Page 18 of Wolf.e
“The whole thing needs replacing. I just started working with Layla’s brother at Crimson Homes. I’ll have it fixed up by the end of the summer. No need for a talk,” Brinley adds, resting her hand on Layla’s arm, her pale pink fingernails shine in the dim light. The beast in me imagines what they’d look like with my blood under them after she tears up my back.
“I’m pretty good with wood, I could probably take a look for you.” Kai gives her his best dazzling smile, and I grit my molars to stop myself from cuffing him up the back of his head.
Brinley smiles nervously and averts her eyes from his, her innocence taking over. I kick him sharply under the table without looking up from cutting my steak. Kai turns his attention to me. I lift my gaze to take my bite and shake my head slightly only once, no one else would notice. Kai nods and grimaces, understanding I’m telling him to back off.
My eyes flit to Brinley’s and the moment I meet her gaze she looks away. I take another bite of steak and watch her talkto Layla. Every time I feel her eyes on me, I focus on her, and every time she looks away, pretending she wasn’t looking at me.
It’s a game I could play all night.
You can look away all you want, but you can’t run from me, little hummingbird.
My VP and cousin, Jake, stands with a head nod and a smirk to the table beside us. I follow his gaze to a sweetbutt and know he’s about to hook up. He’s always ready to party and is extremely impulsive which is why his father, my uncle Ray, nominated me to take over as president for him before he died. I didn’t want to take it from Jake, but luckily for me, Jake didn’t seem to care. He was happy to be VP. This way, he can drink copious amounts and party his life away. Two things I have zero interest in doing. I’ll knock back a shot of whiskey or two but aside from that, my body is my fucking temple.
I grab his arm. “Be back here in thirty minutes, you aren’t missing toasts,” I say, and he nods before stealing out the clubhouse door.
Jake listens and slides back into his seat twenty-five minutes later just as Shelly starts the rounds of speeches after dinner and has all the girls at the table tearing up. Ax’s father was my uncle’s enforcer and his father before that was Sergeant at Arms for my grandfather. The club is in all of our blood, and Ax and I already have an unbreakable brotherhood. We served three tours in the Middle East together. That shit bonds you like nothing else.
I watch Ax now as his mother talks and Layla tears up, he’s all in for this fucking woman or so it seems.
Layla is cool, I’ll give her that, but as I listen, all I can think of is Ax on his knees before he met her, no more than a year ago, on the middle of the pool table while two brunettes tradedsucking him off in front of everyone. A competition to see which one would earn his cum down their throat first.
He tried to pass them off to the rest of us after, to which I gave him a hard fucking no. I’m all for fucking women but there isn’t a damn thing they could do to earn my cock down their throat. Especially the ones who hang around here. No clue where their mouths have been.
I watch the two lovebirds across the table now. Ax has his arm around Layla’s neck and he kisses her on the lips like he is actually committed to her for all eternity.
Layla champions all her girls for more shots, and after speeches the party gets going. I take a few minutes to do my diligence of making my way around the room and talking to everyone important. We have several members from different charters here and some of their ol’ ladies. Not all the men bring them along, some of them treat events like this as a release from their constants. Ax and I also have ex-military buddies who have shown up for us. Men we spent time with in Kuwait and Afghanistan. Seeing these men here tonight brings back all sorts of memories from both ends of the spectrum. I make my way back to the table to find Brinley and Layla acting out some sort of choreographed dance while seated at the table, and I keep on eye on the proper little hummingbird that seems to be loosening up.
“We did at least ten of these over the years for our church youth groups,” Brinley tells the girls.
“Do you still remember every single one?” Layla asks her, laughing as I rejoin.
“I cannot see you as the little girl in the front row every Sunday…” Chantel says to Layla as she laughs, gulping back a shot—probably her tenth. I’ve seen that woman drink men under the table on any given night.
“New girl, I could see,” she says, pointing to Brinley to which they laugh again—all of them but Brinley, which just solidifies to me she may not always enjoy her good girl persona.
Before Brinley can speak, I sit. She straightens right up, and her eyes nervously focus on anythingbutme, instead paying attention to her half-filled glass, people talking and milling about, the girls.
It’s okay, I have a big enough ego to handle her evasiveness. I already know her secret.
Shewantsto look at me.
My phone buzzes on the table just as we’re all through toasting Chantel and her maid of honor’s speech. No sooner does mine buzz, but every one of my men’s start buzzing and dinging simultaneously.
I’m instantly on high alert, my hand covers the gun concealed under my cut at my hip, and I look around the room for threats. I open the text, it’s a photo from an unknown number, of myself, Kai, Ax and Jake in Jake’s dad’s old Silverado yesterday at a stop light leaving Lakeshore. DOS territory.
We were there to stake out across from the coffee shop watching for Gator’s men picking up his weekly Percocet. You can’t even see us through the tinted windows. I can’t understand how they knew we were there—Jake’s truck isn’t registered to him. There’s no way they would’ve known it was us—
The entire building shakes as an explosion rocks the outside of the club house. It’s instant pandemonium. Women scream and people get up and start running for shelter. I stand without thought and get to Brinley in one stride. I wrap one arm around her waist. She gasps and tips her head back, looking into my eyes, her face just a few inches from mine. Her eyes fill withfear as I pick her up in a rag doll carry and following Ax and Layla, we burrow the girls into a hallway alcove for safety.
When I set Brinley down her mouth pops open, but she doesn’t speak. She breathes in shallow breaths, the way the body does when it’s dipping into fight or flight.
“Stay,” I order.
She closes her mouth, gulps and nods. Her ocean eyes and the way her throat works to swallow threatens to hold me, but I know I have to go.
“Don’t leave them for one fucking second! And no one leaves this building!” I yell to Mason over my shoulder, then turn to Chris, one of our prospects. “Lock it all down, now!”
It’s only been twenty seconds, but I’m already running to the front door forty feet away. I see the Silverado is engulfed in a mass of flames and smoke in the parking lot near the hall. We fly through the clubhouse door. I don’t even have to turn to know Jake, Ax, and Robby J—one of my most trusted and longest-patched members—are behind me.
