I went into the closet, where the pegboard was on the back of the door and, biting my lip, I snatched the master key for room 402.
***
“You good?” I heard as I approached 402, which was across the way from my own assigned room, 404. Yes, I’d done that on purpose.
That was Brady. He was standing at a door a few doors over.
“Yeah, you?” I replied.
“Hunky dory. Went to my old room automatically. Weird being in the guest block.”
I smiled. “You happy you moved to Aberdeen though?”
“Absolutely. No way I’d pass up being close to the Valentines if I had the choice. The whole club is my family, but you guys are my family.” He gave me a warm look.
Brady was tanked. Looked like this was a good party for all of us. I smiled.
“Nite nite, BrayBray. Love you like craycray.”
“Love you right back, Jojo.” He blew me a kiss and put the key into his door and stumbled in.
I totally loved Brady. Even though Brady blocked my second attempt to lose my virginity as well as refused my advances when I decided to give my cherry to him.
The Second Time I tried to Lose It
The second time I tried to lose my virginity was blocked a year and a half after the first attempt. I was sixteen, nearly seventeen, and I’d skipped school and came home early with a boy, a bad boy from school who wore a leather jacket, Harley tees, and called me babe. He was seventeen and told me that he wanted to prospect for an MC, and was shopping around for which one to join after high school. He acted like he wasn’t sure if the Dominion Brotherhood was the right fit for him when I suggested it. In hindsight, this made sense. He wound up prospecting for the Wyld Jackals a year later and that landed him in jail; he’s currently doing a nickel. The Wyld Jackals had plenty of prospects land themselves in jail as well as land themselves dead. Where our club may’ve given the new recruits dirty jobs, I knew we also protected the fact that they were green and inexperienced instead of using them like fall guys, which was exactly how the Jackals used them.
I had condoms (stolen from my brothers’ stash) and I was going to let the bad boy biker wannabe divest me of my cherry. In my head, I saw it as something I wanted to get rid of, something that would help me move forward in life. My virginity was just something in the way of me being the woman I wanted to be.
So, I brought Patrick Porter home and planned for us to go to the basement and drink beer and fool around and I had no plans of stopping him from getting a home run. Little did I know, Brady was waiting there for us. See, Brady was Brady Porter, Patrick’s cousin (which I did know), and Patrick had bragged to Brady that he was going to skip off and ‘bag’ me that day. Brady broke up our party. And boy, was I mad. Mad at Patrick for telling Brady and mad at Brady for getting in the way.
Brady told me he wasn’t going to tell on me but then he sat me down and tried to give me a talking to about saving my virginity for someone who mattered.
“Tricks is my little cousin, he’s my blood, but he’s a bad egg, Jojo. He’s not gonna call you tomorrow. Don’t expect him to be there for you next week, either. You don’t need to give that beautiful gift to a guy like that.”
“How do you know I haven’t given it up a bunch of times already?”
He looked at me with disappointment. “Maybe I’m wrong, but I saw somethin’ special in you. Was I wrong?”
“Are you saying girls who give it up are not special?” I snapped.
“Didn’t mean it that way, sweetheart. What I meant was that I thought you were the kinda girl to have standards, including wantin’ the right man to be the one to trust that gift with. You wanna give it to some little puke who’s gonna brag about it in school tomorrow before he goes off and finds another victim?”
I was angry at Brady and made him leave.
He didn’t rat me out. He also didn’t treat me differently the next time he saw me. And Patrick didn’t call me again, clearly nervous about the warning Brady had delivered.
And I found my crush on Brady went from mild to blossoming into a huge crush. On my eighteenth birthday when I tried to kiss him, he firmly told me he wouldn’t go there with me. He did it in such a sweet way, like it was a travesty he wasn’t also eighteen years old. He was twenty-nine.
Brady and I share the same birthday. By my nineteenth birthday, I made him promise that if I got to twenty-five and was still holding onto that precious ‘gift’, that he’d let me give it to him for his thirty sixth. We shook on it.
***
I didn’t know if Christian was gone to bed yet. My half-baked freshly hatched plan was to pretend I’d come into the wrong room. After all, it was feasible since there was the whole key faux pas earlier.
Though… that wouldn’t explain the wrong room and the right key. Like I said, half-baked. I knew I was crossing boundaries, but I’d decided to do it, to give this thing one major, direct, not-to-be-mistaken kick at the can.
If he wasn’t there, I could wait for him. In his bed.
I unlocked and then opened the door and the big light was off but there was a lamp on. And he was in the bed, a folded paperback in his hand. He watched me step in and shut the door behind myself. I slipped the key into my front pocket.
I took him in from head to toe. He was shirtless, barefoot, and stretched out on top of the blankets in just his jeans, his hair loose, his skin gloriously on display.
I bit down on my lower lip and stared at the vision in front of me. That vision took me in from my bare toes all the way up. Slowly. So slowly I felt like I was heating up all over under inspection. It was as if he was allowing himself the luxury of taking his time like he’d never done before.
I’d had flip flops on earlier but lost them somewhere, so I’d been traipsing around all evening in my bare feet. I was wearing a short jean skirt and a tight black top with a deep vee on the back and a scalloped strip covering my bra strap. I knew he couldn’t see it with me against the door, but it’d seemed like he was staring at it when I’d walked away earlier. This was one of my favorite tops for a reason. Figure-hugging to show off my boobs in the front and then when I walked away, it was feminine, pretty, and sexy all at the same time in the back.
“Whoops,” I said unabashedly. “I guess I’m in the wrong room.”
“Are you?” he asked with his brows raised.
“Maybe not.” I pressed my palms flat on either side of myself against the door.
He tossed his book to the floor and then he erased the space between us.
And my heart felt like it was about to fly up into the sky. Joy welled up inside me at the look on his face.
God, he was tall.
And oh my… he was looking at me with that warm expression.
He wasn’t touching me but there was barely any space between us.
We were alone, in his room, and not a soul knew I was here.
“What’re you doin’ here, Jojo?”
Direct eye contact from him was doing things to my tummy. The proximity to him? That was doing things to my underwear.
I shrugged. “Haven’t been able to stop thinking about you. Since Easter weekend when I first saw you.”
“Why?” His voice was husky. And now it was that other expression. The heated one. I could smell whisky on him, and it smelled good.