Chapter 3
Trick/Jase
Sunday morning, I was finishing my protein smoothie as I watched various club brothers stumbling into the common room.
Church would be starting in twenty minutes, and based on their bleary eyes, copious amounts of caffeine would be needed to make some of them feel human enough to get through the meeting.
Joker and Skid, in particular, were looking rough as hell.
That may be due to the woman they’d taken up to Joker’s room last night.
She was a screamer, and they’d gone at it for hours.
My room was two doors down from his, and I’d contemplated kicking all three of them out of the clubhouse somewhere around three o’clock this morning, just so I could get some sleep.
“Prospect, my niece left her sunglasses in my room when she was here Friday. She’s in Sinner’s rental house over on Rush Street.
Head over there when you’re finished and drop ‘em off to her,” Viking ordered gruffly as he slowly shuffled over to the coffee pot.
He was moving around a little better, but his back was still not completely healed judging by the way he stooped over slightly.
“Prez has me doing some painting for Ella at their new house today, but I can do it later tonight,” Tony answered.
“I can swing by her place after Church, since I’m heading to the gym anyway,” I told Viking, who narrowed his eyes as he looked at me.
“Since when are you so fuckin’ helpful? You tryin’ to sniff around my niece, shitstain?”
“I’ve never even met the woman, old man,” I scoffed. Technically, I wasn’t lying. “It’s not a big deal. I have to drive right past her neighborhood on the way, and that way she has them if she goes anywhere today. It’s gonna be sunny as hell out there.”
“Fine, but you keep your eyes to your fuckin’ self or I’ll scoop ‘em out with a rusty spoon,” he scowled.
Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen. My eyes were going to be all over her, and if I played my cards right, I wouldn’t be keeping my hands to myself either. Still, I needed to play it cool in front of the old man.
“Why would I want to look at her? She probably looks like you, but with tits.” I gave a fake shiver as Viking scowled even more. No way in hell was I going to admit that I’d already had a good look at her and liked what I saw.
Joker choked on his coffee and glared at me as Skid pounded him on the back. “Shit, man, I didn’t need that image in my head. That’s just nasty as hell.” I grinned at Joker, then saluted him with my glass as I lifted it to swallow the last few drops of my smoothie.
Church didn’t last long today, with just routine reports about the various club-owned businesses.
Luckily, we hadn’t had any more issues with T-Bone, the former street gang member who’d been plaguing our territory by dealing drugs in our bar and strip club.
Of course, he was probably hiding out somewhere trying to stay under the radar after killing Pic and Star.
It still pissed me off that Pic, once a valued club brother, had turned on us and gone rogue, partnering with T-Bone and taking Star – a club bunny – down with him.
My stomach growled as I left the clubhouse, reminding me that it was almost lunchtime.
I debated stopping for a bite to eat, but my eagerness to see Lauren won out.
I jumped on my new pride and joy – my Harley Dyna Wide Glide, chosen to better accommodate my long legs – and headed toward the rental that Lauren was staying at.
I’d been a frequent visitor there during the months Rome had lived there after Abby divorced him, so I was very familiar with the place.
I glided to a stop in the driveway, parking my bike in front of the garage door. I dismounted, took off my helmet and hung it on my handlebars, and then strode up to the front door.
I rang the doorbell and reached for her sunglasses which were tucked away in the inside pocket of my cut, pulling them out just as the door opened to reveal a redheaded goddess. From her fiery curls to her startling green eyes, to her lush cupid’s bow lips, and creamy white skin…she was perfection.
My gaze – luckily hidden behind my own sunglasses – skimmed over her body and lingered briefly on a pair of tits that strained against her pale purple shirt in a way that was guaranteed to bring a man to his knees, before sliding down to take in her trim waist that flared out over the curve of her hips.
It was the sight of her legs though – impossibly long in a pair of black shorts – that made my cock twitch behind my zipper.
I could almost feel those thighs wrapped around my waist as I pounded into her.
My eyes drifted down over her toned calves and came to rest on her bare feet with toenails painted a dark red that matched her fingertips, before shooting back up to her face as she pointedly cleared her throat.
“Trick, I presume?” Ah, fuck me. There it was. That sultry, sexy, throaty purr that had distracted me mid-fuck on Friday night. My cock twitched again, and I slowly reached up to remove my sunglasses as I flashed her a confident smile and one of my patented flirty winks.
“You know who I am, darlin’?” I asked, pleased that she’d recognized me.
She snickered, then bit her lip, trying to hide her amusement.
“Well, we haven’t formally met”, she said with a smirk, “but my uncle called to let me know you were coming. I told him I could stop by the clubhouse to pick up my sunglasses sometime this week, but he insisted on having someone drop them off.”
She held out her hand for them, and I made it a point to drag my fingertip over the delicate skin of her wrist as I placed them in her palm. A tingle of awareness shot up my arm at the feel of her soft skin.
She didn’t even bat an eyelash at the contact.
Undeterred, I stepped closer, resting my forearm on the door frame as I leaned into her and gave her another wink.
“I was happy to do it, babe. Why don’t you invite me in so we can get to know each other a little bit?
” My lips stretched into a seductive smile, already anticipating what would happen next.
I was wrong. So. Fucking. Wrong.
This woman – this sexy-as-hell woman – somehow managed to look amused, disgusted, and annoyed all at the same time as she shook her head and took a step back. “No, but thanks for dropping these off.”
I barely had time to move my arm out of the way before the door was shut in my face with a decisive click. I slowly straightened to my full height as I tried to understand what the hell had just happened.
Trying to shake off the unfamiliar sting of rejection, I hopped on my bike and headed off to the gym I managed for the club.
The short ride did nothing to clear my mind as I pondered Lauren’s reaction.
Now, my ego wasn’t so massive that I thought every woman in the world would fall at my feet, but in all honesty, I didn’t normally have to do much more than smile, wink, and crook my finger to get what I wanted.
I knew I was considered handsome, and between my muscles, my MMA fighting background, and my position as the club’s Sergeant-at-Arms, I’d never had much trouble picking up women. I’d been turned down before, of course, but admittedly it was a fairly rare occurrence.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been shot down so resolutely without even a second’s thought, though. Shit, I really should have given her a little more time to forget about the whole “catching me fucking a club bunny” situation on Friday night. That was a definite miscalculation on my part.
Determined to put the entire clusterfuck out of my mind, I pulled up to the gym and parked in my reserved spot at the end of the front row. I whipped off my helmet, tucked it under my arm, and strode inside.
The sounds of the usual Sunday crowd helped ease my irritation.
Even over the beat of the hard rock music pouring out of the sound system, I could hear the steady thwack-thwack as Brick pounded the punching bag, and the rhythmic whappita-whappita-whappita as Hawk delivered rapid-fire hits to the speedbag.
There were close to twenty other people scattered around the large open space – running on the treadmills, lifting free weights, and doing reps on the pull-up bars.
There were a couple of guys getting ready for a workout with the grappling dummies, by the looks of things, and two more climbing into the practice octagon.
Thanks to the kick-ass ventilation system I’d insisted on, the building didn’t reek of sweat and dirty socks like the gym I’d spent every spare moment in during my teenaged years. Back in those days, I’d sworn that smell was permanently embedded in my skin.
“Hey, man. Anything going on that I need to know about?” One of our prospects, Rod, was working the front desk, and glanced up at my question.
“Not really. One of the treadmills is acting up again, so I put in a call to the repair company. Oh, and a couple of Rossi’s guys have time reserved in the cage late this afternoon.”
Luca Rossi was the head of a local mafia family, a group that our club had a friendly affiliation with.
The gym was the location for the underground fight ring La Famiglia Rossi had run for the past few years.
We trained his fighters and provided the site and security for fight nights, and Rossi gave us a nice cut of the profits from the illegal betting that went on.