Burned In Stone | A BBW, MC Lite Romance | EBOOK | Stoneheart Motorcycle Club Book 4

“You can head out,” I call to Miguel in the kitchen. “I’ll finish cleaning up.”

“You sure, jefe?”

Devil’s Bar is dead tonight. So quiet I can hear the neon sign buzzing. Three customers in the past hour, and the last one just stumbled out, three sheets to the wind and singing off-key.

“Yeah, go home to your family.”

Cash looks up from his spot at the end of the bar, where he’s been nursing the same beer for the past hour. ‘Keeping an eye on things,’ I’m told. Most people would find having a burly member of an outlaw MC watching them work intimidating. Me? I find it oddly comforting not having to look over my shoulder all night. The last time I felt safe with a man watching me, it turned into surveillance. Cash’s watching is different. Comforting.

Maybe it’s the way his voice rumbles when he talks to his MC brothers, or how his hands dwarf the glass he’s holding. Either way, it shouldn’t feel this safe—or this distracting.

“Closing early?” he asks. 

“Might as well. No point staying open for ghosts and dust bunnies.” I start wiping down tables, hyperaware of his presence. Officially, he’s around because that big development company—Summit—is still sniffing around. For months they’ve been using underhanded tactics to buy up homes and businesses. The MC’s president, Stone, wants someone keeping an eye on the bar, and somehow that someone always ends up being Cash. At least whenever I’m on shift, anyway.

He sets down his empty bottle and comes around the bar. “How about we both call it a night? I’ll walk you to your car.”

“Actually...” I pause, surprising myself with what I’m about to say. “Want to have a drink with me? A real drink, not that light beer you’ve been babysitting all night.”

His eyebrows shoot up. “You wanna drink with a biker, Mercy?”

“Only if you think you can keep up,” I retort, my lips twitching into a smile. His grin widens into something slow and dangerous. My stomach flutters, and I turn my back on him, reaching for the good stuff—a bottle of aged whiskey Kya and I keep hidden for special occasions. Or apparently, quiet nights with the club’s treasurer. “Whiskey OK?”

“Pour away, angel.” The low rumble comes from just behind me. He’s close enough that warmth seeps through my shirt.

My hands still.

What am I doing? Asking Cash to have a drink with me is just inviting trouble. But when was the last time I just... enjoyed myself? Had a drink with an attractive man without overthinking every consequence? Without that voice in my head cataloging all the ways I’m going to screw this up? That he’s going to screw me up?

Shut up, I tell it. Not tonight.

Before I can overthink it, I pour two fingers of amber liquid into a pair of heavy tumblers. His pale green eyes track my every move as I hold one out. Our knuckles brush as he takes it. A spark shoots up my arm and settles low in my belly.

“To ghosts and dust bunnies,” he murmurs, his gaze never leaving mine as he lifts his glass. 

“To quiet nights,” I reply, voice soft. Our glasses meet with a gentle clink. The whiskey burns down my throat, warmth blooming in its wake. Not enough to drown out my awareness of him beside me. He watches me over the rim of his glass, a smirk ghosting his lips as his hand dips into his cut. 

“Wanna play?” He pulls a well-worn deck of cards from his inner pocket. The sight is so unexpected I laugh, then immediately try to swallow it back. 

“What, you carry those everywhere?”

He shrugs and sets the pack on the bar. “Never know when you’ll need insurance. Or a way to kill time.” His hands move over the cards with the kind of ease that says he’s run more than a few hustles in his day.  

The dog-eared deck suits its owner.

Cash is unfairly gorgeous in that rough-around-the-edges way that makes smart women stupid. Tall and muscular, dark hair kept just long enough to run your fingers through—not that I’ve thought about it. Much. His jaw carries a few days’ worth of stubble that would feel delicious against sensitive skin. 

But it’s his eyes that always get me. Pale green, like sea glass. Sharp and watchful.

“What’s the game?” I ask, taking another sip of whiskey. 

He fans the cards out on the bar with a practiced flick of his wrist. “How about a little five-card draw? We can make it interesting.”

“How interesting are we talking?” I raise an eyebrow, leaning my hip against the bar, trying to project a confidence I don’t entirely possess.

His gaze locks on mine. Sharp. Direct. “Loser tells a secret.”

A secret. The word hangs between us, heavy with unspoken things. My secrets are jagged, sharp-edged, and best left buried. The idea of sharing one with him, even a small one, sends a shiver down my spine.

“That’s a dangerous game.”

“I’m a dangerous man.” He doesn’t look away, and there’s a heat in his eyes that makes my mouth go dry. “Question is, are you brave enough to play?”

I should say no, finish my drink, wish him goodnight, walk home to my quiet apartment where I can pretend the sight of his hands on those cards doesn’t make me imagine them on my skin.

Instead, I hear myself saying, “OK. Deal me in.”

We slide into a worn leather booth, our whiskey glasses leaving damp rings on the dark wood. Cash shuffles the deck, hands moving with easy rhythm. The soft riffle of cards is the only sound besides my breathing. He deals five to me, five to himself, his eyes gleaming with challenge. And damn if that look doesn’t make me press my knees together.

I lift my cards. A pair of jacks. Not bad. I discard three, pulse ticking at my throat. He slides over replacements. I peek. Nothing. Jack high.

My smile falters.

“Read ‘em and weep,” I say, trying for bravado as I spread the cards. 

Cash just chuckles, a low, rumbling sound. He lays his own hand down. A full house. Aces over kings.

“Son of a bitch,” I mutter, leaning back against the leather. 

He gathers the cards, his movements slow and deliberate. “A deal’s a deal, angel. Time to pay up.” His eyes drift from my face to the messy auburn curls tumbling over my shoulders. “Let’s start easy. That hair color. Is it yours?”

The question is so mundane, so unexpectedly intimate, it throws me. “You think I buy this in a bottle?”

His gaze turns molten, a slow smile spreading across his lips. “Just wondering”—his voice drops an octave—”if the fire runs all the way through.”

There it is. The familiar territory of sex and attraction—easy, safe, something I know how to navigate. He wants to get me naked. That I can give him. It’s the rest of me, the messy and damaged parts, that nobody really wants anyway.

Heat rushes up my neck. A traitorous blush I can’t control. My mind goes blank, floods with images—his hands tangled in my hair, his mouth everywhere. I take a sharp breath and force the thoughts away. Then I meet his gaze like I’m not already halfway undone.

“I think that’s the kind of secret you’ll have to earn through action, biker,” I manage. “Not just from the luck of the draw.”

That smile of his doesn’t waver. “Who says it was luck?” He leans forward, closing the small space between us over the table. “Maybe I just want to know you.”

Cash’s gaze drops from my face, making a slow, deliberate tour down my throat, over the swell of my breasts beneath my fitted Devil’s T-shirt, before lingering on the curve of my hips. It’s the kind of look that should make me want to shrink, to cover up. For years, every curve was a sin, every pound a failure cataloged by a man who shamed every bite I took.

But I’m not small anymore. I’m forty pounds heavier than the ghost he tried to starve me into being. My hair is a riot of red curls he would’ve made me iron flat. This body is mine—built on whiskey, pizza, and freedom—and for the first time in my life, I’m not ashamed of it.

At least, not of my body. The rest of me—the broken pieces I left behind in Ailington, the woman I used to be—that is staying buried. I didn’t drive seventeen hours with everything I owned crammed into the back of my car just to dig up the past for a man with pale green eyes and a killer smile. No matter how much he makes me want to.

I lift my chin and meet his stare head-on. “Shuffle the cards, Treasurer.”

He chuckles again and gathers the deck, his knuckles deliberately brushing the back of my hand as he collects the last card.

“Another round, another secret.” His voice drops to a low hum that strokes my nerve endings. “You sure you’re ready for that, angel?”

“I’m more ready than you know.”

He deals again, my heart giving a hopeful leap when I pick mine up. Two pairs. Queens and eights. A damn good hand. I lay them down with a triumphant smirk.

“Pay up, biker. Time to spill a secret of your own.”

He barely glances at them. Without a word, he slowly turns his own cards over. Four of a kind. Fours.

My mouth falls open. “No way,” I breathe, narrowing my eyes. “You’re cheating.”

The corner of his mouth lifts into that infuriating, devastatingly handsome smirk. “Maybe I am.” He leans forward, his voice dropping low again, the sound a physical touch against my skin. “But you still have to pay up.”

I fold my arms across my chest and jut out my chin. “Ask then.”

“Why here, Mercy? Out of all the places you could have settled in, why’d you pick Stoneheart?”

My breath catches. That question cuts too deep, straight to the bone of a story I’m not ready to tell, a wound I’m not ready to show him. But he wants to know me? Fine. But I think I’d rather show instead of tell.

Shifting back from the table, I hook my thumbs under the hem of my Devil’s Bar t-shirt. With one smooth motion, I pull it over my head, letting my wild curls fall around my bare shoulders. I toss the shirt onto the table between us. Clad only in a simple black lace bra, I meet his stunned gaze.

“Your questions are boring, biker,” I say, my voice steadier than I feel. “Let’s make it strip poker.”