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Gia cast another longing look in Riker’s direction and sighed. “I’ll take that bet.”
Then she waved her hand dismissively in the air. “Besides, Uncle Gianni will be going soon too. You know as well as I do what this is. The family’s only here to show support for whatever dastardly alliance the bikers and Uncle G’s crew are brewing up. In just a few minutes, the family henchmen will drop off fat envelopes filled with wads of cash into the wedding box. Then they will all go behind closed doors, drink grappa, and congratulate themselves on being masters of the universe.”
Valentina knew her cousin was right. The small contingency of La Familia at the wedding was there for one purpose and one purpose only—to make a statement in support of Gianni’s business relationship with Prosper Worthington. Providing the hall for the reception and attending the nuptials with his family meant that Gianni was intent on sending out a clear message to the syndicated crime circuit.
The fact that the table next to Valentina’s family was filled with her father’s most trusted men completed the picture the organization intended to paint— if you mess with the Saints, you mess with the mob…and vice versa.
Valentina agreed with her cousin on one other thing, too.
Gia wasn’t the only one who was sick of living like a nun.
Hal watched on as the girl seated next to Valentina Abruzzi tossed her hair, widened her smile, and homed right in on that sonofabitch, Riker.What was it about that guy,Hal wondered for the millionth time. Fucker attracted women to him like bees to honey, and Hal just couldn’t understand it. Sure, the guy was well-built, but there wasn’t a lot of brothers in the club who couldn’t bench press their own weight and then some. Besides, Riker always looked just a little dirty to Hal. His leathers usually had a thin layer of road dust on them, and his knuckles were covered with jailhouse tats.
Hal realized that the women hanging around the clubhouse got off on that type of thing—they weren’t the real discerning type. But still, how dumb could the bitches be? Riker’s room might as well have a revolving door.
Brother cared more about quantity than quality, that was for sure.
Band-Aids. That’s what the brothers called the unclaimed girls who hung around the MC looking for something more permanent. Never seemed to occur to them that sleeping their way through fifty guys wasn’t the way to go about findingMr. Right.
But then again, these girls weren’t exactly Mensa candidates either.
The reason why the brothers called them Band-Aids was because they were cheap, got the job done, and were disposable. The bitches all looked the same to Hal. Every stitch of clothing they owned seem to be tight, tiny, and had the Harley logo on it spelled out in glitter. They had big boobs, bony asses, and the same strange-colored hair—a weird brassy-puke yellow. It was as if they had all pooled their pennies together and bought a batch of cheap hair-dye wholesale. The worst of it though, for Hal, was the look of desperation in their eyes.
But really, when it came right down to it, Hal was not exactly Prince Charming either and had no right to judge anyone. He paused in thought here and decided to give himself due credit. Maybeconsideratewasn’t the word for it, but at least the bitches weren’t slamming into one another and clawing at each other like feral cats outside his bedroom door. And he was honest in a way he knew a lot of guys weren’t. Even before the war fucked him up, Hal had always been upfront about what he wanted and needed from a female.
And now those wants and needs were…different.
Yeah, that was one name for it, Hal snorted in self-derision as he reached out and downed the shot of tequila that sat on the bar in front of him.
Focus.
Strength.
Control.
Those were the things that held him together now, and he worked hard to keep that control—to a physically punishing degree. It was as if relaxing his body, even for just a little, would shatter the tenuous hold he had on his emotional stability.
His VA counselor had explained it all to him. Apparently, there was still a lot of shit that his system hadn’t worked through yet. She told him that his body and his mind were still trying to work together to find a balance between a soldier’s life and civilian life.
Between war time and peace time.
Between living and dying.
The therapist had reassured him that while it might seem to Hal that his recovery was frustratingly slow, it was also steady. He was doing all the right things to achieve his end goal of full recovery, but it was still a long, painful process. The counselor explained to Hal that until his mind adjusted to civilian life, his body would continue to idle at the same heightened state that had saved his sorry ass on the battle field. It was as if his system needed a constant rush to stay at a functioning base line. With the help of therapy, he had found ways of dealing with that constant, driving need. A strenuous workout routine, a high-speed road trip on his Harley, and ice-cold showers helped.
Basically, the more intense the stimuli were that went into his short-circuited brain—the calmer he felt.
This made Hal pretty much a mess when it came to dealing with the tedium of everyday life.
But it also turned him into one cool, calm, and collected, yet very dangerous machine when it came to handling a crisis situation—and it made him real damn special in the bedroom. Violent sex wasn’t just a matter of recreation for Hal, it was a necessity, and not in that wimpy-assShades of Black or Blueor whatever the hell color that mommy-porn was all about.
He was not interested in safe words.
Or spanking an ass red.
Or a locked room filled with toys.
Hal liked to fuck women at gunpoint.
