Pagan (The Henchmen MC 8)

And while Edison wasn't exactly afflicted with some kind of trauma that made him talk in as short of sentences as possible, he was a quiet fuck. He didn't engage in small talk. He didn't volunteer any personal details. The fuck was even tight-lipped when he had an entire handle of vodka in his system.

So Roan having some information on him was intriguing, to say the least.

"Did you invite her to your fight?" Maze asked, smiling big, a little too eager to be going herself. She had been too pregnant then breast-feeding in the past, and this was going to be her first one. In fact, all Henchmen old ladies were showing up for once, having made some kind of deal with their other girls club members to deal with the ankle-biters for the night so they could get out.

"Do you think that was a good idea?" Laz added, coming in out of nowhere. "You do realize she fucking ran when she saw you pounding into that idiot during the open house. And that shit was tame compared to you in the ring. Especially after being benched for so long."

"Yeah, I mean, I couldn't watch your fight," Bethany added, immediately getting wrapped up by Laz because they were in love and shit like that.

"Girl is wound like a top," I said, trying to shrug off the completely unfamiliar twinge of insecurity. That wasn't me. I didn't give a shit what people thought. My entire goddamn life was a testament to that fact. "She'll be six cocktails deep before I step in the ring. By then, it won't matter how much of Slate is leaking out of him."

"Nice visual," Bethany said, face scrunching up.

"So tell us about this Kennedy girl," Penny demanded as she sat down next to Cy.

"Don't get attached," I warned her.

"Right, because when one of these guys," Maze said, waving a hand around, "starts getting those puppy dog eyes like you have, history has totally shown that he fucks her and dumps her."

"Jesus fuck," I growled, tipping up my beer and draining it. "I need something stronger than this to put up with this shit."

Fact of the matter was, I wasn't a relationship guy. Not once. Never. Fuck, I wasn't even sure I had ever taken a woman to dinner. That just wasn't the kind of life I led. I couldn't even make a commitment to keeping a pet; I damn sure wasn't going to shackle myself to another person.

People could accuse me, rightly, of being a lot of things: violent, reckless, outspoken, filter-free, foolhardy, cocky, impulsive, blunt.

But no one would ever accuse me of being steady.

And likewise, no one could say I made promises I didn't keep.

So since my life consisted of cage-fighting, gun-running, ATV-crashing, plane-jumping, car-racing, drinking, and any number of other stupidly dangerous things, getting myself a nice, steady woman was fucked up.

Not because I thought there was anything inherently wrong with how I lived my life, but because it was not the kind of shit a decent woman wanted to settle down with. And while I was fine reaching for a clubwhore or some chick in the bar when the mood struck, which was often, those were not the kinds of women I could ever see myself wanting more than one night with. Maybe that made me a dick, but that was just how it was.

There were one-night kind of girls, and there were settling down kind of girls.

The former loved my lifestyle. It was hot, scary, dangerous, sexy, but safe because they knew none of it would ever actually touch them. I would just be the story they told their girlfriends when they were old, sitting around a cheap dining room table drinking Starbucks, and discussing the good old days before the shitty husband, and three bratty kids, and the life that was eating away at their souls. I was that spark of fun. I was that outlaw biker who fucked them until they saw the face of God back in the day.

Nothing more, nothing less.

The latter, though, were the kind to look at the package that I presented to them and say 'no fucking way.'

Kennedy though, it was painfully clear she wasn't some one-night girl, despite the fact that she let me finger fuck her in an alley at a crowded party. She probably would have let me do more too. But that wasn't who she was, how she was. That was the product of what was obviously a shitty interaction with some rich asshole who wanted to fuck her and whose touch she wanted to forget about. It also likely had a fuckuva lot to do with the fact that, as her co-worker implied, she hadn't gotten any in a long time.

But in need of a fuck or not, she was quality.