Chapter 20
“Technically, you can’t know anything,”Willa said. “You’re not an Old Lady, and only Old Ladies are privy to information about the club. And even then, you’ll never know as much as you want.”
“I don’t belong here,” I murmured. “Do I?”
“That depends,” Logan said slowly. “Do you want to be here?”
I looked at Bones again. I watched him laugh and joke with his brothers. He made my stomach flip with lust, but what the hell was I doing?
“My head says no, I shouldn’t be here. But my body…” I sighed.
“Yeah.” Logan nodded. “I get it. I so get it.”
“Doc really should be the one to talk to you,” Willa said.
My attention shifted to her. “Doc? Why?”
“Because she’s like you. She comes from money. She’s from the opposite side of the tracks, but she fell in love with Boxer anyway. And she stayed.”
“But she’s not here. You two are. And I need…I don’t know. I need insight. I need to know I’m not completely crazy to even entertain this idea.”
“You take this one,” Logan said to Willa. “You’ve been around longer.”
“By like, only a few months,” Willa said. “This is really something for Mia or Darcy to talk about.”
“They’re not here,” Logan said. “Tick tock.”
“Fine,” Willa said with a sigh. “The men in this club…they’re loyal and protective. They want families. And there isn’t anything they wouldn’t do for each other or for their women and kids. But they also live life in the gray area.”
“I gathered that,” I drawled. “The fact that he carries a pistol and came to my place tonight with raw knuckles kind of gave it away.”
“It used to be that Old Ladies weren’t involved in club business at all,” Willa continued slowly. “We didn’t know what the club was doing, like, in any way. It was a way to protect us in case…in case things went south.”
“Okay,” I said with a nod. “That makes sense. I guess.”
Willa looked at the men who were busy talking and not paying us any attention. “They didn’t tell us so we couldn’t testify against them, if it came to that.”
I blinked. “Wait, are you saying they’re involved in?—”
“Not anymore,” Willa hastened to say. “The club was involved in some bad stuff, but they’re not anymore. They’re moving in a different direction.”
“That doesn’t ease my fears,” I said. “It just makes it sound like they moved from morally black to morally gray.”
“I get it,” Logan said. “It was hard for me to wrap my brain around it as well.”
“So how did you?” I asked.
“I chose to focus on how Smoke treated me and how he made me feel over anything else,” Logan explained. “It’s not easy. Choosing to be with a man like Smoke. I didn’t grow up in this world. It was like traveling to a foreign country where I didn’t speak the language. It had me questioning what I was doing several times. On paper, my ex was the guy. He checked all the boxes. He said the right things, knew the right people. But in the end, he was a piece of shit.”
I knew what that was like. Being with the right man. And when the chips were down, he’d left me.
“These men won’t lie to you,” Willa said. “They’re going to be evasive; they’re not going to include you in what’s going on with the club. That’s just how it’s been done for as long as anyone can remember. But with them, what you see is what you get. Bones spending time with you the way he is…it matters. It means something. And if you let it, it can be real.”
“Things are changing, though,” Logan said. “With the club, I mean.”
“How so?” I asked, intrigued even though I knew I should run far, far away.
“The club has moved in a different direction, so how they treat the Old Ladies has changed too. Not a lot. I mean, they don’t run business ideas by us. We’re still not included in that kind of stuff…but recently, when things affect the entire club, we’ve all been informed. We’re a family and we operate like a family business.”
I took a sip of water to bathe my parched throat.
“But if you’re not an Old Lady, things are buttoned up even tighter. So where you are in your relationship with Bones…you won’t know anything because he’s not allowed to discuss it with you. Hell, Duke doesn’t discuss stuff with me either, but sometimes he can and then I’ll know.”
Logan nodded. “It’s the same with Smoke.”
“It’s like the mafia,” I murmured. “They keep their women out of it.”
“Yes,” Willa agreed.
“So, Bones won’t ever tell me anything. Not unless I become an Old Lady.”
“And there’s no guarantee that he will then, either,” Logan said.
“But there’s more of a chance that he could if you were his Old Lady,” Willa said.
“It sounds complicated,” I stated.
“It’s not. It’s a trust thing,” Willa said. “He’s not gonna tell a woman who’s not committed to him and his way of life if she’s going to bail.”
“I see,” I said slowly. I was turning over their words, trying to compute them.
“And you’re not all-in because you’re not sure about Bones and the club,” Logan said.
“I’m not all-in because this will affect my life in ways I can’t even fathom. I don’t do things like this. I’ve never done anything like this in my life.”
“Anything like what?” Willa asked. “Spend time with gutter trash?”
I flinched. “No. I didn’t mean it that way. Not even a little bit. But you’ve got to understand…my world is tuxedos and trust funds, glitz and galas…not guns and bloody knuckles.”
“Your world sounds cold,” Willa said. “No offense.”
“None taken. I just…how do I even explain this? I’ve always done the right thing.”
“How’s that worked out for you?” Logan asked.
“I’m alone and unhappy,” I said quietly.
“It’s hard,” Logan said, shooting me a smile of commiseration. “I’ve been where you’ve been. I’ve had to leap without looking. It was the best thing I ever did, though. I’d do it all over again.”
Bones slapped Raze on the back and then he began to walk toward us.
“Ladies,” Bones greeted. “What are you talking about?”
Logan and Willa were awkwardly silent, and I jumped in with a smile. “The wedding. I asked what the heck I’m supposed to wear to a biker wedding.”
“I told her something in leather,” Willa said, picking up what I’d laid down.
“With a rockabilly hairstyle. Like a pinup girl,” Logan added.
“Please God, tell me this is true,” Bones said.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I said with a laugh.
He held out his hand to me and helped me stand. “I’m gonna take Hayden and show her around.”
“Show me around? It’s dark,” I stated.
“Trust me,” Bones said.
“Whew, I know what that look means,” Willa said with a laugh.
“You know nothing,” I said to her.
“Hmm.” She rubbed her belly. “How do you think this happened? Just be careful, that’s all I’m saying.”
I groaned. “Let’s go.”
Bones escorted me away from the bonfire and party.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“The club bought the land behind the clubhouse with the intention of expanding,” he explained, his hand clasping mine. “I’d like to show you what the future holds. The clubhouse didn’t have enough space for all of us. Not to mention when the Idaho boys come down to visit, quarters are tight.”
“Idaho boys?”
“There’s a Tarnished Angels chapter in Coeur d’Alene,” he explained. “Anyway, they visit us down here from time to time and there just wasn’t enough space for everyone. So, we built some tiny homes.”
“Where?” I asked.
“Just up here. We wanted to keep them close to the main clubhouse, but at enough of a distance so that we’re not all on top of each other.”
He stopped and gestured to several tiny homes that looked newly completed. “We have more land that way.” He pointed. “And that’s our private shooting range.”
“You have a shooting range?” I asked in surprise.
He gave me a look. “Where do you think Willa learned to shoot?”
“Oh,” I said quietly.
“I could teach you. If you wanted. Get you comfortable with a pistol.”
I bit my lip. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “The Old Ladies have competitions. It’s fun, actually.”
“Sounds fun,” I admitted.
“So, you’ll learn how to shoot a pistol?”
I nodded. “It’s not completely foreign to me.”
“Right. Your dad, the duck hunter.”
“Yeah.” I looked at him. “I appreciate you bringing me to the clubhouse and everything, but this isn’t what I had in mind.”
“What did you have in mind?”
“I don’t know. I just—never mind.”
“Tell me.” His hands found my hips and he pulled me toward him.
“I thought you’d take me around town on your bike, show me where you hang out.”
“This is where I hang out.”
“Isn’t there like, a biker bar or something you could show me?”
He laughed. “What, like the one Arnie walks into at the beginning of Terminator 2? That kind of biker bar?”
“Yes. Exactly like that. Don’t laugh at me.”
“I’m not. I swear I’m not.”
“I’m serious, Bones. You want me to be in your world. So show me a biker bar.”
“First of all, you being in my world doesn’t mean you have to hang out in a biker bar. I don’t even hang out in biker bars.”
“You really don’t?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
He sighed.
“Where did you go to pick up women?” I prodded.
“Yeah, like hell I’m actually having that conversation with you.”
“Tell me,” I said.
“Well, I picked up a woman at Chaos once.”
I pressed my hand to his chest and attempted to push him away, but that only made him tighten his arms around me.
“You tried to pick me up. It didn’t work that well,” I quipped.
“Where are you standing right now?” he asked.
“In your arms. At your clubhouse.”
“Then it worked pretty damn well.”
“I approached you that night.”
“Yeah. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t aware of you before then.”
“Wait, what?” I pulled back just enough so that I could stare up at him. The flames of the bonfire danced in his eyes.
“You think if you hadn’t approached me, I wouldn’t have approached you?”
“You called me jailbait the first time we met.”
“Of course. How else was I going to get you to show me your ID so I could get your name,” he said with a slow smile.
My entire body softened, and his hand wormed its way down from the small of my back to the curve of my ass. He pulled me against him, showing me how much he wanted me.
“I’m not asking for you to meet me halfway,” he said as he stared down at me. “I know you’re not ready for halfway. But maybe a quarter of the way?”
“What does a quarter of the way look like?”
“More nights like tonight,” he said.
“Which part?” I asked. “The dinner part, the fighting part, or the back of your motorcycle part?”
“All of it. And I like you on the back of my bike, Duchess.” He angled his head down.
“I liked being there,” I whispered just before his mouth covered mine.
We kissed in the darkness, the bonfire behind us, the stars above us, the budding promise of a future ahead of us.
“So tell me the truth,” I said against his lips.
“Hmm?”
“Are your biker parties always this tame?”
He cradled the back of my neck. “Truth?”
“Yes, the truth.”
Bones pulled back to stare down at me. “When it’s us single guys, no, it’s not always this tame.”
I swallowed. “Women with big hair, big tits, big attitude?”
“Yeah.”
“Have you…ah…been to one of those types of parties since we, you know, started this thing?”
“No.”
“I mean before we told each other we weren’t sleeping with other people.”
“The answer is still no,” he said.
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, seriously.
“But why?” I asked in confusion.
“Because I didn’t want anyone else after I met you.”
“Sentiment like that will ruin your street cred,” I joked lightly.
“Hayden,” he began.
“You just called me Hayden.”
“Because this is important, and I want you to hear me.”
“Okay, I’m listening.”
“I’ve got nothing to prove by hooking up with a bunch of women. I’ve been there. I’ve done that.”
“How great for you,” I said snarkily.
“Listen,” he said, not rising to the bait. “I’m not fucking around. I can’t get you out of my head. I can’t go five minutes without thinking about you. I don’t want anyone else. I don’t want to fuck anyone else. So until you’re ready to fuck me, I’ll use my hand and fantasize about you. Okay?”
“Okay.” I was glad he couldn’t see me blush. But I was blushing.
Hard.
I stood on my toes and sank my fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck. “Bones?”
“Yeah, Duchess?”
“I’m almost ready for that too.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
He brushed his lips across mine, sliding his tongue into my welcoming mouth. He kissed me until I was drugged with pleasure and my body wanted more.
“Hmm, I have a really good idea,” he said after he lifted his lips from mine.
“What?”
“I’m now the one holding out.”
“Huh?”
“We’re not crossing that line until you beg me for it.”
I let out a screech of outrage. “Beg you for it? What makes you think I’ll beg you for it?”
“Oh, Duchess.” He shook his head and gave me a wicked grin. “You begged me when I nearly had you splayed out on your dining room table. So I don’t think you’ll beg for it. I know you will.”
“Challenge accepted,” I said loftily, pushing away from his warm embrace. I trailed my hand softly down the front of his shirt to lazily glide against the fly of his jeans. I could feel the straining outline of him. “We’ll see who begs.”