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“Does eating pussy count?” I asked. Partly because that was just what I would normally say, and partly because I wanted to see her reaction to it.
Her head whipped over, brows raised, eyes a little round.
“No,” she said, the sound snapping, concise.
Then her gaze was back on the road.
But it was too late.
I saw it.
Just a flicker of a flame, tamped down before she thought I could see it. But I did.
Not that I was going to try to pursue her.
If for no other reason than Slash would have my fucking head on a platter.
I’d already done my fair share of fucking the wrong woman and getting myself in trouble for it. I needed to think with my head for a change. Especially since this wasn’t just about me, or even just about my club, but all of the clubs. I didn’t give a damn about my reputation, and the Shady Valley crew was used to my bullshit, but I didn’t want to drag the Golden Glades or Navesink Bank guys down with us.
“So, where do you live?” I asked after we had our first stop, each taking a dog to stretch their legs and do their business before we got gas and some food and got back on the road again.
“You managed to track me down to a cabin in the woods in the middle of nowhere, but you don’t know where I live most of the time?”
“We weren’t looking for you at home since your email pinged in Modoc.”
“I guess that makes sense. I live in Santa Monica.”
“Santa Monica? Really?” I asked, not even trying to hide my surprise.
“What?”
“I dunno. Just not the vibe I get from you, I guess.”
“I like the beach.”
“You go a lot?”
“No. I like looking at it,” she said, shrugging. “My condo has a water view.”
“Did you grow up in that area?”
“Bakersfield,” she supplied, making my brows shoot up.
“Bit of a rougher area,” I said, but that was probably putting it lightly. Last time I’d heard, the crime rate was ninety-something times the national average.
To that, she just shrugged. And I couldn’t tell if that was because that was a sore spot, or if she just never felt that unsafe there.
“My dad had a repair shop there. We lived in the little house behind it,” she supplied. “We didn’t go out much. We both just liked staying in and working on our projects.”
Because she didn’t volunteer anything else, because she just didn’t seem like someone who would think to keep the conversation going, I went ahead and admitted, “I’ve never spent much time by the beach. Shady Valley is as landlocked as you can get. But I spent some time by the shore in Jersey a while back when we were visiting the mother chapter.”
“And you wanted to go back to Shady Valley?” she asked.
“Home is home,” I said, shrugging. I had no other way to explain it.
I mean, yeah, Jersey had been a nice vacation. Lots of different shit to do, women to take home, fun to be had. But it was always just that… a vacation.
Home would always be Shady Valley.
And in the town’s defense, it was trying to recover from the economic collapse that happened after the manufacturing was shut down. The prison was slowly giving jobs back to the community. On top of that, it was bringing family members of the inmates into town as either tourists or residents.
Eventually, I figured it would be more reminiscent of most small to medium sized towns. More people. More stores. That kind of thing.
“What is home?” she asked after a short silence.
“Hmm?”
“Home,” she said. “Is it an apartment? A house?”
“It’s a clubhouse.”
“For… like… all the bikers?”
“Yes. Slash, our president, bought an old manufacturing plant. It’s enormous. Our bedrooms are each like three or four times as big as your cabin. Then it’s got a massive common space.”
“You don’t like your privacy?” she asked, brows furrowed.
“We have privacy when we want it. Hence the rooms being so large. But we’re a community, a family. It’s nice to have everyone around. Some of the guys don’t live there full-time anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Because they’re married, building families. They needed more space to grow.”
“You don’t have a family?”
“Not yet.”
“You want one?”
“Figure one day, yeah.”
“Why one day?” she asked.
“Think you gotta find the right person first. Right now, I guess you can say I’ve been exploring all my options.”
“No shit,” she mumbled under her breath, making my brows shoot up.
“What?”
“Oh, you just have a playboy smile,” she said, shrugging it off. “Noticed it almost immediately.”
“Known some guys with one, huh?”
“Yes.”
Again with that clipped response, making me think there was something hiding under the word.
“You know, sweetheart, just ‘cause some dogs bite, doesn’t mean you should suspect all of us of wanting to do the same.”
“I don’t have an issue with guys who sleep around,” she said, shrugging. “I actually think it’s refreshing when a guy is a whore,” she added.
