My job was to blend in, and if I wore something I was more comfortable in—like jeans and a plaid shirt with discounted Gucci sneakers, I’d stand out. And not in a good way.
So I dressed similar to the other women who were peppered around the room. They did not remember my name. Mainly because there were only a small handful of regulars these past three Fridays—the rest banished from beds in the early hours with a story and maybe an STD.
It had only been a few months since all the club girls had been murdered along with most of the club, so these were new. None of them seeming to be permanent. I wondered if they were scared of being gunned down or if the men were hesitant to have the blood of more women on their hands.
The club girls weren’t as friendly as the men, they viewed me as competition, and the ones that didn’t only managed to get in a few pleasantries before they were dragged off by a man in a cut.
That all changed with a blonde knockout who I hadn’t seen before.
She sauntered up to me with a sober gaze and probing eyes.
Fuck.
This was a woman who saw through bullshit, I could tell that already. If I wasn’t careful, it wasn’t going to be a man that brought me down.
“Caroline, is it?” she said in greeting, making the prospect on the stool beside me scutter off with nothing but a sharp look.
I raised my brow in appreciation. “It is.” Keeping with my real name was a calculated risk. Well, my real first name at least. I hoped that no one got curious enough about me to do a Google image search, and if they did, I hoped my appearance held up.
I’d gone as far as making a fake Instagram for ‘Caroline Woods’ months ago, peppering a lot of sexy selfies, various quotes and images of life on the road. Cheap motels, cheaper bars, sunsets with stupid quotes attached to them.
“Scarlett,” the blonde said, taking a beer from the bartender.
I nodded in response.
She was definitely a Scarlett from her platinum blonde hair to her hourglass body, to her blood red nails.
“I’ve heard you’ve been here the last three weeks, and that’s all well and good, we throw a good party,” she said, sipping on her beer. She paused, probing eyes settling on me. “But you haven’t fucked any of the men, you don’t have one of your own, because if you did, you wouldn’t be going to a biker party alone for three Fridays in a row. And though there are surely a few duds in the mix, none of these men are exactly ugly.” She glanced around the room pointedly before moving back to me. “You don’t come to a Sons’ party to be chaste. What’s your deal?”
Her arched brow and lack of polite smile were calmly hostile.
I liked her immediately.
“I like a party,” I said, shrugging, downing my own beer.
She was an Old Lady. I knew this because I recognized her from my research. She’d been a ‘club girl’ for years. Which meant that she was pretty much passed around every member like property. The idea in itself was repulsive, but the woman in front of me told me she was no one’s property, and no way had she been some kind of docile victim in her life here. None of the club girls I’d witnessed had.
It wasn’t a prison.
It was an alternate lifestyle.
A life beyond the bounds, rules, and laws of society, but somehow still wrapped up in classic patriarchy. Women were only attached to the club if they were wives, girlfriends, or whores.
The beautiful blonde knockout looked me up and down with an expert eye. She had a hardness about her that I had come to recognize on soldiers who’d seen some of the worst things humans could see. Photojournalists forced to document suffering instead of help. Shit, I saw it in the mirror when I really looked, which wasn’t often.
“You’re not going to find Prince Charming here, darlin’,” she continued.
I laughed. I couldn’t help it.
“My world isn’t driven by the search for Prince Charming, trust me,” I said honestly. That tender part of my heart that even war couldn’t harden convulsed at a memory. “I’m just here because I like to party. Like to be somewhere that is real. Wrong.” I shrugged. “Not pretending to be something it isn’t.”
I knew I couldn’t hang out indefinitely without sleeping with someone. It would make me stand out, and when you were a journalist looking to break a story on one of the most notorious MCs in the country, you didn’t want to stand out.
Not if you wanted to live.
I wanted to live.
But I also wanted the story.
So I had a choice to make. As Scarlett had said, it wasn’t exactly a hardship to sleep with one—or many—of the muscled, tattooed and menacing bikers. I wasn’t a virgin. Nor was I a prude. I learned to separate sex from emotions right after I attached far too many emotions to it.