Chapter 21
Pyre
Yawning, I walked into Rae’s kitchen the next morning. I frowned over at the dining room. It was spotless. “I would’ve cleaned that up.” I’d meant to, but the nap we’d taken had turned into a full night of sleep.
I glanced over to where I heard her moving around near the stove and froze as she turned to me with a huge plate of food. There were eggs, fried potatoes, fruit, a salad, tomatoes, to name a few. My brows drew together in confusion. Who ate salads in the morning? Or at all?
There was yogurt and pancakes, as well as a few other things I didn’t recognize. Some kind of seeds. This was the weirdest plate of food I’d seen. But the quantity was what I was more used to eating.
“That’s okay,” Rae said as she bent down and plopped the plate of food on the floor.
I watched in confusion and horror as her opossum brushed past me and made her way to the food. She used her pink little hands to grab one of the eggs and bring it to her mouth. Mine was hanging open as I watched the animal dig into a breakfast that would make a king happy.
“Penny helped me clean it up.”
She’d spoken of Penny. And of course I knew she had an opossum and had even seen her at the old folks’ home. But it was very different seeing the animal in her home, eating a breakfast I was a little envious of, and enjoying herself immensely. She was pretty cute, I had to admit. “Helped?”
Rae smiled. “She finished up dinner for us last night.”
My stomach let out a rumble so loud Rae’s eyebrows shot up. We’d skipped dinner. And I wasn’t a man who usually skipped a meal.
“Here.” She turned back to the stove and began scooping food on a plate.
I watched in dismay as she handed me a plate with two fried eggs, a small scoop of potatoes, and some fruit. “Thank you, Little Reaper.”
The last fucking thing I was going to do was complain about a damn thing.
She’d woken up early and made breakfast. Maybe it was for her pet, but she was including me in it, so I was happy with that.
Still, I wondered what I’d have to do to earn a breakfast like Penny got.
Not that I hadn’t tempered my appetite a bit the couple times we’d eaten together so far.
So how was she supposed to know how much I actually ate?
Though the way my stomach was growling, I was tempted to fight the opossum for her plate.
I wondered whether those long claws and sharp teeth of hers were for show or if she’d tear me up to keep her food? I’d even take the damn salad at this point.
We carried our plates over to the table and sat down together. Rae took the ketchup that was on the table, messed with it, then applied a small dab to her potatoes while I started eating. She looked up. “Did you sleep-” She broke off, her eyes widening. A comical look of shock spread over her face.
I took the last bite of fruit and set my fork down. “What’s wrong?”
“You…” She blinked at my empty plate, then looked at her own. “How did you eat all that so fast?”
Both eggs had gone into my mouth at once. Then a couple fast forkfuls of potatoes, and last the fruit. It’d taken her a minute to open the new bottle of ketchup, but it hadn’t been very long. “Practice,” I told her with a grin. “A lot of times in the military you need to be able to eat quickly.”
“Yes, but…” She looked up at my face. “Are you still hungry?”
I hesitated and her eyes narrowed. I didn’t want to offend her.
“You haven’t eaten all that much on our dates, even when you cooked,” she pointed out.
My lips quirked upward. “I ate again afterward.”
She looked surprised. “Why?”
I sighed. “Years ago, Cypher gave me a piece of advice. I’ve followed it ever since. He told me to wait a while before I let women see how much food I tend to eat.”
“I-is it that much?”
Shrugging, I nodded. “My mom always said I was going to eat us out of house and home.”
“How much exactly do you eat?” she asked, a fascinated look crossing her face. “Use this breakfast as an example.”
“Eight eggs, that entire skillet of fried potatoes, a loaf of bread for toast, and about six pancakes, if they’re the size of the plate.”
Her mouth was hanging open.
“And then I’ll be ready for lunch in a few hours.”
“That’s- You have a big appetite,” she said with an incredulous laugh. “I can make you more-”
I reached out, putting my hand on her arm as she started to rise and stopping her. “Please. Eat your breakfast. I can make it, if you don’t mind that I use your kitchen?”
“Of course not,” she said.
She watched as I walked over to the fridge and pulled out a carton of eggs. She had about five cartons in there and now I knew it was for Penny because she had only taken one for her own breakfast.
“I’ll pick you up some groceries later today,” I told her.
“Oh, you don’t have to do that.”
Grinning at her over my shoulder, I said, “Yeah, I do. If I stay very long, then you’ll be searching your pantry for leftover crumbs.”
She searched my eyes, her own smile forming. “And are you planning to? Stay very long?”
“If you don’t kick my ass out, yeah.”
She picked up her fork and began to slowly eat instead of answering.
She didn’t seem to be in a hurry to get rid of me, which made me damn happy. A furry body brushed against my pant leg. Glancing down, I squatted and stroked a hand over Penny’s fur. It was softer than I would have expected.
“Oh, that’s wonderful.” I glanced up at Rae. “She doesn’t normally warm up to people so quickly. She must like your energy.”
I shrugged, gave Penny a scratch under the chin, then stood and washed my hands. “Animals are easier to understand than humans. It’s all body language.”
“You don’t seem to struggle to get along with people,” she pointed out.
“I have my moments. There’s a lot of time where I’d rather be alone than with other people.”
“I understand that completely. A lot of people think my job would be lonely. And…maybe it would be for most, but I don’t mind my own company.”
I cracked eggs into a skillet. “We tend to drift into jobs like that.”
She arched a brow at me in question.
“Introverts.”
She shook her head. “I’ve seen you with your brothers. With your family. The day of Brandon’s funeral, you were a rock for your cousin and his wife. I wouldn’t say you’re introverted.”
“I can be outgoing. Joke around. I get along with my brothers so much because they let me just be me. We all understand that each of us has some kind of…strange thing…we’re harboring.”
She cocked her head. “What strange thing is Warrant harboring?”
I snorted. “You mean besides the fact that he’s an asshole?” I said it with a grin because he would be the first to admit it. “He’s a fucking menace.”
“That’s…true,” she replied with a laugh. She turned fully toward me and leaned forward a bit. “I’m curious…”
“Yeah?”
“What’s Demo’s?”
I looked over at her in silence.
She shrugged. “He just seems like he’s carrying something…heavy.”
“You’re intuitive as hell, you know that?” I shook my head. “Demo’s story isn’t mine to tell, but you’re spot on. How did you even see that?”
She took a deep breath. “A lot of times those who work the hardest to make other people laugh seem to be hiding the most.”
I studied her. “You sound like you have experience with that.”
“I do. Someone I care deeply for does the same thing.”
My brow kicked up and I focused on flipping the eggs before I scorched them. Nothing worse than a scorched egg. They tasted like shit when that happened. I’d still eat them, but it wouldn’t be nearly as enjoyable. “Anyone I need to eliminate?”
She laughed. The sound was light and musical. It ended abruptly when she realized I wasn’t kidding. “One of my brothers. And no…I wouldn’t allow you to do anything to him.”
“Naw, family doesn’t go on my list.”
“Good to know.” She watched as I made up the rest of my breakfast then brought two plates back to the table. “It’s good that he has all of you to go to if he needs, or when.”
I nodded, scooping some eggs onto a piece of toast. “Cypher keeps a close eye on all of us, believe it or not.”
“So all of Warrant’s shenanigans?”
“Oh, he knows about them. But you have to let men blow off steam and he wasn’t off killing people, or getting into worse trouble, so Cypher doesn’t stop him. I suspect he tends to aim us to his own needs at times.”
“I bet Owen wishes he would. Stop them I mean.”
I chuckled. “Denison used to have weekly meetings with Cypher before he gave up and mostly let Warrant, and the rest of us, do whatever the fuck we wanted.”
She scoffed. “I’m surprised he tried to put a stop to it at all. He was as lazy as they came.”
“It was to try to save his sanity.” I was systematically eating, scooping eggs and potatoes up with the bread and my fork.
“What’s Torque’s deal?”
I paused and considered that. “You know what? He might be the only one of us who’s normal. Mostly. Other than the fact that he’s a murder machine.”
Her eyes widened. “A…what?”
“Kid’s fucking deadly,” I explained.
She smiled as though she thought I was joking. It disappeared when I just stared at her, deadpanned. “Oh…”
“You can ask them all for yourself one day.”
She let out a startled laugh. “You want me to ask your dangerous, often grumpy, biker brothers what their particular hang ups are? To their faces?”
I grinned. “It’ll be fun. In fact, I’m going to bring it up one of the trips we’re at the clubhouse.”
“Don’t you dare!”
Chuckling, I pointed my fork at her. “Oh, I’m absolutely doing it.
They deserve that shit. It’ll be hilarious.
It’s rare I get to put them on the fucking hot seat and I’m looking forward to it.
They’ll love the chance to roast each other in front of an audience.
No way they let each other turn it down. ”
She shook her head. “You’re something, you know that?”
“So I’ve been told.”
“I meant that in a good way.”
“That may be new.”
She laughed and picked up her plate, taking it into the kitchen.
“What do you want to do today?”
She came and sat back down. “You…want to spend the day with me?”
“Yeah. I sure as fuck don’t want to spend it with my brothers. And no one else is as much fun as you.”
She arched a brow, one of those secretive smiles playing over her lips. “I wouldn’t have guessed I was an overly fun person.”
“You hang out with old people and have a pet opossum. Devious old people at that. You’re fun as fuck.”
“Fun as…fuck,” she repeated with a shake of her head. Then her eyes heated as she tilted her head. “I might have a few ideas of what we can do.”
“Say no more.” I rose, took my plate to the sink, then came back and hauled her out of her seat and over my shoulder.
“Pyre! Put me down!”
“Nope. I enjoy carting you around, Little Reaper. I’m going to do it as often as I can.
” Striding out of the dining room, I grinned as she struggled against my grip.
She was definitely the perfect woman for me and I was going to spend the next couple hours showing her why she wasn’t going to want any other man after me.