I perked up. “Cryptic much?”
He peered at me, his big hands flipping a coaster over and over in his fingers. I didn’t know if he did it on purpose, but it was a good reminder that he was not someone to fuck around with.
“Don’t want ya like that. Pretty as a fuckin’ peach, but like I said ’fore, that don’t matter much to me. What does is my own fuckin’ business and you don’t need to worry ’bout it none, ‘cept for the part where you go on pretendin’ to be my old lady.”
“Think I do need to worry about it,” I said slowly, my eyes scanning the biker haunt for any Berserker brother that might’ve been listening. “If it involves me lyin’ to the club.”
He snorted. “Let’s get this straight, I got my own shit goin’ down, but I’m still VP of this fuckin’ club and the only reason I’m not diggin’ into your shit—shit so rank I can smell it a fuckin’ mile ’way—is ’cause I’ve got need of ya. Reaper might buy that wide-eyed blue stare, but I see your second face, H.R., and I know you got shit to hide, same as me.”
I pursed my lips, but I was between a rock and a hard place. He’d saved me from those asshole bikers, sure, but in doing so he’d already inextricably tied us together. If I wanted to take down the MC, I’d have to go along with his plan. And in a way, it was to my advantage to have the VP’s protection, especially without having to take his cock.
“So, what’s the gig then? We pretend to be together in front of the brothers? I cover for you, they ask where you’ve been?”
“Sounds ’bout right,” he agreed as his beer arrived and the hot wings crashed to the table between us. He watched me lay into the chicken with humor lighting his eyes. “Don’t trust you, H.R., but I’ve got to. You screw me on this, I’ll gut you with the same knife they claim killed my cousin. You feel me?”
I spoke through a mouthful of chicken as I ripped a chunk of meat off the bone. “You gut me, you’ll have hell to pay with The Fallen. I’d say, give or take a year or two, you touch a hair on my fuckin’ head, they’d spend a decade keepin’ you right on the edge of the death, torturing you daily for hurting their princess.”
“No doubt,” he agreed easier, shoving an entire wing into his mouth and then pushing the clean bones would between his teeth.
“So, same goes here. I need cover, you’re it.”
He blinked at me then his eyes shot to the door as it opened to the sound of a giggling woman. His smile pulled across his face as if tugged by a thread and needles as he looked between the newcomers and me.
“Done.”
Two seconds later, I understood why he’d been smiling, and didn’t like that he knew enough to get off on my coming discomfort.
“H.R. girl!” Laken cried as she threw herself into the booth beside me, her arms tightly wrapped around my neck.
I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth against the flashback, the feel of her wound against me so much like the feel of Cricket locked on top of me, his gun sliding hard and cool down my thigh over the gusset of my panties and under…
“Good to see ya, brother,” Danner’s voice cut through my turmoil and I watched as he leaned forward to clasp Wrath in a manly handshake/back pat.
“I cannot believe you didn’t tell me about Wrath,” Laken faux-whispered loudly, her arms still around me but loose. “Were you fucking him while you were with Cricket?”
“Laken,” Danner snapped at her before I could answer. “Jesus, woman, you ever dream of thinkin’ before ya speak?”
It was weird to hear Danner speak in biker contractions just as much as it sent a tingle of arousal shooting between my legs.
God, he looked like sex on legs in that leather jacket.
I refocused on Laken who looked properly chastised and patted her arm before pulling them off me. “Don’t mention it again, babe. But, if you wanna talk surprises, when did you hook up with this guy? What’s his name again?”
Wrath poorly concealed his bark of laughter behind a cough, and I shot him a wary look, because it seemed he knew way too much about my history with Danner.
Laken helped herself to one of my wings and said, “Harleigh Rose, this is my man Lion.”
“Lion,” I mused. “How’d you get that one?”
“When he started prospectin’ he was an ink virgin so the boys took ’im down to Gilly’s shop and made him get tatted up. He didn’t take no pills or shots to dull the pain and he chose a huge chest piece with this lion roaring over his heart caged by a thicket of these roses and thorns,” Laken sighed dreamily as she recounted the story, completely unaware of my unnatural stillness beside her. “That combined with the fact that he came off the street with brass balls to straight up as Reaper to take ’im on as a hang around two years ago, no connection to the club at all, well the guys figured he had the courage of one, ya know?”