Three Kinds of Trouble by Anne Malcom

Chapter Five

I didn’t want to make eye contact with Hades when I finally rustled up enough courage to emerge from backstage. I’d planned on averting my eyes altogether, making an art out of staring at his motorcycle boots. How could I look him in the eye after that?

I was all about confidence and owning my sexuality when I was on stage. Hades wasn’t scary when I was the one with all the power over him. But now he was plenty fucking scary.

And I couldn’t take my fucking eyes off him.

He couldn’t seem to take his eyes off me either. Yet there was none of that liquid sex glittering through them. None of that animalistic need from before. Just a familiar fury that I’d never get used to. Never stop reacting to.

“You done?” he barked, the two words rattling my bones.

I couldn’t even speak, literally couldn’t form words. Instead, I nodded slowly, blinking rapidly at him.

He jerked his head toward the door, not saying anything else.

Somewhere, deep down, it pissed me off something wicked that he thought he could order me around with a jerk of his head and expected me to obey. In any other situation, I would’ve—or at the very least I might’ve—given him a piece of my mind then purposefully strutted to the bar to order a drink, making it clear that no man told me where to go with a flick of his fucking head.

But this was a whole other type of situation. So I walked toward the exit, feeling Hades’s eyes on me the entire time.

We didn’t speak as we walked to the car, not one word. But I felt his presence behind me, his heat. He was close enough for me to smell since he was almost pressing up against me. Almost. He seemed to be being very careful not to touch me. As if we hadn’t had some kind of ... moment not twenty minutes prior. As if I hadn’t made myself come in the bathroom thinking of his cock thrusting inside of me.

I didn’t know if I was glad or disappointed by his silence, all I knew was that I let out a long exhale the second I closed the door to my car. I also looked in my rear-view mirror far too often than was safe throughout the drive home.

Despite having made myself come less than thirty minutes prior, by the time I was back at my place, I was ready to explode. There was no way that we weren’t having sex, right? After what had just happened?

I would’ve loved to call Marilyn to process all of this so I didn’t become the first woman to spontaneously combust due to the proximity to a badass biker with a stare that could melt panties. Or drench them.

Unfortunately, the ride from Fate to my place was too short for me to completely unpack with Marilyn. Plus, I wasn’t sure I had regained the ability to speak just yet.

I’d call her tomorrow. After all the sex.

There had to be sex. As much as I really, really wanted to fight it, fight him, I didn’t have the power to. Maybe in the morning I would’ve regained my wits. Maybe I would be able to straighten things out, banish the biker from my life. But the sun hadn’t risen yet.

It was two in the morning, I was pulling up to my house, a man on a Harley behind me, and I was more turned on than I had ever been in my life.

He didn’t open my door for me, though I hadn’t expected him to. He was just standing there, under my floodlights, a living shadow. A very sexy, menacing, dangerous shadow.

My heels clicked against the concrete of my driveway as Hades watched me approach. My skin prickled with anticipation.

“Prospect is comin’ to spend the night,” he announced before I’d reached him. “Outside,” he continued, his tone like iron. “No invitations to sleep on the couch, the pullout. No hot fuckin’ cocoa. He’s not hanging around to be your friend. Not coming for shit other than to make sure no one comes and slits your throat in your sleep.”

A chill raced through me. Not from the air, it was July in New Mexico. Even at two in the morning, the heat was thick, sticky. But nonetheless, I shivered.

This was not the same man who had sat in the corner and watched me dance for him, that had made me wet with nothing but a gaze and the purposeful opening of his legs.

“We clear?” he grated out when I hadn’t spoken in a handful of seconds.

A motorcycle roared in the distance, and my eyes panned to the end of my driveway where a lone headlight made its way toward us.

Suddenly, I was no longer looking at a lone headlight. I was, once again, looking into a cold, icy, intense and unyielding stare. Hades had grasped onto my chin with his fingers, forcing my attention back to him.

My body thrummed under his touch.

“Freya, need to hear that you understand me,” he murmured.

I blinked at him, the roar of the oncoming motorcycle nothing compared to the thundering of my heart.

“I understand you,” I whispered.

The seconds the words were out of my mouth, Hades let me go, stepping back two paces. It might as well have been two football fields.

Rejection washed over me like acid, burning away whatever confidence I’d been wearing two minutes ago. He didn’t say anything more, didn’t address the sexual tension between us. It was as if it didn’t exist.

And I didn’t storm into my house, swinging my hips in a way that told him I did not need him when I had a perfectly good vibrator in my bedside table. That’s what a strong, sexually stable woman would’ve done. And that’s what I thought I was up until two minutes ago.

Hades didn’t so much as say goodbye to me when the man on the bike pulled up. He just gave me one lingering look before walking toward the Harley running in my driveway.

I watched them speak a handful of sentences before Hades got on his bike and drove off, not looking back once.

As promised, I gave the prospect a little wave but didn’t exchange pleasantries. Instead, I went inside, poured myself a big drink, then another. Then I baked cookies, ate half the batter, eating the rest once they were cooked—except for the three I set on the doorstep along with a mug of cocoa—cried a little, used my vibrator then went to sleep.