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Or so I thought.
"You gonna stop bullshittin' me, or tell me the truth?" he asked when we were alone - well, as alone as you could be while a party raged around you.
"I'm sorry?" I asked, my head whipping back in his direction, knowing I looked as guilty as I felt. I needed to find that Janie woman and ask her for lessons in poker faces.
Virgin's lips twitched. "You're a shit liar," he told me.
"I know," I agreed, shaking my head at myself, suddenly wishing I had something to drink that wasn't water from the tap in the kitchen. Why was no one serving up shots now?
"Why would you lie to me? You know I am an arms-dealing biker. You knew I grew up around heroin and clubwhores. Not exactly in a place to judge."
The words were out of me before I could think better of them.
"Have you ever been to prison?"
"Jail, yes. Prison? No. You?"FIVEVirginI didn't think she would show. Not really. Maybe I hoped. Because, apparently, all these relationships around me were making me soft or some shit. But something about her said she wasn't the type to show up at a biker compound even if she was invited by a member. I'd been around a lot of women in a lot of clubs. There was a vibe about them, an energy. Freddie didn't have that.
In fact, if I wasn't completely mistaken, she almost seemed to have a sort of goody-goody vibe to her. Which was not my type. Not by any stretch of the imagination. I wasn't one of those guys who got off on the ideas of corrupting good girls, dragging them down to wade in the muck of things.
I liked my life.
I liked the uncertainty, the familiarity of the crassness, the brotherhood that was the closest to a family I had known in far too long to even remember.
But it wasn't meant for everyone.
And it felt cheap to try to coax someone into it.
I probably shouldn't have even invited her in the first place.
Especially knowing it was a bit of an open house, not just the guys and their girls, knowing that whenever you brought in new, unpredictable men, you opened up the potential for unsavory things to happen.
Reign had about five guys who had been brought to him - or in West's case, just swaggered his cocky ass in through the gates - that he wanted us to all get a chance to vet.
It was almost distracting enough to forget to check the door for her.
Almost.
"What's the consensus?" Reign asked, tipping back a beer, watching the guys move around.
"The one with the gauged ears is out," Renny decided, always the first to nix a potential member.
"Gonna need reasons, Renny," Reign reminded him.
"The way he talks about women like objects, I get the feeling he roughs up his girls in his free time."
"So he's out," Reign agreed. Drugs and hurting women, those were the old man's triggers. It took some getting used to, coming from the MCs I had been in where drugs was where the money came from, where women were often treated like trash. "What about that fucker walking around charming all the women?"
"West," Repo supplied. "Dunno. Reminds me a bit of Shooter before he settled down."
"What's his story?" Reign demanded.
"He's a floater," Sugar supplied, shrugging. "Worked all across the states doing whatever paid."
"Such as?"
"Anything that involved fucking someone up," I pitched in.
"A lot of suppressed rage," Renny agreed.
"In a way we got to worry about, or like Wolf?" Cash asked from behind me.
"Best guess? Like Wolf. He's hard to read. But I would pick him over the others to prospect at least."
"We'll see how he does the rest of the night," Reign allowed. "Christ, what is that, the eighth woman he's hit on tonight?" he asked with a snort, pushing away from the bar.
My gaze followed the line his had, finding Wes standing there. Kissing Freddie's hand while her brother loomed behind her holding an umbrella under his arm despite the fact that it was dry and dark out.
"She yours?" Renny asked, those unsettling eyes on me. Eyes that were that way because of how much they saw, how many inferences they made from all they saw.
"I invited her," I clarified. "But she isn't mine."
But despite that being the absolute truth, there was no denying the possessiveness that swarmed my system - swirling and uncomfortable - at seeing her smile at West, seeing his hands touching her.
Mine something in me called. It was some prehistoric, caveman impulse to take, claim, own. Some biological drive that I had never felt before.
But there was no denying it as the night went on, as the men and women eyed her, sized her up, silently - or not so silently - placed their bets on our status, on her potential of fitting in.
