I don't feel like my usual self right now, like someone who knows what he's doing, who decides when and where and how the sex goes down. I just feel like a man trying to get closer to his woman, trying to hold her, to make her feel good, to possess her.
I slide my hands forward and up Lyric's smooth belly to her full breasts, grabbing them in rough fingers as I try to get a hold myself, to bring the usual Royal back to the forefront of my mind. But then she cries out, a little more pained than pleasured and I fucking snap, wrapping my arms around her waist and yanking her as tightly as I can against my chest.
When we come, her hips bucking and thrashing against my cock, we come together.
A couple hours later, I'm standing on my front porch watching the sun come up, a cigarette clutched in one hand and a girl in my bed. I don't usually bring them over here. There's no need, really. I can have as many club whores as I want back at the compound.
But they never make me feel like this—like a confused, moody asshole.
I watch the ocean for a while, waving at my eighty-seven year old neighbor with a single extended finger when he makes the sign of the cross at me. When I first moved in, the old bastard tried to start a petition to remove all convicted felons from the neighborhood. Joke was on him when I did a background check on myself and dumped the paperwork on his front lawn.
I've never been convicted of shit.
I take a drag on my smoke and pause, hearing the bike before I see it. By the time Dober pulls up in front of my house on his silver and black bobber, I'm stabbing it into the ashtray next to the wooden swing, a perfect match to the one on the back porch.
“What the hell do you want this early in the goddamn morning?” I ask, raising my brows and getting another cig from my pack. I like to smoke when I think. I have a lot of fucking thinking to do this morning.
“I was on my way in when Janae called,” Dober says, climbing off his bike and slipping his helmet off. One glance at my bagger and I can tell he knows I have a guest. “She wanted me stop by and wake your lazy ass up, remind you that you have a meeting with the mayor's daughter this morning.” I freeze, my smoke halfway to my lips, lighter still clutched in my hand. “But I can see that won't be necessary because the boss is a goddamn dumb shit.”
“Watch yourself, Dober,” I say, gritting my teeth a little. “We all know how you got your name off some snippy ass little black and tan dog, but there's no need to reinforce the notion.” Dober ignores me and strokes his hand down his beard in thought.
“You fucked the mayor's daughter.”
“Indeed, I did.” I smoke my cigarette in silence for a few moments.
“Do you need a speech from your VP? Something about putting the club first and all that?” I squeeze my smoke in tight fingers.
“I always put the club first,” I say, my voice cold and empty of emotion. Landon. I put the club above my best friend, above the boy who'd made me feel at home in a foreign country, the one who'd taken me on my first ride, who'd dragged me to the Alpha Wolves Compound and somehow got me tangled up in becoming a hang-around. We'd prospected together, patched in together.
“Then how about something uplifting?”
“I'm listening,” I say, glancing at Dober in his cut, a hammer hanging at his side and a slight smile working its way onto his lips. This is not a man who smiles often, believe me.
“Glacier dug up some shit on that Brent guy and found out he's on paid leave with the FBI, pending some sort of internal investigation.”
My mouth twitches.
“Now that is bloody good news,” I say, glancing over my shoulder as the cracked front door swings open and the dogs pad out, their nails loud on the wood of the porch. My heart did a little jump there when I thought it might be Lyric. Fuck me sideways. “What else do we know?”
“We know that this guy, Brent, is good friends with an old buddy of ours.”
“That so?” I ask, perking up at the news. Whatever this shit is with Lyric, I can't figure it out right now. But club business? I'm damn good at club business. “And who might that be?”
“You remember Clayton Moore?”
My stomach tightens at the mention of the president of the Mile Wide Motorcycle Club. If that bitch was listed in the dictionary, he'd be there under greedy motherfucker. I've never known a man to go so far or fight so hard for so little.
“So Brent's in bed with Mile Wide, huh? Didn't see that one coming.”
“Glacier's got more he says, but he wants us to come in and hear it straight.” Dober raises his bushy brows at me.
“Why the fuck didn't he call me directly and tell me any of this shit?” I ask on an exhale as I watch the dogs play bow at one another, tails wagging so fast they're nothing but blurs.