I made a show of irritation as I slipped down the hall and into my room, but I didn’t know if he bought it. Rummaging through my suitcases, I realized his request for jeans and a T-shirt wasn’t going to be so easy to fulfill. I had a couple of pairs of jeans, but they weren’t exactly the working type. Regardless, they’d have to do.
I tossed my dress aside and slid into them as I considered the possibilities for my escape. I’d have to leave everything behind, but it wouldn’t be the first time. Grabbing the only thing that mattered—my mother’s hag stone—I snuck it into my pocket and threw on a white tank top.
Before I could think of anything else I might need, Huck appeared in the doorway, his eyes moving over me with lazy scrutiny. I couldn’t read his expression, and that irritated me.
“This is all I have,” I muttered. “Take it or leave it.”
“Fine,” he grumbled. “Get your ass in the truck.”
THE SHOP WAS BUZZING WITH activity when we arrived twenty minutes later than what was typical for me. I owned the joint, but it didn’t mean I skipped out whenever I felt like it. I showed up and punched my timecard every day like the rest of the guys. If being in prison had taught me anything, it was consistency.
The first couple of years after I got out, I couldn’t bend or break the structure that had been ingrained into me. For thirteen years, I’d lived and breathed by their rules. It never occurred to me there was any other way until Lucian made a point to tell me it was okay if I didn’t get up every morning at five. The smallest decisions were the hardest ones. What to eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. How to spend my downtime. Being free wasn’t as easy as I’d anticipated when I was still caged inside. One day, I ran into a guy I knew from prison, and even though I’d never spoken to him, he seemed to recognize the war in my eyes. He told me about his club, the Beards of War, and invited me to check it out sometime. They were men like me. The misfits, the condemned. They took me in, and I found my place in this world.
Lucian helped me figure out what the fuck I wanted to do with my life, and now, here I was, five years later, free as a bird with a little Birdie in tow. As I paraded her through the shop, all the tools paused, and every set of eyes turned to examine her.
I knew bringing her here wasn’t my best idea, but I didn’t know it would make me want to murder every one of my employees. Birdie took their gawking in stride, ignoring it completely. She wasn’t a stranger to the wandering eyes, or the entitlement men felt when they looked at her. Everyone wanted something. And for the first time since I’d known her, it really hit me how fucked up that was.
“Here.” I led her into the office and grabbed a spare work shirt off the rack. “Put this on.”
She eyeballed the blue material with apprehension. “Do I have to?”
“Yes,” I gritted out. “I’m putting you to work today. Wouldn’t want to ruin that pretty white shirt of yours.”
She rolled her eyes, the way she usually did when something didn’t go her way. Truthfully, the shirt was mostly for safety reasons. I didn’t want her getting burned or scratched or anything else, considering she’d had enough of that to last her a lifetime already. But I also didn’t need the guys in the shop trying to look down her top every time she bent over.
“I bet you just love this, don’t you?” She groaned as she slipped the shirt on over her tank top.
“Bossing you around?” I smirked.
Her eyes flared. The conversation should have stopped there, but she started it.
“Trust me, you’d know when I was bossing you around,” I added.
Pink crept into her cheeks, and my cock began to swell again. I didn’t think it was possible, considering I’d practically rubbed it raw in the shower this morning, but there it was, that hunger I couldn’t satiate. Like any man, I thought about sex, but I always considered myself too fucked up to share something like that with someone. During most of the years when I would have learned how to navigate relationships and the like, I’d spent in prison with a bunch of other savages. Emotions and women were too complicated a subject for me to ever figure out, so it was just easier to watch porn and pretend I was content with my hand. When that didn’t work, Kylie was always happy to provide some pain. And the pain made everything better, at least for a little while.