Time had aged up all the Henchmen kids. They were all their own sort of handsome.
But Valen?
Valen had aged the best, in my humble opinion.
He’d always been tall, but now he had the bulk that came with age, with working out or doing some sort of manual labor. All those defined, impressive muscles underneath his tight tee.
His face had always been stupidly handsome, but the years had hollowed out his cheekbones, had make his jaw stronger, and his brow firmer.
We weren’t even going to talk about the damn tattoos that snaked up his arms and neck.
Or the fact that I was a complete sucker for ink.
He had the same dark hair, the same gorgeous eyes.
I kind of hated that.
Some petty, vengeful side of me had hoped he’d somehow gotten uglier. Lost too much weight or most of his hair. Something. Anything.
Making him even more attractive was just a cruel twist of fate.
At least I was pretty sure he missed my surprise at his appearance because he was so shocked by my presence.
Though as his gaze moved over me, I couldn’t help but feel a little twinge of insecurity, wondering for perhaps the first time if the years had been as kind to me as they had been to him.
I generally was okay with what I saw reflected in the mirror. But it had been a long time since I compared my present self to the girl that Valen had known.
Objectively, I’d probably put on a little padding. Not an extreme amount, but I hadn’t exactly denied myself any of the cuisine in any of the countries I’d been to. And I didn’t work out quite as often as I used to at Lo’s gym.
I’d lost a little of that plumpness in the face that all girls lose in their twenties, too. And while I thought that the sharper edges were sexy, I had no idea what anyone else would think of them.
What he would think of them.
I mean, not that it mattered.
The last thing I wanted was to care what he thought of me. I just wanted him to think I was at least as attractive as I had been when we were younger. Especially because he was still hot. It would imbalance the power if he thought I’d lost my appeal.
His shock and immediate freak-out, I will admit, warmed my cold, dead heart a little bit.
Him not wanting me there made me aware that he at least knew that, all those years ago, he’d been in the wrong.
It would have been harder to teach him a lesson if he thought he hadn’t done anything, that he’d been perfectly justified in leaving like he had.
But he clearly didn’t want to have to be stuck with me, which said he was fully aware of who’d been the bad guy in our clusterfuck of a relationship.
In the end, it had been Fallon who saved my plan.
I’d actually lucked out with that, because if the president had still been his father Reign, I likely would have been nudged out of the clubhouse already.
But Fallon? I knew from the second I saw him walk in that I could count on him. Not because I knew him, per se. He’d been a little ahead of me in school, the hot, dangerous fuckboy that everyone wanted. But he’d also always been a little bit of an asshole, someone who liked to push buttons, who liked to see how shit played out.
Of course he was going to get a kick out of watching one of his prospects squirm.
In fact, it was Fallon who clearly said something to Valen in private that had his shoulders slumping a bit as he took a deep breath, then turned back to face me.
Everything about him looked resigned right then.
“I’m supposed to show you around,” he told me as he moved back toward the group I was standing in. “Voss, you coming?” he added, drawing my attention to someone behind me.
Turning, I saw who he was speaking to. He was tall and strong, maybe even a little on the burly side, with a full blond beard and a bunch of ink as well. He had both sides of his head shaved, but had long blond hair down the center that totally gave him a sexy, broody, Viking look. He had a prominent brow which made his eyes fall a bit in shadow, but the light was good inside the clubhouse, and I could see they were blue as he pushed off the wall and made his way toward us.
Voss.
Another prospect.
Which meant he was another man I would be sharing a room with.
I probably should have been freaked out about that prospect. But I’d been sharing hostels and all sorts of other accommodations with various unknown, totally sketchy, dudes for years.
Not much scared me in the way of menfolk anymore.
What Lo and her team of teachers hadn’t trained out of me, life had beaten out of me.
In fact, my biggest concern was that I would be stuck on a lower bunk, because I was a light as hell sleeper, and one of them climbing down at night to go pee, or coming in late to go to sleep, was going to wake me.
And me without sleep… yeah… that wasn’t pretty.
“Louana, Voss. Voss, Louana,” Valen said, and maybe a part of me was expecting butterflies when he said my name again, like there had been—though I’d desperately been trying to deny it—when he’d first breathed it out when he’d walked into the clubhouse.
There were none, though.
And, really, there was no reason for there to be.
Valen had never even called me Louana unless he was trying to be pretend-stern with me.
“Voss,” I said, giving him a nod.
What did I get in response? A grunt. Yes, an actual grunt.
“Very loquacious,” I said, nodding.
“Anyway, you’ve been here before,” Valen said, clearly wanting to rush through the task of showing me around, likely so he could get as far away from me as fast as possible. “This is the common room. TV. Gaming consoles. Pool. Darts. Bar. Kitchen is through there. Basement down there,” he said, pointing toward it. “Basement is off-limits unless you’re doing laundry. And you don’t go onto the roof unless someone assigns you there. The hallway where the patched brothers live,” he said as we moved toward it.
“The old crew or the new?” I asked because while I was playing at being a prospect, I did need to learn some shit.
“New,” Valen said. “Old crew is still around, but not as active.”
“Even your dad?” I asked, then immediately cringed at how familiar that sounded.
“Yeah.”
“Really? Adler is retired? The man considered being an outlaw biker his retirement,” I added, thinking of all the crazy stories I’d heard about Valen and Violet’s dad, who’d led a really interesting life after a truly tragic childhood.
“Like I said, they’re still around,” he said, brushing me off.
Damnit.
I was losing points already.
I had to at least act like I was completely disinterested in his and his family’s life. If I wanted to know shit, I could track down Vi when she was in town and ask.
“Where’s the prospect room?” I asked, moving the conversation forward. “Do I have anywhere to store some of my stuff?”
He said the next part under his breath, but I was so aware of him right then that I heard every single word, “Yeah, at your own fucking house.”
“What was that?” I asked, tone a little sharp.
“Right this way,” he said, not even looking at me as he led me toward a door then through it.
And inside was, well, a sort of gymnasium looking space, for lack of a better way to describe it.