I was a mean bastard, and most people were scared of me, but the women—Old Ladies and sweetbutts alike—knew that I was a safe haven for them.
I’d slice and dice any of the fuckers I called brothers if I learned they inflicted pain on their women.
Jesus, I couldn’t even think about it without my hands curling into fists so tight, they ached.
A hand slapped down against my shoulder, and Rex muttered, “He’ll have learned his lesson.”
“He’d better.”
“That why you want Giulia’s help with the diner?” Storm queried, his head tilted to the side in consideration as he studied me.
Like I was some kind of anthrax strain on a petri dish.
I fucking hated when he looked at me like that. Like I was a puzzle he wanted to solve.
No one could solve me. No one could fix what had been broken so early in my life.
“What? To make sure he doesn’t chase after her?” I frowned. “You questioning my efficacy as Enforcer?”
That stunned him. He jerked upright and shook his head. “Of course, I’m fucking not.”
“Then you should know that Dog is terrified, and that Giulia will be okay. I want her because she’s the only one of us who knows how to fucking cook, and we have a team of sweetbutts who can feed us, but she could do that shit at the diner instead of here.”
Rex laughed. “You have it all worked out, don’t you?”
I shrugged. “Not exactly.”
And it was probably a good thing I said that, because when I found Giulia knee deep in tears from all the onions she was cutting and told her my plan, she ground out, “Fuck that. I’m not cooking shit in a diner.”
After last night, had I hoped things had changed? Had I hoped we’d be closer? Maybe?
We’d talked about a lot of things, things I wouldn’t normally be interested in, not when I could be throat-fucking Cammie again.
But stay, I had.
Listen, I had.
Until she’d tried to toss my ass out.
I’d ignored her, of course. On principle. I’d bedded down on her sofa, and had woken up to her tight ass in a pair of sleep shorts waggling around the kitchen as she made some coffee.
In fact, even as she currently glowered at me, I thought of those moments. They’d been silent, like something from a movie. At least, I’d only ever seen shit like that in a movie.
A woman in the kitchen, a man watching her bustle around as she started the day. I’d half wanted to watch her get dressed and shit, and not because I wanted a front stage view of those tits of hers either, but because...
Fuck.
I felt like a pussy, and I wasn’t used to that. Not one bit, but there was no denying how the intimacy of the moment had hit me.
I’d never been intimate with anyone before. Sex and fucking weren’t intimate. Even Cammie was just a hole for me to plug. I treated her right, maybe a little rougher than I should, but I never fucking hurt her, aside from her gagging around my dick.
But that was just release.
Sex wasn’t intimacy, and it stunned me that it had taken me nearly thirty-seven fucking years to figure that out. What was even more of a revelation, was that it had taken meeting Giulia for it to hit home, and I was nowhere near ready to think about why that was.
“Nyx?” I rejoined her grumbling to find her waving her hand in my face. “Thank fuck, I thought you were having a seizure or something.”
I narrowed my eyes at that, then tensed when I zoomed in on the knife she was waggling around. “You know how to use that?”
She scowled at the weapon. “To cut onions? Sure. And that’s why I’m not helping in the diner.”
Okay, she hadn’t been threatening to stab me. The tension in my shoulders lessened some. Then, her words hit home.
“Wait. You don’t want to help out because of onions?”
She shrugged. “You can’t make shit without onions.”
“It’s a diner. You make bacon or Canadian ham and fucking eggs. Waffles. None of that shit needs onions.”
She rolled her eyes. “You have no idea how to make sausage gravy, do you?” She stabbed the knife at me again, and it was a true testament to how much I’d appreciated the view this morning that I didn’t grab a hold of it and slam it into the wooden board she was using. “Or how to make burgers or—”
“I know how to make burgers,” I muttered.
She scowled. “Whoop-de-do. How dare you put me forward for a position I didn’t even ask for!”
“You’re part of the MC now,” I growled, jutting my chin out. “You do as you’re fucking told.”
She sniffed. “I’m not wearing a cut. I’m working hard for the money you pay, and the second I can, I’m out of here.”
Whatever I’d anticipated her saying, it wasn’t that. “Where the fuck are you going?”
She shrugged. “That doesn’t matter.” It fucking mattered all right.
I scowled at her until her eyes stormed up, and she hissed, “The city, okay?”
“New York?” I grunted. “It’s not as good as you’d think.”
“Says someone who’s been, and I’ve been no-fucking-where. Here and Dipshit, Utah. That’s it.”
Okay, so I’d been questioning where the rebel in her was, but this fit. Lizzie had loved riding bitch with Dog. Even if I didn’t remember much about her in the grand scheme of things, I remembered that, mostly because she’d had the longest hair that whipped behind her whenever Dog rode out with her at his back. I remembered watching them drive off through the gates as a kid, standing in the clubhouse, just dreaming of the moment I could be like them.
Huh. Nostalgia. I was seriously starting to wonder if I had an aneurysm or something.
“It’s expensive as fuck over there,” I grumbled, folding my arms against my chest. Sure, the gesture was defensive, but so were the words. NYC was dangerous, and Giulia had a mouth on her. She’d get stabbed or shot when she pissed off the wrong person, I just fucking knew it. If New Yorkers were dicks, then fuck me, Giulia was Queen Dick.
Why did the thought of her being anywhere but here send me into a tailspin?
“So? That’s why I’m here. Save up some money, get myself a stuffed bank account, then—”
“Fuck off outta here,” I grated out. When she just huffed, then twisted around to get some shit from the fridge, I wanted to shake her.
She was going to walk away from family, all for what? A visit to the Big Apple?
“It’s less than an hour away, dammit. You can visit NYC without moving there,” I reasoned, trying to remain calm when I had the worst feeling about her leaving.
She’d die.
I could feel it. Like some fucked-up premonition. Some people needed a keeper, and Giulia was one of them. Someone would gut her just to get her to shut the hell up. Here, she was safe. Sound. She was Dog’s, so we’d protect her to the end. In NYC, she was just another rat racing around trying to make sense of the world.
“Why would I stay here?” she countered. “This place isn’t my home.”
“Your family’s here.” I clung to that argument, because I knew how much family meant to her. Not her dad, but her brothers. Sometimes, her mom, with a wistful tone that spoke of a story she didn’t want to share. They were all she really talked about.
“Dog isn’t much family, and I love my brothers, but they’re big boys. They don’t need me hanging around, watching them eat out sweetbutts.” Her mouth twisted as she returned to the counter with a couple of bell peppers.
“The MC is family. If you let them be,” I told her stiffly. “But you haven’t let anyone in. You haven’t even tried to make friends.”
Fuck, and now I knew why, didn’t I? She didn’t intend on being here long.
Something she confirmed with her next statement. “No point. Not going to be here long enough. Everything’s different, anyway. None of the people are the same, and the atmosphere has changed. It’s more like a frat-house than a commun
ity.”
Panic clawed at my insides, and I couldn’t reason it away, not when the truth was that I didn’t exactly like Giulia, but she’d gotten under my skin. Always watching, always judging. You didn’t have to like someone to want them, did you? And that was where I was currently at.
It fit, really, that she didn’t want to stay here, that she would try to get away from here as soon as she fucking could, but—and it was a big but—that made me want her to stay here all the more.
I didn’t want her to be as intrinsically miserable as I was, but damn it, I didn’t want her to go. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
“On what you’re earning, you’ll be working for a decade before you can afford to stay in a rat-infested shithole in the city,” I stated, instead. She wanted to think rationally, then I could be fucking rational too. “You’d be better off feeding us here and working somewhere else.”
“I won’t work at a diner.”
Because there were options, I mumbled, “There’s a bar. A garage. A brewery. A strip joint.”
Her brow puckered. “What the hell? You giving me a list or something?”
“New business ventures,” was all I said, not sharing shit with her, not just because she evidently didn’t want to be here, but because bitches were never told shit about business.
Didn’t matter if they were sweetbutts, Old Ladies, daughters, or mothers, we never shared that kind of stuff with anything in possession of a cunt.
She tipped her head to the side. “New business ventures? I’m sure I don’t even want to know what they could be if, all of a sudden, you have so much money in need of… laundering,” she mocked with a sniff. “I’d prefer to work in a bar than the diner.” Then, she blinked, like she was really thinking about something, and she murmured, “How about the garage? I’m good with admin. I did a lot of temping back in Utah.”
I shook my head. “Nah, the bar would be better. I hate working in body shops.”
“What the hell do you have to do with where I work?”
“Don’t you know?” I told her, baring my teeth at her. “I’ve taken responsibility for you.”
❖
GIULIA
THE ABSOLUTE FUCKING nerve of the man.
Take responsibility for me?
Like I was a goddamn stray dog who needed a home?
“Since when is this the Dark Ages?” I replied, fighting the urge to take my knife and throw it at him. “I don’t need anyone to take responsibility for me.”
“No? Well, tough shit. It’s happened. Where you go, I go. So, make your decision. Diner or bar? Which is it?”
I wasn’t altogether certain why, of all the options, those were the ones he was interested in, but considering I had no desire to work at a strip joint—even if it was interesting at first, there were only so many tits a girl could see without getting bored—and the idea of cooking even more than I already was broke me out in hives, didn’t seem like I had much of an option between the bar and the microbrewery—and I knew shit about beer. Liked it even less than I liked cooking.
Yeah, that was how much I didn’t want to work there.
“The bar it is,” I muttered, but I scowled at him as I said it. “I don’t get why you’re a part of the decision.”
“Because every unattached woman that ain’t a sweetbutt has to be taken in hand by a biker,” a new, deep voice informed me.
The statement jolted me from my glowering session at Nyx, but when I saw Storm, I relaxed some. Sure, he was as much of a pervert as the rest, but he was always really cordial to me.
Yeah, cordial.
Go figure.
Plus, he always complimented my food. The bastard had manners.
Again, go figure.
“I don’t need anyone to take me in hand.”
“Just how it works, darlin’,” Storm stated as he swooped in, and curved an arm around Nyx’s shoulder that I knew the brother just wanted to shrug off. They shared a look I didn’t get, one that had Storm smirking and Nyx tensing up even more, before he returned his attention to me once again. “You got any of those sandwiches left from earlier?”
“Nope,” I told him succinctly.
“Make me one?” he wheedled.
I smirked at him. “Nope. You want a sandwich, get one of the sluts to make it for you.”
Storm snickered. “You say the meanest things.”
“I’m sure.” I rolled my eyes. “In a clubhouse of dirty fuckers, I’m the one with a potty mouth. Anyway, I told you to get a sandwich before you went into council.” I shrugged. “You snooze, you lose.” It was a bittersweet fate that, though I hated cooking, I was really fucking good at it.
Even that miserable piece of shit, Maverick, always sent his trays down completely empty, and I’d learned that was a first, as he hadn’t been eating right since he’d returned home from the frontlines four years ago.
“When did you see him before council?” Nyx grumbled, making me scowl at him.
“In here. Where I was making breakfast.” Was the guy deaf or something? Or dumb? If I wasn’t in here, I was at the bunkhouse, and we’d left there together this morning because he was a stubborn asshole.
Storm snickered out a laugh, then muttered, “I gotta get me a bitch who can cook,” as he turned away, evidently going on the hunt for a slut who could make a sandwich as well as she could suck cock.
“You’ve already got one, dumb fuck,” Nyx muttered, and I watched with interest as Storm tensed up, his shoulders hitching a second, before he headed on out.
I had no idea what that was about, but as far as I could tell, the cock sucking was more important than the eating. It was probably why all the brothers were so fucking slim. Well, save for the ones with Old Ladies, of course.
When Storm strutted out on the hunt for a cocksucker sandwich maker, I turned my attention back to Nyx, who looked both pissed off and confused.
“What is it?” I asked, unsure why he was looking like that and well aware I didn’t want his focus on me.
Just because we’d talked last night, just because we’d… No.
No way.
I didn’t want this shit.
I wanted to work hard, earn some honest bucks, get the fuck out of here, and leave my brothers in semi-safe hands. Sure, I’d undoubtedly be visiting them in jail within the year, but fuck, that was their fault and their problem, not mine.
I didn’t want a biker to be looking at me like he wanted to be inside me. Especially one that had half the evil cunts in this one-percenter club backing off when he approached. I wasn’t sure what Nyx was, but it ran deep. Yeah, he had labels. Biker, brother, Enforcer, and yet, there was something running underneath the surface. Something that should probably have scared the piss out of me, but didn’t.
Why?
Well apparently, I had a death wish.
Because what had the brothers dashing out of his way, and what had that slut Cammie quivering on her too high, stacked heels when he summoned her like a dog, didn’t scare me.
Not one bit.
Nyx wasn’t bluster, he was cold reason. He was precarious safety in a dangerous world. He was harbor in a storm, but even harbors came with splinters.
I saw him, but the issue was, I didn’t know what I was seeing. Not really. Maybe if I did, I would be scared, but the truth was, Nyx would never hurt me. He’d have let my dad slap me last night, if that was the case.
He might break my heart, and if I let the fucker between my legs, might wreck my pussy, because, yeah, I’d seen what he was packing, but physically? I was as safe as I could be, and I wasn’t sure why every other bitch in this club didn’t see it.
He wasn’t a kitty cat, never that, but if a one-percenter could and would protect a daughter from her father?
The man had a twisted moral code that meant anything with a pussy was safe from danger.
Unless said pussy betrayed the club, I figured, and since I didn’t feel like getting my throat slit, that definitely wasn’t going to be an
issue.
“What are you staring at?” he growled at me.
“I’m staring at you staring at me,” I retorted with a sniff. “Anyway, the bar? I’ll take that over the diner.”
“Fine,” he grunted, twisting around on his boot before he strolled off to only fuck knew where.
Shit, if I’d known that would have worked, I’d have told him that earlier.
Nyx was Trouble. Capital T necessary. I knew it, my body knew it, my heart knew it, but most importantly, my brain knew it. And while I was many things, no one could ever accuse me of being stupid.
That was why I avoided him.
Which wasn’t easy.
The only time I talked to him over the next few days was when he showed up for something to eat, and while a part of me was okay with that, another part of me wasn’t.
The other night, as I’d drunk hot milk and he’d glowered at my mug as though I was drinking poison, I’d started to think he was more than just a grunt. Sure, he’d barely said more than a couple of sentences at a time with large pauses in between, as though he wasn’t used to speaking frequently, but I’d thought he wasn’t as big of an asshole as I’d initially assumed.
Then had come the assumption that I’d be willing to work my ass off in a fucking diner.
A few days after the ‘incident,’ when he came into the kitchen and grunted, “Time to get to the bar,” I just blinked at him.
“Excuse me?”
“Have you gone deaf?” he growled. “It’s time to get to the bar. We’re opening in a few days, and we need to hire staff.”
“We? No. You. I thought I was one of the staff.” I wasn’t just being ornery for the sake of it either, I was genuinely confused.
He was talking to me like I knew what was actually happening, when I seriously didn’t.
He frowned. “We’re going to do this shit together.”
“We are? Why is this the first I’ve heard of it?”
He shrugged. “Maybe if you hadn’t been avoiding me—”
“Me? Avoiding you?” I half shrieked, wondering if I’d fallen through the rabbit hole, not just down it. “You’re the one who’s barely been around.”
Forgotten & Found: A Dark & Dirty Sinners' MC Boxset Page 12