Pagan (The Henchmen MC 8)

By the time night fell, Benny shooed his very happy client out the door after she insisted on taking about twelve selfies with him to show off his awesome work and Instagram and Snap about it to her friends. Which we both knew was free publicity, so we always posed when it was asked of us. He shook out his very sore arms and rolled his shoulders. "I need to get home to my man and have him give me a massage," he declared, going behind the desk to grab his stuff. "Come on, let me walk you to your place."

Because I didn't have a car.

Not because I didn't drive, but let's just say that things got bad enough that I had needed to sell it. Which sucked and made life even harder than it had to be, but it was a sacrifice I had needed to make.

Luckily, I only lived around the corner and down about ten houses.

"Nah, I am going to work on the website before I head out. Go enjoy your man."

"Oh, you know I will," he said with a smile, giving me a wave, and heading out the door.

I was no graphic designer.

I hated web design.

My first three attempts at a site for us looked like maybe a ten-year-old did it. I was slowly, but surely, getting better. Mix that with my absolute determination to get it right, and you would see why I was there almost two hours after closing still tweaking little things.

But when the coffee machine beeped off for the second time, I knew it was time to head out. I shut down the computer, grabbed my purse, slipped my fingers into this nifty kitty cat self-defense keychain, and went out the door, turning and locking it.

"Girls who look like you look shouldn't be walking around this town alone at night," a newly familiar voice said casually from my side. "All kinds of bad characters out around here." My head turned in his direction, finding him leaning casually against the wall, foot pressed against it, a cloud of cigarette smoke around him. The end lit up in his mouth as he took a drag before pushing off the wall, squashing the cigarette, and letting out the smoke as he moved toward me. "Guys like me with all kinds of ideas about what they'd like to do to you."

Oh, hell.FOURPaganShe ran off.

That shouldn't have surprised me. I didn't fight clean. It was always crazy, bloody, brutal, animalistic. It definitely wasn't meant for anyone faint of heart or weak of stomach.

That was why I was paid the big bucks over at Hex.

Maybe a part of me was so used to that, and the people around me being so used to it, that I forgot that not everyone could handle that kind of violence.

Especially the soft and sweet girls like Kennedy.

I shouldn't have even been stressing about it.

That was the dream, wasn't it? To have the chick leave so there didn't need to be that uncomfortable conversation about how it was casual, how she needed to take her ass home, find a decent guy, and set to sinking her hooks into him.

So when I turned back, wiping the sweat off my forehead and likely swiping blood all over my face like some goddamn barbarian, standing over the body of the fucking moron kid who thought it was in any way appropriate to step to a member of the MC like that, I expected to see her standing there.

The disappointment in not seeing her was more than was normal. And it wasn't as simple as the fact that after a fight, I needed a fuck. That was just how I was wired. I had the rough and nasty, and I needed a soft woman there to burn through the rest of that energy. So it was normal in that sense to feel like I was missing out when she was gone, that I wasn't going to get the fuck I wanted.

That being said, it was a goddamn open house. There was snatch everywhere just waiting to be plowed into. Getting my soft was not the problem. It never was.

But somehow, she was the soft that I wanted.

And that, well, was simply not like me at all.

Any woman was just as good as the next since all I wanted was a good time.

As I walked back into the compound to get another drink, I had the absolutely insane, uncharacteristic, ridiculous thought that maybe it was because I wanted more than a good time with her.

And then I grabbed a bottle of something amber and tipped it back until that fucking moronic thought no longer existed.

"You're bleeding fuckin' everywhere," Reign said at my side, brow raised.

"Not my blood."

"Fine, then you're drippin' fuckin' everywhere."

"Some dipshit kid wanted to step to me."