Twenty-Eight
28
Salem
“I don’t understand why anyone would want to be called an ole lady,” I said as Pepper held up two different tops to me and studied each one.
“Because they’re stupid. But if you tell Goldie or Nina I said that, I will call you a liar,” she replied, then held up the see-through black top. “This one.”
I looked at the top doubtfully. “Is that going to fit my boobs? Also, why do I have to go? Can’t I just stay up here alone and read?”
The bikini she had picked for me was intimidating. I’d wore it to make her happy, but I was not going to take off the clothes I’d put on over it. Although the short red tennis-style skirt she’d chosen for me and this top wouldn’t do much to cover up the bikini. But the outfit was better than nothing.
“Oh, no. I’m invested in this. I may never date a biker, but you have history with Tex. You loved him before he became a part of this world. It’s different.”
I shook my head. “I don’t want Rome or Tex. He isn’t the same guy. I’m not the same girl.”
The image of Nixie’s perky, perfect young stripper body taunted me, souring my mood further.
Pepper shrugged. “Maybe. But the way Tex looks at you? In the thirteen years I’ve known him, I’ve never seen him look at a woman like that.”
She was seeing something that wasn’t there.
“I think he’s just curious about me. Not interested in the way you think. I’m old. He said so himself. I’m not the girl he loved anymore, if he actually loved her at all.”
Pepper tossed the shirt, skirt, and the bikini she’d chosen for me onto the bed. “We can agree to disagree. But while we are stuck here, humor me. Wear this and keep your hair down.”
I was beginning to realize telling Pepper Abe no wasn’t acceptable. She wouldn’t allow it. If I didn’t like her so much, I would be annoyed by that fact.
This wasn’t who I was. I didn’t put myself out there and try to draw attention.
My life had been comfortable and safe. Going to work, knowing that I had a dependable husband who loved me and accepted me with all my flaws, was my normal. I took it for granted. That was something I’d learned the hard way this past year.
Sure, Eamon hadn’t been rugged; hadn’t smelled like cigarettes, the outdoors, or leather; and hadn’t had tattoos and piercings, but he was handsome. He’d smelled like clean soap, had a smoothly shaved jawline with his hair trimmed every four weeks on schedule, and dressed in Ralph Lauren the majority of the time. I loved all those things about him. But that wasn’t where the guilt came seeping in through the crevices of my memories. It was that my heart never fluttered, it never raced, and there was never that excited knot in my stomach at the sight of him. His kisses never made me cling to him, panting and wild for more.
That was where my shame lay. And to make it all the worse, Eamon had always known it. I liked to pretend he didn’t. I had even convinced myself that I had hidden that from him. That he’d had no idea there was another who had caused those things in me that were now broken. His last words replaying in my head would forever haunt me. I’d never be able to shake them.
Pepper stepped in front of me, waving a hand. “Hello? Where did you go?”
I blinked, shaking my head as I pushed away all those heavy thoughts, and I looked at her. “Sorry. Did you ask me something?”
She studied me for a moment. “Yeah,” she replied. “Three times.”
“I, uh…I was thinking about before,” I admitted. “My life after Rome. Married and how different it all was. I’m not used to dressing to get someone’s attention. It…it isn’t me, and I don’t think I want Rome’s attention really.” Not that this was going to change anything anyway.
I just didn’t look forward to the humiliation of him ignoring me and letting naked young girls with tight bodies crawl all over him. Nina, Goldie, and Pepper were so sure he was going to see me and want me. This would be the embarrassing truth. I was not his type now. Why couldn’t they see that?
Pepper gave me a sympathetic smile and gently squeezed my arm. “I’ve never loved a man enough to marry him. So, I don’t know what it feels like to lose him. But you lost two men you loved in this life, and one is there for the taking, if you want him.”
I wanted to laugh. No, he wasn’t. He could spout that he had never forgotten me or that he saw me when he was screwing other women, but that wasn’t true.
I had been there when he walked out of my life. I was the one wrecked and lost. So completely lost. He had carried on with his life. Never looking back.
He might not have gotten my note with the address I had left him. I could believe that. But he had my number. I’d never changed it. In all these years, I’d kept the same one because, deep down, I held on to the fact that it was the only way he could find me. And that was just another one of my sins. Another piece of myself that I’d never given to Eamon.
Rome never called.
“I don’t see tonight going the way you do. You weren’t there for it all. How it ended. Rome couldn’t have loved me and ripped out my soul the way he did. But”—I smiled as brightly as I could—“I will go have a good time. This week has been one of the most traumatic I think I’ve ever experienced, and I’d like to not think about my dead boss being a drug trafficker or his lifeless body on the floor.” I paused and winced as the image came back with my words. I would never get over that scene. “Anyway, whew, I want to find an escape, but I’m under no illusion where Rome is concerned.”
Pepper smirked. “You say he isn’t the same guy you knew, yet you still call him by that name. Must be something there you see.”
She was right. Calling him Rome labeled him in my head as the boy I had loved with everything I had. The one I had thought loved me until he broke me. He wasn’t that boy. He was a very different man.
“It’s habit, what I know, but you’re right. He’s not Rome. He is Tex. The man he became. It’s time I call him that and let Rome go.”
Like I should have done a very long time ago. The way Eamon had deserved.
Pepper nodded at the clothes on the bed. “Get dressed. I have to go meet Micah in the library. He texted, and it’s insurance stuff about the bar. The walls with blood-splatter stains and bullet holes aren’t going to be cheap to replace. If I’m not back when you’re ready, just go on out back. Nina and Goldie will be out there, along with Dolly. Sit with them. They’ll have the ole ladies’ VIP spots under the gazebo beside the pool. The rest of the bitches don’t come around them and aren’t allowed in the pool until Dolly is done with it. Micah doesn’t want her having to swim in the same water as the club sluts and strippers.”
My eyebrows shot up. That was thoughtful of him. But then the man worshipped her. He rarely took his hands off her when she was with him. The way she would gaze up at him as if he were her sun made me envious. They loved each other in a way not many people found in life. At least not that I’d seen. It had always seemed like one loved more than the other.
She nodded at my surprised look. “Yep. And it’s been cleaned. He has a company come in and professionally clean it before she steps foot in it.” She shrugged. “We normally leave when the nudity starts. Their men go with them because it becomes a fuckfest out there. STD central.”
I shivered and scrunched my nose at the thought, and she laughed.
“I’m kidding. The girls all have to get tested monthly at the clubs they work at, and the men use protection. The only STD outbreak here I can ever remember was when Drifter—he lives in Ocala now and manages Devil’s, the strip club they own there. Anyway, he brought in this skank he’d met—I don’t know where from. I was a teen. I didn’t have all the details. But syphilis was running rampant around here. Sores on lips, genitals.” She shivered and grimaced. “Yeah, so after that, they set up rules and precautions. Still, Micah doesn’t want Dolly near them or anything that touched them. Them being the other females.”
Yeah, I really would rather stay in this room.
“We for sure get to leave before the pool orgy takes place?” I asked.
She laughed and nodded. “Yes. Promise. Micah, Brick, and Jars will come get us, and we will leave them all to it.”
I glanced back over at the bikini and outfit, then sighed. I could do this. I’d have fun. Enjoy female friendships. I’d not had many of those back in Boston. Mostly just wives of Eamon’s business partners, and we were never really that close. Especially since I was almost positive two of those wives had wanted in Eamon’s pants.
I can’t believe I’m going to a biker party.
Live a little, beautiful.
This is more living than I anticipated.
You’ll be fine. I always told you that I loved walking into a room, knowing my wife was the most stunning female there.
You were blinded by love.
No, Salem. You were.
I closed my eyes tightly, blocking out that internal dialogue. This was my imagination, dammit. Why did it have to turn on me like that?
My bikini no longer felt so revealing when I saw what Goldie and Nina were wearing. The evening was warmer than it had been, but there was still a little nip in the air. When the sun began to set, it started to cool down some. The pool was heated, but I still doubted I’d get in it.
Nina was climbing out of the hot tub, connected to the pool, with a cocktail in one hand and a cigarette in the other when she noticed me and waved me over. Her animal-print swimsuit consisted of some string up her butt and two triangles covering her nipples. Well, her vagina had a tiny part of fabric covering it, but that was about it. A diamond near her belly button caught some light, and I noticed it, realizing she had it pierced. There were a few small tattoos, but nothing like the men. She seemed to have no issue walking around without covering up in front of this crowd.
I barely glanced over at the fire, where the rest of the people seemed to be. Pepper had been right.
There was only Goldie in a metallic-gold bikini with a tad more fabric, but not much. She was sitting on the edge of the pool, letting her feet dangle in the water, holding a drink that looked exactly like Nina’s.
Dolly looked like a petite pinup model.
That isn’t at all intimidating , I thought sarcastically.
The hot-pink bikini she wore was by far the least revealing out of the three, although her boobs were bigger than the other two. She had them covered up for the most part. I had a feeling that was a Micah requirement. He was likely to murder any man who looked her way for longer than a second. Which had to be difficult for the other men because I was a heterosexual woman and I could admit that Dolly was hot.
She noticed me from the raft she was floating on in the water and waved at me. Her friendly smile instantly eased me. Pepper hadn’t returned to the room, and she wasn’t out here yet, it seemed.
“I made a pitcher of my margaritas!” Goldie called out. “Come get you a glass.”
Alcohol would be helpful. Especially if they pushed for me to get in the hot tub or pool. That would require I take off the clothing. Dolly made curves look sexy, but I wasn’t so sure I would do the same. I wasn’t overweight exactly, but my butt had always been an issue for me. I’d embraced my boobs when it was clear that boys—okay, fine, Rome—liked them. He’d liked them a lot back when I was young, of course. My bottom was also something he’d liked, but that had been the teenage version of it. There were dimples now—and not just the two on my lower back, right above it. There were a couple on it.
Why didn’t Pepper own a bathing suit that covered one’s entire ass?
Goldie had hopped up and was already pouring me a glass when I reached them. She held it out to me. “Warning: it is strong, but”—she nodded her head in the direction of the bonfire —“when they get rowdy, it is a requirement.”
I took the glass, ready to down it in hopes that it’d help boost my self-confidence enough for me to take off my clothing.
“Also, you look fucking hot,” Goldie added with a grin, her eyes darting back over toward the bonfire. “I have a hundy on Lick being the first one over here. Nina has a hundy on Tex.”
I bit back a groan. I felt like I was in a pageant that I had no chance of placing in, yet I had a cheering squad who was clueless to that fact. They’d both be let down. The brief glance I did, I saw no less than three topless females with bottoms on that had less fabric than Nina’s.
“I need a refill,” Nina said, holding out her glass, then looked at me. “Take off the clothes and get in. The pool water is warm enough, but the hot tub feels better.”
I dropped my gaze to the glass in my hand and figured I might as well get this one down and get a second. “Let me drink enough first,” I told her, then began to gulp. I stopped, realizing that Goldie hadn’t been joking. There was more tequila than mix in this margarita, and my eyes watered as I choked.
Goldie chuckled. “I warned you.”
“Please tell me you don’t need liquid courage to take off your clothes. If I had your tits and ass, I might strip down to nothing but what the strippers are wearing,” Nina informed me.
Goldie let out a bark of laughter. “I’d love to see that. Jars would leave a pile of dead bodies on the ground before he got close enough to cover you up.”
Nina smirked and turned to wiggle her butt at us, but I realized she was pointing at a tattoo, which had the Judgment logo from their vests and said Property of Jars just above where the swell of her bottom started. Wow. Okay then…she’d been marked permanently. On her skin. Claiming to be a man’s property. Why would she have done that?
“He had it put there. No one else is gonna be stupid enough to look,” she said, then strutted back over to the hot tub with her drink.
Goldie laughed and rolled her eyes.
“I take it, you don’t have a Property of Brick then?”
“Oh, yeah. I do,” she replied, then turned to show me.
There it was. Just like Nina’s, but with Brick’s name.
I swung my gaze over to Dolly, who was watching us with an amused look. She shook her head without me even asking.
“Micah doesn’t like the idea of me in pain,” she said with a small shrug.
“Correction,” Nina called out from the hot tub, “he said—and I quote—‘I won’t allow anything to mar Tink’s perfect skin. She’s mine. She wears my cut. But her sweet skin stays untouched.’”
Dolly’s cheeks pinkened, but the happiness that radiated from her was clear to anyone who looked at her.
“He had Tink tattooed over his heart instead,” Goldie added. “That’s his name for her, if you haven’t heard him call her that. Says she’s his brunette Tinker Bell or some weird shit.”
I took another drink, but this time with more caution, then asked, “Are you the only wives? I mean, are any of the other guys married?”
I hadn’t seen any other ole ladies, but that didn’t mean they didn’t exist. I hadn’t been here that long.
“Grinder was married, but his wife passed away a few years back. Anson”—she rolled her eyes—“he married one of the strippers, but their marriage is on the rocks, seeing as he can’t stop dipping his dick into other vaginas. I think she’s cheating on him too. My guess is, she got tired of it. But his mistake is that, unlike him, who just fucks for pleasure, she’s a woman, and hers is probably emotional too. I figure she’ll leave him soon enough for whoever she’s messing around with. Now, Anson may go kill him, but”—she shrugged—“she knew all this when she married him. He was a slut, and marriage did not change him. And of course Liam is married. Has a baby. But he doesn’t live at the club.”
I continued to sip, making each one longer until I finished it off. The slight buzz I already felt was reassuring. I was definitely more relaxed.
“You getting in now?” Nina asked me.
I thought about it and glanced at the group by the bonfire. I’d not scanned the area down there for Rome, and I wasn’t going to. I’d rather not know what he was doing or with whom. No one seemed to be paying any attention to us, so I figured now would be the time to ditch the clothes and hurry into the safety of the hot tub.
I held my glass out for more, and Goldie chuckled, picking up the pitcher and filling it.
“The hot tub will only heighten the buzz. Go slow this time.”
Right. I’d heard that before.
Taking a deep breath, I took one more drink, then set it down on the table beside me so I could take off the clothing that I’d not intended to rid myself of tonight. But if I didn’t, I had a feeling Nina would keep asking me to.
I pulled off the top first since it was see-through and not covering that much, then went to quickly tug the skirt down and step out of it before tossing it with the top onto a lounger. I was more relaxed with the tequila in my system, but I wasn’t completely comfortable with this yet. I felt like a spotlight was on me and everyone was looking at me. Which wasn’t the case at all. There were topless women down there, draping themselves all over the men.
“Damn, Pepper did good,” Goldie said, grinning.
“It doesn’t cover as much as I’m accustomed to,” I said, reaching for my drink and needing more.
“You’re at a biker party. There are topless strippers here. You gotta show ’em enough to get their attention, but stay classy, reminding them that you’re on a higher level,” Goldie told me and winked.
I looked over at the hot tub, wanting to go hide my body in the water now.
Nina waved me over, then went to light up another cigarette.
I took my glass and went over there while silently telling myself that no one was watching my butt jiggle or judging my body. That was all in my head.