Owning Beauty (Taking Beauty Trilogy 3)

That had been two years ago, and I had been nowhere near ready.

But now? Tonight? Was I ready? Maybe now I was.

Or, maybe I wasn’t.

But there was only one way to find out. I hadn’t meant for this to all go down this way, but now that Gabby was here, squirming on the couch like she was just as torn as I was - why pass up an opportunity to jump start things?

I mean, fuck, what else were we going to do all night anyway? Talk to each other?

“So, why is your gang called the Deadly Sinners?” Gabby asked, in between bites of steak. She was eating like she was starved and I watched with satisfied amusement.

“We’re not a gang, we’re a club. There’s seven of us, and at one time in our lives, we committed a lot of sins together. It’s just something we came up with when we were kids on the street and it stuck.”

“So you’ve all known each other a long time?”

“Yeah, since we were kids,” I replied. “We grew up in the Bronx on Author Avenue. You know the neighborhood?”

“Yeah, a little,” she said, her eyes darting away. I couldn’t stop looking at her across the table and every time she tore those green eyes from mine, I wanted to reach over and pull her gaze back.

“Where are you from?” I asked.

“Howard Beach,” she murmured, dismissively. “So, tell me more about your club.”

“The club? Right. Well, like I said, we grew up together. We were just little kids, you know? Riding bikes around the neighborhood. When I was sixteen, I saved up and got my own motorcycle. Of course, then the other guys had to get one too. I had all the parents so pissed at me after that. Hell, Italo and Alonzo’s Ma still hasn’t forgiven me.”

“Italo and Alonzo?”

“Yeah, they’re twins. They had an asshole dad, like most of us kids in the Bronx did, so they were raised by their Ma. She still refuses to let me in her house. Once, when we were about eighteen, before we all went into the Army, Alonzo laid down his bike. It was his fault. Stupid ass took the curve too fast and the bike slid out from under him. His Ma came over to my house, hitting me with her purse and yelling some kind of Catholic curse at me for almost killing her son.”

Gabby’s laughter echoed in the small kitchen and I couldn’t help but smile.

“You were in the Army?” she asked.

“Yeah. I get blamed for that, too. But whatever. I was the oldest of all of us guys, and no matter what I did, they followed. I tried to tell them all not to join, but they didn’t listen. Sure as shit, one by one, they each signed up. We all ended up in the 101st Airborne Division together.”

“Why did you sign up yourself?”

“I didn’t have a lot of options as a poor kid in the Bronx. You know what it’s like. If you’re lucky, your family has some kind of business you can join. But if not, like me, you don’t have anything like that to fall back on. It was either that or get tangled up with the mafia and I figured my chances of staying alive were a lot better if I stayed out of that scene.”

“Right,” she replied, slowly taking a drink of her beer. “So what did you do in the Army?”

“Jumped out of planes. Lived through a few battles, thankfully. Did a tour in Afghanistan. Did another one in Iraq.” Dammit. There it was. That steeliness that returned to my voice, the ropy muscles in my neck tensing painfully - it always happened when I talked about the service.

“That must’ve been hard,” she said, her green eyes filling with concern.

“It sucked,” I nodded. “It fuckin’ sucked big time.” The last thing I wanted to think about was my time overseas. None of it was good.

“Enough about me,” I said, shaking away the haunting memories of screams that I never wanted to hear again. “Let’s talk about you, Gabby. Tell me something interesting about your life.”

“Oh, my life isn’t as interesting as yours,” she replied, smiling back at me, her long lashes fluttering as she blinked. “Tell me more about the guys.”

My eyes landed on her bottom lip, the urge to kiss her overwhelming me. I wanted to forget everything she was asking me about, in fact I was done talking altogether… But I knew if I went too fast, it would scare her away.

“Well,” I began, calling on all my reserves of patience. “I told you about Italo and Alonzo, the twins. There’s Giovanni - we call him Gio. He’s a cool guy. You’d like him. He’s half black and half Italian. His Ma died when he was born, so he was raised by his father’s Italian family. He makes these meatballs that I swear are better than my Grandma’s. Unfortunately, his dad got mixed up with the mob and was killed when Gio was eighteen.”

“That’s awful,” she said, a look of horror crossing her face.

“Yeah, it’s another reason I went a different direction after high school. It kind of turned us all around, seeing Gio go through that shit.”

“I see,” she said quietly.

“I told you about Romeo,” I continued. “And then there’s Angry Bobby and Bats. Angry Bobby is the sweetest guy you’ll ever meet.”

“Why do you call him Angry Bobby then?” Her eyes flashed with amusement, and I couldn’t tear my eyes away from her beauty. She was breathtaking. Her long black hair framed her gorgeous face, her high cheekbones made me want to reach out and trace them with my finger. I studied her like a painting, committing every line and curve to memory.

“Yeah, that’s the thing,” I answered. “Once, when we were in Afghanistan, one of the other guys in our squad said something nasty about one of the local women, and Bobby went off on him. He was totally out of control, off the chain pissed off. Thought he was gonna knock the other guy’s head off. We’d never seen him like that before and the nickname stuck.”

She nodded, her eyes watching me intently. I hadn’t had such a rapt audience in quite a while and it made me feel good. I wanted to make her smile again, to make that light shine in her eyes all night long so I could keep watching.

“And Bats? What’s his story?” she asked, taking a drink of her beer. She was loosening up now, and she hadn’t looked at the front door in five minutes at least.

“Bat’s story is pretty fuckin’ sad. Bats was the star pitcher on our high school baseball team. He was one of the greatest. He was recruited by all the best schools, and offered a full-ride at Princeton. But instead of going off to college, he chose to follow us all into the Army. Some really violent shit went down,” I said, my voice lowering as I remembered it all. All the fuckin’ blood. The blood-curdling screams. The look on his face when he realized what had happened. The memories would haunt me forever. “He lost his arm in a roadside bomb. I feel completely responsible.”

“That’s horrible!” she exclaimed.

“Yeah, tell me about it,” I said, filling the glass with whiskey and taking a huge gulp, the harshness of the sweet poison ripping my throat apart like a razor blade. “It’s been over five years, but he’s adapted better than you’d expect. Maybe that’s because he can still ride, which is one of his favorite things in the world. The technology is amazing these days. He has a special modification on the grip of his bike so he can still hang with us as if he still had both arms. His attitude is amazing, he’s really

an amazing dude. They all are. They’re my family.”

“I can see why,” she replied. “Family is important. They sound great.”

“Yeah, it is. Maybe you’ll get to meet them sometime. You’re close to your family, it sounds like?”

“I guess so,” her voice lowered to a whisper. “We all have our problems.”

“Shit, yeah we do. Fuck this,” I said, standing up and putting out a hand for her. “Let’s stop talking about all this sad shit and take a walk.”

“A walk? It’s so dark out,” she said.

“Are you afraid of the dark?” I asked, staring down at her. She smiled slowly, and shook her head.

“No, I guess not,” she said, taking my hand and letting me lead her outside. Bear stood up slowly as soon as we opened the door and followed us out.

A blood red moon hung high in the black sky, dimly lighting our path as we began strolling down the long road that led away from the clubhouse.

Gabby

The thick forest surrounding the clubhouse provided total and complete seclusion from the rest of the world. It would have been great if seclusion had been something I was seeking. But while I’d gone to Otto’s seeking a little carnal biker knowledge, I’d never expected it would come with a side of violence and end up with me hidden away like a bad secret in some strange biker’s bizarre private world in the middle of Jersey, of all places.

I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t nice though. So far, so good. Dante wasn’t bad company at all, and although a tiny little voice kept telling me that he was basically keeping me prisoner, I kept pushing it away and reminding myself that he had been a complete gentleman so far.

I shuddered to think of what would have happened if he hadn’t been standing next to me at Otto’s when everything went down.

But he was right there. Just as he was now, walking beside me, steady and strong and sexy as could be.