Page 21 of Bullet

“Christ, that’s diabolical. Canned pie?”

It happens when she quirks a brow and shoots me an almost playful look. My heart falls out of my chest, and south of the border I just about explode in my jeans.

“I was kidding. We have a box of fresh apples in there that one of the guys brought from their tree.”

The way her face goes from amused horror to approval solidifies in my mind just how regal and queenly this woman is.

“In that case,” she says in a voice that’s almost smoky, but light too, like the harmonious notes in an expensive perfume, “let’s get the introductions done so we can make magic happen.”

I’d like to work a different kind of magic altogether. She’d look so beautiful with those heels locked around my hips as I eat that red lipstick off her lips while filling her with my thick cock. She’d take it so damn well, right next to a bowl of sliced sweet apples. She’d feed me one and ask, with a defiant look, which I prefer better. Her, or the apple. I’d have my mouth between her legs in an instant, proving to her that there’s nothing I prefermore than the taste of her sweet pussy, especially after I’ve been inside her.

On that hedonistic thought that short circuits my brainandmy balls, I grace her with a tight smile and motion to the other side of the room, where everyone else is holding back, waiting for me. “I’m sure you’ll find everyone lovely.”

Her sharp, narrow-eyed stare seems to say she knows it’s early yet.

As soon as she turns her back, I subtly arrange myself in my jeans so the outline of my dick isn’t visible while I’m talking to my Prez, VP, and their old ladies. I don’t need to be scaring Lark or giving Ella a reason to make terrible jokes the second she catches me alone. She’d never embarrass me in front of anyone else, but she’d sure have fun with it.

Hedonistic? More like masochistic.

I’m starting to learn that this night, and every other moment I have to spend in Lynette’s presence, is going to be torturous.

Chapter 7

Lynette

Pie is just pie, but I can’t eat apple pie without thinking about my mom. Every fall, she’d wait for the bulk apples that were fresh from the orchards to come into the stores. There’s nothing more delicious than an apple right off the tree, but since we lived in the middle of the city and my mom worked three jobs, there was never time to drive to an orchard for something so small.

I didn’t feel robbed of the experience because we were poor. We made our own experiences, and even if that was baking a pie in the tiny kitchen in the rundown apartment with water stains overhead and cracked ceilings, trying to coax the aged stove into displaying some last signs of life, it was still special because we did it together.

That’s how I find myself blinking away unexpected tears in the club’s kitchen. It’s not like I haven’t made apple pie since my mom died. I’ve made plenty of them because they’re Willa’s favorite as well. I don’t know what it is about this small square kitchen with the industrial throwback to the factory that this place clearly used to be that brings tears to my eyes—tears I’m worried I can’t just blink or gulp away.

Hamish looks so out of place, stalking around the kitchen in his leather jacket and the jeans with the big chain hanging off the back pocket and wrapping around to the front. His massive form makes the huge mixing bowl he grabs seem almost tiny. Every apple looks miniscule in his hands. I refuse to find the way hebasically stumbles around the kitchen, awkward but determined to find the ingredients I keep listing off, charming.

“I think all we’re missing is lard,” I say after looking over everything that’s been assembled on the large strip of counter.

I should be worried about getting this eight-hundred-dollar blazer dirty, but I don’t peel it away. I can’t allow myself to be so exposed, not while I’m here, in the den of my… enemies? Adversaries?

Alright, so no one feels like an enemy. Tyrant, Raiden, and their wives were perfectly nice. Raiden’s wife even teaches at one of the colleges here. She’s tall and beautiful, a total blonde bombshell, rocking leather pants and her tight ripped up tank top like a badass biker babe. Lark was the opposite. Sweet and almost shy, she gives off boho princess vibes, but she seems totally at home here. Tyrant and Raiden are both young, probably only a few years older than me, if that. Not only were they well spoken, both of them burning with intelligence and kindness, I couldn’t deny their overt magnetism.

They weren’t at all what I was expecting.

The lanky, sandy-haired man with his leather and snarky attitude who’d been playing pool with Hamish when I walked in here—that’s more the attitude I figured I’d get. Leering looks, outright flippancy, devil may fucking care vibes. He walked out of here with a sauntering swagger that said he was hot shit and knew it.

Hamish stares down the espresso cabinets doubtfully. The kitchen is large and there are cabinets on three sides of the rectangular room that extend well into half of it. “What does lard look like, and would we be likely to have it?”

His face is almost comical. A little panicked. Like he’s a big tough biker and he can’t lose face over something as simple as this.

He might be assured of himself normally, but never full of himself. Just comfortable with who he is in a way that most people are not.

“It’s a type of fat. Maybe you have shortening?”

“I’m sure we have it because Lark and Ella are in here all the time, baking amazing things. Oh, and Tarynn lately too. You’ll probably meet her later tonight. She works at Patterson’s, though not for much longer.”

“That sounds ominous.”

He grins, and holy god, I don’t know why I can’t stop myself from being affected when he does that. Or breathes. Or exists.

Hormone check. Right now.

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