Page 62 of Grave Games

“Let them try.” To my surprise, Shiloh snarled the words that both burned with rage and threatened to ice the world over. “I know their cruelty firsthand, and Zee is right—any sign of weakness will only fuel their fire and make them think they’ve won. I’ll be damned if I’m going to hand that kind of weapon over to them, so yeah. Tonight we’re going to party louder and more fiercely than ever, and I hope they watch. I hope they see how strong we are and how impotent their attempts were to get at us today. Their limp-dick energy is obvious as they take potshots at us from afar, so we’re going to have a kickass barbecue right in their faces, and we’re going to have a great time doing it, goddamn it.”

“Preach, sister!” Ashtray pounded the table with his fist before pointing a finger at me. “See? I told you she was a keeper, Romeo. You need to listen to me more often.”

Jesus Christ, tonight was going to be fucking insane.

*

Shiloh

Come to find out, I didn’t know how to dress for a biker bash that promised to be full of bonfire, barbecue and bullets.

In truth, I didn’t give a damn about what I wore. All I really wanted to do was go to the hospital and stand vigil for Arthur, but Romeo had told me—even before I’d asked to go, that’s how well he now knew me—that it wasn’t safe outside the compound now that war had begun. It clearly hadn’t escaped him that it was my personal bodyguard that got attacked. The message was about as subtle as a jackhammer to the face—you took Chef, we take anything remotely connected to Chef. They may as well have posted an announcement on Reddit that I was their number-one target.

Sadly that meant I couldn’t go shopping for an outfit for tonight’s barbecue, but I figured no one would notice if I just wore what I currently had on, a pair of jeans and a sweater. When my new friends heard that, they instantly decided this would be a disaster of epic proportions and mobilized to turn me into a biker-world Cinderella. Misty and I wore the same shoe size, so she promised that whatever outfit we could put together, she’d have the right kind of “fuck-me shoes” to go with it.

Fuck-me shoes. Now I’d heard everything.

Then came the problem of the actual outfit. Thankfully Mabel knew the family that owned the stripper apparel store across the street—The Vixen’s Den—so she wasted no time in picking up the phone. Next thing I knew, I had what had to be half the store’s inventory spread out all over the room I shared with Romeo in the Barracks. The owner of the shop, Ginger Sisko, looked every inch her name, with flame-red hair and a Jessica Rabbit bod. She came over to the compound with garment bags stuffed full of inventory, the likes of which I’d never even seen before.

Clearly I needed to get out more.

I straight-up adored the look of a black-studded pleather catsuit, but the moment I tried it on every pore my body possessed began to sweat. So not sexy. I also loved a pair of stretchy skinny jeans that looked painted on, paired with a loose black cotton halter top with a massive silver-sequined skull-and-crossbones on the front. Ginger slyly pointed out that just one tug on the halter’s tie would make the whole thing drop off, which had both advantages and disadvantages, at least in my mind. The final outfit I went nuts over was a black leather miniskirt, thigh-highs and a lace-up corset-style leopard-print top that pushed my boobs up so much that even I was impressed.

If this didn’t make Romeo forget all about the little mamas, club girls, easy fucks or whatever else was hanging around at the club, nothing would.

In the end, I took everything but the catsuit and handed over my one and only credit card. To my surprise, the statuesque Ginger shook her glorious head of hair and pushed the card back at me.

“That was your bodyguard we watched get taken away in an ambulance earlier, right?” When I nodded, she gave me a thousand-watt smile. “Consider this my gift to you, Shiloh. This is your battle armor, understand? You need to show up in it looking your finest, so the world sees you’re not cowering away somewhere. Far from it. You’re getting your glad-rags on and showing everyone that Hades is incapable of breaking a Gravedigger woman.”

I blinked, overwhelmed. “Oh, I couldn’t—”

“You can and you will, because I said so. Don’t thank me, my unofficial sister,” Ginger added, waving a casual hand when I tried to stutter out my gratitude. “You’ll learn soon enough that we support each other around here, especially when it comes to sticking it to a common enemy.”

“Unofficial sister?” There was so much that needed to be unpacked in that statement, so I started from the top. “Do you, uh, belong—” God, I’dneverget used to that, “—to one of the Gravediggers?”

“No, but I grew up in the life. My mom was Hades’s on-again, off-again ol’ lady, and I hate that asshole’s guts like you wouldn’t believe. He’s not my father,” she added hastily when she correctly read the widening of my eyes. “Dear God, no. That shithead was an abusive fucker from start to finish, and he’s still the star of some of my worst nightmares. I’m totally in on anything that works to get under his skin, even if it’s something as simple as getting you the proper battle armor you need to show his evil ass how unafraid you are. God, I just want to giggle at the thought of how pissed he’s going to be when he sees you being the life of the party.”

And like that, I was in possession of some seriously cute outfits from a stripper apparel store. Honestly, my life was that much better for it.

With the problem of what to wear taken care of, it was then time to make sure the party preparations were going smoothly. As more and more bikers roared in with their women perched on the backs of their bikes, I was in the Barracks’ kitchen learning an awesome marinade from Mabel while assembling my killerqueso con carneand setting it to simmer in a large crockpot. Then a bunch of us shaped about a million hamburger patties and set them in the fridge for later tonight.

As we worked, a commercial-sized smoker on a small flatbed trailer was pulled up to the back of the kitchen, and soon the scents of hickory wood and smoking brisket and turkey legs perfumed the air. As the afternoon rolled on, more Gravedigger woman—some with jackets, others without but still known to just about everyone there—wandered into the kitchen to see what they could do to help. I found myself with less and less to do, despite the fact that there was a staggering amount of food—most of it some kind of meat—being prepped for the party.

Clearly, vegetarianism wasn’t a thing in badass biker world.

It was almost five in the afternoon when Mabel sent Misty, Ana-Sofia and me off to our respective rooms to get ready, while she continued to marshal the troops still coming in to lend a hand. As I climbed the stairs to Romeo’s and my room, I noted that an unlit bonfire had been built log-cabin style in the parking lot area not far from the Clubhouse. I had been told that it wouldn’t be lit until it was completely dark, and it was the biggest bonfire structure I’d ever seen. The statement it made was clear. Far from being broken over Arthur’s attack, the Gravediggers were ready to party like their lives depended on it.

The only thing more head-shaking about this was that I was beginning to understand the ways of this new world that I’d found myself in. It was amazing, really, how far I’d come.

I pushed through the door to our room and found Romeo already there, standing next to the built-in where I’d hung the outfits Ginger had given me. He had the thigh-highs in one hand and a half-smile on his face as he turned to look at me while I quietly closed the door behind me.

“I met Ginger Sisko today,” I offered, for some reason ridiculously embarrassed that he had my pretty sheer stockings in his hand. “She calls that battle armor. Which outfit do you like?”

“I like you naked, but since there’s no way in hell I’d ever let any of my brothers put eyes on what’s mine, let’s go with the skirt.”

The hungry possessiveness in his tone thrilled me. “Like a bit of leg showing, do you?”

“Baby, what I like is easy access to that sweet, sweet pussy of yours.”

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