She laughed flatly. “I spent fucking years being tortured in Purgatory. Other than my near immortality making me the perfect fucking canvas for sick angels, I have no damn powers.” The bitterness in her voice, the darkness dripping from her tongue, made my own stir. I wanted to carve up the people who hurt her, which had less to do with her and more to do with the fact I wanted to make someone bleed. I made a low humming noise in my throat, pleasure at the thought, and the woman gave me the side-eye. “Is that it?”
Judas nodded. “For now.” He seemed to hesitate. “Let the guys help you. It would help assuage some of our past sins.”
My eyes snapped to the Pres. I’d atoned for our sins. I’d bathed in the blood of that atonement. I didn’t need some bitch soothing my hurt feelings. I curled my lip menacingly, and was happy at the fear that made her shoulders tense. Good. She might be part-angel, but we were the damn harbingers of the End of Days. She should be scared.
She nodded and turned toward the door, but hesitated. “What will you tell everyone else?”
Cain stepped toward her, his hand alighting softly on her spine. “We’ll hold Church. Put it to the members. But it's in our code that we offer sanctuary to women. We'll tell them we expect trouble, and if they want to send away any of their Old Ladies, they can. We’ll put a ban on the sweetbutts for a while too, though they can still go to the strip club. Then we’ll vote. It’ll be fine. The four of us, and Trigger will vote for letting you stay. No one will go against all five of us like that.”
He grinned at her, an expression I hadn’t seen in decades. Maybe the Pres was right, maybe she was helping them overcome their past sins.
Not me though. I was steeped in sin. Blackness flooded from my pores and spewed past my lips. I was beyond saving, and I wallowed in my filth happily.
Judas clapped his hands together, the sound overly loud in the tiny room. “Good. Let’s fucking party.”
Solomon hefted the woman in his arms and whooped, and her stunned squeak made my lips twitch. “Let’s go. I’ll drink your share, Dippy.”
He skipped out of the room, Cain’s snarl to watch her head trailing them and the woman’s light laughs bouncing off the walls.
Judas turned toward me, his face not showing any of the lightness that the other two had. I understood. His grief was an endless well that he filled with anger and tyranny. He seemed fair, but underneath that reasonable exterior hid a monster that could bring nothing but death and destruction. There was no relief from the horrors of the things we had seen and done, and some woman would not absolve him of any of it. “You sure about this?” I asked one last time now that Sol and Cain weren’t in the room. Something good remained in them. Something that wanted saving. I wanted death and so did Judas. If not my own, then someone else's.
Judas sighed. “I am sure, G. I can’t explain it, but my gut says she needs to be here.”
I nodded. More than any touchy-feely bullshit, or whatever bleeding heart crusade that Cain was on this week. I trusted my Pres’ gut. Judas slapped me on the back. “Let’s go drink with our family and forget the past for a little while, hey?”
Now that plan I could get down with.
11
Solomon
It made so much damn sense now. She was an angel. The more I stared, and seriously I was only a trench coat and a chubby away from being a fucking creeper as it was, the more I could see she wasn’t normal. Even with the beauties from the strip club dancing around, drinking and flashing more skin than they did at Apocalypse, so many eyes kept wandering in her direction. She was something fucking else. Magnetic.
I wanted to pluck the eyeballs from every man who even looked her way. I wasn’t the violent one in the Club, that dubious honor went to Goliath. I wasn’t even the most deadly, that one was Judas all over. Hell, I wasn’t even as silently menacing as Cain. But when anyone cast even a single heated look in her direction, I wanted to jump the fucking table and pummel them to death. These were my Brothers. My Club. I shook my head to chase away the thoughts.
My eyes drifted away from where she sat with Cain, listening to him talk shit about god knows what, and over to where Judas and G sat at the end of the bar, watching the room but not really a part of it. But their eyes were focused in the same place as mine, as much as they wanted to fight it. I didn’t mind them looking. With them, I’d share. We’d always been a set, a band of brothers, even before that day over Laura’s grave when Lucifer had made us so much more.
Laura had bound us all. She’d been our world and I wasn’t sure we could do it again. But I wasn’t sure they’d just let me have Dippy either, despite their protests.
And fuck knows I wanted her. I downed my beer, excusing myself from the table where Trigger had his hands up some girls skirt, a different one from last night though, but she didn’t seem to mind. Timo and Stag just grunted and went on talking about who had the better bike.
I walked toward her like a moth to a fucking fireball. I’d ask her to dance. I could tell she loved dancing. When I had her in my arms last night it was like our bodies had been made to move together. She was light on her feet despite the bulge of her stomach throwing her off.
I contorted my face into something casual and less desperate, sitting down beside her in the booth opposite Cain. Shots and Sweetie were on the other side, as well as Taylor, Timo’s Old Lady. She was short, round, and had the biggest laugh of anyone I’d ever met. She was infectiously happy, and how she ended up with that grumpy old fuck Timo was beyond me. But she loved him with all the ferocity of a hurricane. She was petting Dippy’s hand enthusiastically.
“Don’t even worry about it, Doll! My youngest just had her sixth kid and made her husband get fixed or she was going to chop his dick off herself,” she said, roaring with laughter. I caught Timo’s fond look as if he was drawn to the sound of her laugh. I’d met Timo and Taylor’s youngest. She wouldn’t hesitate to cut off a man's dick. “You can have whatever baby stuff you need. I’ll bring it over next weekend, and anything you don’t want can go to charity. She won’t be needing it, and her older brothers are all done too. You’d be doing her a favor really.”
Ah, Taylor was a smart woman. Dippy wouldn’t take charity, but she would help lighten another's load. I could sense that about her.
I leaned toward her, ignoring the pointed look Cain was giving me. “Want to dance again, Dippy? This time Cain can wait his turn and Goliath has already had his temper tantrum. We can dance until the sun comes up,” I promised softly.
She looked at me from under her lashes and then gave a soft nod. I slid out of the booth and held out a hand. When she took it, I felt that spark of attraction again. I’d felt it when I’d seen her slide out of Cain’s truck in the car park yesterday. I felt it last night when she danced in my arms. I felt it now, and I needed to tell myself to go slow. She wasn’t a sweet butt or a stripper. She was damaged, even if she did hide it well.
I struggled with slow. I wanted to live, because I knew how quickly it could all be taken away. One minute, Laura was there. We were fucking happy too. Sure, one woman and four men was unconventional, but we were fucking one-percenters. We didn’t do conventional things. And when the baby had been born, I’d been fucking ecstatic.