Page 36 of The Devil's Scars

Chapter Seven

“So, wait up.” Willa Moore set her cup of coffee down, stared at her best friend. “You… you had sex? Last night? In an MC bar back room? With a goddamn biker?”

“Shhhhh!” Zoe hissed, shooting a look at Keira. The baby was sitting at Zoe’s feet in front of the sofa, all blonde curls and brown eyes, happily absorbed in her favorite toy which Willa had been organized enough to bring on the plane. Thank Christ it was a totally silent toy, a stuffed giraffe with purple spots, because according to Willa, Keira had shaken that thing for the entire two-plus hours of the flight from Fargo. If it had even had a tiny bell inside of it, she was sure that it’d have driven the entire plane insane.

Willa stared at Zoe, then down at Keira, who was singing to herself in some language that made zero sense to anyone except Zoe. “‘Shhhh’… seriously? You think she knows what the hell we’re actually talking about, Zee?”

“Shhhh!” Zoe hissed again. “I have no idea, OK, but I don’t want the words ‘sex’ or ‘goddamn’ or ‘hell’ used around her.”

“Alright, alright.” Willa shook her auburn head and rolled her blue eyes. “Message received loud and clear, Mama Bear. I’ll skip the swearing, but we need to replace the ‘s’ word with something else, ‘cause we are going to talk about the hopefully-filthy-and-steamy ‘s’ that happened.”

Zoe grinned, drank some of her own coffee. “Let’s call it ‘step class’. Mostly because it was about that aerobic.”

“Nice. Burned some calories in a hot and sweaty step class, huh?”

“Oh, Lord.” Zoe almost shuddered as she recalled coming from Scars just sliding into her. “Yeah. So yeah.”

“How’d you meet the step class… uh… instructor?”

Zoe explained about going to meet Wolf’s VP at Satan’s Bar, who ended up being a scarred warrior with little bits of fallen sky as eyes. She told her friend about how she’d unburdened on him about Hailey, about how Keira had come into her life, about her fears of not being a good Mom for the sweet little girl sitting at her feet. Then she admitted that she’d just decided to go for it with Scars – history forgotten and the future ignored. That she’d just been living in the moment for the first time in a long time, and that it had been what she’d needed.

Now, though… now, it was back to real life. Her, Keira, this new house in a decent neighborhood, starting a new job managing an MC-owned tattoo parlor the next morning. And part of that reality was seeing Scars Innis again, and again, and again… around the bar, the parlor, the garage, with Wolf… and the whole truth was that as much as she wanted to stay the hell away from him because, Jesus Lord, the man scared the crap out of her, she also longed to see him.

Worse, she ached to have an extended, intensive step class with him again. Ached deep inside her body, deeper than he’d touched physically. Ached in her pussy, her guts, her chest, her throat. Just ached with desire and want and need. Ached for more of him.

No way she was telling Willa that part, though. Best to play it off as a stress-release and a meaningless night of fun before her kid reappeared on an airplane. Best to be all la-la casual about it, because God knows, Scars had barely watched the back room door hit Zoe’s ass on the way out last night before he (surely, most definitely) had been back at the bar, eyeing up one of the scantily-clad pass-arounds and MC regulars on the dance floor.

That’swhat guys like him and Wolf did. It’s what all of The Road Devils did. She knew that. No sense pretending otherwise.

“So…” Willa said. “When’s your next step class?”

“Oh, there won’t be another one.” Zoe pushed her blonde hair off her face, aimed for ‘who-cares-anyway’. “It’s not like that with these guys.”

“No? Never?”

“I never saw it, in all the time that I hung around the club with Wolf,” Zoe said. “Even the married guys – the guys with old ladies – screwed anything that opened its legs to them, and the wives were expected to be cool with it, but stay faithful and not even so much as sneak a peek at another man. The club pass-arounds had literally no other purpose but to provide… um… step classes, and every night at Satan’s, women just showed up, looking to be around the bad boys. You’d be surprised how many college girls and women with decent jobs have a step-class-with-a-biker fantasy. It’s a nice break from their safe, little lives… and those boys are ready and willing and able. You get a few minutes of their time, maybe a night, then you’re damaged goods, and he’s off with the next chick hauling her skirt up. He’s a hero for it, the woman is a wh– uh… a w-h-o-r-e.”

“For real?” Willa grabbed a cherry danish. “Talk about a double standard.”

“Complete and total. These jerks live for the pussy on tap.”

“Shhhhh!” Willa flapped her hands and gestured at Keira. “Don’t say ‘pussy’! Say ‘pineapple’ instead!”

“B-i-t-c-h,” Zoe said with real affection. “So, yeah, now that Keira is here and I start work, my pineapple is closed for business. No more step classes for a while, and when I do feel the need for a bit of exercise, I’ll be looking far away from that clubhouse, believe me.”

“Like where? An Appleby’s? A TGI Friday’s?”

“You got it, babe. Gimme vanilla and law-abiding. I’ll be good with that.”

“Well,” Willa said, not convinced. “I think attending a regular step class isn’t a terrible idea. I mean, look… if it’s the kind of thing that you can just show up for when you get a burst of energy, and you don’t have to buy a full membership or commit to monthly fees, then why not just enjoy it? Treat that instructor like – well. Like a piece of convenient hot fun, the way that he’d treat you like a hot pineapple. Why not? Have a good time, get a work out, call it a day. Come home and eat ice cream, and hug this adorable little girl.”

“Because Wolf already desperately wants me to be part of the MC family,” Zoe said in a hollow voice. “He wants me to think of his brothers like my brothers, and to be honest, the guys that I’ve met are already taking me in. Doing things for me.”

“And that’s a problem, because…”

“Because I don’t want to be thought of as club property or a club responsibility. As a club woman.”

Willa stared at her, not fully getting it. Zoe elaborated.

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