Page 73 of That Girl is Trouble

He rolls his eyes, his face snapping back to neutral. Pushing off me, he asks, “You know what I don’t understand?”

“A lot, I imagine.”

Tex smiles, but this time it’s more menacing than charming. His spine straightens, and his eyes spark in challenge. The moment he crosses his big arms over his chest is the moment I realize I’m trapped in the middle of a biker sandwich. Tex on one side, Preacher on the other, the bar behind me blocking my escape.

“Tell me, Kitty, how’s it that the second you’re tangled back up with the club, our prez is keeping secrets from our VP?”

I cross my arms, matching his stance, ignoring the narrowing of the space between us. Tex isn’t smiling, and on my other side, Preacher steps closer, further caging me in. I’ve never been naïve enough to think these men aren’t a danger. I may have spent night after night with them, learning how to play poker, eating dinners, cooking food Tex hated because he says I cook with too many vegetables, but in the end, I’m not one of them. There’s a line, and even when I was Jesse’s, that line was still thick and bold and sitting between us. With the club, it’s always the same—them versus everyone else.

“Not your business,” I say, swallowing down the nerves thrashing in my stomach and climbing up my esophagus.

He rubs his hand over his chin. “I can take a few guesses. Tell me if I’m getting warm, yeah?”

“Tex—”

“Always comes down to pussy,” he says, reaching over me and plucking a glass of whiskey off the bar. The maneuver shrinks the remainder of my personal space. From where he’s looming over me, he smiles, his large frame a tower of muscle. Tilting his head, he says, “That’s it, isn’t it? Why he’s keeping this dirty little stripper secret of yours. He’s fucking you.”

“Drop it,” I snap.

“I would. But the rest of us are being dragged into your bullshit. And I’ll tell you, honey, Jack asks me anything about you, I ain’t lyin’. I don’t like feeling like there’s a rift between the two men I count on to keep me alive,” he says. Dipping forward, he gets a little too close to my face, his eyes level with mine. “Whatever this is, fix it. Preferably without one of them killing the other. Or you’ll be answering to the club. Got it?”

I step into him, somehow still hanging on to a thread of bravery, but he holds up his hand and silences me.

“Don’t even think about saying what you’re about to say.”

“And what was I gonna say?”

He takes a sip of whiskey. “No fuckin’ idea, but I figure it’ll piss me off.”

“Incoming,” Preacher murmurs, and both he and Tex take a step away from me.

Halfway across the room, Axe is striding our way. Jaw set, eyes blazing as they lock with mine. He looks… angry. Beyond angry. It’s the same look he gave me that first night he saw me at the Garden. Like he wanted to punish me. But also fuck me.

The storm of nerves swirling in my stomach gives me another swift kick, and as he approaches, a shiver runs through me, the same kind of shiver that racked me last night when his tongue was between my legs. And when his teeth were grazing over my skin. And when he was clapping that damn belt down on my ass.

“Kat,” Axe says, tone curt. His glare shifts from me to Preacher to Tex, and then he narrows his eyes. “You three getting reacquainted?”

Tex smiles and drops his arm over my shoulder again so he can pull me into his chest. “Something like that.”

Axe hums in response but barely looks at me when he speaks next. “Got a room sorted for you. You got shit in your car you need brought in?”

Nodding, I say, “Yeah. But I can go—”

“Keys,” he says gruffly, and when I hand them to him, he barks at a younger guy with a shock of red hair and a leather cut to collect my things.

I twist my fingers and clear my throat. “Um… what room, exactly?” I ask, a tremor of sorts weaseling its way into my chest.

He tilts his head, and for a second, I swear his face softens. Just for a second. Another one of those moments where all those harsh lines are a little more bearable to look at—less severe, less cold. “Not your old one. Across from where Graves usually sleeps. You remember the one?”

Not my old one. Not where I used to sleep with Jesse. When I nod, Axe jerks his head to the door leading to the second floor. “It’s late.”

Under other circumstances, I might have taken the dismissal as an insult, but tonight, I’m a little grateful for it. For the first time in as long as I can remember, I’m craving a little less noise, fewer people, a reprieve from that unrelenting stare of his that always seems to make my heart pump.

I wiggle out of Tex’s firm grip on my shoulder and slip past them, through the crowd of rowdy bikers and their women, and into the stairwell.

Relief hits me as soon as I’m alone, but the calm of finally being away from them, from Tex’s threat, from Axe’s sharp lines, dies off quickly.

Tonight, I’ll be sleeping in the same building as Axel fucking Donovan. And historically, that has not gone well.

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