Sugar (The Henchmen MC 12)

I went to sleep a mix of orgasm-content, a bit lonely, and excited.

But where I would normally be excited about a bake-off with the girls, I knew that this time, it had nothing to do with them.

And everything to do with a biker who maybe, just maybe, as Jamie had said, was simply the right person at the right time."Earth to Peyton," Scotti said, throwing a plastic measuring spoon at me from across the island.

"Yeah, seriously," Lea added, parts of her dark hair white with flour from where Fee had thrown it at her. "What is up with the spacing out today?"

And then it happened.

Savea's poker face - or complete lack thereof - failed her yet again.

She didn't know as much as Jamie did. But she knew about Sugar. She knew he had been around every night for the past several nights. She knew that I had gone out drinking with him. And that I had cooked for him.

She knew things weren't normal.

"Uh-oh," Fee said, eyes twinkling. "Look at Savvs. She is trying to keep a secret from us," she informed the group of women.

"Don't pick on her," Dusty demanded, always trying to stand up for the underdog.

"I'm not picking on her," Fee insisted. "I just want to know what she knows. It's about Peyton, right?" she asked as Autumn caught my eyes from where she was placing Italian Wedding cookies onto a cookie sheet. I knew that look too. That was her upset look. Because she was used to always being the one in-the-know in my life. But since she had moved out, clearly Savvs and Jamie had gotten to be the ones who were the first to know everything. And that hurt her.

"I have nothing to say," Savvy said in a completely unconvincing tone, holding her flour-covered hands up defensively.

"I think you have a lot to say," Fee countered. "Did Peyton do something illegal again?"

"I am not a delinquent!" I insisted, but everyone just laughed at that.

"You have a colorful criminal record that says differently, hon," Helen said, giving me an affectionate one-armed squeeze as she moved past me.

"And it has been a whole three months since someone got a call from the police station," Scotti piped in. "That has to be a new record."

"She hasn't been getting into trouble," Savea insisted, always wanting to defend me... even when I was, indeed, in the wrong.

"What else could be such a secret then?" Fee wondered, tapping a wooden spoon against her thigh. "Did she get something else pierced?"

"Not that I know of."

"I'm as pierced as I am going to get," I informed them. They knew that much. I had told them all, in bright, vivid detail, all about the time I went to the tattoo shop to try to get my hood pierced, had gotten all naked and spread eagle, then chickened the hell out.

"You didn't fuck Brodie, did you?" Fee asked, giving me pleading eyes. "I know you've been flirting for months."

"I flirt with everyone," I insisted, feeling my stomach start to twist in knots as they were getting closer to the truth. To my side, I could see Jamie refilling my glass with more white wine. We knew what was coming. And we needed lubrication for it.

There was no way it wasn't coming out.

These women were too nosey, too demanding, too relentless.

They wouldn't stop until they got it out of one of us.

"So that's a no," Autumn said, small-eyeing me a bit, trying to read me. "If she'd fucked him, we would have heard dick measurements by now. And what his accent sounds like when he dirty talks."

"But it is a man," Helen decided, looking at me hard too. Never, not once, did so many people look at me like they were trying to see inside me. It was off-putting, to say the least.

"But since when are men ever a secret?" Lea asked, shaking her head.

"When they are more than just a good fuck and a juicy story," Helen supplied, always keen, always the first one to see underneath the bullshit.

"No way!" Fee said, turning to pin me with those green eyes of hers. "Do you... have... feelings for a man?"

"Who is he?" Autumn asked almost at the same time.

Even Dusty forgot how she normally wasn't one to pry, because her next words were, "This is so exciting. Where did you meet him?"

Ugh.

This was painful.

Excruciating, really.

Because, on one hand, I did want to dish. I wanted to bullshit and laugh with them, to share this with them, like I shared all my other conquests. But Sugar, I was starting to accept, was more than just a conquest to me.

We also couldn't forget the fact that I wasn't supposed to be involved with him. Because if the men found out, shit would hit the fan.

"Look," I said, shaking my head, trying to head this off before it got out of control. "It's nothing. Really. I just have a new... fuck buddy situation. That's all. And to answer your question," I said, turning to Dusty, "I gave him a ride home."