They seemed to tell me that I was too rich to be authentic, too young to be wise and too fuckin’ privileged to be wild.
I stepped forward away from Zeus and smiled prettily at her. “You can insult me until the cows come home, Harleigh Rose, I’m here to fuckin’ stay and I don’t care if it takes you two decades to be civil to me, nothing, not even you can take me away from Zeus.”
Uncertainty made her blink like a lost little girl for a moment and it was a moment my man took advantage of.
Zeus stepped forward and tagged his daughter around the hips to haul her into his chest and wrap his massive arms around her in a great, big bear hug. He even growled for effect as he rocked her back and forth.
“You fuckin’ suck sometimes H.R.,” he said as he bent down in a pseudo squat so they were at eye level. “But I’d do fuckin’ anythin’ for ya.”
“Yeah?” she asked hopefully, casting a sly look over her shoulder at me.
I laughed at her audacity, perilously close to liking her despite everything.
Zeus’s grin was a bright wedge of joy in his dark, close-cropped beard. “Fuck yeah. Just a warnin’ though, you ask me to stay away from my little warrior, she’d fight you and win. Even if she didn’t, there’s no way in heaven or hell my fallen angel would leave me in peace.”
“You know it,” I winked at him.
H.R. pouted but she did it in a cute way and she didn’t gripe when Z slid one arm around her shoulder and reached out to grab mine with his other hand.
“Fuckin’ starvin’, let’s get the feast fuckin’ started.”
Zeus.
It was dark, late into the night past little girl’s bedtimes but I had a surprise for Lou and I couldn’t wait to see her put it to use for me. Her hand was in mine as I led her out of the house where some of the brothers lay crashed out in the livin’ room and the two guest bedrooms, where King and Cress were makin’ out like teenagers ’cause one of ’em was one, where my daughter was pretendin’ to sleep in her bed ’til she could sneak off to Cricket.
We left that all behind for a moment or two of solitude in any man’s paradise.
His garage.
We went through the side door and when I flipped the light switch, Lou gasped and declared, “Wicked.”
It was.
Not only my cages—the huge GMC truck I used to haul dead bodies to Dixon’s farm and wood for my fireplace to my hearth, and the black 1969 Boss 429 Mustang—but the entire space was admittedly pretty fuckin’ wicked. Eugene had done up some of his neon light shit and I’d put up old street signs and license plates Bat, Blackjack and I stole as kids. I’d built the garage and the house with my own bare hands, so I took a fuckuva lot’a pride in it and I loved that Lou’s dazzled expression said she did too.
Then she noticed her surprise, wrapped in a red bow in the corner of the concrete space with a workbench dragged in front of it just exactly for what I planned that night.
“Did you install a stripper pole in your garage?” Lou asked me, cocking out her hip as she turned at me with a sassy eyebrow raised. “Seriously, Z?”
I went over to the bottle of Crown Royal and glasses I kept in the small bar beside my wall of tools and poured myself a drink ’fore goin’ over to sit on the bench in front of the pole.
“Want you to dance for me.”
“I don’t take orders, Zeus. I barely even take suggestions unless they happen to line up with what I already wanted to do. What makes you think I’m going to dance for you on fucking demand?”
“Dance for me, little girl,” I ordered lazily, as if I had the right to command her. ’Cause I did and she fuckin’ loved it. “If you impress me, I may let you make me come.”
She glared at me. It took effort because she was sassy but she wanted what I was offerin’ her and it showed all over her flushed face. Only my girl would look into the eyes of a monster like me and taunt, “Kiss my ass.”
“You get to dancin’ and you do it in a way that gets my dick hard, I may let you come too. You want it like that, I’ll get you on your hands and knees and eat that sweet ass ‘till you come on my tongue. But, Lou, warnin’ ya, you want ass play, I’m down but that means I’ll also be fuckin’ ya there too.”
She blinked at me then fisted her hands on those cocked hips and said, “What music have you got?”