Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
GRAFF
By the time the Prez dismissed Church, the men were rowdy, but I only watched Sas. The party was his idea, sure, but he didn’t look happy. The gears were moving in his head, hidden under his stoic face. It was a look I knew all too well. Usually, it meant danger or that he was going to go off on some solo half-cocked plan.
The bell rang in the clubhouse, calling everyone out of their hiding places for the ride up to the canyon. The guys’ voices bounced off the walls and ceilings, calling out for their favorite sweetbutts.
Shorty stepped out and her face lit up when she saw Ace.
He wasn’t a prospect or member, but Angel had made him the honorary doc in LA. I didn’t know if he even owned a bike though.
“Sas?” I asked.
He spat into an old Coke bottle, brown spittle running down the insides.
My stomach lurched, but I managed to swallow my gag. “Thought you were quitting that shit.”
“Stress, brother. Whassup?”
Before I could answer, Adelina poked her head out, “What’s going on? I heard the bell. Are we under attack?”
“Attack?” the Veep scoffed. “That’s our cattle bell, little princess. We’re on the move.”
His little princess dripped with more venom than usual, and he turned his back to her.
Maddie slid out behind Adelina. “Thanks for your help. And the helmet.” She tucked the hot-pink sparkly thing under her arm and moved into Cook’s side.
“You’re not keeping it?” I asked, surprised that she went to such extremes to get a rise out of the club.
Adelina shrugged, but her gaze ever-so-briefly flicked to Sas. “Too tight around my forehead.”
“It fits me perfectly.” Maddie beamed up at Cook. “Wait till you see the rest of the riding gear she helped me order.”
“Can’t wait.” He kissed her quickly on the lips and pulled his cut over his I like it moist T-shirt with a chicken under the words.
“What are we doing?” Adelina asked.
“I need some air.” Sas pushed up from the table, his lip curling up like he was ready to sink his teeth into his fiancé. Then, he left.
Adelina raised her eyebrows, obviously confused, and I met her gaze. No matter how badly I wanted to give her everything her heart desired, I didn’t have whatever answers she wanted.
She read me like an open book, coming to stand at my side and laying her hand on my arm. “It’s okay, Graff. He’s the one who owes me answers.” She jutted her chin in the direction Sas had stormed off.
I watched her for a few seconds as what appeared to be a million thoughts gyrated through her mind. She kept her hand on me, and I didn’t want to move or do anything that would give her the impression I wanted her to steal back her touch.
In the back of my mind, I had always suspected I would need to go back to one of the communities they didn’t break up to find the kind of relationship I felt suited me. Therefore, I’d never been looking for a relationship here. But now...
When had I started to see a possible future that involved this woman? Perhaps it had been at the sculpture garden, but I didn’t think so.
She patted my arm and then she stomped after Sas, fury written across her face. That little spitfire was about to pick another fight with a man who clearly wanted nothing to do with her.
She had her hand out, finger pointed at him.
Fuck. I moved quickly, about to throw myself between them, but then Kaos sauntered down the hallway.
“You calling on me, Veep?” said Kaos, exaggerating the twist and sway of her hips.
He grabbed her hand, spun her on her heel until she landed with the back of her neck in his crooked elbow.
Kaos gave Adelina a catty glance over her shoulder as she let Sas lead her out of the building.
Adelina stopped in her tracks. “What the hell was that?”
Again, I didn’t know. I couldn’t wrap my head around what Sas was doing right now. Something had to be fucked up in his head if he really wanted Kaos over the adorable little pissed-off woman standing in front of me now.
“We’re heading out,” I said. “Riding back up to Red Rock Canyon.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Bonfire.”
Her brows drew together, two little lines creasing her forehead. “Don’t you have enough of those here?”
“These are different.”
“Why?”
I stepped closer to her and held out a hand. “You’ll have to come and find out.”
Her gaze dropped to my hand and then her dark-chocolate eyes trapped me. “Do I have a choice?”
“There’s always a choice. The better question. .. is it a good choice?” I raised my eyebrows, silently asking if she wanted a ride out. Sas wasn’t coming back for her.
Adelina turned away from me, flashing the same furious look at Rafe. Her expression could only be described one way. Someone—by the name of Sas—had just pissed in her Frosted Flakes.
Although, with where and how she grew up with money, I doubted she had ever eaten those. Nah, I felt certain she’d had people to prepare poached eggs or some other billionaire breakfast shit.
Regretfully, I would have to leave her uncle to deal with her ire. I followed the others out to the line of bikes.
Club bunnies were already swinging on to the backs of motorcycles. Shorty and Ace—he did have a bike. Duchess gave me a sweet smile with a question, and I nodded for her to hop on my bike. Switch, our girl who liked to play both Dom and sub to our club, rode with Teller. Cash sank on to the back of Beans’s ride.
The motorcycles roared, ready to eat up the open road.
“Graff, let’s go!” Sas sat down on his bike between Kaos’s thighs.
Her arms wrapped around his center, and her shit-eating grin said she was right where she wanted to be. A huge fuck you from both of them to Adelina.
Sas revved the engine of his motorcycle. The man was keyed up to blow off some steam, but we needed to stay together.
Wilde, clearly thinking the same thing, pulled a new ride up to block Sas’s lead. Not on his new Rosie, but another bike. Bou hadn’t come out, probably too uncomfortable to ride for more than an hour and hang out with a bunch of drinking and smoking and fucking bikers until the wee hours of the morning.
I started my engine but checked the door again.
“Graff!” Sas called.
“What about Adelina?” I twisted around, but she hadn’t come outside with the rest of us.
“Leave her!” yelled Sas. “She’s Rafe’s problem.” Then he pushed his bike back and pulled around Wilde.
I rode after him, but Wilde passed us up, holding out two fingers to put Sas in his place—second. Cars had deserted the industrial roads along the LA River in East Compton, not even a semi-truck parked on the edge, like everyone had vacated just in time for our ride out.
We stopped at a Sonic in Anaheim, and Sas handed Kaos some money, then slapped her on her ass. She squealed in delight. There were kids around, snotty noses pressed against the glass windows of their minivans, ogling our rides. Kaos then giggled and dropped the money. She bent over with her legs straight and wiggling her ass in front of Sas, and he rewarded her by slapping it again.
“Go get us some cherry limeades,” ordered Sas, smiling.
Kaos looked down at the money in her hand. “Cherry limeades?”
“Yeah.”
She pursed her lips. “How about ice cream for you? Something sweeter. And a hot dog for me.”
Sas grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her close. Kaos almost tripped on the obnoxious heels she wore, but she stood in front of Sas, their faces close together.
I had parked right next to him and could hear everything. I had never seen or heard Kaos question him before, and with his hot temper, his reaction surprised me.
Sas didn’t threaten Kaos for questioning him, just snarled at her.
He had snapped at Adelina for far less.
“Cherry limeades,” he repeated in a low rumble. “They’re my favorite. Do you know why?”
Kaos shook her head no, bottom lip pouting like she was a bad, bad girl who knew she had crossed a line. Undoubtedly, punishment was what she wanted.
“Because my brother and I used to scrape up our nickels and dimes until we had enough to buy one of them.” His eyes went a little glassy, like he was seeing something in the far past. “Just one. And we sat on the crumbling steps to our flea-ridden apartment while Mom passed out on the couch. It was the only way we could pretending everything in life could be so sweet.”
She drew her eyebrows together, giving her wrinkles and exposing her real age. “I didn’t think you were so sentimental, Sas.”
His eyes went as hard as the tiger eye stone he wore in his tragus piercing. “I’m not.”
Sas slapped her on the ass, hard this time. The sound reverberated through the whole parking lot. “Go get us our shit. You’ll be rewarded with the best orgasms of your life.”
“Not sure you can top last time.” She batted her eyelashes at me.
Fuck, why’d she have to remind me of who was in the center of our sandwich a few nights ago? I was perfectly happy imagining it was someone else. Someone younger. Prettier. Curvier.
Duchess, who was doing a far better job of ignoring the exchange than me, slipped off my bike and asked, “Want anything, Graff?”
I shook my head and watched her walk away with Kaos.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” I said when they were away from earshot.
Sas cut me a sideways glance. “Because there are others around?”
“Because you’re engaged, and you should’ve taken Adelina with you.”
“Fuck her.”
Our VP was an idiot. After gaping at him for a few seconds, I stood, swinging my leg off my ride to stretch. Next to him, I gritted out, “What is your goddamn problem?”
Sas raised his head. Still sitting on his bike, he was a fucking giant with his one leg kicked out onto the highway bar. “She’s a goddamn virgin, Graff.”
“Wha—” I blinked. Then it registered, and my blood rushed south. “Adelina’s a virgin? Damn.”
“Don’t look so starry-eyed, fucker.”
I shuddered and refocused on Sas. “So what if she is?”
“Virgins get clingy, Graff.”
“So? She’ll be your wife. Clingy goes with the fucking territory.” But somehow, I didn’t see Adelina as someone who would ever define herself by one man.
Sas dropped his head back and rolled it to one side. A rip sounded from the crack of his spine. “I’ve been someone’s first once. Never again.”
“That’s the stupidest bullshit I’ve ever heard,” I said.
The VP pinned me with his hazel stare then. “What have you failed to understand about this situation, Graff?”
“Not a motherfucking thing. It’s an arranged marriage, sure, but you could’ve been handed someone ugly or worse.”
“Ugly I can handle. Young. Dumb. Scared. Needy. Those are all red flags.”
I laughed. “From what I’ve seen, that woman is anything but dumb, scared, or needy.”
“You didn’t see her yesterday in my room.”
That made my vision pulse and turn red. “What did you do to her?”
“Fuck, Graff! Nothing. Didn’t you hear me tell you she’s a virgin?”
My shoulders relaxed. “Then what’s the problem?”
“The motherfucking Mafia, Graff. That’s the problem. What if her dear old daddy—the new Mafia Don, in case you forgot—wants a bloody sheet on the wedding night?”
I shrugged. “She’s twenty-two. Even if she is a virgin, she probably won’t bleed.”
“Even worse for me, then.”
“Jesus fuck, Sas. That’s ancient shit you’re worried about.” I swiped my hand through some knots already forming in my hair from the wind. “Or... you’re looking for excuses.”
“Arranged marriage is ancient, Graff. And nothing will excuse this fuckery”
“So slice open your finger so there’s blood and fuck her with it.” I shrugged. “Easy peasy. Problem solved.”
He jerked his head back, nearly gagging.
“What?” I asked, a grin pulling at my lips. “Scared of a little blood?”
“No,” he said, but it lacked conviction.
“You’re a shit liar.”
“Fuck off,” he said.
“I just don’t get it, bro. Staying away from Adelina because she’s a virgin is messed the fuck up. That’s gold as far as pussy goes.”
“Everyone, you included, already knows I’m not a, um”—he choked—“a gentle lover.”
I nearly laughed. I had seen girls come out of his room with bruises and chunks of their hair missing, but I’d also heard the sweetbutts crying and screaming in ecstasy. We had tag teamed several of them, and I remembered how his body slapped theirs, and not only Kaos, who finally had stepped up to the Sonic window.
What was his point? Did he think Adelina was breakable?
Sas ran a hand through his hair. “I was ready to sink my cock into Adelina’s sweet cunt last night, but then she had these huge little-girl eyes and asked if it would hurt.”
I scoffed. “And you didn’t come in your pants from that question alone?”
“It’s not funny,” he growled.
“It’s not like you’ve cared before,” I said. “So why give a fuck now?”
“It’s different.”
“Because she’s going to be your wife?”
“I don’t give a shit about that.”
“I think you do.”
He barked a laugh. “You go fuck her then.”
“Maybe I will.”
“Do it. Have her blood on your cock and your conscious.”
“I’m not concerned about my conscious.”
“I’m not concerned about mine if you’re the one who fucks her.”
“We could always fuck her together,” I offered, and Sas stiffened. “Like we did with Kaos.”
I was egging him on, but it was my blood draining into my cock at the mere thought of that.
Then he smiled. “Kaos would like that full feeling again. And I need a release.”
I worked my jaw. I didn’t fucking want Kaos. “Adelina might need a release too,” I pressed, but Sas didn’t take my bait. “Did you get a look at her as we left? She was about to lay into Rafe.”
“Better him than me.” Sas beamed.
Kaos came toddling back on her come-fuck-me-heels with a cherry limeade in each hand and a cherry stem sticking out from between her lips.
“Adelina was pissed the fuck off,” I said.
Sas smirked “Which’ll make her even more fun to fuck with tonight at the bonfire.”