“How’s our girl doing?”
“You’d know if you went and talked with her,” I retorted, not cutting him any slack.
He winced. “The fuck do I know what to say to a little girl, babe?” Because he wasn’t bullshitting, because I saw the fear of fucking up in his face, I reached up and cupped his chin.
“She’s yours. You can’t fuck up.”
That had Wolfe snorting. “Unless you’re me, apparently.”
My nostrils flared as I whipped my head around to glower at him. “You’re the one who fucked up by being mean to me. She’s protective of me.”
He huffed, shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans, and just stood there. Looking awkward. And Wolfe didn’t do awkward.
He was one of those effortlessly cool fuckers who rarely got riled. He always had a level head too, and that just made him even cooler. Except where I was concerned.
Together, we were dynamite, and some might say that was warning enough to back off, but not me. I’d never liked listening to people. I did what I wanted and damned the consequences.
Which was why I’d been exiled for too fucking long.
Still, Wolfe didn’t deserve my help. Not yet. Not until he’d fucking groveled. Sometimes, helping someone out of the pile of shit they’d buried themselves in did no one any good, and I wasn’t a fucking martyr. I knew what my men were like. If I gave them an inch, they’d take a goddamn mile. Just because I loved them didn’t mean I was blind to their flaws.
They were mine, but they still had cocks. And anything with a cock wasn’t to be trusted. Not one hundred percent.
It was like that joke guys had about women. About not trusting something that bled for a week and didn’t die. Well, you couldn’t trust a snake not to bite… at least the snakes guys had didn’t have fangs.
And wasn’t that nightmare material?
Turning back to Dagger, I rested my hands on his shoulders and murmured, “What are you doing in here? Thought this was King Dick’s space?”
Dagger grinned at me. “You’re playing with fire, baby.”
I hitched a shoulder. “It’s what I do best. Why do you think Flame and me are birds of a feather?”
“Just what we need,” Wolfe sneered. “Those two fucking pyros back together again.”
Ignoring him and his rather rude labeling of both Flame and me—pyromaniacs, sure, but fucking pyros? A girl had standards—I asked, “How come you’re in the Prez’s chair?”
Instead of replying, Dagger immediately grabbed my ass and squeezed my cheeks. When he pulled them apart, just ever so slightly, my irritation morphed as awareness of him took over everything else.
The smugness that settled on his face was deserved, so I didn’t slap him upside the head. Instead, I focused on him and his words as he explained, “He’s less formal than your father.”
My dad had taken the ‘president’ part of his title a little too far in my opinion. He’d thought that being Prez meant he was king.
“Wouldn’t take much. Guess the old fucker didn’t soften up much before he got shot down?”
The lack of feeling in my voice had Dagger tensing. The trouble with MC brothers was they took that ‘ride and die’ shit far too seriously. Sure, when you were committing fuck knew how many crimes, you needed your brother at your back, but when that brother was bad to the bone? And not in a way that was acceptable in our community? Yeah, that fucker deserved no loyalty.
My dad had been like that.
Even more than that, he’d been a cunt, and that was irrefutable. A fact I thought he’d have agreed with and been proud of too.
From him, I’d learned there were two ways to rule men—one through fear and the other through loyalty. I knew, without even having been around the place all that long, that Wolfe ruled through loyalty. The men loved him. Not because he was Bomber’s first choice of heir, but because he was one of them but smarter. Stronger. Fiercer.
My dad had reigned through fear. I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that my father had killed first and questioned later. Wolfe was the kind of guy to give someone the benefit of the doubt, which was why it was ironic that he was giving me as much shit as he was.
“You shouldn’t talk that way about your pop, baby girl,” Dagger chided, and because he meant well, I didn’t smack him, just reached up and ran a finger along the wrinkle that had formed between his brow.
“He wasn’t my pop.”
His eyes flared for a second. “What do you mean?”
I could have shrugged it off. Said that Bomber had never acted like my dad, which was the truth, but what was the point in lying? I hadn’t come back here to withhold shit that mattered.
“Bomber wasn’t my dad.”
“The fuck are you talking about?” Wolfe ground out. His stomping feet approached and, within seconds, he was there, beside me, glowering down at me.
“I’m talking about shit that doesn’t leave this room.” My top lip curled a little. “Well, you can tell Flame and Axe, of course, but no one else. I’m Bomber’s to the rest of the MC, and that will make them accept us when—”
“There is no ‘us.’ Not yet,” Wolfe growled. “Now, what the fuck are y—?”
I reared up, my knees digging into the leather seat on either side of Dagger’s hips as I used my momentum to stick my finger in Wolfe’s chest. I prodded to punctuate each word as I declared, “There is an us. The second you accept it is the second your life gets a fuck ton easier.”
“If you think you can hold Amaryllis against me…”
Though inside, that was like he’d taken a knife to my belly, I just snorted at him. “You’re digging your own grave where she’s concerned. I don’t have to do a fucking thing to turn her against you, Wolfe. She may be five, but she’s smart. She sees shit. Just because she’s quiet, you’d be a dick to underestimate her.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” he spat, his cheeks burning with a heat that was sourced in his outrage.
“It means that you’re a dick, so you probably won’t see her for what she is—a clever little girl who’s beyond sensitive. Who sees more than you or me. She’s protective of me. You should take that into account when you talk to me like shit in her presence.”
Dagger growled, “What have you been saying in front of her, Wolfe?” And I loved him for defending me, for snarling at Wolfe and not letting him get away with his shit.
See, Wolfe and me? We were like two rabid pit bulls shoved together in a ring. Just before we killed each other, we’d stop to fuck, but we were two Alphas, always butting heads. Flame, Axe, and Dagger were no less Alpha than us, but for some reason, we just never argued as much.
I spent half my time wanting to throat punch Wolfe, and the other half, wanting to kiss that beautiful mouth of his. The others? I felt like I could surgically attach myself to them and never want to hurt them. That wasn’t to say they didn’t get my back up from time to time, but they were the peace in my endless war with Wolfe, who couldn’t seem to accept that I was theirs, not just his.
It was a war he was foolish to think he could ever win.
Wolfe’s jaw tensed at Dagger’s anger. “Nothing,” he bit off. “I didn’t say shit.”