Sugar (The Henchmen MC 12)

"Italian this time."

"Fuck yeah," I said, my stomach already growling at the idea. "All the noodles. What am I supposed to bring? Other than my sparkling personality, and amazing ass?"

"Helen wants all us girls to come over early - without the kids - to bake some desserts instead of just pot lucking."

"Only if I get to be the one to make all the cannoli jokes," I stipulated.

"As if anyone would ever try to steal your thunder on the inappropriate cream-based humor. She said to bring Savvs and Jamie if they aren't busy. I think she's getting annoyed at all the testosterone that the Rivers bring to the table. Not enough estrogen to balance it out."

"Tell me about it. If I have to hear one more conversation about how Team A is gonna slaughter Team B in the championplayofftitlething, I am going to scream."

"Good. So bring them."

"Will do," I agreed, loving the idea of all my people in one place.

"Ronnie can come too."

I snorted at that, shuffling through the purchase log, carefully whiting out something we already had freaking ten copies of. "Ronnie is primping for the next few days then he is being whisked away to San Fransisco for the weekend by his new man."

"Aw. And you set them up, you little matchmaker you. I knew there was a hopeless romantic buried under there."

"Except I was trying to get him laid, not wifey'd up."

"Sure. Sure," she said, sounding amused.

"I don't do love."

"You do love just fine."

"I meant with men," I insisted, doing so with maybe too much emphasis, making up for the fact that I was clearly having some kind of issue with that currently.

"Someday, girlie. Someday, I am going to make you eat those words. And I am going to enjoy watching you choke them down."

"Ew. No. I'm hanging up now," I told her, shaking my head, ignoring the weird gut-punch feeling that took over my core.

To that, she laughed, a musical sound I missed hearing more often. "Alrighty. See you Sunday. If you could fall in love by then, we would all appreciate it. It would be all the better to gang up on you at once."

"Shut up. Love you."

"Love you too. Talk to you later."

"Later," I agreed, hanging up, sighing out a breath as I checked the clock.

Another hour until closing.

I had a feeling I wasn't going to be able to focus on a damn word in my book, a newly chronic problem that was putting me in a surly ass mood. How was I supposed to function without a fresh kill to calm me down, damnit?

I chose instead to attack all the surfaces in the whole damn library with antibacterial wipes, something I usually only did during flu season. I wasn't a freak like Reese who could be found wiping down the covers of books as she checked them back in. But I always found cleaning cathartic. And distracting.

I needed distraction.

As it would turn out, there wasn't a single thing that could keep me focused for the next three days. Every spare thought I had was on Thursday night. After work. When I would go to The Henchmen compound for the first time ever.

I had even packed a special outfit for it in my bag so I could doll it up in the bathroom before I headed over.

I strapped myself into a hot pink bandeau under a mostly see-through mesh black top, slipped into a tight black and white vertical striped short pencil skirt, fixed my hair and makeup, put some pretty hot pink panties on that I had maybe bought specifically for him to rip off me, and - the pièce de résistance - a pair of hot pink high heels that didn't have normal heels. Oh, no. They had lady legs and butts as heels. They were my current favorite item in my wardrobe.

I was excited to see them hiked up on his shoulder again as he fucked me.

That was the plan, at least.EIGHTSugarIt wasn't that I had forgotten I had invited her.

It was more that... shit was happening.

Not with the V situation.

That shit was too quiet, too still, too everything. It was putting everyone on edge.

But that wasn't what was keeping Virgin and me up at night, trying to track down leads, trying to make sense of it.

No.

Those would be the texts I kept getting.

More and more paranoid more and more violent by the day.

"The fuck are we supposed to do with this?" I'd asked in complete frustration after the sixth message I had gotten that morning alone.

"Fuck if I know," he'd told me, unhelpful, but honest. "Doesn't seem to know our location, just that we are patched-up again."

"Right. But if he finds it out, he's coming for us," I said, looking down at the note that said something about shooting us in the dicks before the head. It was colorful.