Wicked Burn

But that was all over now, Niall vowed to herself as she lifted the box from the floor. She glanced back at her office, poignantly aware that she was about to embark on a new chapter in her life. Satisfaction surged through her when she turned the lock on the door and shut it with a brisk bang.

She was going after Vic. If fate had determined that he wasn’t meant to be hers, at least Niall would know that it wasn’t because her grief and guilt had kept her from trying.

FIFTEEN

A determined glint shone in Missy Shane’s green eyes as she tossed her tray on the bar. The man she studied so intently didn’t look up at the loud noise. She frowned and began to fill her own draft orders. Alex, the owner and bartender of the El Paso Lounge, must be in the back getting another keg. The El Paso would close in two hours, which meant it would be reaching its peak of Saturday night rowdiness any minute now.

Not that you could have guessed that by looking at the silent, morose man sitting at the bar. His dark, shaggy hair was in desperate need of a cut, although Missy had to admit that the wildness of it was dead sexy. The unruly waves fell forward on his forehead and brushed his lean cheeks and collar, casting him further into shadow. His elbows rested on the bar and his broad shoulders hunched forward as though he protected a bone from all potential comers.

Missy grinned slightly at her mental comparison of Vic Savian to a big dog. She was going to do her damndest tonight to get her hands on that bone. Ellie Sheerer, another waitress at the El Paso who had been lucky enough to get in Vic’s pants one chilly night last April, had informed Missy with relish that the beast’s bone was worth any sacrifice to taste. Her nose wrinkled distastefully at the thought of buxom, boisterous Ellie getting the privilege of sucking off Vic Savian’s big, delicious cock in the parking lot of the El Paso when he’d never so much as glanced twice at Missy.

Missy was Halver County’s Corn Queen for two years running, after all. Sure, it was ten years ago that she’d won those titles, but Missy was every bit as tight and voluptuous at twenty-nine as she had been at nineteen. She might not have tits as big as Ellie’s but she’d been told by quite a few of her lovers that she gave head every bit as fine as her rival did, although she didn’t have the experience that Ellie’s thirty-eight years granted her.

Besides, Vic Savian had been so drunk on the night that he’d allowed Ellie to climb into his pickup truck with him he’d probably thought Ellie was Missy. Yeah, maybe that was it. They both had reddish hair and wore identical waitress uniforms. If that was the case, then Missy couldn’t wait to prove to Vic that he’d gotten the wrong woman to steam up the windows of his cab back in April.

All Ellie or Alex had been able to tell her about Vic Savian was that he’d inherited that enormous spread that used to belong to Manny Padilla out on the west side of town, and that he was a writer or something. She hoped he wrote scary books like her favorite author, Dean Koontz. She wouldn’t be a bit surprised, as dark, mysterious, and a little dangerous as he seemed. He didn’t come into the El Paso Lounge very often—or anywhere in town that Missy had been able to identify—so she needed to make everything out of the opportunity that she could.

“Let me put a nice head on that beer for you,” she offered suggestively.

She blinked in surprise when he raised his shaggy head slowly. He made a subtle rolling gesture with his lean jaw as he inspected her. She’d never looked directly into his eyes before, so she hadn’t been prepared for their impact. Holy shit. Missy had seen how many beers he’d put away tonight as he sat there silent—and nearly as motionless—as a stone. So it shocked her more than a little to see how startlingly alert and penetrating his light gray eyes were.

His gaze lowered over her body unhurriedly. Was it wishful thinking, or did those phenomenal eyes linger for a second on her nipples, which had just obligingly pulled tight beneath her uniform? He slowly pushed his empty glass across the bar as he continued to watch her.

Missy tried to hide the triumph in her smile. She was going to get a taste of elusive Vic Savian tonight, she just knew it.

And she was determined to be the first woman in El Paso, Illinois, to see the inside of his bedroom instead of just the view of the floor mat of his truck as she leaned over to suck the tall, stiff pillar of his tasty cock.

“Wait.”

Missy paused and looked over her shoulder seductively, her hand poised over the tap.

“Give me a Scotch.”

Missy stared for a second, amazed at the effect his hoarse voice had on her body, like a pair of knuckles running seductively down her spine. It sounded so raspy that she wondered when he’d actually last spoken out loud to another human being. Jeez, this guy must be a real loner.

But she’d never seen a sexier hermit in her life. Maybe he was shy. Good thing Missy knew how to bring a man out of his shell. She licked her lower lip in a gesture of anticipation at the same time that she gave him a knowing wink.

“Anything you want is yours for the taking, cowboy,” she promised him huskily. She turned and cocked her hip, gifting him with the sight of her ample, round ass as she took her time locating the most premium brand of Scotch that Alex owned.

Of course it was necessary for her to bend over deeply to find just the right bottle.

Vic looked his fill at the sight of the reasonably attractive red-head waving her more than reasonably attractive ass in the air for his benefit. He wondered if he could have set a drink on the shelf of the upper curve of her generous, taut buttocks. His cock stirred listlessly in his jeans, like a bear awaking from a winter slumber, sticking its head up and taking a sniff.