Obviously, I didn’t tell her that I’d taken Harleigh Rose on the same one the day before, that my rebel girl loved Earnest’s whiskey hazelnut flavor, and that when we’d sat beside the ocean she’d kept one hand in mine and the other twisted in Hero’s silky fur, her face contented because she was with two of her men even though the other had excommunicated her.
It had been reckless to take her on a date like that, but after all she’d been through, I’d wanted to spoil her.
My eyes searched for her in the backyard, the air filled with the haze of weed smoke and the burn of the huge fire on the other side of the lawn.
She was under Wrath’s enormous arm, tucked into his side like she was made for him, tall enough that he didn’t have to bend in half to touch his lips to hers the way he was doing then.
My heart burned with rage even though I knew it was just a ruse, even though I currently had a woman under my arm myself.
Laken pressed into me, grabbed my face with one hand and glared up at me. “You think I don’t see you always lookin’ at my girl Harleigh, think again, Lion. I’m not educated, but I’m not dumb neither. I’m your Old Lady and it’s thanks to me you got your cut at all, so how about a little gratitude?”
I snarled at her, half-biker persona, half because I hated that I needed her. Reaper still didn’t trust me much and whatever trust I’d earned, Laken was right, it’d come through her.
“Why the fuck you think I don’t want you bein’ fucked by some other guy or fuckin’ multiple guys tonight? Don’t want that for my girl.”
I didn’t, but I meant the girl across the yard, the one Wrath was putting up for collateral because she was his and Reaper had ordered it.
The burn in my heart spread through my chest and down into my gut where it started to blaze.
There was no fuckin’ way I could stand by and let Harleigh Rose get fucked by one of these psychotic fuckers.
She’d only avoided it in the past because Cricket, somehow, had kept her away.
His one redeeming quality.
Now, I had to count on Wrath winning The Fight to keep Harleigh Rose safe.
“It’s my duty,” Laken told me, pulling my focus back to her. “It’s my honour as your Old Lady.”
“That shit is just straight up fucked, Laken,” I told her.
“It’s tradition,” she seethed.
I wondered how many deplorable things were done for the sake of tradition. The Chinese had used it as justification for foot-binding, the horrible act of tying a woman’s feet to stunt their growth, the Aztecs had used it as a motive for sacrificing humans to their antiquated Gods. My own family had turned wiping out biker gangs into a kind of legacy even though The Fallen did more good than harm within the community, and many outlaw biker cultures used it as a reason to indiscriminately share their women regardless of getting their permission.
Tradition as I’d come to know it was a false God I refused to worship at.
“Fucked up,” I repeated.
“Don’t care, I’m doin’ it. You care so much, don’t lose,” Laken said with a wide smile.
I grunted my affirmation and turned back to our conversation with Mutt, Roper, and Twiz.
Seconds later, Reaper joined us with his new old lady under his arm.
Farrah.
Fuck.
Harleigh Rose had been playing interference all night with her mum, trying to keep her out of my sight so she wouldn’t recognize me, but I’d known that it was inevitable, especially with The Fight.
My only hope was that the bitch didn’t recognize me.
I was older for one and I wore that in my face, craggier than ten years ago, lined and brown from spending too many hours out of doors. Dressed in a cut with my hair in my face and a different kind of attitude in my air, I hoped to hell it was enough. It should have been given that the times I’d seen her back in the day, she’d been high out of her fucking skull.
But Harleigh Rose had warned me.
Farrah was an addict, but she was too cunning to be taken for granted.
So, when she approached under Reaper’s arm, I knew I’d have to use every tool in my arsenal to get her to believe I was someone else.
“Brothers,” Reaper said with a chin tilt and then addressed Laken with a smile. “Girl. You ready for The Fight?”
“Fuckin’ born ready, Prez,” Twiz said, jumping from side to side lightly on his toes like a boxer, throwing a few air punches for good measure.
Reaper jerked his chin up at him then looked to me. “You ready for your first time, brother? There isn’t a thrill like it in this whole goddamn world.”
“Ready to win, Prez.”
He threw his head back and laughed. “Wrath’s won last two years runnin’, you beat ’im, I’ll give you permission to fuck any’a the Old Ladies for a week, not just one measly night. You’d fuckin’ deserve it.”
“Dad,” Laken said with a loving eye roll as if her dad was just being silly and indulgent, not immoral and psychotic.
“Shame to get such a pretty face knocked about,” Farrah input, her eyes thin, red slits. It was clear she was high as fuck.
I shrugged. “Don’t got much care for my face, pretty or not. It’s my woman I wanna keep at my side and it’s why I’m gonna win this.”
Farrah stared at me for a long moment then turned to bat her lashes at her Old Man. “Why don’t you let this handsome Lion go first, Reaper? He wants to prove himself to his woman, why not make him go all thirty-nine rounds to prove it.”
There had been no flicker of recognition in her eyes, but the way she threw that at me had me convinced she knew who I was.
Then I remembered she was a despicable bitch who liked to play dangerous games for sport.
She probably just wanted to see me beaten and bloody, probably got off on it like the hell demon she was.
Reaper kissed her long, wet, and sloppy before pulling back and declaring, “Done. Twenty minutes, you’re up first, shirt off and in the ring.”
“This is going to be so hot,” Laken breathed into my ear as Mutt and Twiz gave me pounding slaps on the back for good luck.
It was going to be a lot of things, but I very much doubted it was going to be hot.
My eyes searched the yard for Harleigh Rose again and I frowned when I saw Wrath lead her into the house by the hand, his usually stoic face broken apart by a wide smile.
Harleigh Rose was smiling too.
That rage came back, primal and too strong to stem.
“Better use the john ’fore the fight,” I muttered, unwrapping myself from Laken and heading inside after the fake lovers.
Fake.
I told myself.
But the beast in me that I’d gentled over the years into the Dom in me, seethed at the idea of her touched by a man.
Be damned that he was with her like that to protect her.
I was her protector.
I had been since she was six and I would be until she was fuckin’ dead in another hundred or so years if I had anything to say about it.
My feet took me up the stairs to Wrath’s room before any hope of my rational mind could kick in.
I paused outside the door, struggling to lasso the wild thing in my chest and bring it to heel.
A laugh.
The sultry, full-bodied laugh that I’d recognized anywhere as Harleigh Rose’s.