Wretched Love

“He’s hung up on last time,” she explained to me.

“When she almost died,” Macy expanded.

“It was bad,” Caroline added, voice grim. “Hades was… on another level, even for him.”

“And he’s scared something is going to happen to you?” I surmised.

Freya nodded.

“Everyone thinks men are most intense and dangerous when they’re angry, but those people haven’t ever seen a badass, alpha male scared,” Macy said. “Scared for the life of the only woman that they have ever or will ever love.”

I sipped my wine. Yeah, I had seen that firsthand.

“He’ll come around,” I reassured Freya.

Her eyes glistened. “I hope so,” she said in a small voice. “He doesn’t have any choice, anyway,” she continued, sounding stronger.

“He will come around,” Macy repeated my sentiment but more firmly. “Sure, he’ll be a homicidal bastard for the next eight months or so, but that won’t be unlike the time before you met him.” She winked at Freya.

Macy lifted her glass once more. “To marriage and babies.”

We clinked our glasses. “To marriage and babies,” I murmured, thinking about my own alpha male and what his reaction would be if I gave him this kind of news in about two weeks.

Would he come around?

He would have to, I guessed.

And so would I.

The men arrived home, and everyone had congratulated Hades who, unsurprisingly, did not smile or have much reaction to the well wishes. He only had eyes for his wife. Understandable, given what Freya had said.

Then the men had been banished outside to the grill area to cook dinner. Hades only went when Freya stood to whisper something in his ear, and then he leaned to kiss her hard and fast before stalking off.

“Do you ever wish that they moved away from the things that could get them killed or incarcerated?” I asked the women while watching Swiss.

The way he moved was mystifying, enchanting, hypnotizing. It was fluid, strong, purposeful.

Infinitely arousing.

As if he sensed me, his eyes traversed toward our little group, focusing on me.

My body jolted with the electric current of our eye contact.

All of the women quieted at my question.

“Do you mean do we think about the club going in a more legitimate direction?” Macy clarified. “Like the Amber charter?”

The Amber charter was in California, and from what I’d gathered, close with the New Mexico Sons. Macy, Freya and Caroline talked about women like Gwen, Amy and Mia, along with many others with fondness. There was going to be a big trip out that way in a couple of months.

I was incredibly curious to meet all of the people I’d heard so much about, and to see if the hot guy thing was unique to New Mexico—something in the desert air—or if patching into the Sons indeed required muscles, a smoldering glare, a strong jawline and an intensity that brought women to their knees.

I was also incredibly curious because the Amber charter was unique in that they were not outlaws in the traditional sense of the word. I was sure they didn’t live their lives to the letter of the law, but I’d also gleaned that the club operated entirely above board.

This club did not. I’d asked Swiss about the realities of club life, about what he did with his days, how the club made its money. He hadn’t skirted around the truth, not even a little bit.

The club ran guns.

It was a nationwide thing, I’d come to find out, and it was a huge portion of their income. Along with the local strip club they owned, and the garage. There were other, smaller ‘rackets’ but apparently none as lucrative as the guns.