I dug my fingernails into the palm of my hands and silenced the scream that was building in my chest.

Fuck.

Hatch Malone. Fuck him and his stupid delectable lips. And his incredible probing tongue.

Fuck him for getting me hot and bothered and denying me any release.

I stormed back to the bar and almost shattered the glassware as I wiped it dry and put it away in my angry state.

“Simmer down there, sweetcheeks,” a gravelly male voice said from behind me. “You keep that up and you’re gonna break half the glasses you’ve got back there.”

“You keep telling me to simmer down and calling me sweetcheeks and I’ll smash them all,” I snapped and whipped around.

He must have seen the fire crackling in my eyes because he actually recoiled in nervous laughter. “Whoa, leave me out of it. I was just making an observation.”

He was probably seventy and frail in appearance, with water blue eyes and thin white hair. He could have been my grandpa and there I was freaking out on him like I was a crazy woman.

“I’m sorry, I’m just having one of those days. Now what can I get you?”

“How about a smile?”

“That’s pushing your luck.”

“I’d hate to be the fellow who put you in such a bad mood,” he chuckled.

“How did you know?”

“Because there’s nothing else in the world who would make a pretty girl like you frown like that. Risk all those frown lines and such.”

I rolled my eyes and sighed dramatically. “I don’t care about frown lines, now what do you want?”

“Give me a beer, whatever you’ve got on tap,” he replied, watching me carefully. “And remember not all men are the same, so don’t poison it or anything because you’re angry with your fellow.”

I shot him the flash of a smile and slid his mug of brew across the bar, hating how it almost got caught up in the grooves and pits of the surface. We really did need a new, smooth one.

“Was that smile for me? No? Oh well, I’ll take it,” he replied and gave me his own smile before he stood up and walked across the club to a table in the corner.

I felt bad, taking my sullen mood out on an old guy and a customer, but I couldn’t help myself. Hatch just got under my skin somehow. His infuriating cockiness and sexy confidence. His smile. His dark, sultry stare when he watched me work.

God he was insanely hot and frustrating because he seemed to know it, and completely understood the effect he had on me.

But those lips, my goodness, damn. Those lips.

On mine.

I resisted the urge to lift my finger to touch the places he’d been, where his mouth had covered mine, where his tongue had snaked around mine.

I resisted the urge to moan softly and sigh loudly and tell everyone how great I felt after Hatch Malone kissed me.

And that’s all he’d done, kissed me. I’d been kissed many times, by many men from different backgrounds, but I’d never been kissed like that.

Never ever like that.

“Hey, what’s going on with you?” Lucy, one of the cocktail waitresses voice broke into my daydream fantasy about Hatch.

I turned around and laughed. “Just some things in the family,” I said, “You know the fun of working for your uncle with your dad living right upstairs.”

“I can’t even imagine. My parents would drive me insane if I worked for them, you have the patience of a saint. Now, I need three Old Fashioneds, there’s a rowdy group of out of town businessmen starting their nighttime festivities at our fine establishment.”

She was so sincere and such an innocent girl I felt guilty lying to her, but what the hell else could I say? I was having dirty, dirty thoughts about the sexy biker dude in the back room? That I’d suddenly switched my vote for my favorite drink to a Sloe Screw because of the way Hatch had said it. And the way screw had rolled off his lips and the way my imagination had kicked in the moment he’d said it.

Him screwing me. There, that’s what did it. That’s what drove me mad with lust.

“That’s good, those are the kinds of guys we need in here,” I replied and mixed her drinks and slid them across the pitted bar towards her.

She smiled, held her tray out in front of her with the drinks carefully balanced and made her job seem like it was easy. And it wasn’t. That’s what I admired about the waitresses in the club, they made it all look so easy.

I managed to shuffle through the rest of my shift as if I was sleepwalking, and when the time came for Hatch to finish up and for him to claim that dinner I owed him, I felt almost sick to my stomach, it was flip flopping so hard.

I told the other bartenders I was leaving and crossed the club as nonchalantly as possible. Every cell in my body was vibrating with anticipation as I made my way to the back room and found Hatch bent over the cedar bar, sanding it lovingly, carefully, and covered in wood dust.

He didn’t see me at first and I watched the way he caressed the wood and my body responded, my center heating up and warmth spreading outward from there.

He finally realized I was standing behind him, he stood and turned around and I almost gasped at how stunning he looked. The wood dust clung to him, and as he pushed his safety glasses up off his face, I was struck with how incredibly masculine he was.

He was blue collar, through and through, and there was something so completely and utterly sexy about it that I was mesmerized by his every movement.

I’d always dated guys who worked for my dad, or guys from college, or even out of towners here in Vegas, but they were all pretty boys. They were the kind of men who had soft hands and pedicured feet stuffed into thousand dollar pairs of shoes and bloated with their parent’s trust funds.

Hatch earned every dime he had, and my god, that was fucking hot.

“Hey kitten,” he said in a low tone and gave me a lopsided smile as he wiped his hands on a cloth hanging from a belt loop in his jeans.

“Hey,” I replied, my throat closing.

“I was just thinking about you.”

“Really? What were you thinking about?”

He shook the cloth and dropped it on the surface of the cedar plank, crossed the room to stand in front of me. I was silent, I couldn’t even breathe.

“This,” he said and bent to kiss me.

I could suddenly breathe again, and I inhaled his scent, the smell of cedar and maleness mixed intoxicatingly as he crushed me with his mouth.

And I had to admit to myself that this was exactly what I’d been thinking about since I’d seen him before.

This, his mouth, his hands, and everything it was leading us towards.

Our bodies entwined, together in exploration and pleasure.