Free Vulnerable (Barons of Sodom) by Abriella Blake

whiskey glass out of his reach. “Oh, Penny? How
about a water on aisle three?”
    But as Athena attended to his hydration needs, Tuck felt all
his senses sharpen and hone in on a new figure: Bridie, Baby, looking every
inch the woman of his jukebox dreams. She wore a light shimmer of red make-up
on the apples of her cheeks and the full thrust of her lips. Her body was snug
and sleek-looking in a black dress designed to kill. The cloth swished about
her hips, fell smooth over her ass, and stopped just short of the knees. When
she turned her head to look his way, Tuck saw the girl in slow motion: he
watched first the swish of her raven hair, before his gaze moved across the
contours of her sweet, smart face. The glinting fierceness in her eyes. The
prominent arch of her collarbones, the elegant fan of her cleavage. Athena was
lovely, but she wasn't beautiful like this. It seemed to Tuck that no woman
was. And he'd never, ever wanted a woman so much.
    “Want me to wipe that drool off your chin, sugar?” teased
Miss Penny. Snapping back to earth, Tuck realized he was staring—creepily, from
the vantage of a barstool. Athena wore a look of burnt disappointment; he
caught a glimpse of deep pain. Well, it wasn't as if he could help it. Didn't
all the books and movies say that when you knew something was for real, you
just knew?
    Bridie, impossible, gorgeous Bridie, sauntered toward the
bar, already looking more like a woman than she had the day before. The girl
plopped down on the vacant stool just beside Tuck—visibly surprising Athena,
who had hovered over the seat moments before.
    “What's everyone drinking?” the girl asked, her voice
impish. Though Penny wasn't one to abide by the state drinking law, she rolled
her eyes slightly.
    “Let's start with sodas for all, and see where we go,” she
murmured. But she winked at Tuck.
    Athena—bless her heart—got the clue. “Tuck, give me a
quarter? I'll put on some music before the rest of the Slayer fan club arrives.”
    The jukebox. The jukebox just made him think of her
nipple in his mouth, the miraculous content of his dreams. Yet here they
were...Bridie and he, side by side on barstools. Tuck knew he was supposed to
say something, but what?
    “Hey, doll,” he tried.
    Bridie just smirked. He studied the curve of her lips, in
search of some sign of mutual attraction—that is, until his gaze ambled south.
Her breasts looked firm and lovely in whatever dress Athena'd lent her. Her
arms were thin, but muscular. Her long hair was swept away from her face,
falling so far down her back it grazed the top of her ass.
    “ Doll? Is that the best you got?”
    From behind the bar, Penny snorted. Wordlessly, she poured a
tall amount of Jameson into a glass and nudged it toward the newbie. Something
about this made Tuck furious—the insolence of it. While ten other townies vied
for his attention, this one little tough bird thought she could play coy with a LaRouche ? He reminded himself that he was too old to play games. But
just as he framed some snippy retort, Athena's jukebox selection began to pour
out of the speakers. It was the opening riff to Joe Walsh's Life's Been
Good.
    “Oh, I love this one,” Bridie said then, and proceeded to
close her eyes and sway to and fro. “ My Maserati goes 185 ...”
    “This one seems a little before your time, kid,” Tuck
laughed. Yet, she looked so earnest, dancing with her eyes closed. It made his
heart ache.
    “ I lost my license, and now I don't drive... I've got
a radio, don't I?”
    “I don't know what the hell you've got.”
    This remark seemed to startle the girl back into reality.
She gripped the edge of the bar firmly for support, and Tuck watched a flicker
of something—pain? Fear?—dance across her vision. It was hard to remember for
some reason: the circumstances of Bridie's arrival were shrouded in tragedy.
She had, of course, lost everything she “got.” Maybe everything and everyone,
and all so recently.
    “I'm