Still, he knew enough of the story to get me when I said, “Lou’s here.”
“The fuck?”
“You heard me.”
“Please tell me that isn’t why we bought this shithole?”
I glared at him. He may have been my brother, but no one questioned me, especially about the betterment of my fuckin’ club. “King had a point about diversifying our investments. We got the garages, the trucking company, the tat shop, Eugene’s bar and now a titty bar. They’re cash cows and it’ll keep the boys happy, they got a place closer than Vancouver to go to get some quality pieces.”
“The only thing of quality here is your little church mouse,” Bat argued.
“We bring in Maja and she’ll get ’em sorted,” I said, referring to my VP Buck’s old lady. She’d worked at a titty bar over in Calgary for years before hookin’ up with Buck and she was a class act, just what this place needed.
That and about thirty gallons of bleach.
“It may be a good investment, I get you wouldn’t do bad by the club, Z, but this is about way more than that. This is about the fuckin’ girl.”
“Watch your fuckin’ tone, brother,” I growled, my fingers flexing around my empty rocks glass.
I needed to work out this sick fuckin’ feeling. A bag at the gym, a warm pussy in my bed and a couple hours of physical therapy with both ought to do it.
“You want someone to bow and scrape to the almighty Zeus Garro, go to one of the fuckin’ prospects or get some pussy ’cause I’ve been tellin’ it to you straight for twenty-five years and I’m gonna keep right on doin’ it ’til you drive us both into an early grave.”
He stared at me dead in the fuckin’ eye, serious as shit.
I threw my head back and laughed because he was the only man still walkin’ on this earth that would throw back at me like that.
“Fine, you fuck. It’s about the girl too,” I conceded.
Just then, the girl in question came striding back into the bar, walking amidst the now empty tables picking up used glassware and empty bottles. My throat ran dry at the sight of those curvy long legs in those tiny little black shorts, the thick wedge of deep brown skin between the low rise of the hem and the edge of her thin, white crop top. Couldn’t tell if she was wearing a bra but it was clear she’d gone outside to recuperate from her shock ’cause her hard little nipples were clear from across the room where I sat watching her.
I licked my lips at the thought of those sweet tips between my teeth.
She’d like it rough, I thought. My Lou was a spitfire and I knew she’d give as good as she got in the sack.
Fuck.
What the fuck was wrong with me?
I’d practically raised this girl from the time she was seven years old. I could tell myself ’til I was blue in the face that I hadn’t actually seen her grow, that she’d been a little girl one moment and a grown woman—a damn fine woman—the next, but it was still seriously fucked up.
It was even more seriously fucked because I didn’t care. I wanted her. I wanted her worse than I’d ever wanted anythin’ in my life, even my first Harley that I’d saved for startin’ when I was eight years old and first saw a bike in one of my uncle’s car magazines. I didn’t care that she was a little girl. If I was being honest, it was hot as fuck that she was so young, so fresh, like a blank wall in front of a graffiti artist, I wanted to stripe her in paint, draw her up in anarchy.
I wanted to be the one to fuck her that first time, her blood on my cock and her cries in my mouth as I claimed her.
The only problem as I saw it was this.
I’d keep her.
Knew myself well enough to know the truth. I was a monster, sure as shit. Violence was second-nature to me. Greed was an instinct I didn’t care to curb. Lawlessness was my code and brotherhood was my anthem.
I didn’t believe in rules ’cept the ones I decided to make for others.
And for the last twenty years of my life, my religion had been two-fold. The Fallen and my kids.
At one point, I’d lumped Lou into “my kids”.
I was realizin’ I needed to un-lump her quick or I’d be a seriously sick bastard.
But where did that leave her?
I tugged at my beard as I watched her hips sway between the tables, as she laughed at a guy who tossed her an empty bottle, as I thought about how good it would feel to throttle that guy with my bare hands and feel his life leave ’im under my fingers.