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“As some of you know, Brute and I have been—”
“Hooking up,” someone’s voice shouted from the crowd.
“Knocking boots,” another voice joined in.
“Fucking like rabbits!”
Men.
I shook my head, smiling. “Day and night,amici,” I joined in, because, when in Rome…
“But what I was going to say,” I went on before this speech turned into a “synonyms for sex” marathon, “is that Brute and I have been lucky enough to find something we hadn’t even been looking for. To be honest, it was something neither of us had wanted to find. But I, for one, wouldn’t change a damn thing.”
The room hooted and hollered, all of these men showing off their genuine happiness for their president.
“However,” I said, holding up one hand, trying to call the room back to order, “there’s something missing.”
The room went silent, eyes wary, brows furrowed. Except for Gabe’s—he was grinning from ear-to-ear.
Brute looked up at me. There was no trepidation in his eyes, but his expression was curious.
I nodded to Dynamite, who held out the leather cut he’d been holding behind his back. Across the back of the cut, there was the Old Dogs’ top rocker and the club’s flaming dog skull emblem in the center. And beneath it, the lower rocker read “Property of Brute”.
Yup, that’s right; I’d just labeled myself as property. Perhaps not one of my finest feminist moments, but the property patch meant something different to the biker culture than it did elsewhere. It was a patch of honor, of loyalty. And those two things were far more important to Brute—and to me—than what the patch meant to anyone else.
Brute looked at the cut, then back up at me, and I suddenly wished I’d had a camera. The shocked look on his face was priceless.
“I never would have asked you for this, darling,” he said as I hopped down off the bar.
The room was still silent, and I think I could actually feel every man in the room leaning in, trying to hear what we were saying.
“I know,” I said. “And when I’m inmyworld, it won’t always be possible for me to wear it, but I know how much this means in your world. So, when I’m here,” I said, motioning around in a general sweep that encompassed his club, his men—his world— “They’ll know who I belong to.”
He smiled—the kind of smile that poets wrote sonnets about. The kind that lit up his whole face and, if possible, made him even hotter than he’d ever been.Whoa.
He nodded, and Dynamite handed over the cut—since he couldn’t very well go handing out Old Dog cuts without the president’s approval.
I’d barely gotten one arm through when the clubhouse erupted in hoots and hollers again. It was like I was standing in the middle of a rock concert with the speakers blasting at me from every direction.
The moment I had the cut on, Brute grabbed me in a hug that lifted my feet clear off the floor. He was hard muscle and heat, and something so much more profound that ran beneath the skin and made something burn inside me that was much more than lust. Something I’d had no idea I’d been missing until this tornado and volcano met.
The moment he set my feet back down on the floor, he leaned in for my lips, but Dynamite grabbed hold of my arm and yanked me away and into a one-armed hug.
Then it was Tate’s turn, then Old Mike’s. When Deo grabbed me next, I thought I was saved, but he just grinned and let Hack pull me into yet another hug.
On second thought, maybe I should have presented the cut to Brute in private, because aprivatecelebration was sounding damn good at the moment.
I was just about to put an end to this train of endless hugs whenSignorLuciano grabbed me up. Well, sort of.
He grabbed hold of my hand and stood up straighter, looking about as out of place in a biker clubhouse as a man could look.
“May I speak with you for a moment?” he asked, nodding toward the front door.
“Si,of course.” Again, when the don of the Luciano family asked you for something, you smiled and nodded, and did whatever the hell it was he wanted.
I turned back to let Brute know, but he was surrounded by Old Dogs, being bombarded with one-armed hugs, back-claps, and handshakes.
Men.
