“Just relaxing,” Beast said in the end, cooling his neck with the empty bottle.
King’s mouth stretched into a wider smile, and he slapped Beast’s back. “Only your dick’s relaxed, am I right?”
Beast forced himself to smile, and his gaze trailed over the cluster of sofas and chairs the party spun around. At the beginning of this evening, Beast’s closest friend, Knight, and his girlfriend Jordan had seemed back to normal, but the mood must have deteriorated throughout the last few minutes, because they now sat turning away from one another and alternated hissing over their shoulders.
Sometimes, Beast considered dipping his toe into finding a regular partner—if there was a man interested in him enough—because then he could actually teach a guy how to touch him and not have to do it over and over again every time, like he would have to with every new casual lover. People didn’t want to put effort into a heavily tattooed man with burns and a shady life when there were so many easy lays to be had at the click of a button. And then Beast thought of Knight and Jordan’s relationship and shuddered, immediately losing interest in any kind of romance. Being with someone would only bring him more trouble and annoyance than remaining celibate ever could.
King groaned. “Are you in one of your moods again?”
“My moods?” Beast asked, as if he didn’t know what his father meant. King was the kind of guy who believed not smiling all the time made you sulky. And Beast was just fine. He felt completely normal. Watching couples who actually had a romantic and sexual connection had only hurt him in the first few months after he realized he wasn’t ever going to have that again. He was thick-skinned now, and he had the scars to prove it.
King raised his hands in mock-defeat and laughed. “Okay, okay. At least get yourself another beer.”
Beast squeezed his hand around the bottle, stopping only when he realized that cuts were the last thing he needed in his collection of imperfections.
With the music so loud they all needed to shout in order to hear each other, Beast hadn’t noticed a fight starting on the other side of the vast room, but two men shoving each other eventually caught his attention and pulled him away from King. One was their VP, Davy, the other—Gyro, a newcomer who got invited by one of the girls. Barely anyone noticed what was going on yet, with the band playing almost too loudly, but Beast was on it, rushing through the middle of the crowd of people engaged in a mating dance that would soon move to the sofas or to the bedrooms nearby.
“The fuck is this, anyway?” Gyro yelled and pushed at Davy so hard, Davy’s favorite racoon hat fell off. Things were about to get ugly.
Davy’s eyes opened wide in fury. “You don’t come to an orgy and expect to only be covered in pussy. A guy stroked your shoulder! Get over yourself, motherfucker!”
Not this again. Beast wasn’t in charge of vetting new people, but at times like these, he wished he were. That he could handle it all himself if some of his brothers lacked the sense of responsibility required for the job and allowed some homophobic trash in the clubhouse. At least this fight would give him something to do instead of sulking that he hadn’t gotten any action for so long.
The music stopped. First the guitar and base, with the drums going strong in the silence for another two seconds before the guy realized things were heating up beyond the stage. Gyro’s voice was loud and clear in the void left behind by the lack of heavy metal.
“You call yourself a biker club? You’re all a bunch of dick-loving pussies,” he growled and tossed a bottle at the wall, his intoxicated body swaying to regain balance following the rapid movement. The bottle broke into a million pieces, but the sound of shattered glass drowned in the onslaught of shouting and noise as the bikers turned their attention to the insults thrown at them.
Joker pushed a girl off his lap and stood up, jumping over the backseat of the leather sofa, nimble like an acrobat in his bright green shirt that surely hid a collection of weapons that could be used on the offender who’d come here to break club rules.
“We’re outlaws. We do what the fuck we want! You have a problem with me fucking a guy when I feel like it? Maybe my dick should go into your ass then and show you what it’s like, huh? Wanna be converted?” Joker hissed, pushing back his bright, spiky hair that had gotten slightly tousled throughout the party.
Gyro’s eyes went wide, and before Beast could get to him, the fucker pulled out a gun. A small thing, one of those women were encouraged to carry in their handbags, but no matter how small the firearm, it could do a lot of damage. “You better stay the fuck away!”