I did know. His courage and conviction were half the reason I’d started calling him Lion as a girl. I didn’t know anyone so foolishly brave, so convinced of their mission to do good and right wrongs.
I understood the symbolism of the tattoo more than anyone else could know.
Danner was looking at me, his eyes like hot knife points searing into my skin, but I refused to look his way. If I did, all my well-maintained walls would crumble and all that remained would be me in my basest form, weak and tender and his.
“You ever heard’a the Cowardly Lion?” Wrath asked.
I burst out laughing, shocked that the big, bad biker knew the Wizard of Oz and delighted that he used it to insult Danner.
Even Danner’s eyes sparkled at the cut. “Shut the fuck up, man. You’re just fuckin’ sore I beat your ass at pool last week and took you for fifty bucks.”
Wrath thumped a hand on the table. “Was lurin’ you into a false sense’a security. Feelin’ a rematch?”
“Bring it.”
“Couples game,” Laken cried happily, standing up to grab my and Danner’s hands so she could drag us over to one of the three pool tables.
They were all occupied but one look at Wrath’s bulk and Danner’s corded height, both clad in biker cuts, made the people closest to use scurry away.
I hid my smile behind my beer. Intimidation never got old.
“How’s my dog?” Danner asked, reaching around me to grab a cue from the wall, his hard torso pressed against my back. “Takin’ good care of our girl?”
“How’s Laken?” I asked back quietly. “Takin’ care of your cock?”
Danner stared at me for a moment when I turned around and then laughed. I loved the sound of it low and smooth like liquid honey, the way his head dipped slightly as if he was embarrassed, surprised by his own mirth, and the creases it cut in his face, beside those green eyes, around his firm mouth and an especially delicious one cut into his left cheek like a dimple. I could have watched him laugh for hours, but the fact that he did it so sparingly also made it precious, and I coveted that.
“Playin’ the game of life here,” he told me when he quieted. “My only goal is to make Vancouver a safer place.”
“So, why not use Laken to do that?” I ventured, careful to keep my voice down and my lips immobile so Laken and Wrath wouldn’t eavesdrop from the other end of the table where they were ordering more drinks.
“She’s Reaper’s niece and she isn’t the brightest,” he shrugged.
“Never knew you to be so ruthless,” I muttered as I racked up the balls on stained green felt.
“Police think Berserkers are responsible for one-third of all guns illegally seized in this city, and we have the highest rate of gun crime per capita in the country. I’ve been undercover with this operation for three fuckin’ years, H.R., at this point, I’ll do anything to bring them down.”
I thought about Mute, The Fallen brother who had taken a bullet to the neck while trying to save Loulou, her little sister, Bea, and me from a burning building. I wondered if Berserkers had supplied the gun that loosed that bullet into his neck and my resolve tightened.
“Joining you in this, Danner,” I told him. “You don’t sort it with the pigs, I will.”
“You wanna work for the police when you can’t even refer to them with respect?” he asked with a snort.
“Yeah, I do. They’ve threatened my family, they sell guns to anyone with money and they encouraged Cricket to crack me in half with his fists so I’d spill Fallen secrets. Think I have a better reason than most to get involved here.”
Danner’s hand went to my hip, out of sight of anyone, caught between our bodies as he stood slightly behind and to the side of me, but I felt the illicit touch like shock paddles to my heart.
“Don’t want you involved in this shit, Rosie,” he said softly, too close to me, his voice in my ear and breath on my neck.
I shivered violently and his hand flexed on my lower back in response.
“Too late,” I said. “Besides, you’re so concerned, you’ll watch my back.”
“Yeah, rebel,” he said and his hand dipped lower pressed hot and possessive like a tramp stamp of ownership to my upper ass. “I’ll watch your back.”
He moved away, and I didn’t need to look over my shoulder to know that he stood with his arms crossed, eyes trained on my ass as I bent over the pool table to break the balls.
It was late. There weren’t many windows in Bernadette’s so it was hard to tell, but the sun had definitely set. I’d slammed back at least five beers and a few shafts, a provincial specialty that was a heady combination of vodka, coffee, Bailey’s and Kahlua, but over a long enough period of time that I wasn’t as drunk as I could’ve been, just this side of tipsy.