Nyx, the bastard, took a second to watch her ass flounce off, but I couldn’t really blame him—she had a nice ass. I’d even go so far as to say that I wished mine looked like that in a G-string instead of cheese wire around a ball of mozzarella. With more dimples.
Folding my arms across my chest, I waited on the lecture. On the ‘if you can’t play nice, then get the hell out of here’ card, but when he’d stopped eyeballing her butt, instead of reaming me a new one, he turned to me and murmured, “You sure this is the right place for you?”
I cocked my hip against the counter which, surprisingly, was a damn fine piece of marble—hell, the rest of the kitchen was nice too. All of it stainless steel like a commercial kitchen in a restaurant or something—and inquired calmly, “Answer me this, would you allow someone to treat you like shit on the first day in a new place?”
“No,” he replied simply. His eyes would never be considered kind, but they weren’t mean either. So I took that to be a positive.
“Are you, or are you not, aware that sweetbutts are skanky-ass hoes with attitude problems? They’re all cats in a bag hissing and trying to fuck one another over.” I didn’t wait for him to answer, just steamrolled on. “If I gave her an inch, she’d take a mile. You know it, I know it.”
He tipped his head to the side. “You’ve caused yourself a whole heap of shit with the other girls. One and done with these bitches. You should remember that.”
I snorted at that. “I was always going to get shit from those witches. If you don’t believe that, then you’re naive.” My lips curved as I eyed him up and down. “One thing I doubt, Nyxy, is that you’re naive.”
His eyes narrowed, and he leaned forward, pressing his forearms onto the counter. As he did, his pecs bulged, making his Henley bunch up. Instead of focusing there, I looked at his throat, which was covered in a tattoo of a songbird with “Carly” inked there in a scroll font. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen it, but in the light of day, it was the first time I realized that the banner that streaked out from behind the vintage bird, housed a chick’s name.
Bikers only had one name on their bodies—their Old Lady’s. Did it sting that he’d evidently claimed a woman? Yup. And did I feel stupid for feeling stung? Yup.
I didn’t want him. He, like the rest of the brothers in the MC—mine included—were bad news, and that was the last thing I needed in my life. Or my bed. Still, he was hot.
And he fucking knew it.
Instead of hiding the fact that I’d been checking him out, I cocked a brow at him, stacked a smirk on my lips, and folded my arms across my belly in a way I knew had my boobs bulging. When his gaze dropped, just like I’d known it would, I murmured, “You got something to say, Nyxy?”
“Yeah.”
“What?” I prompted when he didn’t say another word.
“It’s Nyx.”
“Only people you’ve fucked can call you that, huh?”
He smirked. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“Actually, I’m fine as I am.” My sneer turned into a wry smile. I decided to drop the BS, and told him, “Look, I’m not here to cause any shit, but that doesn’t mean I won’t protect myself. I know how to handle any of the crap those bitches can throw my way—”
“They’re not all bitches,” he interrupted, his brow puckering at my statement.
“They are to anyone who isn’t like them. Even the Old Ladies.” Because dicks like him let the skanks get away with that.
His scowl deepened. “You say that like it’s my fault.”
I hitched a shoulder. “My mom left this place because my dad never put any of the sluts in line. Never said shit if they disrespected her, never did a fucking thing.” My mouth tightened. “I’m not about to let them treat me that way. Ever.”
My words held more emotion than I liked, but he didn’t call me out on it, instead, he just stared at me some more—and why wasn’t that irritating? Why wasn’t his regard annoying as hell?
If anything, it made me tingle, and that was not a good sign.
“You spoken to your father yet?”
The question surprised me. My eyes rounded for a second before I controlled my reaction—something he also took note of. But then, how could he understand how adept I’d become at hiding my expression from the world?
How could anyone, other than someone who’d been through the same shit as me, ever get it? And the bitch of it was, of course, that I was one of the lucky ones. I’d gotten away. But that didn’t mean I didn’t have scars.
“Why would I?” I replied easily, turning my back on him to look into the fridge once more. I’d already figured out what I was making for dinner—steaks. What other way was there to men’s stomachs? At least while I was trying to impress them enough to keep me around until I got my shit together and could leave this place with some funds in my bank account. The pasta puttanesca could be for another day. Steaks would reel them in, even if my signature dish was close to a masterpiece.
“Because he’s your father,” Nyx reasoned, for the first time sounding surprised.
“Some father,” was all I said. “If he wants to see me, he can come and find me.”
Nyx grunted. “If you don’t give a shit about him, then why are you here?”
I peered over my shoulder. “Because my brothers were moving. I wasn’t about to stay in Utah when they were here.”
“So you came for them?”
“I just said that, didn’t I?” I muttered irritably.
“And do they hate Dog too?”
“I don’t care enough about my father to hate him,” I told him, meaning every fucking word.
He hummed under his breath, though I knew I’d surprised him again with my candor.
“But, to answer your question, no. They idolize him. Fools that they are,” I mumbled, and deciding this conversation was going nowhere, I stated, “Anyway, I need to start marinating these steaks.”
And with that, I dismissed him from my mind and got on with my shit.
Three
Nyx
Two Days Later
THE KNOCK at the door had the council meeting coming to a halt. Everyone knew not to disturb us, so that someone had, made me get to my feet and walk over to open the door myself, rather than just hollering at whoever it was to fuck off.
When I saw Giulia standing there, I cocked a brow at her. “Do. Not. Disturb,” I told her gruffly, pointing at the sign on the door.
“This is important,” she said, sniffing at me as she barged her way into Rex’s office.
Her confidence didn’t surprise me. I knew she had more balls than her father, even with our limited interactions, but that she faced down the council when Dog would have been pissing in his pants had me wondering what she was up to.
“I need a Kitchen Aid mixer.”
At first, I thought I hadn’t heard her right.
Had she really, truly, just walked into a council meeting, interrupting important shit, to ask for a mixer?
When Rex’s brow lowered, his scowl making his entire face darken, she blustered on, “If you want me to make pasta and cakes, then I refuse to make it for the lot of you when I don’t have a stand mixer. You can’t expect me to do that shit by hand.”
Not unsurprisingly, Maverick’s ears fucking twitched at that, and in his wheelchair, he straightened up and, with a hopeful tone, asked, “You want to bake us cakes?”
“Cakes are easy desserts,” she replied with a huff, folding her arms across her chest in a move that was self-protective. That was the only indication it had taken her some nerve to burst in here. I wondered why she hadn’t just asked me—I was spending enough time in the kitchen with her after she dealt with the sweetbutts in her own particular way, after all.
Or was that exactly why she hadn’t?
Was this her way of saying that she didn’t need my input?
Ha.
I was the only one between her and the rest of the council at the moment. Everyone was sic
k of the sweetbutts bitching about their bruised eyes, sprained wrists, and broken noses. Only the food she made, meals good enough to serve in a fucking restaurant, kept the guys from turning into jackals.
We weren’t stupid.
We didn’t bite the hand that fed, and with the few meals we’d had, we knew she was good. Not just good, but italics good.
“What kind of cakes?” Steel inquired, evidently getting in on this shit too.
“What is this? A bake sale?” I grumbled. “Just buy the fucking stand mixer. Why did you have to ask?”
“Well, they’re expensive.” She bit her bottom lip.
“How expensive?” Maverick questioned, his Treasurer side coming to the fore as he eyed her up.
I half wondered if he was about to haggle with her on the price.
“They’re about six hundred dollars with all the attachments. And I need those to make pasta.”
“Six hundred?” he repeated, his brow furrowing.
“Yeah.” She shifted on her toes. “But it will make preparing food a lot easier—”
He raised a hand. “Buy three. If it means we get cakes and fresh pasta, buy fucking four, and I’ll cover it with my own wages.”
Her eyes widened at his statement, then she eyed his bare belly, the scars that covered his torso, and muttered, “At least I can see where you put all my meals.”
Mav gaped at her. “Did you just tell me I’m fat?”
I laughed at that. “Ain’t this the first time she’s seen you? How would she know to compare?”
Giulia blushed. “I didn’t mean that. I just... I overheard Jingles saying how you never ate before and now you do.”
“Fucking women,” Maverick grumbled under his breath. “Can’t goddamn win. Get bitched at if I don’t eat enough, get bitched at if I eat too fucking much.”
“I wasn’t complaining!” Giulia explained. “I was just saying it’s...” She blinked. “Well, you’re all very much on display, aren’t you? I mean, all your muscles and things.”
Steel snorted out a laugh. “I think she likes you, Mav.”
The Treasurer squinted at her and, ignoring Steel, asked, “Is that what you’re saying?”
“Well, I’m not calling you fat,” she retorted with a huff. “Anyway, if I can get four mixers, I’ll get four. I’m out of here—sorry for disrupting you.”
I could have hauled her back, but I didn’t. Instead, I watched her go. Her ass bounced in her jeans, and I watched the motion until the door slammed to a close.
“Maverick has an admirer.”
I clenched my teeth at Storm’s statement and shot him a warning look. When I realized he was staring straight back at me, I knew he’d said that to twist the knife.
Jerking my chin up, I ignored his jibe, and grated out, “Can we get back on topic here? Some of us have shit to do with the rest of our day.”
Maverick sniffed. “I didn’t realize she was that pretty.”
Steel scratched his chin. “She was flustered. That must be a minor miracle considering every time I’ve seen her, she’s scowling.”
“Must be because she was in front of the council.”
I laughed at Link’s remark. “What? You think she was shaking in her shoes about that? You didn’t watch her with Kendra.”
“I’d probably have paid to see that shit,” Maverick commented. “Can you imagine the pair of them in a kiddy’s pool full of Jell-O?”
“Is this what you do with your time?” Rex retorted. “Watch weird as fuck porn?”
“Get Jingle to suck you off later,” Steel advised. “It will do you a world of good.”
“I don’t need sucking off.”
“Every man needs sucking off,” I said dryly. “It keeps the world in order.”
Maverick rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah.” Then, he paused. “Do you think she meant it about baking?”
“This is what happens when you avoid sex,” Link lamented. “You start appreciating food more than fucking. It’s weird, man.”
Maverick flipped him the bird. “I think Nyx is right,” he grumbled. “We need to get shit back on track.”
The rest of the meeting didn’t take long, but when I headed back out into the clubhouse, I’d admit to wanting to break something when I heard the arguing in the kitchen.
Fuck’s sake.
While I was pretty sure the woman could argue with a corpse, I didn’t get why the whores kept on returning to the kitchen. Why were they being possessive of a task they’d always fucking moaned about? Bitches made no goddamn sense.
But, the weirdest thing of all? More than the annoying sweetbutts and the brother’s daughter who put the sass in sassy?
The strange buzz that filtered through my veins as I thought about heading into the kitchen to spar with her. Sure, it sucked having to referee a caterwauling bitch and a babe with an attitude problem, but it was almost worth it coming face to face with Giulia, and wondering what the hell she was going to say next.
One thing was for sure.
The place wasn’t goddamn boring with her around.
❖
GIULIA
The next day
“WHO’S CARLY?”
“Huh?”
When Steel eyed me like I’d lost my marbles, I just repeated,
“Who’s Carly?”
“We don’t have a Carly around here.”
Beside him, Link moaned as he took a bite of my pasta. “Fuck, this is good shit, Giulia. I mean, I think this might be better even than the damn steak.”
Steel’s brows rose. “You’re kidding me. Better than the steak?”
“Yeah.” As Link slurped up some more food, he moaned like he was having an orgasm, and even though I was used to hearing my brothers mid-sex, which was a level of TMI that I hoped few ever had to understand, my cheeks burned a little hotly at his reaction.
For the first time in my life, people were appreciating my food instead of just grunting at it or taking it for granted.
It was weird.
I liked it, liked that more than I liked cooking at any rate. At least it made it more bearable.
“Where’s mine?” Steel demanded, eying the pots in front of me with a hungry look that had inspiration hitting me.
“You don’t get any until you answer my question.” I tossed the pasta that I’d boiled for sixty seconds into the frying pan. As I let it get coated in the puttanesca sauce, I smiled at him. “Answers for food.”
“You do know that’s not how shit works around here, don’t you?” Steel growled, eying the bright red sauce as I flashed it in the pan, letting the homemade sghetti get drenched in it.
“Isn’t it? Far as I can see, I have a lot of hungry mouths to feed. First.”
He frowned. “I’m on the council!”
Link snorted. “She’s got you by the balls, dude. Just answer her.”
“A-Are you bribing me for my dinner?” Steel sputtered.
“Finally, he gets it.” Link grinned at me. “Can I have some more sauce?”
“Sure.” I reached over and ladled some into his dish. “There you go.”
He moaned again when he took another bite. “This stuff… it’s fishy. Why?”
“Anchovies,” I explained, but my attention was on Steel. Mostly because he’d messed with me yesterday in the council meeting. I got the feeling Link would tell me who Carly was, but messing with Steel did no harm. As far as I could tell, he and Link were the most easygoing of the council.
At least, I was hoping that was true. Or my ass was about to be tossed out, all because I wanted to know who the fuck Carly was.
I mean, it already stung my pride that I’d been on the watch out for an Old Lady called Carly just so I could eye up Nyx’s woman, but when that had revealed nothing, I knew I was left in the lurch.
I shouldn’t give a shit about whether he’d claimed a bitch or not, and yet, I really fucking did. Why, when the brother was a grumpy pain in the ass, I didn’t know, but tell that to the
butterflies that took up residence in my stomach whenever he made an appearance.
Steel bit his bottom lip. “I love anchovies.”
“I know,” I told him sweetly. “I heard your pizza order the other night.” That wasn’t why I’d made the dish today, but it helped.
He folded his arms under his chest, and I knew he was thinking he could outwait me, so I called out, “Jingle—” God, I hated her. “I have the tray ready for Maverick.”
When I thought about the brother who, from what I’d heard, hadn’t left the clubhouse in years, I determined to bake him a cake all his own. From my perusal, a perusal that had gone awry, he still needed fattening up, and if I had to cook, I might as well get it right.
I figured it was my service to the nation. Helping one military vet at a time.
Steel grunted as Jingle headed over and snatched the tray off the table the second I dished up the plate for the councilor. He didn’t even take the opportunity to study her ass, instead, he studied me as I poured more pasta into the boiling water in front of me.
“Did you really hand make that?”
“Yeah. I did.” Because I was one part insane, and second part eager to impress.
He whistled under his breath as he watched me flash some more sauce into the pan. I was doing this individually because the councilors were served first, which meant I had ample time to torment Steel into answering me, as Nyx was usually the last one in to eat.
“There is no Carly around here,” Steel explained, his gaze on the sauce.
“Nyx has an Old Lady brand on his throat—”
Link wagged a finger at me. “Nyx is off limits to little girls like you.”
That had me gritting my teeth. “I’m curious.”
“Been asking questions about all of us, have you?” Steel retorted, brows high in disbelief.
If my cheeks burned, then fuck it. “I’m curious,” I repeated.
They both snorted as they shot each other a look, then Steel’s smirk disappeared. “Carly’s his sister. She died a long time ago.”
“Oh.” I hadn’t expected that answer, and it made my relief all the more awful. It was weird to eye up a taken man, made me no better than a clubwhore. Still, I mourned for Nyx, even as I wondered why I didn’t remember Carly’s name.
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