“No.”
“I already found my ol’ lady.” He smirked at me and I scowled. “Gonna make her my woman no matter what it takes.”
“Does she know?” I replied dryly.
“Yeah.” He frowned like he wasn’t actually sure and I laughed. The laughter felt strange on my tongue and I cut it off sharply.
“Come back when you actually have a woman.”
The sound of Gauge’s booming voice filtered across the room and we both looked up. “I swear to God, Laney, you’re a goddamn pain in my ass. Just take it, take it all and leave me the fuck alone.” He threw a handful of cash in her face like she was trash, and I scowled.
Laney, Gauge’s daughter, swung back and slapped him across the face as hard as she could, and Gauge roared in anger.
“I hate you!” she screamed in his face, kicking him in the shin with her big black boots. “I hate you so much!”
“You’re a fucking cunt just like your mother was!” he yelled back at her.
“Eat shit and die, dick breath!” She scooped up the cash he’d thrown at her and stormed out of the room, and Gauge headed in the opposite direction.
I watched Jesse staring after her like a lovestruck puppy dog until she was out of sight. When he turned back to me, I cocked an eyebrow at him and he shrugged innocently.
“Oh yeah, he’ll kill you if you touch her.”
“He’ll come around,” he said with a grin.
“No, no he won’t. The thing with a man and his daughter is, is that she’s his, and only his. It takes balls bigger than you’ve got to step into his shoes and take his kid away. Even if they do hate the hell out of each other.”
Jesse stood up. “My balls are the size of soccer balls, brother. I’ve got it handled.”
“There’s a cream for that,” Casa joked as he sidled up to Jesse.
Jesse punched him in the arm and they both laughed and walked away.
Shaking my head after him, I stood up, more than ready to go to bed. I couldn’t think straight when I was so tired, and I needed to think straight right then. A loud banging on the front door of the clubhouse came, the sound of fists on the metal door ricocheting through the clubhouse. I ignored it, heading to the bar for a nightcap before I went and got some much needed sleep. One of the prospects must have opened it, though, and a commotion broke out at the entrance.
Fuck it, what did I care?
I took the whiskey from the clubslut and swallowed it down in one go before pulling out my smokes to light one. I turned at the sound of my name and saw Rider standing there with his arms folded across his chest and a frown on his face.
“Care to tell me what the fuck is going on?” he growled out. “And who the fuck this is?”
I opened my mouth to answer him when Penny shook out from the prospect’s grip and came toward me, her golden eyes sucking me in like they were a vortex.
“I need your help.” She said it like it was perfectly normal to come into the clubhouse of a rival club and ask for help from the man that had kidnapped and tortured you.
A man that was supposed to have killed you.
I’d let her walk away because she made the air I breathed clean again. Because it was the right thing to do. Because with Penny it wasn’t just her fear that turned me on, that made my dick hard and my heart pound.
It was her.
All of her.
And now she was here and everyone knew that I’d lied.
I was dead once Hardy saw her alive, and if I didn’t get her the fuck out of there, then so was she. I’d never get to say goodbye to Battle. And she’d never get to live the life she deserved.
And yet as she stood there, eyes blazing, chest heaving, and her hands on her hips as she stared at me expectantly, I found that I couldn’t say no to her.
