“She’s free to do what she wants, right?”
Leopold just laughed and shook his head. “You don’t know how the club works yet, do you, kid?”
I didn’t, not at that point, but over the years I’d figure it out. And although I never forgot that first time I saw Janine, I also never forgot what Leopold said about her.
She was the biker princess. She was fucking royalty.
We knew each other. Janine knew everyone in the club. She was three years younger than me, which meant we had more in common than some. We were friendly, as friendly as you could be with her at least. Larkin had the habit of beating the fuck out of any member that pushed the line with Janine.
I respected Larkin too much to make a pass. And truth be told, for those ten years we were orbiting around each other, I was too busy finding my own damn place in the club to really see her too clearly.
It wasn’t until I was twenty-eight and she was twenty-five that she came back into focus.
She came back to me, sharp and alive. I had forgotten what it was like to really want someone until that night. But of course, that night wasn’t the beginning, though it did begin a lot of things for us.
No, it really started a week before that. One week before my whole fucking life got a hell of a lot more complicated.
“Clutch.”
I looked up and grunted. Janine grinned at me across the table, cocking her head to one side. She had this way of saying my name, like she was being sarcastic or some shit.
“What do you want?” I asked her.
She laughed. “You in a bad mood tonight?”
“Just don’t have time to mess around,” I said, knocking back my whisky.
Truth was, I had all the time in the world, but I’d learned a long time ago not to mess with Janine, even if she did want to flirt with you. Larkin had given me many of his famous bone-chilling looks, even if it was Janine’s own damn fault that she ended up in my lap.
I never asked for that shit, and I sure as hell didn’t understand the girl.
“Just wanted to say hi, is all,” she said. “Haven’t seen you around much.”
“War got us all busy,” I said.
“Yeah. War does that.” She tossed her blond hair, smiling at me. Of everyone in the club, I’d say that she liked me the best. Maybe I just thought that because she flirted with me the most, and because I was willing to walk the line between harmless and getting my ass beat.
Never wanted to cross that line, though. Never wanted to betray Larkin’s trust like that.
Even if Janine was one of the sexiest fucking women I’d ever laid my eyes on. Full lips like you wouldn’t believe, long, thick blond hair, and a body that made grown men cry. I’d be a liar if I said I never imagined what it would be like to sink my thick cock between her legs, fuck her like I was sure she loved getting fucked.
But I was a good soldier, and I kept my dick where it belonged.
“So where you been?” she asked me.
“Dallas,” I said. “Been scouting out the Snake Spit and all that.”
She nodded. I assumed she knew all about the Snake Spit and the war; probably hard not to know about it if you spent any time in the clubhouse.
“Heard about it,” she said. “They’ve been pressing down from Dallas, trying to snatch turf.”
“Yeah,” I said. “And your daddy wants to push back.”
“You men,” she said, smiling, “always doing the hard thing.”
“What else is there to do?” I asked, grinning. “The easy thing ain’t no fun.”
She laughed and stood up. “You’re right, you know.” She turned and walked off, and I couldn’t help but stare at her ass.
As she left, I realized that I hadn’t spoken to her in at least a month. She’d been around, but we just hadn’t been talking much. I’d been busy with the war, worried about the Mezcals, the Mexican MC gang in Texas, joining up with the Snakes. Then there was all that shit with Ford and Caralee and the Rebels MC going down. For a while there, shit was crazy, all blood and excitement.
And as the Demons MC enforcer, I had plenty of that blood on my hands.
But ever since I’d gotten back from Dallas, things had been quieter. The Snakes and the Mezcals were planning something, we were sure of that, but the Demons had their own plans.
I glanced at Janine as she walked across the bar. I wondered briefly what her life was like, what she’d been doing during all this madness.
But I quickly let that thought go.
Better not to think about her; better not to get involved.
My only priority was the damn club.
3
Janine
Larkin thought I didn’t know what was going down with the club, but I wasn’t blind.