My head swirled as Pink Eye continued to mutter victoriously in my ear and hump my leg. I made eye contact with Wrath for a split second as he turned away from Twiz to face me and there was something in his eyes I hadn’t ever expected to see.
Sympathy and, even more, encouragement.
It was the visual equivalent of “get up, fuck him up, make him sorry ever took you down.”
He’d save me if I needed it but that one look was a reminder that I did not.
With my eyes still on his, I wedged my chin into Pink Eye’s neck, angled my mouth and savagely bit down on his ear.
His howl of pain ripped through my eardrums but I held on even as he thrashed, and when he jerked hard away from me I still held on even as a chunk of flesh ripped loose from his lobe. He rolled over onto his back away from me, but I followed him, hovering over him so I could spit that bloody morsel into his warped face.
“Don’t fucking touch me,” I whispered hoarsely. “Next time you do, it won’t be your ear I rip the fuck off.”
Pink Eye glared at me, gearing up to cobble together the last of his biker badness so he wouldn’t be a complete embarrassment.
I saved him the trouble and punched him in the throat so hard, I felt something crunch.
“What the fuck happened in here?” Reaper asked from the doorway, Grease, Jade, and Shrek all behind him.
I stood up even though my legs were trembling and fisted my hands on my hips, ready to defend myself to a jury that would always side with the man.
Only, I didn’t have to.
“Tried to claim ’er,” Wrath said, stepping up beside me with his colossal arms crossed.
“And you got a fuckin’ problem with that? She’s Berserker property, her old man died it’s only fittin’ she get herself another brother.”
I tensed all my muscles so I wouldn’t shudder. This wasn’t how things were done in my father’s MC. A woman was owned by no one unless it was with her consent, and then she was considered untouchable by others, an old lady fit only for her man. The biker sluts that hung around the clubhouse were not even good enough to be considered Fallen property.
“The fuck? Her man just fuckin’ bit it, she doesn’t get time to, I donno, mourn?”
I closed my eyes at the sound of his voice. I’d convinced myself seeing him wrapped up with Laken was just a mirage my trauma-riddled mind had conjured to fuck with me.
But no, Danner was there just behind Reaper, his arm slung around Laken, his hair in disarray over his bright eyes.
It killed me that I loved the disheveled biker look on him.
I shoved that thought aside though because there was only one reason Danner would be buddy-buddy with an MC.
And that was to take it down.
My blood pressure spiked as pure joy raced through my veins.
Reaper shot Danner a look, but it wasn’t as pissed off as it could have been. “You think we’re gonna give up Garro pussy? Think again, Lion.”
Lion.
I swallowed thickly and clenched my hands into hard fists.
His club nickname was my nickname.
Lion for Lionel, obviously.
But also, because I’d never met such a lion-hearted man before. Growing up, he’d been the king of all the manly beasts in my jungle so it seemed fitting to give him such a nickname.
I both hated that these deplorable men used it, and loved that Danner thought to offer it to them.
“Doesn’t seem that special from where I’m standin’,” Danner drawled with his face tucked into Laken’s absurdly thick black hair. She giggled at him even though she was my friend, and went on her tiptoes to offer him a wet kiss.
Bitch.
“It is,” Reaper said firmly. “Now, Wrath was gonna tell us why he kept a brother from takin’ her for his.”
What he meant was, why Wrath stopped a brother from raping me to claim me, like we were in some 17th-century feudal clan system.
“He was—” Twiz started to protest from where he sat slumped against the wall, a club slut between his thighs as she tended to him.
Wrath quelled him with one violent look.
“Was more than one of ’em,” Wrath stated, then with such a small beat of hesitation, I was sure no one else noticed it, his long arm unwrapped from his chest and rewrapped around my hip. “Doesn’t matter much now, she’s mine.”
“What?” I demanded, at the same time that Grease guffawed.
Wrath’s hand squeezed my hip almost painfully.
“Since when’ve you wanted an old lady?” Reaper asked, his eyes narrowed to slits. “What’s that you say, fresh pussy is the best pussy?”
“Like you said, you think I’ve gonna give up my shot at Garro pussy?” he retorted easily.
Reaper stared at the both of us for a long moment, but it was Danner’s gaze I could feel burning holes in my armor, burrowing so deep I worried it would scar. Wrath must have sensed his president’s reticence because before I could blink, his lush mouth was on mine, his beard scraping deliciously against my skin.