Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Bri set her half-full pint glass of a pale ale on the table harder than necessary. “What the hell, girl? I was not expecting to come back upstairs to find Rage coming out of your bedroom and then find a discarded condom in the bathroom trash.”
On her right, Avery sucked in a breath so loudly, Lyric heard it over the DJ’s blaring music.
Flames flickered at Lyric’s cheeks. Now Bri and Avery knew. Great. “He left it out for you to see it?”
“No, he attempted to bury the evidence, but when I emptied the trash…” She shrugged and grinned. “Look, even without me seeing that, it was obvious what you two did. I had no idea you two were hooking up.”
“We’re not.”
Avery smacked her arm and squealed. “How have you kept this juicy piece of mandatory information from me?”
Bri ignored their club sister and shot Lyric a Sure, Jan look. “Really? I must be seeing things then. And really, he didn’t need to help you move in. You had like, maybe ten or fifteen boxes at the most. Our brothers were more than capable of carrying that shit upstairs.”
Avery bounced up and down on the vinyl booth seat. “Someone spill! Now!”
Her and Bri continued their discussion as if Avery wasn’t there. “He also helped Kyra and Zeke move into one of the cabins on the farm.”
Bri bugged her eyes out at Lyric. “Did you ever think it was because Zeke asked him? Did you ask Rage to help?”
“No.”
“So, he took it upon himself,” her new roommate confirmed.
That he did.
“What the fuck is going on? I need to know details. Now!” Avery demanded so loudly that heads at other tables actually turned their way.
Great. Now she was regretting going out with her club sisters.
Bri finally explained, “Lyric and Rage are fucking.”
“We’re not!” burst from Lyric.
“No? The excitement of helping you move made him shoot a load into a condom?”
Lyric covered her face, dropped her head forward, and groaned.
“Girl! I knew it! You finally got your cherry popped!” She pouted. “But you didn’t share.”
“Avery! Everyone here didn’t need to know that!” If her cheeks were on fire before, they just self-combusted.
Avery grinned. “No, but I did. So that’s your punishment for not telling your bestie.”
“Bri’s going to be my new bestie.”
“Whyyyyyyy?” Avery whined. “She’s the one who let your secret slip.”
“Okay, then neither of you will be. I’ll be posting my opening for a new best friend soon. You two need not apply.”
Bri snorted. “I have to admit, Rage is hot in a serial killer type of way.”
Lyric frowned. “What serial killers were hot?”
“Uh, Ted Bundy? There were others.”
This couldn’t be a serious conversation. “Rage isn’t a serial killer.”
“But I doubt he’d have any issue killing someone.” Bri took a long sip of her beer.
“Mmm hmm.” Avery leaned forward and stage whispered, “Maybe he already has.”
While Ash didn’t put up with any bullshit and could lose his shit easily, he usually had a good reason and she couldn’t imagine he would actually murder someone.
“Shouldn’t we be watching the guys on stage and not talking through the whole performance?” Lyric suggested. “They’re working far too hard for us to ignore their impressive work ethic.”
“My eyes aren’t connected to my mouth. I can watch and talk at the same time. See? I can even watch and use my mouth to drink at the same time.” She tipped her vodka cranberry to her lips and downed half of the overpriced drink.
Of course that same drink would’ve been free for them at The Iron Horse or Dirty Dick’s.
While the original plan had been to stay in and unpack, after how Ash had acted, she made it a point for her and Avery to actually follow through with her fake plans.
Only, she didn’t want to leave Bri out. In fact, if it hadn’t been a last minute decision to go, they would’ve invited all of their club sisters.
They’d have to get a group together and hit The Pink Pearl—a Blue Avengers MC affiliated strip club—again the next time another male revue was scheduled.
One reason that place was good for her and her sisters was it wasn’t seedy and the employees were mostly retired law enforcement officers.
Nothing bad happened there for good reason.
While their club brothers might not love the idea of going anywhere but a DAMC-owned property, the ladies sure would. When the sisterhood all got together to go out, they certainly liked to “raise the roof” wherever they went. But they tended not to tell the men where they were going.
None of them wanted to deal with the way they thought—wrongly, of course—they could control them using the excuse of “protection.” It was one thing to want to protect your family, quite another to want to control them. A fine line their guys loved to cross.
Avery bumped her shoulder against Lyric’s. “So spill. How was your first time?” She wiggled her eyebrows.
Should she admit it wasn’t her first time?
“Did he put some of that rage behind his hip action?” Bri asked with a laugh.
“I don’t want to discuss my sex life.”
“Whoa! A sex life?” Avery squealed.
“Shh.”
“The music here is at a decibel level that ensures we’ll be deaf in five years. No one can hear us.”
“Really?” Lyric leaned closer to the booth next to them and asked the ladies sitting there, “Can you hear us?”
The group all nodded and grinned. That didn’t help her flaming cheek situation.
She turned back to Avery. “See? Everyone now knows my business.”
“And that Rage gave you the business.” Avery shot her a toothy smile.
Lyric groaned, knowing they would only continue to bug the shit out of her until they got the info. “It was fine. It also wasn’t my first time.”
Avery’s mouth dropped open. “I think I’m going to be the one putting out the call for a new best friend. Who was your first? And when?”
“Ree.”
“Was it someone else? Did the last standing virgin in our sisterhood become a little ho?”
“Stop. And I wasn’t the last one.”
“Who else is left, then?” Bri asked.
“Umm.”
“Right!” Avery exclaimed. “You were the last holdout. You were too busy pining over that beast of a man for years!”
“Whelp, now she has him,” Bri announced.
“I do not have him. He’s not a trinket to be put on a shelf.”
Bri winked at her. “No, he is not.”
She threw up her hands. “Ugh! I am so done with this conversation. Can we either watch the men on stage or go home?”
Both Bri and Avery answered in unison, “No!”
“Plus, believe it or not, we have more privacy here than at home.”
Lyric’s head spun toward Bri. “What do you mean?
Bri shrugged. “I wouldn’t put it past that apartment being bugged. Remember, Diesel lived there for a short time with Jewel. I could see him bugging the place to keep track of her.”
“Holy shit! If it was and she found out…” Avery slashed her hand horizontally through the air. “He wouldn’t have had any nuts left to give them three daughters.”
All three of them laughed, but Lyric quickly sobered. “Okay, that’s creepy if that apartment is bugged. I’m asking Ash if it is.”
“He might not know,” Bri suggested.
“He’s the damn sergeant at arms. Of course he’d know,” Lyric told her. “If he doesn’t, I’ll have him ask his uncle.”
“Like they’d admit it if it was true,” Bri said dryly.
“Anyway, can we get back to Lyric getting her first taste of dick?” Avery asked.
“No,” Lyric answered. “There’s nothing left to talk about.”
“Yes, there is,” Bri insisted.
“I agree. How is he at eating pussy? How big is his dick? Did you have an orgasm?”
Lyric turned to Avery. “Do you really want to hear how the sex was with your cousin?”
“If it was anyone but you, no. But if he sucked, I want to one hundred percent judge the big lummox.”
Lyric laughed. “You’re terrible.”
“Was he?”
“No. And that’s all I’m saying. Let’s move on.”
Luckily, they finally let it drop, but Lyric had no doubt it would be brought up again in the near future. And not just once, either.
After convincing both Bri and Avery not to tell anyone else about what happened between her and Ash, she was relieved when the other two women got caught up in the action when a hot, tattooed dancer did a smooth slide across the stage, then began to dance to Michael Jackson’s Smooth Criminal.
“Damn. He kind of looks like he could be a biker.” Avery’s tone dripped with awe.
Lyric agreed with her.
“We should convince him to prospect for the club.” Bri’s eyes were glued to the stage as the man did crazy acrobatics onstage. He was certainly flexible and very fit.
“You know, we don’t have to stick to our men in house. We can find them elsewhere,” Lyric reminded them.
“Oh, look who’s talking!” Avery exclaimed. “The rest of us normally get laid by anyone not wearing a cut. Only you decided to break that tradition. Fair warning, now he’s going to turn into a possessive asshole.”
“No he won’t.”
Avery clicked her tongue. “Just wait.”
“He doesn’t want me.”
Both sets of eyes turned her way, wide and full of disbelief.
Bri shook her head. “Bullshit. He’s not an idiot. He’d know better than to fuck Crow’s daughter simply for shits and giggles.”
“I had to convince him. Do a little arm twisting, if you must know.” That was probably one bit of info she should’ve kept in her pocket.
Lyric winced when Avery screamed, “What?”
She glanced back at the stage to make sure they hadn’t paused the show for a possible murder in the audience. Despite the dancer having his eyes turned toward them, he was still doing his sexy moves by rolling his hips and grabbing his crotch.
Bri laughed. “Yeah, if you think that you had to strong arm him, you’re delusional. No one is convincing Rage to have sex with someone he doesn’t want.”
“I agree with that. As far as I know, my cousin isn’t sticking his man meat into any club sister for a reason.”
“Could that reason be he’s related to most of them?” Lyric asked. “Because…eww.”
Bri added, “There are plenty of women in our circle he could fuck that wouldn’t make it a redneck romance.”
“Very few,” Lyric said.
“It only takes one.” Bri cocked an eyebrow in Lyric’s direction.
“And our girl is that one!” Avery crowed and punched the air with both fists in her excitement.
“Stop making it into something it isn’t.”
“We’ll see,” Avery said, wearing a shit-eating grin.
“I regret this night out,” Lyric grumbled.
Avery countered with, “I don’t! What’s better than watching hot, sexy, mostly naked men and sharing juicy gossip?”
“My privacy.”
“Privacy isn’t a word that exists in the DAMC’s vocabulary,” Bri reminded her. “It’s an illusion.”
Unfortunately, that was too true.
When the tattooed guy appeared at their table a short time later, Lyric did a double take. He remained shirtless but now wore thigh-hugging, rip-away pants. She must have missed when both the song and the dancer on stage changed.
“Hi.”
“Hiiiiiiii!” Avery drew out, flipping her red hair and flashing him big green puppy dog eyes.
Her damn smile couldn’t get any bigger.
The dancer placed his spread fingertips on the table and leaned in. “Is everything okay here?”
Good lord, he had a delicious voice. His body was even better.
“Just peachy,” Bri chirped.
“I wanted to stop over here to say hello and make sure you ladies are okay.” His eyes never left Lyric.
Lyric tipped her head slightly. “Thank you for your concern.”
“You’re a great dancer!” Avery chirped.
“Mmm hmm. Impressive,” Bri said next.
However, the stripper didn’t even look at Lyric’s companions. Instead, he kept staring at her as if waiting for her to add her response. Or maybe he was stopping by for a tip.
“Would you like a private dance?”
Lyric glanced to her right to look at Bri, then left to look at Avery, only to find out he was asking her. Her eyes went wide and she slapped a hand to her chest. “Me?”
He tipped his head to the side and the pitch of his voice dropped even deeper. “If you’re interested.”
Lyric lifted a palm. “Oh, no. But I appreciate the offer.”
Avery snorted. Bri chuckled.
“Anytime.” He shared a smile before rapping on the table with a knuckle. He went to turn, but paused. “Nice ink.”
“Oh…uh…”
“She’s a tattoo artist!” Avery spouted. “The best! She manages In the Shadows Ink in Shadow Valley. You should make an appointment with her to fill in some of those negative areas on your very hot, very sexy body.”
Lyric groaned and wanted to slide under the table.
One dark eyebrow rose. “Do you have a card?”
“No, not on me,” Lyric answered, wishing she could teleport to the moon.
“She can give you her number,” Bri rushed to say.
With a disappointed expression, he ran both hands down the sides of his track pants. “I don’t have my phone on me.”
He didn’t have much of anything on him. “Another time,” Lyric quickly said before her club sisters had her engaged to some random stripper.
“Another time, then.” He gave her a wink and disappeared.
Avery elbowed her and leaned closer. “You should go for it. Especially after you said that you and Rage aren’t a thing.”
“We’re not.”
“So, he won’t have anything to say if you test drive a new model.”
“Avery!”
“When you’re shopping for cars, you never buy the first model you drive.”
“Will you stop?”
Avery shrugged. “I’m just saying.”
Unfortunately, Bri picked up from there. “It’s not a bad idea, girl. And if what you’re saying is true, Rage should have no problem with it.”
“Of course not, we’re not a thing,” Lyric insisted.
“But if you want to be a thing, bringing that smoking hot, sexy-as-fuck guy around might make you and Rage a thing. You know our club brothers are stubborn as hell and sometimes need to be whacked upside the head—hard—for them to figure out what they really want. Look at Zeke and Kyra.”
“I’m not going to use that guy to get what I want!”
Oh shit. That was a horrible slip of the tongue.
“I knew it!” Avery yelled, once again bouncing in her seat.
Shit.
“Maybe we should make a plan,” Bri said to Avery.
Shit. “No.”
“No point in oiling that catcher’s mitt if you’re not catching any balls with it,” Avery insisted.
Lyric groaned and bounced her forehead off the table a few times.
“Are you sure everything is okay over here?”
Holy crap. The guy was back, this time with his blue eyes flashing and wearing a knowing grin.
“No, and I’ll tell you how you can fix that…” Avery started.