Zeus snorted. “Got a good eye for the pretty stuff. Hell, just look at my wife.”
We both laughed at the same time in the same way, heads thrown back to chuckle at the heavens. Nova appeared upside down in my vision, followed by Curtains and Boner.
Nova grinned his pretty boy grin and dipped his head over my shoulder to look at the phone screen. He let out a low whistle. “Jesus, brother, that’s for Cress?”
“Fuckin’ finally,” Boner hooted, slammin’ his hand on the table. “Seriously, dude, I was like one second away from sweeping her away from you.”
“Only person, fictional or not, Cress would leave me for is Satan from Paradise Lost.” I scraped my eyes over Boner and clicked my tongue. “Don’t think I got anythin’ to worry about as far’s you’re concerned.”
Boner cupped his prolific bulge in retaliation and winked. “What I lack in looks and smarts, I more than make up for in size. Just ask any’a the biker bitches hangin’ ’round here.”
Nova hit him on the side of the head. “Don’t think I’ve ever escaped a conversation with you where ya didn’t mention your huge ass cock.”
“If you got it, flaunt it,” he replied with a one-shouldered shrug.
“Bunch’a idiots,” Zeus muttered, but he couldn’t keep the smile from his voice.
More brothers started to file into the room and take their places around the table, readyin’ themselves for the biker version of Church we held there every Sunday and otherwise, when there was news to share.
“Shit, boy, that’s some ring,” Buck, our VP and one of the older members of our chapter, said as he clamped a hand down on my shoulder. “Maja’s been on me for info ’bout you gettin’ your head outta your ass and askin’ Cress to marry ya, so thank fuck you’re finally doin’ it. Got good news to report to the Old Lady, so she’ll be hankering to give me somethin’ good herself.”
There were a few chuckles and whistles at his comment, but it was Priest who took a seat beside me and leaned over to look at the photo of the emerald ring before saying, “Fallen colours, classic cut, pricey as fuck…decent ring, brother.”
I smirked at the club’s enforcer, a man of few words who would rather cut a man to pieces than gossip with the rest of the guys. “I can die happy with your approval then.”
“When’re you askin’ her?” Curtains asked as he flopped his ginger ass into the chair at the other end of the table and pulled out his deluxe laptop. “You want, I can get that shit on tape with my new drone? I’ve been dyin’ to test it out on somethin’ other than surveillance.”
“Bought you that fancy ass drone so you would use it for the grow-ops, not on spyin’ on a private moment ’tween King and his woman,” Zeus reminded him. “Now, let’s shut the fuck up about King’s business and focus on the club. We got a problem.”
“Don’t we always,” Nova muttered, makin’ Boner and Curtains both snicker.
“You’re in a position of power, people’ll always want what you got,” I said as I leaned back in the chair and steepled my fingers to get comfy for the long ass meeting.
“King’s right. Told ya weeks ago the Berserkers wanted to meet up to discuss patchin’ over––”
“Pieces’a shit, the lot of ’em,” Axe-Man grumbled as he shoved on a pair of glasses that were completely at odds with his tatted, biker aesthetic and readied himself to take notes of the meeting. There was a ripple of agreement.
As far as MCs went, there was definitely a spectrum. The Fallen’d always been outlaws; we peddled in marijuana and sometimes, arms trafficking, but we didn’t do any of the fucked shit like narcotics or human trafficking. We got our own systems of belief and codes of fuckin’ honour whereas clubs like the ’serkers only had straight-up greed and nothin’ but shady morals and a fuck ton of mean to back it up.
As a club, we hated them. As a man, I wished every single piece of shit with the wolf head patch on his cut would burn in hell. The tension between the two clubs had nearly exploded when we found out Harleigh Rose’s long-term Old Man had beat her for the past few years and none of the brothers did fuck all about it.
And now they wanted to parler.
It was straight-up stupid, and we would’ve been just as dumb to assume the overture was genuine.
“They want somethin’,” I muttered.
It was easy enough to draw that conclusion, but I knew more than most of the brothers sitting at the table with me because I had an in with one of their members.
The only one I didn’t actively want to kill and the only one with any shred of morality. Probably ’cause of the girl I was secretly harbouring for him while he made sure he could keep her safe.