabs my arms, turning me so that I look him directly in the eyes as he talks.

  “And I don’t know yours either. Which seems pretty fucked up,” he says, pausing before he continues, “since I’m probably going to have to keep tabs on my employees.” His hand moves up to my chin, gripping it and looking at me with his eyes ablaze. “And fill out paperwork.”

  He stops, his hand falling from my face, and for an instant we both say nothing. The sounds of the bar around us invade both of our heads; I hear the camaraderie of bar-goers around us, the deep throaty laughter of men at ease amongst their friends. I hear the rising tones of another pair of men in a corner of the room, others intent on calming them down before they can get to a fight. Most of the people are more inclined for the two to brawl it out, though. Shaking myself free of the distractions, I look back at my captor.

  “I’m Cara,” I say. It seems like the only way I’ll get a name out of this guy is if I give him mine first. And I really want to know his.

  His hand goes to my chin again, forcing me to maintain eye contact with him. I hadn’t realized that I’d dropped my eyes, and it pisses me off. I narrow them, staring at him as hard as I can. The corners of his mouth turn up in a grin and I scowl, moving my hands to slap his hand away from my face. His grip just gets harder, though, and I still, feeling a now-familiar fire rising in my chest.

  “Last name?” he asks.

  “Kulfiger.” I push my chin up, forcing his hand to move. His jaw tightens and I smile to myself, pretty proud of getting that action from him. “Cara Kulfiger.”

  “I’m Blake.” He frees me again, and turns away. I’m thinking maybe he’s going to turn back to me, but he doesn’t. Instead, he walks back through the room, getting lost in the crowd.

  There are more people here now, and it is definitely crowded. The bar still isn’t as packed full as a club or another popular bar might be, but it’s far from vacant. I sigh, adjusting my apron. It’s time to get to work and stop messing around.

  I head to a rickety table in a smoke-filled corner. This place smells horrible as a whole, but around here, it’s the worst. The stench of cigars permeates the area, spreading out into other parts of the bar. I don’t know how I didn’t notice this earlier, but then the chill at my arms reminds me that there’s an open window these people are breathing smoke out of. I finally reach the table, glaring in advance at the bikers there whose eyes crawl over my body.

  “Boys,” I say. “How can I help you?”

  One of them eyes me again. “Well, you could—”

  I put a hand in the air to stop him mid-speech. He has a look in his eyes that I’ve seen several times in the eyes of men, and it’s not one I want to deal with right now. My mind flashes back to Blake’s dark eyes, to his stubble, and to the infuriating way he’s been rebuffing me.

  And then my eyes flick down to the guy sitting in a chair in front of me. I pass him a small smile, pushing my arm over the table and taking his half-full drink from him without asking whether or not he wants me to. I’m not in the mood to be dealing with this stuff, much as I’d hoped for it when I first walked in here. I flash my eyes down at the guy with a hint of malice.

  He must be stupid, because he notices none of it. He just grins at me. And then, almost in slow motion, I see his hand reaching out to me, going to grab at my arm. His fingers dig into my flesh, just below where my short sleeve ends. The apron doesn’t do much to keep my arms anything but bare, and he catches onto me quite easily. I grimace. His grip just tightens.

  He just made a huge mistake.

  He turns me, and I realize: he’s trying to drag me toward the table, so he can p
ress me up against the coarse wood. I glare, narrowing my eyes. He can’t see it, but it doesn’t matter.

  I throw my elbow back, catching him in the ribs. He grunts, and I hear the laughter of someone else at the table.

  “You’re just going to let her do that?” the voice says.

  Implying that he should be able to do what he wants otherwise? I slam my foot down on that guy’s boot, grinding my foot down, and then bring my head back, slamming into him. The guy grunts again, louder this time, and he moves to grab me, to keep me still. I wasn’t expecting to get in a fight on my first day of work…but I kind of like it.

  I grab the dude’s arm, twisting him so his head is against the table. I put a hand in his hair. My other hand goes to the other side of his head. My grip is good, and I’m just about to slam his head against the table when I hear someone else.

  “Cara,” Blake says. His voice is calm and steady, and it does the opposite of its intended effect. It fills me with rage. I don’t get how the dude can be so calm, and, and—

  “Cara,” he says again.

  I look up at him, but don’t let go of the guy.

  It flashes through my mind that I might lose my job. I’ve only been working here less than an hour, and maybe I should be concerned.

  Yeah, right.

  I smirk, making eye contact with Blake over this fool. Blake has moved to a spot a couple of table lengths away, and he’s crossed his arms over his chest. So maybe he’s not as calm as he leads me to think he is. I turn my head a little, making sure Blake knows I’m staring right at him.

  “Cara, let him go,” he says, his voice frustrated. It makes me smile. But, still, there’s a part of me that yearns to obey it—for some stupid reason, probably, a reason that I don’t want to name or have any part of. My hands loosen in the guy’s hair, preparing to let him go. My attention turns completely to Blake.