Page 6 of Old Flame

Pepper came walking in from the back. “Sit your ass down and be patient!” she shouted at him, then nodded her head at a blonde server to go get something.

I wondered if she was going to call security when she walked right into the thick of them and slapped one on the back and hugged another–who I could admit was gorgeous. As in hecould be a model, even with the tattoos. The petite brunette he had tucked at his side smiled sweetly at Pepper, and she said something to her that made her throw her head back and laugh.

When one of them turned around, I could see the back of his vest. It readJudgmentabove halfof a skull that wore a crown with angel wingsand lightning bolts surrounding it. I realized now that the noise and vibration had been motorcycles. A lot of them.

This was not a place I’d have thought would be a biker bar, but I was ninety-nine percent sure that those people were bikers. And Pepper was very familiar with them. This wasn’t a random visit. They were regulars.

Are you seeing this?I asked Eamon silently.

You should have looked for a pub,would have been his reply.

3

Tex

Taking a long pull from the Corona, I watched Nina squealing and screaming like she was at an actual Aerosmith concert while the band covered “Cryin’.” The lead singer was doing a poor imitation of Steven Tyler. Jars chuckled as he held her on his lap, as if someone was going to take his old lady from him. His possessive shit with her almost made me believe in love. Almost.

Nina’s long hot-pink nails wiggled in the air, and the tattooed ring around her finger made me grin and shake my head. That had been a Jars thing too. He’d wanted to make sure she couldn’t take off her wedding ring, so he’d made it permanent. I was there the night she had it done. Jars had been holding her in his lap then too.

Damn, I missed being here full-time.

My gaze moved over to our vice president of The Judgment MC, Micah, who was whispering to his pretty little wife, Dolly, while he wrapped his arms around her from behind. That shit was never going to get old. Seeing the biggest man slut I’d ever fucking known get addicted to one cunt. I couldn’t think of a bigger sweetheart than Dolly either. She was too good for him, and he knew it. But thanks to her, he no longer used my room to fuck bitches. I’d been ready to kill the motherfucker the next time I caught him in there.

I kept waiting for Prez to hand over the president title toMicah. Liam Walsh, the president of the MC, had moved to Ocala a couple of years ago to run Devil’s, the strip club we owned there. All our other clubs were in or around Miami. That one had been purchased when he found his daughter living there with the fucking boss of the Southern Mafia. He’d been looking for her for nineteen years, and he wanted to live near her. Now, he had two grandsons, a wife, and a baby boy. His family had grown, and his life revolved around them.

My life, it was here. This club. It was my family. The only one I had. Going to Ocala and staying for weeks at a time to help Prez manage things was getting old. Prez had his old lady, who was almost twenty years younger than him, and his baby to go home to at night. I was left at the club with the guys and the strippers. Not that I was complaining. Lots of hot, willing pussy to choose from each night, but, damn, I had that here.

Lifting my hand slightly, I motioned for Amethyst. She’d been one of our most popular strippers here in Miami until a year ago, when she finally retired from dancing. She helped us hire the girls now. She vetted them and was doing a fucking fantastic job too. If she didn’t get so damn jealous every time she walked in on me fucking one of the girls, then I might put her in my bed full-time. Just last week, she had come into the office at Toxic Throttle—our biggest and most popular strip club in Miami—to find Katnis bent over the desk while I took her from behind. Amethyst almost clawed out Katnis’s eyes, and I had to threaten to fire her ass to get her to back off Katnis. Hell, she’d hired the hot little redhead.

Long, pointy fingernails ran over my shoulder as Amethyst pressed as close to me as possible.

I glanced up at her. “Get me another,” I told her, handing her the empty bottle in my hand.

She took it, and I winked at her to sweeten the demand before she turned to do my bidding. I knew she wanted to be my oldlady. She’d wanted it for years, but I wasn’t the type who had been built for that. I wouldn’t have a marriage like what Micah, Liam, Jars, and Brick all had with their old ladies. If I even attempted it, I’d have the shit show that Anson had after making Starlit—aka Mandy, one of the strippers at River Styx another of our clubs—his old lady. He was still fucking the club whores, and she kept catching him. It had been the same with Grinder when his old lady was alive. Violence and drama.

“Reckon Pepper is ever gonna give me a chance?” Country, one of the younger members of the MC, asked as he sat down beside me with a tall glass of whatever beer was on tap.

I smirked. “Nope.”

“Damn.”

“Yep.” I stretched and leaned back in my chair, glancing around for a waitress.

The hot little brunette with her ass cheeks hanging out of her cutoff shorts would be nice. I needed a cheeseburger and a better look at her up close. She was new—or new to me. I hadn’t been here in almost a month. Most of my time had been in Ocala, working at Devil’s.

Pepper was over at a booth behind us, talking to someone. I waited for her to finish so I could get her attention and order my cheeseburger through her. She’d get it out here faster.

“Here ya go, baby,” Amethyst purred close to my ear as she pressed her tits against the side of my head while bending down to hand me my beer.

I started to tell her to go order me the burger when Pepper stepped away from the table, and my eyes drifted over to the woman in the booth.

The band began playing a Guns N’ Roses song while the women with us started to cheer, yet it was as if the sound went from loud to being sucked out of the room. Leaving me sitting there in complete silence. I stared. This wasn’t the first time I’dthought I saw her or imagined what she looked like now, but it was the first fucking time the eyes were the perfect shade of cornflower blue, and the Marilyn Monroe beauty mark was there on her creamy, flawless skin.

Memories that I had shut away began to pound me like unforgiving ocean waves even though I tried like hell to hold them back. Then her gaze drifted from the band onstage to connect with mine. She stilled, then stiffened. It was her.

The fucking quickening of my heart didn’t lie. It had only ever done that shit once. For one girl.

Twenty-One Years Ago

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