Viper (Hell's Handlers MC 9)

And Viper had brought Cassie along.

Dammit.

“The fuck are we doin’ here, Sarge? Cutter has been trying to do business with these guys since long before we popped up in town. They haven’t even looked at us twice. Heard it’s because they think our operation is too small-time. And they’d be right.”

“Look, V,” Sarge said, leaning across the booth and dropping his voice. “We do okay, make some decent money moving low-level weapons. But we could do so much more. Could move this club to the next level by working with these guys.”

“Yeah, that’s why Cutter propositioned them. But he always shoots us down. We’d grow by teaming up with them, but what the hell are they gonna gain from us? Their operation is fucking huge,” Viper whispered in a harsh tone across the table. “Not to mention, we’re prospects. We do the shit no one else in the club wants to be bothered with. Why the fuck would Cutter send us here? We here to scrub the toilets or some shit?”

Finally, finally, the door to the women’s room opened and out strolled Cassie, looking like fucking sex on legs.

Sarge whistled. “Your woman’s got some body there, V. Great set of tits, fucking prime ass, and clearly her pussy is choice too since it seems to have you so fucking locked down.”

Viper clenched his teeth, holding in the caustic remarks that would have only started a fight. Possibly a physical one. Sarge had been growing more volatile by the week. Whatever the cause, he refused to open up to Viper, instead acting almost hostile toward him at times.

Especially when it came to Cassie.

Sarcastic remarks about her hold over Viper, lewd, borderline offensive comments about her body, and subtle questions regarding her loyalty had become the norm over the past three months though she’d done nothing to inspire his skepticism. Viper might still feel like he owed Sarge for helping Cassie escape, and he believed in loyalty to his brother, but that only went so far if the loyalty wasn’t returned. To his mind, Sarge ragging on his woman all the time counted as fucking disloyalty. If something didn’t give soon, the two of them would end up trading split lips and black eyes.

At the very least.

“All good, babe?” Viper asked as Cassie slid into the booth next to him. He immediately circled his arm around her shoulders, tugging her flush against him as he shot a warning glare Sarge’s way.

“All good. Somehow I managed to go to the bathroom all by myself.” She rolled her eyes while smiling Sarge’s way. “Is he gonna be all protective over you when you go pee, too?”

Sarge snorted then straightened in his seat as a cute little waitress with long blond curls sidled up to their table. “Hey there, ya’ll,” she said with a hint of a southern accent. “Sorry for the wait. As you can see, Friday nights tend to be a full house. I’m Cindy, and I’ll be your waitress. What can I get you folks?”

“Well, hey there, darlin’,” Sarge said, voice heavy with interest. “Pretty sure I’m looking at what I want.”

Flushing pink from the tips of her ears down to the very generous cleavage on display, Cindy giggled. “Most expensive item on the menu,” she said with a wink, giving them a flash of a purple sparkly eyelid. “How ’bout we start you off with a drink and see what you can still afford at the end of the night.”

Sarge’s nostrils flared and his eyelids dropped to half-mast. “Lucky for you, I’ve come with a full wallet.”

Cindy leaned so far forward, she nearly spilled out of her skimpy V-neck crop top with the bar’s logo on the back. “Well, since you admitted you’ve already come, maybe I’ll just be stuck serving you drinks tonight.”

One of Sarge’s eyebrows arched and the grin on his face couldn’t be described as anything besides smug motherfucker. “We’ll see.”

Viper’s gaze met Cassie’s, who sat there with a disbelieving twist to her mouth. “Is he for real?” she mouthed with a roll of her eyes.

Viper just smiled and tugged her closer, placing a kiss on her temple. The rest of Sarge and Cindy’s banter was lost on him as the smell of his own woman drowned out their surroundings. Christ, he wished they were anywhere but in a seedy bar twenty minutes out of Knoxville in a town where his club had no business hanging out.

Explained the request from Sarge not to wear his cut.

Shoulda seen this coming from a mile away.

“You good?” Cassie whispered, an adorable wrinkle forming across her forehead. He teased her about it often, calling it her Viper-line because it only seemed to appear when she was stressing over him.

For a split-second, he considered lying to her, but it wasn’t their way. Cass handled shit, even bullshit, like a pro and had turned out to be a woman he could confide in. Even club business that he technically should have kept his mouth shut about, he tended to share with her. Being kept in the loop was important to her, probably came from growing up with a controlling father who ordered rather than asked. And for Viper, her rational manner of puzzling through dilemmas without becoming overly emotional saved his ass more than once. She had an uncanny ability to ground him during times he’d have normally lost his shit. No, he wasn’t an overly aggressive macho asshole, but he was a biker and intermittently had the volatile temper to accompany the title.