2. Iron Jack
IRON JACK
She’s into it.
The bar roars around us as I drag Greta against my chest. I don’t get much city-girl action, and it’s fun watching this buttoned-up redhead let go a little. I’ve been thinking about her since she showed up a few months ago to insert her family into club business.
And here she is again.
She tastes like bourbon and cherries, a combination I can get behind.
But then there’s the tang of…blood?
I back off her, pressing my hand to my lips. Yup, blood. The city siren has bitten me.
The bar goes quiet as I casually pick up a napkin from a stack on the bar and wipe my mouth.
Greta’s breathing hard, almost as though she’s as shocked as I am that she did it.
“I think you have potential as an ol’ lady,” I tell her. Some of the Wild Hair women gasp. I know. I’ve never said it to another soul. Most of them took a shot at the title.
Greta’s face mottles red. “I’m only thirty!”
This gets a laugh from the bar.
“An ol’ lady in a motorcycle club is a member’s woman,” I explain.
This seems to make things worse. She presses her hands against my chest so she can wiggle backwards and away.
Naw. I grab her hips and pull her back.
She smacks my shoulder. “Stop it! I’m not interested in being anyone’s ol’ lady! Your behavior is vile!”
Betz stands next to me, and she laughs louder than anybody. She’s the ol’ lady of our club enforcer, Two-Shit. “Hear that, everybody?” she calls out. “We’re vile.”
I grasp Greta’s thighs, just above her knees, to hold her in place. The denim of her jeans is soft, probably designer. “Didn’t seem like you thought I was vile a second ago.”
She leans away from me as far as she can get, propping herself up on her hands. I like this position, her rather impressive rack thrust toward me in a fuzzy red sweater.
“You surprised me!” she cries. “Now back off me, you brute!”
I decide a strategic retreat is probably called for and take a step away, but not far enough that she can easily leave her spot on the bar.
I like looking at her there. Her hair is wild, probably the reddest she can get in the corporate world without someone calling her out.
It has a gold sparkle to it. I fully intend to see it spread over my pillow.
But she’ll be a tougher nut to crack than a typical club bunny. She has to put up a fight to hold on to the image she has of herself. Professional. Aloof. In control.
I’ve only kissed her once, and I already know she’s none of those things. It’s an act as fake as Diesel’s chair fight with Chain. Inside this woman is the beating heart of an outlaw.
It’s not surprising. She’s Diesel and Merrick’s sister after all.
Greta manages to get her knee lifted and pushes her red stiletto heel against my belly. The sharp bottom presses into my skin, but I don’t flinch. It will do less damage than the Bowie knife a member of the Kin shanked into me when I was sixteen.
In fact, this is a new side of her to admire.
She tries to push me back, thinking I’ll retreat from the sharp end of her shoe. But I encircle her slender ankle with my fingers. I’d like to see her in these heels later, and nothing else.
I fully intend to make that happen.
“Let go of me! Good grief!” She pulls her foot away, but the shoe remains in my hand.
Another cheer goes up in the bar. “She’s a goddamn Cinderella!” someone shouts.
Betz elbows me. “All right, Prince Charming. We see how it is. You want me to stick her in a flour sack and drop her off in your room at the club?” She eyeballs Greta for size. “I can probably take her on my own.”
That gets her. Greta yanks off her second shoe, aiming the stiletto at Betz. “I can fight you. I take kickboxing in the city!”
The bar rocks with “ooooooo” and laughter.
Betz nods at me with a gleam in her eye. She’s got a plan. I don’t even have to be part of it.
It’s good to have a club at your back.
“All right, miss fire head,” Betz says. “You’re here to spy, right?
” When Greta doesn’t answer, Betz goes on.
“We all know your big galoot of an uncle sent ya. And we all know your brothers cleared out your husband for being a putz. So you’re single, and Iron Jack wants you, and you want to tattle on the club. We can help each other.”
Greta’s gaze flits between me and Betz. “Are you suggesting I have sex with him for news on the club?”
Betz shrugs. “We’ve had worse offers.” She lets out a long sigh, which is not a Betz sound at all. She’s about to work an angle.
I have to fight not to smile.
“All right, miss paint-your-hair-with-lipstick, you’re right.
You’re too much of a ninny to make it at our clubhouse for an hour, much less, say, a week, to get your information.
” She peers up at me. “Come on, Iron Jack. I saw a chick by the pool table who looks like she could suck the stripes off a straw.”
Greta shakes her shoe. “Wait. Are you saying I can stay at your club for a week? Like at the clubhouse? Meals? Meetings? Everything?”
“Naw,” Betz says. “You’re too soft to survive.” She pulls on my arm. “Come on, let’s go introduce you to that pony show of a girl.”
“Hold up.” Greta shoves her shoe back on her foot. “I can take it. I can live in the club for a week. I’m tougher than I look.”
Betz squints her eyes. “You going to have relations with our president?”
I have to hold back my choking laugh.
“Are you his pimp? Can’t he get his own girls?” She side-eyes me.
“Iron Jack can have pretty much anybody he wants.” Betz shakes her head. “But for some reason I can’t even fathom, he wants you.”
“Oh.” Greta fiddles with the hem of her sweater. “Well, I’m not, uh, not on the market. I just, uh, got out of a thing, and I’m not interested in getting into another, uh, thing.”
“We all know about your deadbeat ex,” Betz says. “And Iron Jack is not one for forcing himself on a woman.”
Greta’s face pops up at that. “The last five minutes notwithstanding?”
Betz shrugs. “He just showed you the mating call of the Wild Hair. But don’t worry. You’ll have your own room at the club.”
“With a lock?”
“With a lock.”
Greta looks up at me again, and I already know how this story is going to end. With her in my bed, willingly riding my cock and shouting my name.
“Okay,” Greta says. “But I want access. Anywhere he goes,” she points a finger at me. “I go.”
“Oh, we’re counting on it,” Betz says.
“One week,” Greta says. “Then I have to go home to my son. He starts school again, and his dad won’t do anything right.”
“One week,” Betz says. “If you make it that long.”
“Oh, I will.” Greta sits up straight. “And if I see anything that I don’t like, I will be telling Sherman about it.” She glances back at her brothers. “He’ll interfere in a big way then.”
Merrick nonchalantly dries the same glass he’s been holding since I dumped his sister on the bar. Diesel pulls the ice bag off his crotch and drops it into the trash.
I lift the second shoe I’m still carrying. “May I?”
She holds my gaze a minute, as if she already knows she’s going to lose this battle. “Of course.”
I caress the back of her naked ankle as I angle the shoe onto her scarlet-painted toes. “It fits,” I say with a grin.
“Of course it does,” she says. “It’s my shoe.”
“So was Cinderella’s,” I say. “And I do believe in the end—”
“They live happily ever after?” she finishes.
I lean in close to her ear. “He fucks her so hard the entire castle hears her cries.”
And of course, I totally notice how hard she shivers.