I stared a second as he scratched her head and she cuddled into his broad chest and yawned, stretching out her toes.
Jealous. Of my cat.
“Here.” He passed her to me.
I reached for my little white cat and pulled her close, catching a whiff of his leather. My God. Leather plus motor oil? An aphrodisiac for a girl like me.
She nuzzled under my chin and purred.
“Sorry. She probably thought it was my door.”
(No she didn’t. I’m sure she knows my smell. Fact: my kitty wants in his room. How poetic.)
I rubbed my forehead against hers.
He made a grunt sound and turned on his heel to head toward the kitchen. Okay, so that was it, I guessed.
“Okay, uh...bye!” I exaggeratedly called after him.
He looked over his shoulder at me, eyes sweeping from my head down to my painted red toes with white polka dots on them, and gave me half a smirk. Half a smirk…
Progress? Fucked if I know.
I put down the cat. She meandered over to the corner where I had her food and water set up. She had an enclosed litter box cabinet in here, too. She also had food and water and a litter box in the utility room at the end of the hall because she didn’t like spending all her time cooped up in my room, so I let her have the run of the clubhouse. Spencer’s dog was usually here too, but was spending more and more time with him and Pippa at her brother’s apartment. Most days back home in Sioux Falls, you’d find Marshmallow curled up sleeping against Chakotay’s belly during the day.
Dad joked that she was our resident biker kitty. She was like a club bunny with a quest to sleep with a different biker every night. She often slept with Brady. Sometimes she went into Dad’s room. She was the runt of her litter, three years old but only a little bigger than a kitten, and she was a pure white short-haired kitty with blue eyes the same color as Christian’s. She wore an ultra-cool studded black collar. Marshmallow really was the best cat ever.
She wanted into Fork’s room.
I knew the feeling.
3
Ella, Pippa, Jenna, and I were at a booth in the far corner at Deke’s Roadhouse. This had both advantages and disadvantages.
Disadvantage: Ella and Jenna sat on the outside seats of the booth, despite my efforts to snag a spot on the outside. Jenna stopped to say hello to someone briefly, corralling me into the booth and mucking up my plan. Drats. I was in the perfect spot for intimate conversation, but I couldn’t have any major conversation that required too much concentration, as I was keeping a lookout for when Brady turned up with Christian.
Brady said that timing worked in my favor to get Fork to The Roadhouse because the two of them were meeting up to do something for the club that afternoon.
Brady had two day jobs, really… he was the epitome of buff and worked out religiously. He’d parlayed that into a side gig as a personal trainer. He made killer money at whipping people into shape. He told me, with light in his eyes, how much he got off on watching people transform, on watching them become something that they believed was outside their grasp. Brady also worked for the courier and cab company down the road that the club owned with Ella’s dad, Rob. Sometimes Brady drove and sometimes he did dispatch.
He also did all sorts for the club, particularly when intimidation was required. He was tough as fuck. Brady had a soft spot for me, for the people he gave a shit about. He was a maniac if someone crossed him or anybody he cared about. He was an adorably, sweet, funny, rock of a soul that – if he said he had your back – he had your fucking back and you knew you’d be good.
I didn’t truly need to keep watch because Brady said they’d be here, but my belly was in knots about tonight, so I wanted a view of that door. I checked my phone, saw zero notifications, and shoved it back into my boot.
“Shooters?” Ella called out to us.
“Absolutely!” Jenna agreed.
“Me, me, me!” Pippa was enthused.
My brothers’ girls were clearly all about the party tonight and on a mission to show me a good time.
Now, I’m only 19, not far off from 20, but technically not of age to get served. In some places like Canada and the UK, I’m already legal and because my family are a bunch of bikers, Dad didn’t hassle me about getting hammered even when I was sixteen. His rule was that we partied at home if we were underage. He knew we were gonna do it anyway, but he didn’t want us getting wasted off-premises where bad shit could happen. And to my father’s credit, this rule applied to me as well as my brother’s.
Yes, we all partied outside the house anyway, but only occasionally, because our pad became the teenager party zone. Our second favorite place to party was where we scattered Luke’s ashes in a spot where not only our group partied as teens, but it was also where my dad, Brady’s dad, Axel’s dad, and their friends had partied back before they were legally allowed to drink.
Our house had a massive finished basement with a long saloon-style bar in it. We had a mini version of the same setup at the family cabin. With us being a biker family and with my dad’s lifestyle, chillin’ at the stocked bar in your house was the norm. And now in Aberdeen, having a bar made sense to us. It meant the same as it always had, except you had strangers around, too. But, the amount of time my dad and the guys in the club sit around shooting the shit and throwing beers back, making money selling booze while doing it makes a whole lot of sense. Bottom line: I was not going to have a problem getting served despite the fact that I was two years shy of twenty-one. It helped that a good chunk of the population around me included protectors. Daddy figured that it was better to let me build up my constitution for booze in a safe place where I had loved ones at my back.
Dad told me that opening the bar was strategic, too, when he arrived in Aberdeen because of the war with the Wyld Jackals, which we’d been winning. It was his good fortune that two businesses side by side were up for sale. He made an offer to take over the dealership while he was at it and it was all working out great in terms of profits, building alliances, and edging those evil Jackals out.
***
I ordered Jack and Coke, Pippa a Jack and ginger. Ella ordered a rum and Pepsi and Jenna wanted a vodka and cranberry. Just as Leanne, who was serving us, was about to leave, Pippa changed her order to a screwdriver.
I made an excuse to go to the bathroom so that I could finagle my way into the end seat when I got back, thereby ensuring I’d see him when he walked in.
It was as I was walking back to our booth from the bathroom that they arrived. Fork first, Brady at his back. And bizarrely, Fork’s eyes hit mine. For a second, everything stopped. Everything. There was no noise, there were no people, it was just us two. Period.
My lips parted as his baby blues stared directly into my eyes.
I’d stopped moving. So did he. I could swear everything around us was frozen. There wasn’t indifference. What there was, was heat as his eyes drank me in from head to boots, and then when his eyes swept back up to meet mine again, there was softness in his expression. And I don’t know which of the two expressions did a better job of shocking me to the depths of my soul.
And then one of the guy’s girlfriends, Deanna, crossed our path, heading toward the booth and interrupted the most perfect moment of my entire fucking life by grabbing me and hugging me.