“We’re not his men, love,” Torch speaks up, and I instantly add him next on the list for calling Annie that dopey-ass nickname.
“You’re not? But I just assumed you all worked at the garage.”
“Garage?” Beast asks, his gruff voice echoing in the air.
I pinch my nose from the tension I can feel behind my eyes, take a deep breath, and then look back up.
“What are you motherfucker’s doing in my woman’s house?” The room goes silent, except for Annie’s startled gasp. The men look at Annie and back at me.
“Peaches here made us dinner. Good thing you claimed her because if you hadn’t, I was going to,” Torch says taking a bite of food and watching me very closely. Motherfucker knows he’s walking on thin ice.
“You would have had to get in line. I was just about to claim Peaches here myself,” Beast says, and I look at him like he’s lost his damn mind. Only trouble is, I can tell he’s completely serious, and that’s fucked up. My brother hasn’t touched another woman since he lost his old lady, and that was almost two years ago.
“Wait, no one has claimed me. I don’t think…”
“Hell, Sabre, is that true? Because if you haven’t claimed her and she is open game, then I’m standing up right now saying that I’m staking her out, too,” Torch says.
“Me too,” Beast adds.
“Yeah, so am I,” Shaft speaks up.
“Shut up prospect, this is none of your concern. Patched in members get dibs always motherfucker,” Beast grumbles. Shaft gives him the one fingered salute but wisely doesn’t argue further.
“She’s mine. It’s not even a question. The only question is what the fuck you yahoos are doing here?”
“Sabre…”
“Hush it, Annie. We’ll discuss this after these idiots leave.”
“Sabre, that’s not being nice. I was feeding them dinner.”
“Yeah, Sabre. Peaches is feeding us dinner.”
“And that’s another fucking thing. Why the hell are you assholes calling her Peaches?”
“We’ve decided that’s her club name.”
“The fuck you have,” I growl, mad as hell. Even if I was going to call her that, it was mine to name her.
“You snooze you lose, brother,” Torch says smoothly and that does it. That pushes me over the edge.
I walk to him and give him a punch in the gut. He sees it coming, so it’s not like he’s unprepared. In fact, he’s expecting it because I don’t even get to blink and he plants a fist into my jaw. I stagger backwards but manage to grab him by the shirt. I draw my fist back to mess up his pretty-boy smile when I’m blindsided by a broom. It slams me on the side of the face; the straw bristles poking into the skin. I step back to figure out what the fuck just happened, and that’s when I see Annie holding the broom and those beautiful blue eyes pointing daggers at me.
“Stop hurting Torch! I won’t stand for fighting in my house. Now, if you’d like to eat…”
Stop hurting Torch? She won’t stand? The men are laughing in the background, but I don’t take the time to give them the beat down they deserve. I grab the broom and throw the damn thing across the room. I hear it bang against something, but I don’t turn around to see what. I grab Annie under her legs, throw her over my shoulder, and stomp in the direction of the hallway I saw when I came in.
“Stop it! What are you doing? Where are you going?”
“Bedroom. Where’s your fucking bedroom, Annie?”
“What? You can’t be serious. I demand you put me down right now! Sabre…”
She drones on, but I tune her out. I open the first door I come to and it’s a bathroom. The second seems to be her bedroom. It’s got dark brown walls and a dark purple cover on the bed, with lighter purple throw pillows. The curtains on the one large window are purple and the bed is a rich cherry color and huge. A fucking king-size, four-poster bed draped in silk and it all looks like it was made to fuck in. My Annie is full of surprises. Here I was expecting yellow daisies everywhere and a room so bright it would make my eyes hurt.
I stomp over to the bed and throw Annie down on it. She struggles to prop herself up on her elbows.
“I don’t think…”
“Shut it, Annie, and roll over,” I growl at her, taking my favorite knife out of the holster on my side.
Her eyes grow wide in fear and she rolls over. There are tears in her eyes, and I’m enough of a bastard that my cock gets even harder at the sight. She rolls over and that perfectly plump, round ass stares as me, and I want to jerk off right then and there. This isn’t about me, though. Annie doesn’t realize that she’s mine. I’m about to give her lesson number one.