Page 32 of The Devil's Viking

She went out to the bar area and saw that Cole was already pouring drinks for the hovering waitresses, while Holt and Cowboy sat chatting. When they spotted her, they jumped to their feet and invited her to sit down.

“Oh, I really can’t,” she said. “I’m sorry. I need to clean the back rooms before Zoe comes and gets me for shopping.”

“C’mon, babe,” Cowboy said, and she once again thought how weird (and yet nice) it was for these smoking hot men to call her pet names. They never thought about it: the sweetest endearments just rolled off their tongues, unbidden and unforced.

Gideon had always lectured to his disciples about silver-tongued angels, and Iris had never really known what those were…until now. They were a bunch of tattooed, intimidating, generous, badass, glowering, funny, rough bikers who one hundred percent had her back as she took the first few tentative steps into her new life.

Wolf had warned her that she didn’t want these guys and their skills gunning for her, and now that she knew some of them a little bit, she totally believed that. These werenotstupid men,notmen to be messed with or threatened; they moved like trained soldiers, some of them, and they talked like men with pasts. But they were also touchingly kind and supportive, they made an effort to get to know her, they seemed to feel that since Iris was living and working in their bar, she was their responsibility.

She felt accepted and wanted. It felt good.

“No, I’m sorry,” she said with real regret. “I don’t want to keep Zoe waiting and she’ll be here in an hour.”

“Rain check?” Cowboy said. “Next time, you have a drink with me, darlin’. A real drink.” He paused. “Wait –doyou drink?”

“Not for a long time,” she said, remembering how hard it had been to kick the drugsandthe alcohol; she’d thought it would kill her to go without those things, and now she never thought about them. Forcing her to quit cold turkey had been theonlygood thing that joining the Garden had ever done for her. “It doesn’t agree with me.”

“Gotcha.” Cowboy nodded, and dropped it immediately, no more questions asked. “So coffee tomorrow morning it is.”

“Tomorrow morning.”

They watched her walk down the hallway to the supply closet, pull out the vacuum, some garbage bags and a pair of latex gloves. She headed right into one of the crash rooms and got to work again.

“I’ll tell you what,” Holt said. “I’ve been watching her today, you know, as Wolf said for me to do, and this woman doesn’t stop. Like,ever. Her work ethic is off the goddamn charts. I asked her if she maybe wanted to lie down for a couple of hours this afternoon, just because she’d been up since five, and she looked at me like I was insane. Said that she worked eighteen-hour days in that fucking cult and even though she was tired sometimes, she was used to it.”

“Jesus,” Cowboy muttered. “She’s the very definition of a modern slave.”

“Right?” Holt said. “I mean, I’m all for working hard, but you gotta play hard, too, you know?”

Bang on cue, the door opened and a group of Satan’s regular bar babes came in. They were nice women, for the most part, and they all had a seriousthingfor MC members, so they were an easy and casual good time. They all knew the ins and outs of the crash rooms in the back, and they understood the rules of engagement, which basically were that the guys would only do what they were asked, only if they were asked to do it, but forget about a relationship.

“Here we go,” Cole said as the women came over to the bar, shedding coats as they walked; short skirts and deep cleavage and belly button rings emerged. “Party time, boys.”

**

Viking skirted past the women at the bar, all flirting wildly with Cole as he poured out a pitcher of Margaritas. These girls looked to be digging in for the night, and Viking was grateful that Iris’ room was way at the other end of the building, over Wolf’s office. She wouldn’t hear much going on down here if she wanted to get to bed early.

He walked through the room, looking for her everywhere, poking his head into the supply closet and then the crash rooms. In the fourth room, he found her vacuuming.

“Hey,” he said but she didn’t hear him over the running motor; he wasn’t keen to scare her, so he stood in the door patiently, waiting for her to turn around and notice him.

She bent over to pick up something from under the bed and Viking suddenly found himself looking at her ass, sweetly rounded in her baggy jeans. He knew that he should do the decent thing and look away, just drop his eyes and turn away, or better yet, leave…but she was curvy in ways that he hadn’t imagined, and yes, hehadimagined. He felt like a creep and a perv about it, considering what this woman had surely been through, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself.

She stood up now and turned around; when she spotted him, she jumped a bit and then smiled. She turned off the vacuum and held up a pair of tiny hot-pink panties between the fingers of her gloved hand.

“Looking for these?” she asked him.

Viking laughed, shook his head. “Nah, baby. Not my color.”

“Hmmm.” She threw them in the garbage bag over in the corner. “That’s the sixth pair that I’ve found.”

“In this room?”

“No. This is the last room that I’m doing, so it’s six pairs in five rooms. This is the first pink pair, though. Black and red seem to be the preferred colors.” She cocked her head at him. “So… I’m guessing that these back rooms are for – entertainment purposes?”

“Yeah, you can say that. I mean, you saw that two of them are actually games rooms – you saw the pool tables, right? – but the others are literal crash rooms that people can rent to sleep over. Sometimes the boys stay overnight for some reason, like when their place is getting some work done or something like that. That’s why we have sofa beds and showers in the rooms. But yeah, if a room is free and the booze is flowing and the mood strikes, bar patrons can come down to an empty room and… well. You know.”

“Fling their clothing off in all directions,” she finished for him. “Got it.”

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