January in Atlantis by Alyssa Day (cat reading book .txt) 📕

Flynn watched, stunned, as the woman who’d turned his world upside down fled through a door behind the bar. He started to go after her but stopped himself. If she was trying to get away from him, he had to respect that even though every nerve cell in his body was screaming at him to find her, take her, possess her.

She'd said “I might be the one doing the begging."

And then she ran.

He wanted—needed—to go after her.

But he stayed right where he was. If she wanted to see him again, she’d come back out. If not, he’d wait until his cock wasn’t so hard he wasn’t sure he could walk and go back to Jake’s table and figure out how to infiltrate the Dark Angels.

The mission.

Yes. He had to focus on the mission. Those girls were in danger, and whatever in the nine hells had just happened to him needed to go away.

One of the Dark Angels started walking toward the bar pass-through nearest where Eva had disappeared, and Flynn’s interest sharpened as a realization sparked in the tiny bit of space in his brain that wasn’t focused on the woman with the haunted hazel eyes and the beautiful red hair.

This one—the weaselly guy headed for the bar—he was new. He hadn’t been in the bar when Flynn and Jake had entered. Eva had glanced at something—or someone—over Flynn’s shoulder just before she fled. Was it this guy?

Flynn turned and casually—ever so casually—scanned the room. Jake was sprawled back in his chair, the picture of ease, half looking at his phone and half watching the action at the pool table. The guy was an idiot. He had the depth of a teaspoon, and Flynn would never trust him to have his back in a fight. It didn’t bode well for any of these missions that this was the kind of talent Denal was putting together.

On the other hand, one of the Dark Angels could have carved Jake up like a trussed fowl while Flynn had been ensnared by the heat in Eva’s eyes, and Flynn never would have noticed. So he added himself to the roster of “untrustworthy in a fight.”

The new guy had stopped advancing on the bar and now just stood, mouth hanging open, in the middle of the floor. Maybe waiting for something? The man didn’t appear to be a threat, but Flynn knew that people of any size or appearance could wield magic or have guns hidden on them. So the guy was incredibly nondescript, true. If it hadn’t been for the Dark Angel leathers, Flynn never would have given him a second glance. But, especially wearing leathers, he could be suspected of almost certainly carrying at least one gun.

Flynn glanced at the door Eva had fled through, trying not to draw any attention to himself, but more worried than he ought to be about what had happened to Eva.

The new guy, Eva’s stalker, was still standing in the middle of the floor, and he was avidly staring at the bar, his gaze flitting from one to the other of the two doors behind it. He was watching for the bartender. Flynn didn’t know how he knew it, but he was sure. Whatever the gang member wanted, it was something that had scared her to death.

The guys at the pool table were getting loud and rowdy. They were puffing up in the way bullies do, looking around for trouble they could start. Most of the people with any sense were packing it up and pulling out wallets and purses to pay the overworked waitress so they could leave.

Still no bartender. He looked at Jake, who caught his glance and raised an eyebrow. Flynn tilted his head toward the door that the redhead had run through and then nodded. He had no idea if Mermaid Man would figure it out, but Jake was a big boy. He could take care of himself.

Flynn told himself he was only watching out for Eva, not stalking her himself, and then he turned around and took a step in the direction of the bar pass-through nearest the door where the bartender had gone. He made it all of two steps before the beer bottle hit him in the back of the head.

Not again.

He’d almost gone to jail maybe half a dozen times over bar fights. He had the typical Stupid Guy problem: he wasn’t able to back down. Dumb as hell, but there you were. He turned around slowly, shook his head to lessen the ringing sensation in his ears, and looked around. The incipient violence that had been hanging in the air since he and Jake had walked in had exploded into a full-fledged brawl. Jake, looking happy as a kid playing in mud, was punching it out one-on-three with Dark Angels.

Another one of them, a big one with a yellow shirt, started lumbering toward Flynn, head moving back and forth like he was a surly bear just out of hibernation.

“What exactly did I ever do to you, friend?” Flynn tried, even knowing it was useless.

“You were talking to my woman,” the bleary-eyed mountain of a man said.

Flynn doubted it. Severely. “Your woman?”

“As soon as she meets me,” the idiot declared, raising a fist the size of a side of beef. “Here we go.”

Here we go?

Flynn sighed. Sadly, they made idiots in all shapes and sizes. Human, shifter, vampire, Atlantean. He couldn’t think of any species in which there wasn’t a subgroup of morons who liked to pick fights in bars.

Lesson? Yeah. He probably needed to stay out of bars.

Brilliance in action there, Flynn.

He ducked under Yellow Shirt’s clumsy swing, stepped inside and delivered an uppercut to the man’s massive jaw, putting all the power of his built-up frustration over the way his life was going into it.

Mountain man or not, the guy wasn’t much for actually getting hit evidently. Maybe he normally scared people off with his yeti-like size. Too bad for him that Flynn didn’t scare easy. Instead, Flynn stepped past the man and kicked him in the back of the knees, toppling him to the floor.

“What? What?” The guy sputtered for a few seconds, but after his head bounced off the floor