anything useful. They just wanted front row seats at the show. To feel like they were part of the Cool Kids’ Club. And when the navy wouldn’t let them randomly interfere, they threw a Congress-sized tantrum.
Bunch of freaking amateurs.
Someone jostled Asher from behind and he whipped around, hands at the ready to take names and break necks. The accosters turned out to be some sort of bachelor party. Plastic cups of beer sloshed, and someone slurred an apology as he bathed his own T-shirt with a generous portion of beer. Shaking his head, Asher stood down and moved on. Relaxing, dammit. He was supposed to be relaxing—not killing drunk kids. The same drunk kids he’d sworn an oath to protect and defend, along with the Constitution that gave them a sacred right to act like idiots.
Desperate to get away from the bright lights and sheer noisy wrongness of the place, he ducked down a side street toward a neighborhood that no sane tourist should have ventured into. But then, he was neither entirely sane nor a regular tourist. When the streets had turned into dark, dank alleys and the men lounging in doorways eyed him with as much hostility and suspicion as he eyed them, Asher breathed a sigh of relief. This was more his speed.
“Hey, big guy,” a raspy female voice crooned from just ahead. “Wanna free drink? First one’s on the house.”
He eyed the hard-looking woman slouching beneath a hanging sign for some joint called the Who Do Voodoo. “Strippers or just booze?” he asked.
“We got girls,” the woman drawled.
“And they’re actually female under the hood?”
The woman grinned, revealing gaps on each side of her yellowed teeth. “No impersonators here, handsome. They’re one block down on the other side of the street. C’mon in. You look like you could use a drink.”
How exactly did that look? A shot of whiskey did sound good, though. Maybe several shots. In fast succession. Enough to wipe the whole stupid idea of relaxing out of his gullet for a while.
The music was loud, pounding against his skull when he walked into what turned out to be a pole-dancing club, complete with a raised stage and topless women gyrating without much enthusiasm. Jesus, they looked like children up there on stage. Or maybe he was just getting old.
Asher spotted a table in the corner well away from the stereo speakers and slipped into a seat with his back to the wall. He scanned the room and frowned. Trouble was brewing. Two men were glaring at each other from opposite sides of the catwalk that extended out into the audience. A stripper shook her booty between the two of them, for all the world looking like she was egging them on. Being a tease was what she was paid to do, but jeez. She was provoking the guys like crazy. Drunks and half-naked women never did mix well.
Sure enough, the fight broke out, and he watched impassively as a huge bouncer dived in to break up the fray. But what Asher didn’t expect was a good chunk of the audience diving into the fight, too. When knives came out in multiple fists, he rolled his eyes.
Dammit, he didn’t want to have to be a hero tonight. He was on vacation. But it wasn’t like he could sit here and watch those jackasses carve each other up and possibly injure innocent bystanders. Not to mention that drawing weapons meant the cops would be called, and he really didn’t need to spend all damned night giving statements to the police.
He sighed and stood up. Grabbing the collar of the nearest idiot with a knife, he disarmed the guy with a twist of the man’s wrist so fast the guy didn’t know what had happened.
Asher spun to face another drunk. A hard, quick fist to the chin and the guy went down. He wasn’t unconscious, but he was stunned enough not to rejoin the fight right away. Asher stepped over him and disarmed two more men before the remaining drunks figured out a wrecking ball had swung into the fight, and they all staggered back from one another.
His shock-and-awe approach gave the bouncer time to get ahead of the knife wielders on his side of the stage and toss them out of the club, with a kick in the pants for emphasis on the way out the front door.
Shaking his head, Asher returned to his seat to watch the waitresses scurry around righting tables and hauling out broken chairs.
A slender arm appeared over his shoulder, and a glass of neat whiskey plunked down on the table in front of him. Startled, he reflexively grabbed the female wrist and gave its owner a yank. A young woman landed in his lap with a surprised oomph.
“Hey!” she protested. Eyes so blue they hurt to look at blinked up at him. Other sensations bombarded him all at once. A resilient tush pressing down rather suggestively on his man parts. A spectacular view of cleavage. Not huge breasts, but perfectly shaped. A nice handful. Slender limbs going every which way in his arms. Silky, straight blond hair wisping across a face that would be pretty—really pretty—without all that heavy makeup caked on.
But all of that paled before the bizarre sense of...connection...he felt with this woman as they stared at one another. Like they’d met before. Maybe in a past life. Not that he believed in any of that woo-woo stuff for a second.
“It’s not wise to sneak up on a guy like that,” he muttered. “Especially not after he’s just disarmed a bunch of dudes with switchblades.”
She stared up at him for a moment more and then, inexplicably, relaxed in his arms. Like she trusted him or something. As if she knew instinctively that he was one of the good guys. What the hell?
“You handled yourself well in the fight,” she murmured.
“Are you Russian, too?” he asked. Everyone else in this joint so far seemed to be. He’d apparently stumbled into the local Slavic hangout.
“Russian by heritage, born and bred in New Orleans, though,” she answered in an entirely convincing New Orleans drawl, her sapphire gaze flickering furtively toward the bar. Fear radiated off her.
His arms tightened instinctively around her sweet, now tense, body. A shocking urge came over him to carry her out of here, to take her someplace quiet and alone to...to do what? He didn’t take advantage of women. And he’d never been fond of hook-up sex. It always left him feeling cheap and more alone than ever. Was he so desperate for a human connection that the first chick to fall into his lap seemed like a gift from God? Hell, maybe Frosty had been right to force this shore leave on him, after all.
He frowned down at the girl now cowering in his arms. “Are you illegal?”
Her attention snapped back to him. Their gazes clashed but still managed to meld together as heat flared between them. Talk about instant chemistry.
She sounded a little out of breath as she mumbled, “I have to go. Let me up or else the owner will charge you for a lap dance.”
He cast about for something—anything—to keep her in his arms a little longer. “What’s your name?”
“Hank.”
He blinked, echoing, “Hank?” His arms loosened in surprise, and she leaped to her feet.
“Short for Hankova. You want another whiskey?”
“Sure...Hank. Make it a double.” Anything to get her to come back to him. To look at him again and thaw some of the ice encasing his heart.
He watched her hustle away from him toward the bar. Her legs were a mile long
