West (The Henchmen MC 19)

There was a vibe to West.

Watching him from a few tables away, I found him easy with a smile, popular with the girls at the table, meaning there was likely a lot of charm under all those tattoos.

I liked a good charmer.

Under all that charm, though, there was also something darker. Something maybe a little violent.

It shouldn't have been hot.

It was, though.

And he was here with my brother to, what, vet him? Set up a new club chapter?

I didn't know a whole lot about outlaw bikers. My experience with bikers was of the weekend warrior sort. You know, long, scraggly-haired, hangover waistlines, ass-grabby hands.

The kind of men who likely hadn't been in a real fist fight since their schoolyard days thirty-something years before.

This guy? His hands were covered in scars. Even with tattoos over them, there was no mistaking their unique texture.

Rage shouldn't have been sexy.

But it was.

Maybe it was primal.

Some base, animal urge of mine to be close by men who could handle any threat that may arise.

Even if I was more than capable of handling most of them myself.

"What's the matter?" I asked when my friends got up from the table, moved over toward me, all of them ignoring the fact that the basketball dude behind me was getting a not-so-discreet hand-job by the brunette.

"Why are you sitting over here?" Sarah, a model-thin brunette with gray eyes, asked, sitting down across from me.

In her daily life, Sarah was a daycare worker who cleaned diapers and wiped noses and sang educational songs. It was why she'd been drawn to me when I sat down next to her at a bar one night. She was craving a little crazy in her very normal life.

In about three-years-time, she'd be married with a baby on the way, and I would be nothing more than a story she told at stuffy dinner parties where everyone ate off charcuterie boards and nursed one glass of wine because they 'had an early morning.'

I was okay with being that for her, with the knowledge that she was just a right-now friend. Most of my female friends seemed transitory, coming in my life when going through a crazy phase, then leaving when they decided to settle down, and be the good housewives that society still encouraged them to be.

Not that there was anything wrong with housewifery. I'd be a badass wife if I could ever find someone worth committing to. But I was pretty sure I would always be the wild mom, the one the PTA moms snubbed their noses at, the one whose kids were a handful, and didn't give a shit about popularity games.

"I'm just... observing," I explained, gaze landing again on West.

"Do you remember that guy you strung along for a couple weeks last summer?"

"You're going to need to be more specific," I reminded her with a smile.

"The one who managed to make every girl in a ten-mile radius flutter."

"Right. Chad. Or Chandler. Something with a C."

"Yeah," Laurie, a girl with arms that put some men's to shame, and long red hair, piped in. "Alexander. With a C," she said, shaking her head at me.

"What about him?" I asked, ignoring the underlying anger in Laurie's voice. I wasn't entirely sure why she decided to be part of our little group. She was the sort who always felt she was in competition with you over the hottest guy in any given room. Which made her think she and I were at odds. When, if she put the internalized misogyny aside for a little bit, she would realize it was ridiculous. If she wanted some guy, all she had to do was say so. To me, one was just as good as the last. She didn't call dibs on Alexander. So she couldn't rationally be all sore about me shacking up with him for a while. She was, though. Even after all this time.

"That new guy reminds me of him."

"A player," I concluded.

"No. It's not like that. More—I don't know. Is it cheesy to still use the term 'ladies man'?"

"Pretty cheesy, but I get what you mean."

He liked women.

Not just as an open mouth or spread legs.

But as actual human beings.

It was a welcome—and increasingly rare—quality in a man.

"He has sisters," I told them. "That's probably why. Huck told me to stay away from him."

"Which means you are going to do the exact opposite," Laurie said, tone disapproving. Whether that was because she just hated my headstrong-ness, or because she had a thing for my brother and was annoyed that I'd disobey him, was anyone's guess.

All his seriousness aside, Huck got his share of women. But he never put a hand on one of my girlfriends. No matter how much they threw themselves at him. God, I'd once had a friend that had snuck into his room after he passed out. And he'd woken up to her trying to go down on him. Needless to say, she wasn't a friend after that night. I could admire tenacity. But essentially sexually assaulting my brother was a big fucking no in my book.