There was a boyishness about Dezi that mingled with this sense you got around him that underneath it all, he was dangerous as fuck.
And that seemed to be like catnip to the ladies.
Which was why it seemed like he was referencing one woman.
He ignored my question, though, as he mumbled something about “mini cows” that made no sense to me, given the context of the conversation.
From where I was leaning at the bar, I could see Louana standing in the living area next to Rowe and Malc.
We were almost two weeks out from the shooting, and while she was putting on a good show of being back to normal, even wearing somewhat tight black jeans that I knew were rubbing against her barely-healed wounds, I could tell she was still feeling it.
She had herself cocked to the side, putting all her weight onto her good leg, and whenever she moved too quickly, there was a flash of pain across her face.
She’d stopped taking the pills several days ago, seeming only to pop a couple ibuprofen for the pain instead, which I could tell was barely cutting it.
I didn’t know what the wound itself looked like because she hadn’t let me near her since that whole shower thing.
I knew better, damnit.
I knew her well enough to know that she was not going to get all warm and fuzzy with me because I’d gone down on her.
Back in the day, yeah, she used to get all soft and sweet after an orgasm or ten.
But this wasn’t back in the day.
This wasn’t young, inexperienced, heart-over-heels in love with me Lulu.
This was the grown-up version of that girl that I’d hurt so badly that she’d felt like she couldn’t even stay in the area afterward.
She was here to punish me. So knowing she let her guard down enough to get close to me likely made her think she somehow lost the upper hand.
Which was fucking ridiculous, of course.
I’d been struggling to not overthink about her before. But since I got a taste of her again? Since I got to hear her whimpering and moaning for me again? Since I felt her nails digging into my skin again? And since I felt her tight pussy squeezing my fingers as she came again?
Yeah, you could say it’s been the only fucking thing on my mind.
Meanwhile, my mind needed to be on some other, more serious shit.
But there was no reasoning with desire and with the feelings that were creeping up thanks to our history.
Which was why each time she went to walk away, to talk to someone else in the room, and she winced, then quickly tried to cover it up, I felt a tugging sensation inside, something that made me want to go across the room and ask her to sit down, to take it easy, to stop pretending she was totally fine when I knew she wasn’t.
First of all, it wasn’t my fucking place.
Secondly, she’d bite my goddamn head off if I tried.
So I kept back, but kept an eye as she made her rounds, getting to know some of the patched members better, since the ones she did know, she hadn’t spent much time with since she was eighteen.
It was a party, of sorts.
Shit had calmed down in the club after all of Cary’s drama. And it seemed like Nave was finally making his way to the club to prospect.
Which was about damn time.
The rest of us needed to patch in before Roderick and Liv’s hoard decided it was time to prospect too. I mean, sure, there was a chance they might not want it. But I was pretty sure we’d be seeing Rune, Croft, and Vas in the near future.
Shit would be tight in the barracks-style prospect room if they all descended at once. They’d have to bring in cots. Or relegate some of us to the basement bedroom area that was reserved for emergencies now.
Nave, like quite a few of us, had taken off after graduation. When you grew up in such a tight-knit town, it could feel a little stifling. And when you had parents like ours, sometimes there was a bit too much protection. It made it so you couldn’t fuck up, so you couldn’t learn from those fuck-ups and grow as a person.
Sometimes, taking off was the only way to sort of detach from the identity of being a Henchmen kid, and get to be your own person.
From what I could tell, no one really had a lot of contact with Nave since he left—which was a couple years before I did—save for his parents, of course.
So, really, none of us knew what to expect, or what he’d been up to, what he might be like.
But from the sound of the bike rumbling into the front yard, though, it seemed like we were all about to.
Even over the music and the conversation, we all seemed to hear the sound at once, making most of the conversations drop as we waited for the front door to open.
Brooks walked in first. Never having been one for parties, Brooks had offered to be outside to keep an eye on shit while the rest of us talked and drank.
“That’s not gonna put him off at all,” Brooks said with a head shake as we all watched him walk in ahead of the man behind him.
Nave was, well, somehow both exactly what I expected, and not at all, at the same time.
He looked like his parents. Tall and fit like his old man, with dark hair and eyes like the two of them. He got his cleft chin from his mom. And some freckles over the bridge of his nose from her as well.
Normally, that would probably look kind of feminine.
But on the man who was towering in the doorway, taking everyone in, it didn’t.
In fact, everything about this guy’s vibe invited you to even think about commenting on his freckles, because he would enjoy the fuck out of teaching you why you shouldn’t.
The scars on his hands were also pretty telling, too.
Wherever Nave had been, he hadn’t been living some cushy existence. No, he’d been in the life somehow. We just had to learn the specifics of it.
“You too fucking cheap to renovate the place, man?” Nave asked, smirking at Fallon. “Looks the exact same as when I left,” he added.
There had been a lot of updates over the years, but the general layout and shit, yeah, it was all the same. I think, to an extent, it was comfortable that way. It was familiar. It was what both generations of Henchmen knew and loved. Even though the club had grown enough that, yeah, we probably could have used a bigger common area where we could have a dining table, and a roomier kitchen to cook the meals. Hell, we could even make use of a lot more bedrooms.
But there was something nostalgic about it being the same.
“Nice fucking way to talk about your new home,” Fallon shot back. “You look like shit,” he added as he walked closer to shake Nave’s hand.
Admittedly, he did look a bit rough. Tired, at least. With smudges under his eyes.
“I hear you shacked up with someone,” Nave said, shaking his head. “Who the fuck would want to put up with your ass for life?”
“That’d be me,” Danny called, raising a hand at him briefly. “And sometimes, I’m not sure I am going to make it the night, let alone forever.”
“Nice pull,” Nave said, nodding at Danny, then Fallon.
“Thanks. But if you say that again—“
“Yeah, yeah, you’ll have to beat the shit out of me,” Nave said, rolling his eyes.
“Actually, I think Danny would do the honors,” Fallon said.
“In that case…” Nave said, smirking at Danny, getting a chuckle out of Fallon.
“Someone gonna get him a drink?” Fallon called, leading Nave over to the bar where Dezi had scooted behind.