Diesel (Savage Brothers MC-Tennessee 2)

“Three,” I confirm. “My best friend in high school—”

“Alright Rory!” he praises—the pig. I instantly know what he’s thinking. “I didn’t know you liked—”

“He was a man—or a boy as it were,” I tell him, ripping away any fantasy of girl on girl action he may be harboring.

“Your best friend was male?”

“Girls didn’t like me,” I tell him simply.

“They wouldn’t.”

“That’s not nice,” I whisper, his words hurting me.

“You’re too pretty. Women are usually bitches, they don’t like competition.

“Women are bitches?”

“Most of the time,” he says.

“You don’t sound like you like women very much for a man who admittedly has banged a lot of them.”

“You don’t have to like someone to fuck them, Rory,” he says and admittedly this is true, but I’m not really digging how that makes me feel either.

“If you didn’t, then why would you bother?”

“You saying you’d never fuck someone if it meant you’d get compensation out of it?”

“I’m assuming you mean other than orgasms?”

“You’re assuming right.”

“No.”

“I think everyone would,” he shrugs, sounding so jaded it’s almost painful.

“I wouldn’t,” I stubbornly argue, wondering how in the world we started this conversation.

“Maybe you just haven’t found your trigger yet,” he argues.

“My…trigger?”

“A reason why you would sleep with someone other than just enjoying the sex.”

“Love?”

“Get real, Gorgeous.”

“I’m getting that’s a negative,” I whisper, because the look on his face leaves no doubt that he’s not digging my response.

“A big ass one.”

“I take it you don’t think love exists?” I ask and for some reason that makes me sad.

“I know it does. I’ve seen it. Feel it for my son. I just know that shit is fucking rare and doesn’t happen that often.”

“I can’t argue with that,” I whisper.

“You love every man you fucked?”

“Can we call it something else besides fucked?”

I’m practically pleading with him. I’m feeling uncomfortable here, and meanwhile he’s just sitting up, leaning back against the headboard like we’re discussing the weather. I sit up too and I make sure I have the sheet wrapped tight around me. This isn’t a conversation that you want to remain naked and exposed for. It hasn’t been from the first moment he opened his mouth.

“Call’em like I see’em, Rory.”

“Right,” I frown.

“I’m not always easy to take, but I’m always truthful, Gorgeous.”

“You are?”

“I will be—at least until you make that impossible,” he answers and I frown.

“How would I do that?”

“I asked a question first,” he responds and I frown.

“I loved my best friend, although not like… that. It was more…like a safe place to experiment,” I tell him. “We were both seventeen and all of our friends had done it… we figured… why not?” I shrug, finding it hard to explain to a man who apparently has a lot of sex why I chose to have my first partner.

“And the other two?”

“Grady, I loved.”

“Grady? Jesus, what kind of name is Grady?”

“It’s a nice name,” I defend—although to be honest, I don’t feel like defending Grady… about anything.

“If you’re a ninety-year-old overweight, corn farmer in Iowa, who wears suspenders and chews on a blade of grass while milking your cow because you know it’s the only tit you’re going to have in your hands for the foreseeable future… maybe,” Noah answers.

I look up at him, taking in all of his words and doing my best to try and stifle my laughter. I’m thinking Noah doesn’t need any encouragement at this point.

“Some people might not like the name Noah,” I tell him, and I might be able to keep from laughing, but I can’t stop my smile when I look up at him.

“Probably, Gorgeous, but could you see me in suspenders milking a cow?”

“Umm… probably not,” I agree softly, giving into a full smile. He grins down at me and those crinkles around his eyes deepen and I feel an excited flutter in my stomach. “And can you see this Grady doing that?” It must be said that I could, though I didn’t confirm it. I’m pretty sure Noah, however, could read between the lines. “What happened to old Grady?”

“He had a permanent case of HIHA disease,” I tell him on a sigh.

“What’s HIHA?”

“Head in his ass,” I explain.

“Oh… I see.”

“I’m afraid it was terminal,” I answer, nodding my head. “It got so bad I couldn’t be in the same room with him for the smell.”

“Shoveled a lot of shit your way I take it,” Noah says.

“Loads and loads. So much the stench was toxic,” I confirm.

“Sorry, Gorgeous,” he says, giving me a squeeze.

“It’s okay except that’s the reason I ended up with Tony.”

“Not love?”

“I never loved Tony. Not ever. I thought I could be happy with him, but I soon found out…”

“That he’s a fucking dickweed?”

“That he wasn’t the nice man he pretended to be,” I whisper.

“Alright then, before you get lost in shit you don’t need to get lost in,” Noah interjects, and before I realize what he has planned he’s shifted on the bed and pulled me down so I’m lying flat on the mattress—all in one very quick movement.