Both was his preference.
You couldn’t blame him. Not when she’d almost died, been kidnapped, beaten and then shot a guy while nine months pregnant. Not to mention gave birth in this very clubhouse with Lucky and Bull as nurses and Cade as midwife.
But that was a story for another day.
And a story that I was distracted from the moment I saw who was entering behind Cade and Gwen, chatting easily with Amy, Gwen’s insane and insanely beautiful best friend.
“It isn’t by choice, my celibacy from the club,” Rosie hissed. “It’s because my brother has threatened death and dismemberment to any man wearing a Son’s cut who touches me.” She shook her head rapidly so her chocolate curls tumbled out of her messy bun. “You’d think for big bad biker men who prize their ironclad balls they’d have a little more courage. But….” Her eyes widened, glancing behind Cade. She caught what I’d been looking at, drooling at since the moment she started talking. “But he isn’t wearing a cut, and he looks like he has a little bit of courage and would brave death and dismemberment,” she breathed.
I barely heard her, too busy battling with my melting panties. The man walking through the crowd with Cade, Gwen and Amy was nothing short of… droolworthy.
I didn’t say, or even think, the word “droolworthy.” And I was surrounded by the cast of Magic Mike in leather cuts.
This man was not wearing a cut.
Something in his favor.
But I think I would have been drooling even if he had been.
I would have burned my carefully crafted and treasured rulebook right there and then if he had been a new patch.
His tanned skin hinted at exotic origin, a milky chocolate that rippled over his sinewy forearms, exposed by his white tee. His left hand had a black tribal tattoo spanning from the top of his palm up his muscled flesh and disappearing under his sleeve. He was wearing plain denim jeans that I would have bronzed for the sheer fact that they had encased his powerful thighs. My gaze moved upward and instantly locked with his chocolate eyes.
Something seemed to shift in me that made me unable to look away from those eyes. Made me want to drown in them.
“Yeah, I think he would brave that. Death and dismemberment for the right woman,” Rosie said confidently. I felt her gaze on me, yet I found myself unable to rip myself away from a pair of chocolate eyes. “Just not for me,” she muttered. “Figures.”
Since then, my life was carefully sectioned into two slices.
Before Keltan and after Keltan.
The split between “before” and “after” may have been clean. But the “after” wasn’t. It was anything but. It was the most complicated, winding and chaotic “after” that I couldn’t have even imagined.
And I knew chaos.
Or at least thought I did.
Turns out I had no fucking clue about chaos.
I didn’t know that was his name until later in the night. Much later.
I had been a coward, hiding from that gaze once I finally found the necessary strength to tear myself away and find my scattered senses littered alongside cigarette butts, motorcycle boots and discarded beer bottles.
Good thing there were a lot of wide, muscled men in black cuts to do that behind.
“You’re hiding,” Lucky observed with a grin, taking a pull of his beer.
I glared at him, all the while positioning myself so the bulk of my body was obscured by his.
Not hard considering he dwarfed me with his muscles and height.
I was tall, especially in black strappy Guccis—vintage and fabulous—but these guys were straight from the radioactive spider plant or something.
Or, at the very least, Valhalla.
“No, I’m not,” I hissed, glancing from the caramel-skinned, tattooed, bald-headed and utterly delicious biker to stare at the man I’d been catching glimpses of all night. When my eyes locked on his piercing stare, directed at me, as if he’d been watching and waiting for me to meet his, I darted my gaze away to meet Lucky’s amused irises. They were lighter, more mischievous and a lot younger than my mystery man.
My?
At what point in this night did I claim him mine?
The fifth stare?
The fiftieth?
Or the first?
“You are, darlin’, and it breaks my heart that you’re usin’ me as a human shield. ‘My body is a wonderland,’ to quote John Mayer, and I’ll not have it used for such purposes,” Lucky stated seriously, hand on his chest in mock shock.
“How is it possible for you to quote John Mayer and be in a motorcycle club that pretty much runs on masculinity instead of gasoline?” I teased, forcing myself not to look in the direction I knew he was.
“I’m a multifaceted man,” he defended. He stepped forward, his eyes flickering with the trademark seduction he’d been using on me since I was sixteen.
Well, me and every other girl with a vagina and legs.
“Plus, I’m very confident in my masculinity and my wondrous body that you’re currently using as a shield,” he continued, tilting his head with interest. “And I’m very intrigued as to why you’re doing so. I mean, you’re finally getting flustered over a man at one of these things.” He tapped my head. “I thought your programming didn’t allow for that, Cyber,” he teased.
I glared at him. Cyber was Lucky’s nickname for me since he was baffled that I was the only woman who wouldn’t jump into bed with him. Or any of his brothers.
Apart from Rosie, and Ashley, both of whom had known him since he was a skinny runaway with demons at his back. We considered him a brother.
A hot one, to be sure.
And also, a total dork.
One who wouldn’t hesitate to kill a man if he looked at me, Ashley or Rosie the wrong way.
“Just because I don’t want to have the wondrous experience of having to visit my gyno for just looking at your bedsheets doesn’t mean I’m a nun. Or a lesbian. Or a cyborg,” I told him.
“No, I disagree. I mean, you’re in the face of true manly beauty, and you’re too busy trying to both hide from and spy on our newest visitor that you probably couldn’t even tell me how many veins I have in my neck.”
I rolled my eyes. “How would anyone know that?”
He grinned. “Because that’s where women imagine their mouths while looking at me.” He waggled his brows in a good imitation of Rosie. “Amongst other places.”
“You’re a pig,” I informed him.
“And everyone loves bacon,” he countered.
I sipped my drink in response.
“You’re not curious, then?” he probed, folding his arms and grinning so his harsh male features softened, revealing the puppy dog he actually was.
If you had asked me before I met Lucky if the Devil could still be bad and good at the same time, I would have told you the Devil didn’t exist. That was, after all, the greatest trick he’d ever pulled. I glanced around, my eyes touching on Bull, leaning on his knees and dangling a beer bottle between his forefingers, watching the fire.
The Devil existed. In all of these men.
He just wasn’t entirely bad.
I glanced to Cade, his dark eyes watching his wife while he moved his daughter in his arms just enough to reveal the Glock shoved into the waistband of his jeans.