It had been one helluva day. And he was paying the price by fighting sleep as though it were a sudden death match – him and the Dream King - and he armed with only a dangerous blade held between his clenching teeth.

Mayhem. Juice. And boys, there's a new Sheriff in town. And thinking of knives, there was a lass who had a serrated edge to her, that one.

He wished he were drunk. Blind drunk. And not on blood, guts, and the perplexing elemental male-female pull he'd been wrestling for hours now. He wanted to pass out hard on good booze. But he couldn't risk the slowed reflexes brought on by a hangover. He needed to be sharp, on point, and lethal.

He turned onto his back, resigned to giving up the useless attempt at sleep. Breathing in and out, clearing his mind, easing his heart as much as he could given that it was heavy with black blood. He reached over, snapped on the bedside table lamp and grabbed the pack of smokes and his lighter. He lit a cigarette and held the smoke for a long time inside his lungs, it lightened him somehow. He went back up on an elbow and leaned over again for the uncorked Laphroig, swigging straight out of the bottle and closing his eyes as the whiskey burned, an alcoholic sin, on his tongue.

Ally, she'd told him and it was an invitation. He had heard that loud and clear. But to what exactly? And for him, really? He'd seen it before, of course he had, they all had. The leather, the weapons, the bike. The absolute threat of the modern Viking whipped some women into a frenzy that would have frightened even the most stalwart of berserkers. On first blush, Jarry seemed as far away from that type as Tara Knowles had appeared to be. Rest her soul. But those were the ones to watch. The lightning strike that could burn an entire forest to the ground.

He never looked back with regret, but he found himself wishing he had handled the few moments they had shared in the parking garage differently. She'd surprised him that much he knew. Surprised the hell out of him and he wondered if she had seen that on his face. His face. She had actually reached up and thumbed the deep scar on the right side of his jaw and he didn't let anyone get that close to his ruined mouth. If she'd been a snake he'd be filled with venom. He'd let her in that close with no way of knowing she wanted to coil her long, lithe body around his.

And what did that look like exactly. He couldn't for the life of him fathom it. Even joking with Jax about her wanting a good Glaswegian humping, it was trash talkin', nothing else. But hadn't she'd started it by calling him out, calling him to her, and bending her beautiful face towards him when she called him Scotty. A nice touch that, acknowledging the blood that ran thick in his veins, the bones that made up his skeleton. He'd found that not a lot of Americans could tell a brogue from a burr.

Grease her palm, Jax had told him. 2k. Not chump change. She had appeared slightly impressed. For one wild inconceivable minute he had to look away from the wide open expression on her face, glimpsing the innocent girl she still was beneath the hardening exterior, had to fight the urge to tell her RUN. Don't do this. This way is only down. This way is only certain death, total destruction. But that wasn't on him. Cops and robbers, white hats and black hats, the good, the bad, and the ugly. She was a full grown woman and if she wanted to piss with the big dogs, who was he to growl and point her to the little girls room.

He pulled the last drag on the cigarette, narrowing his eyes against the French twist of smoke he recirculated through his sinus cavities. Out of the uniform, she had transformed. The butterfly from the cocoon. He thought of her ass, the waterfall of rich brown hair, that warm triangle of creamy flesh she had gifted him, the ragged edge of a gunshot wound. Okay. That was something. He wanted to put his mouth just there. Then drag the flattened length of his tongue up over her small tits, tip her head back hard with a fist in her hair and suck a bruise into the thin skin of her throat. Mark her up good. This is mine. Pull those pricey jeans off her and knee her thighs open, wide open, while he one-handed worked his own belt and button fly.

He snorted, a barking kind of out loud laugh into the silence of his bedroom, and drew his hand down over his face, finger combing the goatee against his chin. He smashed the butt of the cig into the ashtray on the bedside table. He took another long drink of whiskey, relishing the burn, shoved the bottle between his own legs, locked his fingers behind his head and relaxed back into the bed. He could close his eyes and see the ballsy flirtation, the gun on her hip, at the small of her back handcuffs dangling from her belt.

If this girl-woman thought she was ready for what he could give her, well, let her bring it. Hardcore. He wasn't about to step out of her heat. He needed the diversion. And unlike a whiskey hangover, his edges wouldn't be dulled. Her body would be the whetstone. He would be the knife.