“She don’t owe us shit,” I gritted out.
Gauge scowled at me. “You fucking high, brother?”
“He’s right,” Rider interjected. “Right now, we’re all keeping each other safe. She could have dropped us in it with her dad, but she didn’t. We oweherfor that.”
“Fine, well I’m still tapping that ass,” Gauge said, pulling out his cigars and lighting one. “She’s into me, so there ain’t nothing or no one can stop that from happening.”
“You ain’t fucking her,” Rider growled. “Jesus Christ, Gauge, can you stop thinking with your dick for a minute.”
“This is some bullshit,” Gauge replied with a shake of his head. “Gimme one good reason I can’t fuck her.”
“Because she’s been claimed,” Rider snapped.
“By who?” Gauge and I said at the same time.
I reached up and dragged my shades from my face, my nostrils flaring angrily.
How the fuck could she have been claimed? She’d been there all day.
Rider turned to me. “By you,” he said.
“What?” I gritted, glaring at him. “What the fuck are you talking about? I haven’t claimed her.”
“If you want her to live, you will.”
I scowled at him but he wasn’t backing down.
“If she’s your old lady, Razuuk can’t give her to anyone. And if she’s your old lady, Hardy can’t touch her either,” he said calmly.
“Find another way,” I growled.
He shook his head. “This is the only way, brother.”
This couldn’t be happening.
Not to me.
I didn’t want to be tied down.
I didn’t want a woman.
Especially not her.
She may have been beautiful and good, and pure in a way that I wanted to defile and own, but that didn’t mean I wanted her as my woman. I wasn’t the sort of man to ever have a woman—an old lady. Especially not one as innocent as her.
I’d ruin her, if I hadn’t already.
“Rider—” I started, but he put his hand on my shoulder and glared at me.
“There are worse things in this world than to have a beautiful woman in your bed and on your bike, brother. If you want to live, if you wantherto live—and it seems to me that you do—then this is what has to happen.” He patted my shoulder and stalked toward Charlie.
He wrapped his arms around her waist and tugged her face around so he could kiss her hard. Penny smiled as she watched them and continued to plate up the food for us all.
“He’s right,” Gauge said from next to me. “Never wanted to settle down before, but if I did, can’t imagine it would be such a bad thing with a woman like that.”
“Fuck off,” I grunted, and Gauge laughed and headed over to the barbeque, taking a plate of food from Penny.
I was a soldier, a warrior. I followed orders and the club was my life—not a wife and a family. I didn’t do happily-ever-afters, because in my world they didn’t exist.
