A hank of hair had fallen across Tabitha's eyes and she pursed her scarlet lips, trying to blow it away. Her freckled cheeks were rounded with the attempt and glistened with a light sheen of perspiration and a blush of color. She didn't smile when her gaze met mine but her eyes did, and my heart erupted into a staccato pulse. Electric desire rushed through my body tingling the tips of my fingers.

Oswain's drunk grin was sloppy and too big for his face. "Thanks for the drinks and setting us up here, Mr. Crowther."

"No problem, Oswain—"

"Oswin," Tabitha interjected, the warmth in her eyes frosting over.

I frowned, running my hand holding the cigar over my slicked-back hair. "Huh?"

She pinned me with an astounded steely gaze.

Her tall gardening friend jumped in, and with a dismissive flip of his fingers, said, "Oswain-Oswin, whatever, it's cool."

"No, it's not," she shot back, tapping him on the chest, furious that I'd gotten her best friend's name wrong, and part of me did feel slightly bad. "That's not your name." There was a challenging tilt to her mouth when she schooled me. "It's Os-WIN. Not, Os-WAAAIN."

Hells-gate. Her prim reprimand had lust scorching my skin.

"Tabitha," OsWIN hissed beneath his breath, rapping his fingertips against her upper shoulder and whispering to her urgently, "Upper rank... Upper rank..."

Tabitha ducked out from under his arm, stepping right up so we were toe to toe. She pinched my cigar from me, drew in the piquant smoke, and rolled it around in her mouth before blowing it out in a thick stream right in my face.

I jerked my head back, waving the smoke away.

Holy shit, I was in so much trouble with her, but all it did was clench my entire body tight with excitement.

"You don't scare me, Mr. Crowther." She twisted around to Oswin and shoved a finger so close to my face that I weaved sideways. "He doesn't scare me."

She turned her defiant gaze back to me and I held it with my own, breathing hot air over my flattened hand before purposefully rubbing it on my upper chest as if warming it up, readying to spank her.

Her pupils flared and the hand holding my cigar lowered to her middle. A moment later her eyes sparkled with amusement, and her lips twitched on a ghost of a grin.

My expression was bored and disinterested, the complete opposite of the rest of me which was super attentive to Tabitha in her short flirty dress and fiery attitude. "Duly noted... Miss...?"

"Tabitha Catt," she replied airily before drawing in a mouthful of smoke from my cigar, which she obviously wasn't going to give back any time soon. Tabitha had a thing for stealing my cigars whenever we went out, puffing away, and pretending to be me. "Nice to meet you, Tabitha."

"Likewise, Mr. Crowther," she replied, echoing my bored tone, smoke curling from her mouth.

Oswin coughed dramatically, jerking his head toward the tables and pointedly staring at Tabitha as if to say—Let's get the hells out of here before he skins us alive. "I want to sit down for a bit." He shuffled sideways and then stopped to reluctantly ask, "Erm... Do you want to join us?"

"Sure," I replied.

As we threaded through the servants to a corner booth, Oswin strode ahead and I was able to ask Tabitha quietly, "How much have you had to drink?"

Her mouth scrunched and her eyes thinned, lifting to the ceiling as she thought about it. "I had,"—hiccup—"a c-couple of t-tequilas before I arrived."

"How many?"

"Just the one." She held up four fingers. "And since then I've had a rainbow of cocktails."

The booth was small and intimate with enough room for eight of us. Oswin and Tabitha slid along the seat to sit beside a trio of guys, and I took the side opposite Tabitha. As soon as I'd settled in, 'Bliss' blasted through the nightclub and an excited eruption burst from Oswin and his friends. It was the craziest song from New Zealand's band Th' Dudes and pretty much a binge-drinking song. Oswin and his friends slapped their palms in a rolling drum beat, singing along, "Yaaaaaaa ya ya ya yaaaaaa ya ya ya yaaaaaa!"

A tray loaded with Snake Bite shots was placed on the table before us and was scooped up by everyone but Tabitha.

Well, I may as well fucking join them.

Cool condensation wet my fingers as I wrapped them around the closest drink. Shot glasses were clinked against each other with a cheer of 'To Oswin and Dolcie," and downed in one. I shuddered, hissing through gritted teeth, my stomach protesting the foul bite of alcohol.

The shots kept coming throughout the song. I had one more, then another, and soon enough I was drifting in a warm goofy haze as Oswin and his mates continued to get tanked.

"I'll just have water thank you." Tabitha smiled up at the waitress as she took a new round of orders and cleared away the empty glasses.

It was refreshing to banter with Oswin and his mates. Alcohol buzzed through our veins and it had quickly shed from them their unease at being in my presence. We were just a group of guys without rank, hanging out, uncomplicated compared to the snide jabs and underlying machinations to watch out for when mingling with my own rank.

I relaxed into the backrest of the booth and mentally ran through Tabitha's rules for the night.

No sitting next to her—I had that covered. I sat next to some guy with short spiky black hair nursing a pint of stout.

No trying to dance with her—We remained seated. So far I was doing good.

No speaking to her—She fucking broke that rule first.

No overstaring at her—I was engaged in the conversation bouncing around the table, arguing with Oswin and his mates about which team was going to win the English First Division this year. Duh, Man U. of course. I'd dutifully kept my eyes off Tabitha. However, when I darted a furtive look briefly her way she was the one blatantly staring at me over the rim of her tall glass, tendrils of smoke wafting from the cigar pinched between the fingers of the hand resting on the table.

Oswin continued arguing with me over who was deemed the best footballer of all time. Duh, Pelé, it shouldn't even be contested. I might have been slightly biased because of my Brazilian lineage, but come on, it's Pelé!

Tabitha had been staring at me with one of those secretive feminine smiles, and as I wondered what delightful thought was spinning inside her head to entice that lovely smile, something nudged between my thighs.

My shocked gaze snapped to hers over the table.

Oh.

My.

Gods.

Tabitha lounged against the cushioned backrest, her head angled slightly and waves of flaxen hair framing the outer swell of her breasts, rising and falling with deep breaths. Black eyelashes cast shadows over those deep pools of green, their depth fixed on me with the wicked glint of a huntress.

Beneath the table, she slid her warm slender foot along my inner thigh slowly, right to my groin. The flat of her toes stroked up my thickened cock which had saluted her bold move the moment she'd touched me.

I hooked a finger into the knot of my tie, loosening it as smoldering heat burst all over my skin. My body locked taut as she started stroking up and down, all with a sinfully careless air about her as she continued to chat with Oswin and the others while teasing me beneath the table. It was so deliciously wrong it heightened the arousal charging my blood.

My cock strained at my pants, trying to get to her. It was so hard not to thrust my hips back into her touch. My hands clamped the edge of the table as if it was a life raft and I needed to drag my weary body from the ocean onto it. My eyes almost rolled back in illicit pleasure.

Holy hells-gate.

Oh my fucking gods.

Up and down she worked me.

Up and fucking down.

The club darkened as my heavy eyelids drooped lower. My jaw clenched to stop the loud moan that threatened to crawl from my throat. A fiery zing flashed down my spine and my balls tightened. I was fighting my own fucking O face and I didn't know if I had the strength to stop her before I jizzed in my pants.

A hand with fingernails coated in fuschia-pink wrapped possessively around my upper arm and I froze.

Two things happened simultaneously: someone with a husky voice leaned up against me and said, "I thought I'd seen you arrive here earlier, gorgeous," and the heel of Tabitha's foot stamped my balls. Mind-obliterating pain erupted and set fire to my groin. I jerked forward slamming my palms on the tabletop, my jaw rigid, trying to swallow back the bark of agony. Fuck, fuck, fuck...

"Are you okay?" the other woman asked.

"Yes," I wheezed, jack-knifing straight.

I slid a hand down beneath the table to the origin of all that pain, carefully and gently massaging my throbbing, aching balls. Hellsgate. Fuck.

Twisting sideways, my gaze met a woman with wide-set brown eyes and strawberry blond hair cut into a severe French bob that grazed the end of her pointy chin. She was beautiful in the same way that all classically beautiful women were: generic.

I had no fucking clue as to who she was.

A terrible feeling sank through me. Judging by the way she touched me with lust swimming in her gaze, she was one of my drunken one-night stands after I'd been broken by Irma and Gratian.

In the corner of my eye, Tabitha's sultry expression collapsed into hurt and her gaze bounced from me to this woman beside me toying with my shirt collar.

I brushed her hand off me. "Listen, I'm sure we had a good time—"

"The best," she purred, undeterred, and pressed closer to rub her tits up against my arm. "I still haven't gotten over that night. I want more, Varen."

"I'm kind of busy here," I shot back, wondering how to politely tell her to piss off.

"And I can offer you a different kind of busy. A more fun kind of busy."

"No thanks."

And still, it didn't dissuade her. Her glossy pink lips found the shell of my ear and she began whispering what she was going to do to me if she got me alone.

An icky shudder worked its way down my back. Gods, the fucking gall of her. I was about to nudge her off of me with my elbow and outright tell her to fuck off when I noticed Tabitha's reaction. She was a storm of fury all directed at the other woman, who for the moment only had eyes for me.

Tabitha jerked upright, leaned across the table, and dumped her cigar in the other woman's drink. "He said—No thanks."

The woman whipped around, her gaze darting to the cigar drowning in her champagne flute and back to Tabitha. Her lips curled with anger. "Who the hell are you?"

Tabitha blinked, her fury dissipating. "I-I-I'm... Ugh," she faltered, kneading the heel of her palm against her temple. "I'm Tabitha Catt."

"Who is this? Your girlfriend?" the woman sneered.

Yes, I wanted to shout, godsdammit yes, but instead went with, "No."

"He's...he's..." Tabitha squinted at me, making a humming noise as she tried to think of a reason. "Kind of my boss."

The other woman laughed, raking her gaze dismissively over Tabitha. "Is she your secretary or babysitter?"

Secretary. Just the title alone had blood rushing back to my cock as images flooded my mind of Tabitha in my office back home with her skirt flipped up and bent over my desk.

"You never told me what you do," the other woman said to me with a provocative smile.

I was just about to say 'Importing and Exporting,' which was the standard vague line I used all the time if anyone should ask about the Houses, but Tabitha got there first and answered for me. "He's a Trust Fund Baby."

My eyebrows shot up. "Trust Fund Baby?" What the hells? I had an actual legitimate job as an enforcer, thank you very much.

"Yeah," Oswin drunkenly added. "Mr. Crowther's a Trust Fund Baby."

"He's kind of all of our bosses," the guy next to me said.

Oswin raised his glass. "Gardener."

Another guy tipped his hand up. "I'm his chauffeur,"

"I do his laundry," said another guy.

"Either way," Tabitha huffed, her anger stoked once more. "This is a private party you've gatecrashed, so please remove,"— a looong pause— "yourself now."

The other woman's nostrils flared and she parted her lips as if to shoot something vicious back when Tabitha lunged forward and clapped her hands right in front of her face—clap, clap, clap—making her shirk back in startlement. "You're not wanted here so shoo-shoo."

The woman glanced around and didn't find anyone to back her up. I waved my fingers at her with a grin—Good-fucking-bye. With a scowl and a sniff, she jumped to her feet and stormed away.

Tabitha quickly hobbled around the table, because she'd removed one of her high heels to get me off, and plopped down on the seat beside me. Oswin and his mates picked up their conversation about soccer exactly where they'd left off as if they hadn't been interrupted. All of them without a care in the world, canting over the table to be able to be heard over the music.

I whistled low, raising a drink to my lips and glancing sidelong at Tabitha. "You're so fucking hot when you're bossy."

"I know," she whispered back, doing a little squiggle with her shoulders as she picked up her drink with its pretty umbrella and stabbed the ice cubes about with the pink-striped straw. "And I'm fun. Seriously fun, and these guys," she said, sweeping a finger at them, "are finally seeing that I'm not the uptight spinster they pegged me for. Like, I'm fuuuun, Varen."

"I know you are."

"But now they know it too. And now Miss Grabby Hands over there," she tilted her drink at the strawberry blond tossing us a dirty look over her shoulder as she stalked toward the exit, "knows she'd better not mess with what's mine."

I faux-gasped, splaying a hand over my chest. "I feel claimed."

She slurped her drink up the straw and grinned. "You are claimed."

Shifting around in my seat, I squinted down the length of my nose at her. "You're breaking so many of the rules you set me for the night. Aren't you worried?"

She shrugged, flipping up a hand. "Eh, I don't know why I was even worried. Everyone is sooo drunk and they're guys. They're simple creatures, clueless about this kind of stuff. All that's going through their heads is what to drink next. Do I have a chance with that woman over there? I'm starving. What is there to eat?"

I rubbed my fingertips beneath my chin. Yeah, Tabitha pretty much summed us up. I was peckish myself and I had been wondering what there was to eat around here. I was fairly confident I was going to get the girl tonight. And there was an unlimited supply of drink, so that was all good too.

Really, what else was there to think about?