Page 58 of Grave Games

Ana-Sofia looked confused. “Like what?”

Mabel sighed. “Okay, let’s give you an example. A couple years back there was a woman who showed up. Real looker, dressed head to foot in that high-priced Dolce and Gabbana shit. Come to find out, this woman is some brainiac VP at some swanky-ass bank, dealing with lots of high-pressure situations. She said she needed to blow off some steam, so she came over here because she wanted to know what it was like to have a train run on her. She must’ve liked it, because she’s come back at least half a dozen times since then.”

“A train?” I said it carefully, not wanting to sound judgy, because Mabel had once been one of the Gravedigger mamas, and I had no idea how closely she related to the so-called easy lays.Good God. “Does that mean what I think it means?”

“If you think it means being fucked by a bunch of men, one right after another, then yes. It does,” Mabel kept her gaze on mine as if searching for my very soul. “I know you were a nice suburban girl kept by Marvel at his daddy’s club, so I don’t know if that sort of thing was done to you—”

“It wasn’t.” Now that I knew the whole story behind my kidnapping, I realized that Hades and Marvel hadn’t wanted to break me so completely they’d never get my brother to cooperate. But I hadn’t known that at the time, so for those three horrible days I’d lived in terror that it would come to that. “It was just Marvel, but… that was enough.”

Mabel nodded. “You didn’t want to be there, but in this banker woman’s case, shewantedto be where she was. You understand me, girls? All the easy lays are exactly where they want to be, just like all the mamas are where they want to be. No one’s forcing them to be here with the Gravediggers. Hell, you’ve seen these men. Women with half a brain are ready to line up around the block for a chance to be with them.”

“Believe me, I’m not judging the women, or the men who take what’s being offered,” I assured her. “I’ll admit I don’t know anything about this world, but I do know enough about life not to judge what people do. My dad taught me that lesson—instead of questioning what had happened to me for three days, he just made me feel like I’d asked for it, so I try very hard not to pass judgment on situations I know nothing about.”

“That sonofabitch,” Mabel muttered as if to herself, before she shook her head as if dismissing bad thoughts. “Don’t you worry, honey, you’ve got a new family in Romeo, you hear me? And you can add Ashtray and me into the mix, and Misty and her Lasso, though you’ve never met him. He’s good people, and I get the feeling little Ana-Sofia is good people too. So you just hang with us, and we’ll show you what true family’s all about.”

“Absolutely,” Ana-Sofia reached over and gave my hand a warm squeeze, making me love her all the more, before she turned her attention to Mabel. “Now, tell me more about tonight. What should we expect to see at the party?”

Mabel pursed her lips in thought. “Well, if it’s like other parties this club has thrown, it’s going to get real rowdy real fast, and I don’t want the two of you to be so shocked and horrified that you get scared away. That’s why Misty and I are giving you fair warning about it now.”

“I almost broke up with Lasso after my first party at the Gravedigger Clubhouse,” Misty volunteered with a little shudder. “I wasn’t sheltered, considering what my mother was, but dear God.”

I gave her a leery look. “That bad?”

“Let me put it this way, girlfriend. I never knew orgies were an actual thing until I walked in on one.”

Both Ana-Sofia and I gasped.

“Orgies happen,” Mabel said, her tone as mild as if she’d just acknowledged that hiccups happened. “It might even happen tonight at the party. You’re going to see a lot of the hottest little mamas doing what they do best, and any and every member of the club doing what they do best with their mama of choice. Same for the easy lays.”

“What about our men?” Ana-Sofia said, and her expression looked exactly how I felt—torn between worried and ready to go to war with any woman who would dare to set their sights on her man. “Because I’m saying it now—I will cut a bitch, and then Zee, if he decides he’s going to screw someone else while I’m right here.”

“You need to make that very clear to Zee,” Misty advised from her end of the island. “But I’m fairly certain he would never do that, considering how possessive he is of you, Ana-Sofia. Same for you, Shiloh,” she added, shooting me a wink. “I’ve seen Romeo with you and how he hovers and tends to your every need. That man knows damn well you’re his treasure.”

“Make no mistake, though,” Mabel added with a seriousness that told me she was about to drop some epic wisdom. “As sweet as your men might be with you when they’re behind closed doors, they’re used to life being a certain way. This is their world you’ve chosen to enter. Some of their behaviors might be tough for them to change. It might even be difficult for them to understandwhyyou’d want them to change.”

“Romeo’s a smart guy.” It was almost impossible keeping the heat out of my voice at the thought of Romeo hooking up with some rando while taking care of “club business,” so I didn’t even try. “I’m with Ana-Sofia on this. If I threaten to cut off his favorite appendage, I’m sure he’ll be able to understand that as long as he’s with me, his easy-lay days are over.”

“Or, you could make it so your man doesn’t have any need for other women when he’s got you right there, all hot and ready to go,” Misty said, her smile turning sly. “Rock your man’s world before church, and he’ll never be tempted to touch another woman. At least, not without knowing he’s running the risk of losing the best thing he’s ever had in his life, and that’s you.”

Chapter Twenty

Arthur

Romeo

“Who’s coming in for church?” Ajax folded his hands over his stomach and leaned back in his chair. Tyr, Slash, Zee and Ajax sat with me around a table we often used for poker in the Clubhouse’s main gathering area. The table was now bare, with the exception of a few coffee mugs and a sticky bun Slash had scrounged up. Usually at midmorning, the place was as silent as a tomb, but today there were a couple prospects hard at work stocking the bar and moving extra tables and chairs in, and about half a dozen mamas tidied the place up in preparation for the upcoming business and festivities. “What’s the roll-call?”

Tyr glanced at him. “All chapters, including the ones in Wisconsin and Michigan.”

“Hail, hail, the gang’s all here,” Slash quipped around a bite of sticky bun. “Remember the good old days when we started out on our own, just the Original Four and a bunch of guys who didn’t know their throttles from their dicks? It was just a handful of us, trying to live our born-to-be-wild dreams.”

“You guys started out with ten or so and expanded to ten times that amount just within the city limits,” Zee said absently, frowning down at a sheaf of papers he held. As the recruitment officer, Zee was the man who knew where all the moving pieces were and what they were capable of. “Plus we’ve got about a hundred or more coming in from their various chapters. Even Locust from Ann Arbor is coming in with his crew, and they’re traveling through a blizzard on their side of the lake.”

“They probably heard we had sunny weather and decided they needed to work on their tans,” Slash said, then winced. “Oh, shit. I just imagined Locust in nothing but a banana hammock, and now I wanna puke.”

“You want to puke because you eat shit like that instead of real food,” Zee said, nodding at the half-eaten sticky bun.

Slash waved the bun at Zee. “This isn’t shit, Dad. Shit is the package of Twizzlers I’m gonna eat after this.”

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