Valen (Henchmen MC Next Generation 6)

“The fuck are you doing?” I asked Dezi as I went into the kitchen to grab a bottle of water before heading to bed, finding him standing in front of the stove in a goddamn frilly apron that one of the wives or girls must have left around, dropping a giant glob of butter into a pan that he had lined with bacon.

“Making bacon.”

“With butter,” I said, tossing Voss a bottle of water while I was at it, just barely resisting the urge to grab another one for Louana.

Old habits.

“Don’t want it to stick to the pan, right?” Dezi asked, genuinely looking confused, reminding me again that I had no fucking idea what kind of past he’d come from, but clearly it had left him without basic life skills.

“No, man,” I said, shaking my head. “Bacon makes its own grease in like ten seconds of being on the heat.”

“Huh. The more you know,” Dezi said, but didn’t actually remove the butter.

“He’s gonna have a heart attack before forty,” Voss said to me as we made our way out of the kitchen.

“Zaddy won’t let that happen,” Dezi called back. “Got me on salads and shit,” he added.

Voss and I both knew there was no way to balance out bacon fried in butter, but we kept walking toward the prospect room.

I found myself almost holding my breath as we moved inside, some part of me not sure that she wouldn’t have wrecked all my shit, or that she wasn’t lying in wait to take me out.

You never knew with Lulu.

That was what was so interesting about her.

You could never anticipate her next move.

But potentially being on the receiving end of her wrath made me a lot less appreciative of that aspect of her personality than I used to be.

Luckily, we didn’t walk into any sort of ambush. And it looked like all my shit was exactly as I had left it.

Louana’s middle top bunk was now covered with a black blanket with a gold celestial print. I knew that blanket. Because it had been on her bed when she’d been a kid.

I didn’t know a whole hell of a lot about Louana’s life after I skipped town. But I did hear that she’d been away. Traveling, Vi had said with a sort of disappointed huff because it sounded like whatever kind of traveling Louana had been doing meant she was hard to get in touch with.

That was another part of my selfishness that I hadn’t given too much thought to over the years. Louana had started out as one of Violet’s best friends. It was only through Vi that I got to know Louana well enough to want to start something with her.

With me leaving, it sounded like it put a somewhat permanent strain on their friendship.

But if she’d been away a lot, not putting down any roots, it made sense that she didn’t have a lot of her own grown-up shit, and needing to bring some stuff from her parents’ place to her new home at the clubhouse.

Underneath the blanket, she was still save for the steady rise and fall of her breathing.

I tried not to notice the way her long, silky hair was draped over the pillowcase. And how that hair used to feel drifting through my fingertips, or teasing over my chest… or my thighs.

Fuck.

No.

No thoughts like that.

They were dangerous.

I couldn’t entertain them.

With that, I tossed my water on the bed then moved over toward my cabinet to slip out of my dirty clothes and into a pair of pajama bottoms before dropping down in my bed.

I expected sleep to come relatively easy after such a long day. But I found myself staring up at the underside of the bunk above me for what seemed like hours.

Voss, I knew, was dead asleep. He always slept like a brick just a couple seconds after dropping down.

Hours later, though, there was a squeak that could have been someone rolling over, but I somehow knew better.

Because then there was more squeaking and a deep, but feminine sigh.

From my position, I could see her lower legs dangling down over the side of her bed near the ladder.

There wasn’t much light in the space, save for a dolphin-themed nightlight left over from some sleepover someone’s kids had in the clubhouse at some point that no one had ever thought to take out. But even so, I was pretty sure I made out dark painted toenails. And it annoyed me that I wanted to know if it was black or midnight blue or royal purple, knowing those were her favorite colors.

She swung her legs for a couple seconds. Shaking life into them, maybe? Or just restless energy?

Then there was more adjusting and her legs shifted, turning to grab onto the ladder as she started to move down.