Wretched Love

Kate

“I was thinking,”Violet said as she dressed the salad.

“I’ve heard it’s dangerous when women do that,” Swiss taunted from where he was setting the table.

He was not one to sit on the sofa with a beer while we prepared dinner. No, he was involved, helping by refilling drinks, chopping vegetables, pretty much doing anything and everything he could to contribute.

Violet had noticed it during her time here with us. We’d settled into somewhat of a routine. I say ‘somewhat’ because there wasn’t really such a thing as routine in my life now. Not with impromptu dinners at Macy’s or Freya’s or Caroline’s or my place. Or club parties. Dinners at the two restaurants in town that served great food. Visits from other charters which required an ‘all hands on deck’ situation.

So yeah, there was no Meatloaf Monday or anything like that in the biker world.

Which I adored. I loved that I never knew how a day might end. Maybe a quiet dinner out or getting tipsy in the desert with women who had become my family.

But we did get nights, a good amount of them, just the three of us. I cooked because I enjoyed it, not because I was required too. Violet sat on the breakfast bar, chatting to Swiss and me while sipping wine. She’d acquired quite a taste for it in Paris and had argued about how ridiculous a drinking age was when you could ‘enlist in the Army but not buy a beer,’ and I was inclined to agree with her. I also wasn’t going to disapprove of my adult daughter having a glass of wine or two at dinner.

Those dinners were special. Precious. They had an energy about them, a magic about them that gave me the impression that we would never have quite a time like this again. I was looking forward to the future, looking forward to Violet growing into herself even further and achieving great things.

But I also knew that that would mean seeing less of her, her having a separate life outside of me.

So I was savoring every moment we shared.

Violet poked her tongue out at Swiss at his joke, and he grinned back at her. The two of them had developed an easy relationship, a friendship even.

“I was talking to Colby, and he said there is an extra room at the club.”

I stopped dicing, and my mouth opened, but Swiss beat me to it.

“When the fuck were you talking to Colby?” Swiss barked.

I pursed my lips, hiding my smile. Swiss was not just her friend, he was also the protective, alpha male who would go to battle for my daughter without hesitating.

Violet had a grin of her own that she was not hiding. My daughter, it seemed, was not intimidated by the dangerous badass routine. That had become clear at the club gatherings she attended where she’d routinely challenged anyone in a cut about the ‘anti-feminist bullshit of a woman not being able to patch in,’ and the only people who were able to form a coherent response were the men who were married, madly in love with their wives and saw Violet as more of a daughter figure.

The unattached men were usually too busy drooling at Violet to form an argument. Swiss, of course, had threatened death and dismemberment to anyone who tried anything with her, and no one was brave enough to go up against him.

Violet found this endlessly entertaining and had now moved on from challenging these men to flirting with them relentlessly, much to Swiss’s horror. I was more amused by it all, somehow comforted by the idea that my daughter could end up with a biker who respected and worshipped the ground she walked on. Not some French asshole who she had not said a peep about since she arrived back.

Actually, I did not want Violet to end up with anyone yet. She was too young.

“Oh, calm down, Swiss. I was talking to him, not engaging in oral sex.” She paused, looking up at the ceiling. “Then again, there’s no talking then either. Someone always has their mouth full.”

I had wrongly chosen that moment to take a sip of my wine and almost choked on it when she said that.

Swiss’s cheeks flushed ever so slightly. It was almost a blush. A fucking blush. A blush like a father might have while talking to his daughter about oral sex.

Violet never would’ve spoken about oral sex with her father. She was too busy playing the role of the perfect little angel. One I hadn’t noticed she was playing until recently. Until she started being her unapologetic self in New Mexico, where she felt comfortable to do that, where there were no expectations of her.

I supposed it wasn’t just that, she had just spent over six months in Europe. Falling in love. Traveling. Acquiring a taste for wine. She’d changed, as you were supposed to at that age.

“And sex is an appropriate topic since it pertains to why I’m going to be moving into that room at the clubhouse.”

Where I’d been delightfully amused at my daughter’s adult and slightly vulgar sense of humor moments ago, now I was concerned at my little girl talking about moving into an outlaw biker clubhouse.

This time I beat Swiss to it. “Absolutely not.” I scoffed, turning down the burner so I could focus wholly on my daughter.

She rolled her eyes. “Mom, don’t worry. I’m not doing it because I have any other intentions other than not to hear my mother and soon-to-be stepfather banging it out.”

Now it was my turn to blush. Swiss, the asshole, had found his sense of humor once more and was smiling into his beer.