I still didn’t understand her choice in being on the top. Especially because I’d always known her to be a deep sleeper. I used to be able to slide out from under her body, then over her to get off the bed, then sneak out the window at her parents’ house almost every night. She’d never woken up.
Had life changed that?
Or did she feel safer up high?
Safer from what? Me?
That idea had my stomach twisting. Because, once upon a time, I had been the person she’d trusted more than anyone else.
Until, of course, I fucked that all up.
Still, it bothered me if she thought she had anything to fear from me.
All those thoughts disappeared, though, as she got down to the ground. And I saw a lot more skin than I’d anticipated.
My stomach twisted as she made her way toward the bathroom, knowing that the second she moved inside, the under-cabinet and under-mirror motion lights would activate. And I’d see all that skin clearly. Too clearly.
Before I could even try to prepare myself for it, though, she was across the room and moving into the doorway, and the lights were popping on, soaking her in light.
She didn’t immediately close the door, either.
Oh, no.
She just stood there, bracing her hands on the sink cabinet in front of the mirror, but her gaze wasn’t on herself, it was downcast.
Which gave me a chance to look.
And I did.
When I damn well knew what I needed to do was look away.
Back when I’d known Louana, she’d slept in roomy pajama pants and some of her dad’s hand-me-down oversized shirts.
This Louana, though?
Yeah, she apparently favored tank tops and the shortest shorts I’d ever seen in my life.
All of it hugged her curves that had only managed to fill out over the years.
She had nothing on underneath, and the material of her tank was thin, and the air in the clubhouse always ran toward slightly frigid.
I’m not proud to say that I looked for way too long at her hardened nipples pebbling up under the material.
Reaching back, she gathered her long hair, and tied it up in an elastic band she had around her wrist, and I could make out the outline of some sort of tattoo peeking out from the top of her tee.
From there, her gaze finally slipped to the mirror as she turned on one of the taps, staring at her reflection for a long moment before bending down to press what I imagined was cold water on her face.
Had I been wrong when we’d come in? Had she been awake all this time as well?
If so, thinking about what?
Me?
I mean, I was the reason she was at the club in the first place, wasn’t I?
It wasn’t like Louana had always wanted to be a biker. In fact, she’d been hesitant to get on my bike when we’d hung out the first time.
She’d always been sort of uncertain about what her future held. She said she thought she’d been too sheltered in our small town with her overprotective parents, and that she wasn’t going to be able to decide until she got out in the world and experienced more of what life had to offer.
There was no way those experiences suddenly made her want to become an arms-dealing biker.
She was here because she knew I was back and she wanted to fuck with me.
So, then, why did she seem every bit as anxious about it as I did?
That, I decided as she left the bathroom and went back to bed, was what I needed to figure out.
Whether she liked it or not.
CHAPTER SIX
Louana
“Hey there, pretty lady,” a voice greeted me when I’d made my way out of the prospect room the next morning.
I thought I’d gotten up relatively early, but I guess the bikers were earlier risers than I’d realized. Because Valen and Voss were both gone when I’d climbed out of my bunk. Their beds were even made.
A little panicked that I’d screwed up already, I’d decided to shower later in the day, and just got into a pair of jeans and a ribbed tee, and rushed out into the main area of the clubhouse.
My fellow prospects were nowhere to be found, but there was another guy hanging around with a box of donut holes sitting on the coffee table in front of him.
“It’s seven in the morning,” I said, shaking my head at the sweets.
“I had bacon for a midnight snack. I needed something sweet,” he informed me, not really helping his argument at all. But he seemed both aware and okay with that. “Louana, right?” he asked.
“Yeah. New prospect.”
“I’m Dezi,” he offered.
He was hot.
Objectively, I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen an unattractive Henchmen.
This guy had wavy brown hair that brushed his shoulders, a beard, brown eyes, and tattoos that cover just about every inch of skin below his chin. Including ones on his fingers.