Raw and Dirty(4)

I liked it.

I run my tongue over my lower lip and Smoky groans.

“Goddamn it, Royal.” I flick my gaze over to my friend and smile. “You're so full of shit your eyes are brown.”

“Yeah, well, you can blame my mum for that one.” My smile turns into a grin as I move away from Smoky and into the crowd. It parts like the Red Sea, bodies shifting aside as I make my way towards the front entrance. I know how to crack a joke and a smile, but I also know how to break a man's ribs without leaving any bruising. There's a reason I'm the youngest president in the club's sordid history, thirty-two years old and the officers twice my age don't have shit to say about it.

“She's here again.”

“Damn it, Dober. I thought I told you I wanted the night off?” I pause just outside, my boots dark against the rich red stain of the deck. A quick scan of the parking lot and there's no black Chrysler in sight. Eh, I don't know why I'm letting myself get so worked up over some bureaucratic government bitch that's just as likely to screw me in the courtroom as the bedroom. She wasn't even very attractive, more plain than anything else. But there was just something about her …

“What do you want me to do? Throw Rebecca and the kids out and close the gates? She's not stupid, Royal. Clearly, there's a party happening here, and as far as she knows, her husband died to protect the club.”

I grit my teeth and realize I've forgotten to ash my cigarette. Gray flakes drift in the breeze and fall to the black leather toes of my boots. I flick it away and grab a new smoke from my pocket.

“He did die to protect the club,” I growl as Dober steps up next to me, arms crossed over his broad chest, his mouth turned down in a frown that I can barely see through that thick brown beard of his. I know because I took care of him myself. Fucking rat. Fucking backstabbing, idiot, blindsiding twat.

I miss him so bad it's like a knife to the gut every time I think about it.

“Yeah, well, what do you want me to tell Rebecca?”

I close my eyes and listen to the heavy bass throbbing in the background, taking a drag on my cigarette as I try to figure out how to handle this. I've already offered to keep paying Rebecca her husband's salary, at least until she gets herself on her feet. Landon might've been a snitch, but he was my VP and, once upon a time, my best friend.

I sigh.

“Where is she?”

“In Janae's office, bawling her eyes out.”

“Lovely.” I snub my cigarette out in a nearby ashtray and ignore the squealing and shouting and jeering that's taking place all around me. My brothers need a party to get their minds off things; I don't have that luxury.

Without another word, I take four steps down from the deck and hit the pavement in front of the parking lot, preparing myself to look Rebecca in the eye and lie through my teeth. No fucking way I'm telling her what really happened between me and Landon. I can still feel his blood on my hands.

I shake the thought away with a growl and jam my fingers through my hair. This surprise visit, last thing I needed tonight.

“Rebecca.” I don't bother to knock, opening the door to the Wolf Cycle office without preamble, slipping in and closing it behind me before one of the guys notices and decides this is any of their business.

“Royal.” Rebecca is a mess. Her blonde hair is tangled and twisted around her face, mascara streaming down her cheeks in two dark lines. Her lower lip is a bloodied mess, all scarred and scabbed from being worried at by those pearly white teeth of hers. It's a habit she's had since high school, one that Landon was always trying to get her to break.

Dober said the kids were here, but I don't see either of them.

“In the back watching TV,” she says with a sniffle and a small smile, one that fades just as quick as it came. “I need to talk to you.”

A crash sounds from somewhere outside, but I don't bother to check on it. I'll leave that to Smoky—he's my sergeant-at-arms and even drunk, he's good.

“What about, sweetheart?” I ask, and I actually feel bad, I do. I killed your husband, I'm sorry. It's what I should say, but I can't bring myself to feel anything but betrayal. He put all of us at risk, all of us, even you.

Rebecca puts her hands on her lower back and turns in a small circle, her brown boots clicking against the cement floor of the office. Even as a grieving widow, she cuts a nice figure in her tight denim and leather jacket. It's not hard to see why Landon was smitten with her from the beginning all the way until the end.

I grit my teeth against the pain, push it back and bury it away. I haven't felt pain in years. I can't. It doesn't fit my job description.

“There are things a man can tell his wife,” she begins and then pauses, breath hitching as she stares at the soft sage green on the office wall's—Janae's pick, not mine. “There are things a man should be able to tell his wife that don't leave the four walls of their home.”