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“I’m actually excited to go,” I told them. “I didn’t realize it was, you know, open to the public, or I might have gone before now. I’d like to know how to really defend myself. The classes I’ve taken in the past have been mostly no-contact. And teaching everyone to S-I-N-G like in that Sandra Bullock movie.”
“Miss Congeniality,” Sully supplied. “It technically has a rom-com element,” he said with a smirk.
“Some of the classes are lower contact,” Vi said. “But a lot of them are full. With pads. Or not for a select few of them. Which is why you need to be fully healed first. If your ankle feels weak or your ribs still bug you even a little, don’t start classes.”
“It’s something to look forward to then,” I decided. Even if it was a couple months in the future.
“I hate being the one to always leave first,” Willa said, getting to her feet and slipping them back into her skyscraper heels. “But I have a meeting at seven tomorrow morning.”
“It was nice to meet you,” I told her, meaning it.
“You too. I hope we set up another girls night—“ she started, getting interrupted by Sully clearing his throat. “A girls and Sully night,” she conceded, “soon. And please reach out to me when you have more information about your next charity event,” she said, placing a business card on the table in front of me, giving everyone a little finger wave, then heading out with the click of her heels.
Effortlessly cool and collected, that was Willa.
“Hey, Earth to Luna,” Gracie said in a sing-song voice, tapping the woman’s book. “Weren’t you catching a ride with Willa?” she asked, making Luna’s eyes widen. “Go on. Run,” she said. “Sylvie knows you think it was nice to meet her.”
Then Luna was running too.
“Luna’s place is on the way home for Willa,” Gracie explained. “I would have had to go the complete opposite way.”
“You’re taking me home, though, right?” Vi asked.
“Home,” Layna scoffed. “You don’t have a home.”
Apparently, Vi traveled so often that she didn’t keep an apartment of her own.
“Well, Hope’s home. Temporarily,” she said. “While she’s not using it,” she added, piquing my interest as the remaining girls shared a look.
“I thought Hope was working,” I said.
The girls shared a look again.
I thought it would be Gracie to bring me into the fold. In the end, though, it was Layna.
“Well, she is. But it is a sort of live-in position right now,” she said.
“And you can’t tell her parents if you see them,” Gracie insisted. “At least not until she tells them herself.”
Hope’s parents, if I remembered correctly, were Renny—the club’s profiler—and Mina, who did or once worked at Hailstorm, the paramilitary camp that I’d seen from a distance but had no idea what it was or what kind of things they did there.
I may or may not have asked to take a field trip there one day once the girls told me all about it.
“I won’t tell anyone,” I assured them. I doubted anyone would ask me, being the newcomer.
Another half an hour later, some of the guys started stumbling in from the bar, and the girls took that as their cue to head out.
“So?” Voss asked, dropping down next to me with two beers, passing one to me, and popping the top on his.
“I love them.”
Something warm flashed across his gaze then.
And as crazy as it sounded, that look had a similar warmth moving through my chest.
What was that about?
CHAPTER TWELVE
Voss
I’d never really considered self-control one of my strong suits.
But I swear to fuck, it took everything I had not to grab that woman, shove my fingers in her panties again, make her come with them, then my mouth, then my cock.
It was a miracle I’d held off from touching her as long as I had.
And the only reason I continued to do so after I knew for sure she was totally fine with it was her ribs.
I didn’t imagine either of us was going to be soft and sweet in bed, and I didn’t want to hurt her worse by being too rough with her at the moment.
Sleeping in the prospect room helped.
A little further from temptation.
Her being back at work did its part too, even if I was uncharacteristically worried about her the whole time she was there.
But she wasn’t limping anymore.
Her ribs seemed to be… mostly better.
And it was her day off.
So I guess I had to be thankful that this was the time that Junior decided to call, preventing us from being all but alone in the clubhouse all day.
He met us in the lot of Sylvie’s apartment building in his black Bronco. And I felt that new, but familiar, surge of jealousy as Sylvie’s brows rose when she looked at him.
“So, you’re the man who has been digging into every dark corner of my life,” she greeted him.
