The deliberate way that man lifted his drink to his mouth—when he touched the highball glass to his full, lower lip before he tilted it, the liquid flowed in, and he swallowed—made Dree think he would be incredible in bed, that he’d take his time, that he’d know what he was doing to her.
The inside of her mouth watered like she wanted to lick him.
And he was still staring back at her, his dark eyes serious and almost wary.
He took the glass away from his mouth like he was stripping off his shirt for her to see his naked flesh.
Dree was leaning so far toward him that she nearly fell off her chair.
A new guy inserted himself into her view, jamming himself into the narrow space between Dree and the petite, judgey woman sitting next to her.
Dree looked up.
The new guy’s red silk shirt was unbuttoned to his waist, exposing a thatch of black chest hair. “Bonsoir.”
“Uh, yeah. Hi,” Dree said.
“You called for volunteers?” the guy asked with a strong French accent.
“Uh, about that,” Dree said, leaning back in her seat in retreat and gripping an empty shot glass.
She should not have stood on her bar chair and announced that. The napkin said to do something that she might regret later, but she regretted yelling that right now.
Another guy moved up to stand beside the first. “I heard you say you were going to fuck every guy in the bar.”
She examined the shot glass in front of her instead of meeting his eyes. “I sure did say that.”
“So, you didn’t mean it when you announced that you wanted to fuck every guy in the bar?”
“Maybe announcing it was a bad decision,” she admitted.
Two more guys crowded around her chair. “‘Allo, my sweet. Is this party full, or am I just in time?”
Another guy with a New York accent said, “I’m not taking sloppy seconds. I want to fuck her mouth, and I want to go first.”
“Whoa,” Dree said, leaning back, her feet scrambling for the foot-rest bar to shove herself backward in her chair. “Slow down, dudes.”
More men stepped up, forming a knot around where she sat, boxing her in.
A gravelly voice asked, “Is this where I redeem my one-free-fuck coupon?”
Another said, “She’s fatter than she looked.”
“Hey!” Dree said, getting pissed.
Another man reached for her as he said, “I want to fuck her tits. I get off on tits. You want to be un chou à la crème?”
He was asking if she wanted to be a cream pie.
She slapped his encroaching hand. “Ew!”
“You didn’t seem so finicky before,” an American guy said. “Sounded like you wanted to be the slimy center of a circle jerk.”
“Yuck! Jeez, you guys. Back off!”
“You said you wanted all the men,” another guy said in halting English.
The group tightened around her. Their heat reached her, making the air damp with their sweat. Tremors filled her arms.
A strong hand grabbed her boob. “Nice tits.”
She shoved at the man’s arm, knocking him back, but more hands were reaching for her. She clutched her little purse to her chest like the tiny scrap of pink leather could shield her, “Stop it!”
“Are we going to do this here or outside in the alley?” one of them asked.
Another hand dove between Dree’s thighs, and she clamped her legs together and punched at the arm and face connected to it.
The shaking in her arms wracked her whole body.
There were too many of them.
Too many hands, and all were too big and too strong.
“Leave me alone,” she begged them. More hands, more leering faces, more hands and bodies coming at her and trapping her. “Stop! Jesus Christ, just leave me alone!”
Movement from behind the guys.
Rumbling.
A few of the guys’ heads swiveled left as something drew their attention, and their eyes widened.
Large, strong hands appeared over the wall of her attackers and grasped their shoulders. Their attached bodies flailed and flopped aside.
The cluster of men fragmented like a rotting sea wall broken apart by a rogue wave.
Men’s voices yelled as the barrier they’d made themselves into was ripped apart.
A tower of white cotton and muscled flesh breached the ring of guys and rose in front of her. Scents of mild soap and a fresh, masculine aftershave emanated from the white tee shirt and the mountain of a man standing there and facing away from her. One of his arms reached back to shield her, and the other shoved outward, pushing the guys’ shoulders and forcing them to stumble backward.
The man’s deep voice said in British-accented English, “Back away. The lady said she wanted to be left alone.”
The other men crowded around them shrank backward like they were melting wax in the hot sun.
Dree’s heart thrashed in her chest. She was struggling to suck air because the room seemed to have fallen on her. The only thing holding back the wreckage was the huge man looming in front of her, protecting her from those men intent on—
—rape.
Intent on rape.
Dree knew what would have happened to her, and people would have said that she deserved it because she’d yelled such a thing and the whole bar had heard it.
But the man was holding them back.
Her heart fluttered as it settled.
She was still shaking from her skeleton to her skin.
The man twisted, looked down at her, and asked, “Are you all right?”
Up close and looking down at her like that, his chiseled cheekbones and jaw seemed more pronounced, and his large, dark eyes had grown more intense and filled with points of light. He had a straight, masculine nose, and his dark curls swept forward and framed his face as he bent. He looked like a statue of a Roman god or a sculpture by Michelangelo that had come to life and twisted to stare down at her. Shock at his pure male beauty flooded her, and it felt like something between a tremor of magic and abject worship of a divinity that had
