"No, what?" she offered, swallowing hard then, without really realizing she was about to do it, wetting her lips.
"You're right," he said, his head ducking just the tiniest bit, his eyes pinning hers.
"I'm right?" she asked, completely and utterly at a loss for what she was supposed to be right about.
"Yeah, baby, you're right. I'm not a nice guy. In fact, things I have on my mind right now... they're about as far from nice as you can get," he told her, his hand moving to her hip, his thumb pressing into the hollow of her hipbone in a way that made her automatically clench her thighs closer together.
She watched as the heat rose in his eyes, as the decision was made, as he slowly started to angle his head down to hers.
"Faith, donde esta... oh," Rodrigo started and stopped as he came out from the kitchen.
Faith stiffened, completely froze on the spot like they were two horny teenagers caught dry humping in the living room.
"No, I don't see anything," Danny said oddly, making her brows draw together. "But if it hurts that bad, maybe you should make an appointment at the eye doctor tomorrow," he said, moving away, giving her an out she didn't realize she wanted so badly.
She had a reputation to uphold.
And it didn't matter how forward thinking she was about things like her own sexual liberation, she knew the men were a good thirty years behind her on the topic and to see her screwing around at work would open up the opportunity for all of them to start grab-assing.
"Yeah, that's a good idea. I hope it's not glass or something," she said as she walked toward Rodrigo, filling up the trays of dirty glasses he was looking for.
"Can get a flashlight," Rodrigo offered, buying the story without hesitation.
She looked over her shoulder at Danny who sent her a small, sexy little wink before he went back to capping the bottles.
It was right about then that she knew she was in for a helluva lot of trouble with him.
The sooner she could get him on his own shift and off hers, the better.
Or, at least, that was what she was trying to convince herself.
FIVE
Faith
Friday and Saturday night were busy. And she was incredibly grateful for that fact. Because by the time she went home Thursday night, she had herself into knots.
Most women weren't overly comfortable walking several blocks to their apartment after three in the morning in a while not wholly awful, but not great neighborhood. Faith wasn't most women. She had training. She had a knife. And she was ready and willing to use either should she so need them.
But she needed the walk. She needed it to focus, to think things through, to calm her overactive and underutilized sex drive.
Because that had almost been bad. It had almost taken the reputation she had built, the respect she had needed to fight tooth and nail for and thrown it in the trash.
Her apartment building was nothing special. Very few of them were unless you were some stock broker or CEO or something like that. Faith was lucky enough to make good money, but she thought paying more than she needed to in rent was unnecessary. She wasn't stupid. She knew that bartending, especially for a woman, wasn't a career you could do forever. Sure, you could still see old men behind bars in just about any town in the country. But when was the last time anyone walked in and saw an old woman?
Exactly.
Never.
So she needed to be smart with her money, sock as much of it away as possible, and use it to fund a new life outside of the City some day.
But not anytime soon.
She wasn't done with the City yet.
She walked up the stairs to the top floor despite there being an elevator. But the thing was ancient and she was pretty sure there had never been anyone in to tune it up or anything since she moved in six years before. Her apartment was at the end of the hall across from the stairs that went both to the ground floor and roof. It was also one with a fire escape that led both up and down.
You could never be too careful.
She let herself in and flicked on the light to the studio apartment she used to hate but had since gotten used to. It was small, no more than maybe five-hundred square feet plus the tiny bathroom that it was literally hard to turn around inside. Originally, she had no plans on settling in, in making it homey. But after the first two years passed and she didn't have a reason to pick up and run, she settled.
So her queen bed that used to just have plain white sheets, was butted up against the wall to the left, facing into the living space where she had one papasan chair and a small end table in front of the TV that was just inside the door. To the right inside, was a small kitchen against the wall that lined the bathroom, everything petite and apartment sized. She had painted the walls a deep purple that almost had a grayish hue to it because, well, she lived there and she didn't give a good goddamn what man stopped over and didn't like her girly paint. The bed had a huge, fluffy white comforter and purple sheets beneath. The carpet on the floor in the living space was a small rectangle of white, purple, and a swirl of gray.