And you would know it from her temper. That’s as explosive as it comes and would make many Italian nonnas blush for its intensity.
Alice is the Sarge of Rogue Angels MC and she’s perfectly suited for the role.
Even as she lay in my arms bleeding, and I was doing all I could to stop all that bleeding with my bare hands, she was barking orders at the rest of the Angels stuck in the shootout with us. Telling them to keep fighting, that help was coming and that none of them better give up or back down, or else. I guess none of them wanted to find out what theor elseshe was talking about entailed. And frankly neither did I.
She almost died that day. And I may have saved her life, but she’s not exactly giving me the time of day these days.
I came to the Rogue Angels MC clubhouse this morning anyway. On the off chance that today would be the day that she did.
Or just to look at her, frankly. That’s enough to chase most of my black thoughts away, even if just for a little while. I fucked up so many things in my life, but saving her was the one purely good thing I’ve done. And I need to be reminded of that when the black spiral of my nightmares and regrets gets too dark.
Plus, she’s a challenge. A chase. And I love those. I’ve gotten plenty of girls to be with me, even when they had no intention ofdoing it. She might be the most glacial of them all. but she’ll be mine all the same.
Trouble is, she’s been stuck in some very important meeting all morning. So I’ve been forced to sit with Zane, whose biker name is Unholy. That’s about as much as he’s told me in the last two hours, while I watched him down shot after shot of bourbon, which didn’t seem to have any effect on him at all. I’m on my third bottle of Sprite, but I’m about to join him with the shots if Alice doesn’t show up soon.
The club girls have been hovering too, but keeping their distance since neither Zane or me showed much interest in their advances. One of them is trying to sit in my lap as the back door of the clubhouse bar opens and Alice comes out, her long platinum blonde braid leaving a streak of shiny pale gold in her wake. She gives the girl trying to sit in my lap an annoyed glance, transfers it to me, but then focuses her pretty, sky-blue eyes on Zane as she comes over.
Damn my rotten luck. The last thing I needed was for her to see me anywhere near another woman.
“Hi, Bianca,” I tell her once she’s within earshot. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
The look she gives me is definitely annoyed, no matter how much I want to see nicer things in it. I did save her life, so she can’t exactly tell me to stop bothering her. But she’d like to. I can sense that too.
“Hi, Nico,” she says breathlessly. “Can you give us a minute? I need to speak to Zane in private.”
“Sure thing,” I say, grab my bottle of Sprite, ignore the club girl who doesn’t know what to do with herself now, and stand up.
The girl trails behind me like a veil as I walk to the opposite side of the bar—far enough to give Alice the privacy she asked for, but close enough to watch her beautiful face as she has hertalk with Zane. The girl gives up on me after I ignore her more completely than I ignore the invisible air in the room.
Zane seems a little more talkative with Alice, but not much. And that darkness on his rugged, tattooed face seems to grow deeper and deeper.
She’s explaining something to him, her chest rising and falling fast as though she’s in a hurry to make him understand something. It seems like it’s something she’d rather not be talking about.
Zane suddenly slams his shot glass against the table and glares at her.
“And you thought you’d ask me, did you?” he says loud enough for me to hear clearly.
She nods, glaring right back at him. Rogue, Blade and the rest of the top dogs of the MC have come out of the back room now too. They’re hanging back, but watching this exchange as closely as I am.
Alice says something else to Zane and it makes his face positively crackle with darkness. He stands up, towering over her. She’s only about five foot four and he’s gotta be at least a foot taller. To her credit, she doesn’t even flinch. But I’m already on my way to protect her, should she need it.
“And, what, you’re asking me along since I’ve already killed one priest?” Zane hisses at her. “So what’s killing another for me, is that it?”
Killed a priest? Now I get why he’s so dark and brooding all the time. That’s like worse than a mortal sin, I think.
“You should back down now, big guy,” I tell him just as Rogue says, “I’m sure that’s not what Alice meant, Zane.”
Alice just looks annoyed and Zane is closing and opening his fists like he doesn’t know who to use them on first.
“Sure she didn’t,” Zane finally snaps, answering Rogue.
Then he gives all of us a dark look and storms away, slamming the clubhouse door behind him.
“He’ll calm down,” Rogue says to Alice, and the rest of the execs tell her pretty much the same thing.
She shrugs, glances at all of them, probably sees the same pity and concern in their eyes I do, then turns to me.
“You wanted to see me?” she asks.
