Angelfire Series, Book 7: Promises in the Dark by Karen Wiesner

Chapter 1

At two a.m. on the dot, the head of security initiated last call in the usual pull-the-plug way that provided plenty of grumbling among Knuckleheads' rowdy crowd of biker patrons packed to the rafters. Sapphire Stephenson knew despite the "quiet" without music and television and the shutting down of the kitchen and last-round drinks, it would take a good two hours to get everyone out so the staff could begin closing procedures.

Almost as if she was targeting with a heat-seeking missile, she turned, scanned the low-lit bar and locked on to William Decker. While he was six foot four inches of pure, bronzed muscle--someone who would have stood out in any throng--that wasn't the reason she'd spotted him so easily. He'd deliberately put himself in her line of sight.

Across the space separating them, their eyes locked and Sapphire found herself unable to breathe. She'd been off the last two days, as he had been since their schedules were the same, and they hadn't seen each other since the close-down early Monday morning. Two days of lecturing myself about this, and I'm right back where I started. I want him so badly, there's no way I'll be able to refuse when he reaches for me the second the doors are locked and we're finally alone--just like last time and the time before and...

She swallowed in shame and desire, willing herself to break away from his intensely potent, dark eyes telling her the same thing they had since they'd both showed up at six p.m. for their shifts. He's missed me as badly as I've missed him these past two days.

Sapphire felt choked by her derision to the understatement. Missed? She'd ached for him, bled for him, felt like she might die if she didn't see him soon, immediately. This went so far beyond missing. Her throat tightened. She could no longer deny she was in such trouble this time, it'd be a miracle if she could get herself out unscathed.

Ironic what had brought them together in the first place. Two months ago, same old same old, she'd had a big, hairy dude spend an entire shift coming on to her, gunning for what he believed he deserved after all his persistence. Usually, she could handle herself. And, for the times when situations inevitably got tough, she'd taken self-defense classes and kept herself in shape to be able to handle the overzealous creeps that came through the biker bar on a nightly basis. But against one with three-hundred pounds of passion that absolutely refused to be denied, she'd had little chance of escaping on her own. If not for Deck, one of Knucklehead's most loyal patrons, returning because he'd been worried about her, she would have been brutally raped by the a@#hole, too. Deck had said later he'd noticed the guy hovering around her all night, and it'd occurred to him just after he left that he hadn't seen her get in her car and drive away. So he'd turned around to check on her.

As his bartender for at least a decade, Sapphire knew best Deck had been blind-drunk that night, every night. Even still, he'd thought about her, worried, come back to make sure she was safe. He'd shown up in the nick of time, too. As soon as he was off his motorcycle, he'd shouted for her to get out of there, and Sapphire had found out later he'd not only beat her would-be rapist to within an inch of his life but he'd gone to the police and told them everything, describing her attacker in detail. The jerk had been picked up and arrested not long afterward on the basis of Deck's thorough testimony. Though she'd been reeling at what'd almost happened to her, she'd given a statement when the police showed up to talk to her, too.

The next night, when she'd come in to work her shift, she'd found out that her boss Duff, the owner of Knuckleheads, had hired Deck as his head of security. His shifts matched hers every night. Anticipating her insistence that she could handle herself, Duff had given her some story about the fact that Deck had been drifting since his career as the personal bodyguard of former-supermodel Roxanne Hart had ended and she'd cut him loose.

Point of fact, Duff hadn't been bulls@#g about Deck. While William Decker was a man of few words usually, when he was beyond-drunk, he talked. He talked to Sapphire. He'd been divulging his heartaches about Roxanne for years--specifically, his protectiveness toward her, maybe warranted by her self-defeating ways as well as the fact that her second bout with cancer was in remission. He talked about the guy Roxanne had been in love with, stupidly, most of her life, how Deck hated Jamie, didn't think this dude was worthy of her.

Without restraint when he was wasted out of his mind, Deck talked about his love for Roxanne, a love that would never die, even if she didn't and would never return his feelings and hitched herself for life to someone else, the way she would soon. She and Jamie Dubois had sent out their wedding invitations not long ago, and somehow Sapphire had warranted one probably because her cousin Cherish was a close friend of Roxanne's and the two of them had been trying to draw Sapphire into their tight-knit circle of friends for the past year.

More than once, Sapphire suspected Deck didn't remember confiding in her about his feelings for Roxanne. Admitting to me what I don't believe he's ever admitted to himself, sober or drunk.

After Sapphire's near-rape that first night back in the bar, Deck had sobered up, not touching so much as a drop of alcohol, the way most of the staff did as if they were here for the party instead of to work. He personally escorted all female staff to their vehicles at the end of a shift, and Sapphire, as night bar manager, was usually the last employee to leave. They'd been alone the night after Duff hired Deck, once the place was cleared out. She'd intended to tell him she was grateful for his intervention, for thinking about her for some unfathomable reason after he'd left. But he'd reached for her almost as if they'd planned it beforehand.

To this day, she didn't know what he'd intended. Up until that moment, she'd resisted the truth she hadn't wanted to face for years. Attraction had sparked between them long ago, as long as she could remember, maybe from their first meeting. Deck was the very picture of masculinity, of bad-boy mystery. Despite or maybe because of his infatuation with an unavailable woman, Sapphire would have had to be dead not to notice him as a man. But she'd been very careful not to let her own attraction become known to him or anyone else. She refused to be with any guy who drank the way Deck did. And if he's obsessed with another woman... No. No way. I won't compete. I don't share. I don't have the confidence.

His drinking was an issue that'd bothered her more and more since he sobered up and started working officially for Duff. She'd never met a man like Deck. He drank ten times what most people did yet he didn't "show" it the way other people did. Instead of becoming incapacitated or violent, hard drinking turned him inward and contradictorily seemed to make him more sober than the few times he actually was teetotaling. But she knew Deck sober and she knew him dead-drunk. He'd been sober for the past few months, since her rape. And the protectiveness he's always shown the female staff and patrons, especially me, has been ruling him. That and...

Though it'd been a long, draining shift and all she wanted to do was collapse, she couldn't seem to look away from him, fully aware what would happen as soon as everyone cleared out of here and the doors were locked behind them. His gaze was telling her in graphic detail that he'd spent every second of this damn long shift thinking about her and the intimate moments they'd spent alone together in the past two months, so hungry for each other their lovemaking had been shockingly swift each time. Almost before it started each time, the reckless act was over and all she could do was sit in the ashes of what had gone far beyond impulsive pleasure. With Deck, she was so easily aroused, both turned on and turned inside out, so contradictorily satisfied and ravenous each time they came together. What could ever be enough?

What does he think of me? I was almost raped that night he saved me. Yet the very next night, all he had to do was reach for me, I was kissing him and damnably out-of-my-mind eager for anything and everything he did to me, then, every single time since...

Her face burning, her body liquid under his scorching gaze, she forced herself to look away and get back to work. What did he intend that night, that first night? All the ones since? He reached for me. Sure, when I kissed him, the rest just rocketed and he took over, but what did he initially intend? A hug? Sapphire didn't know, couldn't guess, and the past weekend had been torment for her because she'd been in a tug of war with herself. Whatever was between her and Deck couldn't continue. She had a sixteen-year-old daughter she'd spent most of her life trying to be a good role model to. She'd failed often, but it'd been almost a decade since she'd stumbled into a bad romance simply because she ached for physical and emotional intimacy. The shadows of love had somehow convinced her these men had real feelings for her, too, that they weren't just enjoying what she gave freely without sparing a consideration about the future, about her heart when it ended. She hadn't brought home a man since Yasmine was five. Two years after that, she'd stopped getting involved with anyone, period. She'd decided secret trysts were as bad as the blatant ones she'd had when her daughter was too young to understand who the strangers in their apartment were.

What the hell am I doing now? Why can't I stop this? But Sapphire couldn't deny the answer to that. The past two days refused to allow her to hide from the truth. She was already half in love with Deck, despite not having the slightest clue how he felt about her...beyond obviously wanting what they shared together, that was.

Facing that she was in love didn't help, given that things had been so crazy between her and her daughter in the last year. She'd always told herself it wouldn't happen between the two of them. She and Yasmine had been impossibly close. But since her daughter turned fifteen, they fought all the time. They'd become more like mortal enemies than mother and daughter. She's too much like me, like I was when I was her age. Independent. Rebellious. So sure I was right and the rest of the world was wrong--especially my own mom. But I got pregnant when I was fifteen. I can never forget that, even if I equally can't regret it. Given Yasmine's penchant for choosing all the wrong boyfriends, she could easily do the same sooner or later. She won't let me talk about sex, birth control. She absolutely refuses to let me be a mother to her.

A knife twisted in Sapphire's heart as she washed glasses with single-minded focus on what she had to do as soon as the bar was closed. God, do I need to be a good example to Yasmine, now more than ever. But...how can I give this up? She'd known Deck for so long, more than a decade, yet she'd realized in the last couple days she didn't really know him at all. Not in the definable way she desperately needed right now to justify her feelings. I'm not ready to give this up, give him up. Even if it's wrong, even if he doesn't feel anything for me beyond protectiveness and sexual desire...how can I turn away from him? Why do I want what's happening here to be more? Can it be? Why does it have to feel so damn intense? I was sick, missing him these past two days. Why? Why should that have been the case? We don't have a relationship beyond coworkers and incredible, obsessive sex. Not anything romantic, tender. Bottom line, I'm hooked. I'm so hooked, I can't get myself to break away even when I don't have a choice about it.

Last call was greeted grudgingly, but Deck was decisive and few dared challenge him. Sapphire could feel herself growing anxious as the bouncers escorted clients out, the wait staff cleaned up, and she and the barbacks reviewed receipts, distributed tips, closed out the register, melted the ice in the bin, cleaned the glassware, and put caps back on the bottles. Deck had an easier time of getting the staff out than she ever had, when they all seemed to want a drink or ten for the road after their shifts.

When the door was finally locked, the bar empty save for the two of them, she sensed Deck even before she turned to see him leaning against the wall next to the front door, looking at her with an expression she wanted to translate straight from his mouth. She could hardly catch her breath at the fierce arousal in his eyes. What would he have done if I'd actually called him the times I picked up the phone to do just that these past two days? Was he thinking about me, too? Wanting to be together?

She couldn't get herself to believe anything but that he would have met her anywhere, anytime if she had called him. Why? And what would have I said? That what we have isn't enough for me? Or the opposite--that it's over and we can't continue a purely sexual relationship because...because I'm in love and I don't know what he feels for me...

Sapphire tried desperately to draw in oxygen, but he was smiling, shy and sexy when he reached for her. "Hey, beautiful," he murmured in that sandpaper rumble that she sometimes felt right down inside her like a kick to her nerve ending.

God, he was handsome and intensely masculine--from his thick, closely-cropped dark hair and jet-black bedroom eyes--all the way down his trim, muscular body she couldn't imagine ever getting enough of with her eyes, her fingers, her own body.

Tears stung her eyes painfully. She wanted him to tell her something, anything, personal so badly, she could hardly stand it. The touch of his well-shaped, full mouth against hers--sweet and soft and so vital, she felt injected with a drug--sent her straight out of her head. She barely registered what she was doing or thinking or longing for. She only kissed him back, grateful that he still wanted her. She'd yearned for him, for this perfection of body on body, clawing for both during her days off. Without inhibition, she gave of herself, reveling in his stoned gazes, words, and groans.