Page 2 of Bound By Temptation

“What can I get ya?” she asked, and I couldn’t help appreciating the red leather corset that pushed up her breasts and tight black leather pants that hugged each of her curves and rode low on her hips. With blonde hair and brown eyes, she was definitely my type.

“Bud bottle with the cap on and you ridin’ me later tonight,” I answered as Raid just held up his bottle for another and shook his head at my antics.

“Bud it is,” she said, turning away completely and dismissing the come-on. No doubt she was propositioned at every table she stopped at, including the women.

“Damn, bro. You got shot the fuck down,” Raid teased.

“Nah. Momentary lapse in judgment.” She posed a challenge, not fawning over us. That shit was hot. Easy pussy was just that—easy. When you had to work for it, it tasted so much sweeter. She was going to make me work. I was down for that.

Business first.

“Right. As for your question, just needed to get away for a bit.”

This wasn’t unusual for Raid. He had a bit of nomad in him at times, wanting to just be by himself on the open road. He said he thought better that way, but I knew he liked solitude too. Been that way since we were kids.

While I loved being in the thick of everything going on around me, he was more in the background. We might be identical twins, but personality wise, we were two completely different people. I was the loud to his quiet. His predictability to my impulsiveness. My need for eyes on me to his wanting to be on the sidelines.

We were the yin to each other’s yang. Cut from the same cloth yet split down the middle so we balanced each other out.

Looking at Raid, everything about him was like looking into a mirror, except for the scar by his right eye. It was deep and gnarly, never healing right even though he had it stitched up and taken care of. Mom gooped that shit up at every turn, but it never went away. It actually caused part of his brow to not have hair.

To me it was badass. And he didn’t seem to give two shits about it being on him. Actually never said a word about it or discussed with anyone how it happened. All I knew for sure was it was one of the very few ways to tell us apart.

“Right. What’s up? You texted something about family shit. Whose family, and who do I have ta kill?” I asked, and Raid chuckled even knowing I was serious as fuck.

The waitress came right then and set the two bottles down on the table, both with the caps firmly in place. I even grabbed it and made sure it was tight before nodding her off and giving her a wink to which she didn’t acknowledge.

We both opened the beers and tossed the caps on the table with a tink to the wooden top. Whenever we were somewhere that wasn’t exclusively Ravage, we opened our own shit. We’d learned our lesson on that one, and no chances were taken for history to repeat itself. People could be sneaky fuckers, and that was what got men like us killed. So, fuck that.

“Ours,” Raid started. “Nick’s back.”

Fucking hell. “What the fuck does that dick want?” I asked, taking a huge pull on my beer, the coldness seeping into my bones. More than likely, though, this talk would need something stronger than beer. Anything that had to do with Nick needed Jack or Jim.

“Called me yesterday out of the fuckin’ blue sayin’ he wanted to come by the clubhouse and talk to the club. I told him fuck no, but you know Uncle dick. He’s pushin’.”

My head shook at the man’s audacity. “Doesn’t he ever fuckin’ learn? He just wants to get his ass dead. Cruz will never forget the shit he pulled decades ago. Even suggesting coming to the club is asinine. He’s lost his fuckin’ mind.”

Back when Cruz and Princess were getting together twenty or thirty years ago, Nick thought it would be a good idea to fuck Princess in a bathroom at the clubhouse. Granted she asked him too, but it didn’t go over well. Cruz ended up tearing the door off the hinges, pulling my uncle away from his woman and Nick barely got out of the clubhouse without his ass kicked.

Nick wasn’t allowed back in the clubhouse for any reason afterward. It had been said the actual fucking between the two never happened, but it was enough for Cruz to put a ban on Nick. No one fucked with his woman ever, even if she didn’t know she was his at the time.

Even though Nick tried many times over the years to come back into the Ravage fold, since he was trying to be a Prospect before the bathroom incident, he eventually stopped pushing hard yet would bring up the Prospecting idea from time to time, putting a bug in our ear so maybe we’d change our mind. Yeah, fuck that.

Normally Nick would call his brothers—my father, Buzz, and Uncle Breaker, who were also twins and wouldn’t give him an inch when it came to the club. They kept a tight leash around the man when it came to Ravage.

Looked like now he intended to drag Raid and myself into his craziassness. The question was, why?

We’d had “family” dinners over the years at my folks’ home with Nick in attendance. Nothing too much, but enough to keep him in the family loop and our lives at least a little. The sad thing was when he brought up wanting to be part of the club, he just sounded pathetic. It had been fucking decades, dude—get the fuck over it. Wasn’t gonna happen. Not only because of our President, Cruz, but because of the rest of the club.

Raid’s mouth quirked up at the sides. “And when I asked him why the clubhouse and not just Dad’s place, he said he needed to talk to the club, but he wouldn’t give me the fuckin’ reason, so he got another no.”

I nodded. I knew my brother could handle it, not that he needed Nick’s shit any more than the rest of us did. Raid was a good man. “Yeah. Good call. So, why amIhere talkin’ about this shit? You coulda texted and let me know the dick was callin’.” Nick was par for the course and nothing justified thiswe must meet in secretbullshit.

“Because I got curious. He seemed to push harder than before. More insistent. Poking. Prodding. Trying my fuckin’ patience. So, I did some digging.” This was Raid calculating. He was the smart one, thinking shit through. Analyzing it. Coming up with information and putting a plan together to handle it. He was a lot like our father.

Me, I would have easily lost my shit on Uncle without taking pause to realize something was definitely off and needed more attention. I would’ve cussed his ass out and told him to leave us alone with all the club bullshit. Probably would’ve gone into thehaven’t you learned over the yearsshit.

A smile widened my face. Loved how smart my brother was. It was something I truly admired about him. “Of course, you did.” Raid was thorough. Whenever something happened in the club, he’d learn the ins and outs backward and forward. The risks and benefits. He’d voice things when he had concerns, but if he felt it was a good call, he didn’t say a word. It was just the type of man he was. He’d always taught me that knowledge was power, and I was lucky as fuck he had my back on that.

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