The bar explodes. I’m on my feet immediately, cheering, throwing my arms around Lena, nearly knocking Eli’s chair over. Noah lifts me an inch off the ground like we just won something real instead of a bar tab and eternal bragging rights.
Across the room, the Reapers react with groans and laughter, good-natured but loud. One of them claps slowly, exaggerated, like he’s impressed despite himself. I catch the movement but don’t look directly.
“Champions!” Noah yells.
I grab my beer and raise it high. “To trivia supremacy!”
“To Quiztopher Nolan!” Lena adds.
“And to Savannah knowing weird facts for no reason,” Eli says.
“Everything I know has a purpose,” I reply, laughing hard enough my cheeks hurt.
Behind me, I hear one of the bikers say, “We’ll get ’em next week.”
Another answers, “Hell yeah.”
TWO
LUCAS “LUCKY” KANE
I takea sip of my beer, leaned back against the bar at Perdition with my club brothers close by. Riot and Ghost are arguing quietly over a pool shot. Diesel’s perched on a stool, watching the table like he’s counting angles. Viper’s half listening, half scanning the room like he always does. It’s familiar. Steady. Exactly what I needed when I came back to Jackson.
I’ve been an Iron Reaper for a little over a year now. I joined when I got out of the Army and realized I needed something solid to keep me upright. Something that came with rules and consequences and people who noticed when you disappeared.
I joined the military when I was seventeen because a judge told me it was that or prison. No speeches. No sympathy. Just a choice laid out plain. Knowing I needed to get as far away from the shit life I was headed toward, I left Jackson and enlisted. I didn’t look back. Boot camp nearly broke me. It was a shock to the system. More structure than I’d ever known. Less room to run. At first, I fought it. Every rule. Every order. Every inch of control. I told myself if I bent, I’d snap. But I also knew ifI didn’t make it work, my life was already over. So I stopped pushing against the structure and let it hold me instead. Somewhere along the way, I stopped surviving and started thriving. The discipline stuck. The routine sank in. It gave me something I’d never had before. Stability.
When I came home, the club gave me that same sense of balance. Brotherhood. Accountability. A place where I didn’t have to explain why I needed things to stay steady. I take another drink and watch my brothers move around the table, feeling the weight of that choice I made at seventeen settle familiar in my chest. Some paths save you. Others just teach you how to stand once you get there.
“What the fuck are you doing over there? It’s your shot, golden boy,” Riot grumbles.
I give him a chin lift and a grin, set my beer on the rail, and step up to the table. I line up the shot, eyes moving over the felt as I decide where I want to send it. The room fades the way it always does when I focus.
Then I hear it.
A laugh behind me. Female. Loud without being careless.
I glance back over my shoulder, checking the room on instinct, even though I know better. It’s not her. Just a woman leaning into her friends, head tipped back, unbothered. It reminds me of the woman from Jake’s earlier tonight, the way her laugh cut through the bar like it belonged there.
I turn back to the table, jaw tightening, and take the shot. The ball sinks clean, but I’m left feeling empty.
“Nice shot,” a woman says, stepping into my space and sliding her hand down my arm like she’s already spent the night with me in her head.
She’s hot. The kind of woman I’d usually take into one of the back rooms, fuck the edge off, and leave sleeping while I got dressed and disappeared before sunrise. No names. No expectations. Just heat and release.
But tonight, I feel nothing. I’m not interested. I’ve had plenty of pussy over the years, plenty of bodies that filled a need and were forgotten just as fast. None of them ever held my attention longer than it took to get it out of my system and move on.
Whatever’s got under my skin tonight, it isn’t something I can fuck away. And that pisses me off more than I care to admit.
I step back, pulling my arm free. “Not tonight.”
“Aww, come on, baby.” She pouts, then runs both hands up my chest and hooks them around my neck, pressing her tits into me like pressure alone will change my mind. “I’m not wearing any panties, and my pussy’s dripping thinking about how your cock is gonna slide into me.”
She kisses my neck, tongue dragging over my skin. And my brain betrays me. I see the firecracker from Jake’s. Her grin. Her laugh. The way she challenged everyone in that bar without even trying. I picture her mouth on my neck instead. Her hands on me. Would she laugh when she kissed me? Would she push back the way she did all night?
My cock goes hard anyway, traitor that it is, and the woman pressed against me moans like she’s won something. Her hand slides over my jeans, palming my hard traitorous cock. “That’s it, baby,” she murmurs. “Get hard for me.” She grabs my hand,drags it up her thigh, and presses it between her legs. She’s wet but it does nothing for me.
I rip my hand away and peel her arms from my neck. “Get the fuck off of me.” I don’t wait for a response. I turn and head straight for the bathroom, shoving through the door and going to the sink. I scrub my hands. Once. Then again. Jesus. What the fuck is wrong with some of these women?
