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Other than that, and the preponderance of ink and leather all around her—and beards; so many beards—the party was pretty much ... a party. Booze. Weed. Food (pretty strong aroma of grilled cow vying with the smoke for olfactory dominance). Some people were playing pool on a big table with dark orange felt. Some people were playing on arcade-style games. A lot of people were talking very loudly. And there were several couples starting to get busy.
Including a very large, very good-looking guy who was making out with another guy. Huh. That was a wrinkle in her mental picture of outlaw bikers. Cool.
But where was Cooper? He wanted her here, so where was he?
Her heartbeat kicking a little, she tried to get a good look at all the handsy couples. He wouldn’t do that, she felt sureat leastthat he wouldn’t do something like that after asking her to come, but she had to look anyway.
“You look lost, beautiful,” a voice like a bass drum said from right behind her. Not Cooper’s voice.
She spun and nearly crashed into another very large man in a Bulls kutte. Were all these guys big? Did they add something to their Wheaties? This guy was a lot bigger than Cooper—not taller, but really muscular. Past the point of attractiveness, in her opinion. He had long, black undercut hair and was one of the few men without facial hair.
Instead of a beard, this guy had tattoos. Traditional Mojave ink.
“You looking for someone in particular, or do I got a shot?” he asked.
Early on after her surgeries, on the advice of the therapist she’d seen during that whole process, she’d made a couple of halfhearted attempts to ‘return to normal’ and do things like dating, but they’d gone very badly. The guys had reacted with horror to theideaof her chest. She’d never shown it to any guy before Cooper because the couple times she’d thought she might get to a place to do so, close enough to prep them for her reality, they’d bolted. Once had simply ended the night right there and then ghosted her. They other had tried for a short while to work his way around to it, long enough to finish their night—and then dropped her off without even getting out of the car.
Thus, since then, Siena’s reaction to being hit on was primarily defensive, bordering on hostile. She recognized that as being on the crazy side, no matter how powerful her reason for it, so she tried to keep it bottled up. On the other hand, there was a way in which it was easier to be the crazy chick guys warned each other about than to get attacked for ‘lying’ about having breasts or trying to ‘trick’ a guy into buying her dinner.
She was hostile because men, on the whole, sucked.
“She’s looking for someone in particular,” Cooper said before she could figure out how to respond to this guy. Siena turned and saw Cooper emerging from between two partiers. His grin was huge and bright, and his eyes were locked on her.
“Hey, baby,” he said and swept his arm around her waist. “I’m glad you’re here.”
Not all guys sucked. This one was pretty spectacular, in fact.
“Sorry, boss,” said the tattooed he-man, his eyes wide with surprise. “Didn’t mean to overstep.”
Cooper asked Siena, “Did Kai overstep?”
“No,” she replied and tucked herself more tightly against him. “Not at all.”
“Good. Kai, this is my lady, Siena. Siena, this is Kai.”
Siena had never been much of a journal-keeper, but if she had been one to do those journals with the tape and stickers and colored pens and all that, she’d fill today’s entry with stickers of hearts and flowers to represent how it felt to hear Cooper Calderon, president of the Brazen Bulls MC and somehow actually, honestly into her, call her his lady.
As it turned out, there were still a few romantic bones left in her body.
“Siena,” Kai said in a rumble and offered a hand practically the size of a honey-baked ham. “Good to meet you.”
She took it. “Hi, Kai. Good to meet you, too.”
With a nod at them both, Kai turned and wandered off.
Immediately, Cooper swooped in, pulled her in close, and kissed her. More hearts and flowers.
Before she could dive all the way into that wonderful feeling, though, he pulled back a little. “That’s okay? Kissing you without asking? Even in public?”
She nodded. “You now have an all-access pass.”
“Excellent,” he said and came in again.
Suddenly, Siena was one of the people making out with wild disregard for the party going on around them, and she could not have been happier.
Happy—yes, that was what she felt. God, she hadn’t recognized it. All these years, she’d been telling herself she didn’t need a man, she was a woman who could take care of herself, who could build a life for herself and her sister without anyone else. She’d wanted to be a woman like that.
And she was. Shehadbuilt a life and shewastaking care of Geneva, and she’d been doing it mostly on her own. Not perfectly, but passably well. For the most part.
