Snickering, Giulia told me, “You need to grow some hairs on your chest.”
“Why on Earth would she want to grow hairs on her tits?” Lily squawked, but it was so high-pitched I just wanted to moan to drown out the sound.
I squinted over the pool, which was beautiful. Over the hotel, five star, of course—nothing less than that for Lily. Then the city where all secrets were born and interred here—Vegas.
“I should never have agreed to this,” I grumbled.
“We had fun, didn’t we?” Ghost’s soft voice made an appearance, and I peered over at her, and whispered, “Why do you look normal too?”
“Because rich bitches can’t hold their liquor?” was Giulia’s helpful answer.
I grumbled. “I can hold my liquor. Just not Gran Patron. We should have gone with the cheap stuff.”
“I thought expensive drinks weren’t supposed to make you feel like death warmed over?” Lily whispered, evidently having given herself a headache with the sound of her own squawking.
Rolling onto my knees, I almost face-planted the ground when my limbs buckled. Of course, that made me want to puke even harder.
Only focusing on the time got me through it. “Anyone know what time it is?”
Ghost hummed. “It’s twenty-past-eleven.”
“In the morning?” I shrieked, clambering upward, stomach rebelling so hard I almost puked in the pool.
“Well, it’s not fucking night, is it?” was Giulia’s retort.
“Oh Christ, if I don’t check in, Sin said he’ll roll into the hotel and—”
“And, what?” Giulia asked curiously, making me wonder if her hangover involved her being more chatty than I’d ever goddamn heard her.
Mine included an excruciating headache, hers made her suddenly a conversationalist.
Go fucking figure.
“I don’t know. He never dropped the threat, but it involved him killing anyone who dared get in his way so you’d better help me find my goddamn phone or I’ll tell him you didn’t help me.”
“You two bicker a lot, don’t you?” Ghost pointed out helpfully.
“That’s because they’re both too snarky for their own good,” Lily rumbled with a sigh.
I cut her a look, then had to hide a laugh. She was slouched over, her face touching her knees, groaning with each breath she took. Understanding the sentiment because I wanted nothing more than to go to sleep in a dark, dark room, I muttered, “Where’s my phone?”
“You threw it in that chocolate fountain last night,” Ghost replied.
“Why did I do that?” I moaned, slapping my hands to my face in horror. Then, I stormed over to Giulia, and demanded, “Give me your phone.”
“Or what?” she sniffed.
“I’ll make you a damn bridesmaid.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Try me.” I made a beckoning motion with my fingers. “Give me your phone. I need to speak with Sin before he freaks out.”
She sniffed. “Your man’s worse than mine.”
“Gee, I wonder why,” Lily rasped, moving her head to glower at Giulia whose eyes instantly dropped to my belly.
The flat belly.
The belly that should have made me look like I was sporting a watermelon under my shirt, but was, instead, thinner than before.
Because I didn’t want to think about that, I muttered, “Call Nyx?” Then I snatched the phone from her hand the second she gave it to me.
“Baby, missed you—”
“Nyx? This is Tiffany. Can I speak to Sin, please?”
“What’s wrong?” he countered, then his voice darkened. “Where the fuck is Giules?”
I sighed, then shoved the phone back at her. “Your non-possessive Old Man wants to make sure I haven’t kidnapped you for anal probing.”
“Time to get kinky on me,” Giulia retorted as she snatched the phone back from me, and muttered, “I’m okay, baby. Barbie doll over here lost her fucking phone. Or, should I say, she tried to use it as a marshmallow last night.” She snorted, then grinned. “Yeah, I’d like that too. This place has a pool on the terrace. You gonna bone me in it?”
I pulled a face. “This is my honeymoon suite! No one is being boned in my honeymoon pool.” Then, I muttered under my breath, “Well, no one except me.” I’d been eying the damn water since we’d first checked in.
Me? Sin? The stars? A pool and Vegas in the distance? Bring it on.
“Fucking spoiled brat,” Giulia muttered. “Anyway, get her Sin before she starts screeching again.”
Rolling my eyes, I made a ‘gimme’ motion for the phone, then tapped my foot until I heard Sin muttering, “What is it?”
“Tiff. She lost her phone.”
“Thank fuck.” I bit my lip at the relief in his voice, and the second he asked, “Tiff?”
I scurried away and whispered, “I’m so sorry, Sin, I didn’t mean to. But I got drunk, and then I—”
He quieted. “You, what, angel?”
“Well, I mean, I dunked my phone in a chocolate fountain. At least, that’s what Ghost says but I really don’t remember any of that. I don’t think she’d lie to me though. Giulia would,” I barked out, loud enough for her to hear, “Bitch!”
Unoffended, she snickered. “Barbie.”
I grunted at that, then grunted when Sin chuckled. “You give each other so much shit.”
Shrugging, I told him, “It’s good for us. Consider it therapy.”
“Maybe the Enforcers of the Sinners are destined to have snarky—”
“If you want this snarky mouth around your cock later on, you’d better not compare me to her. Already got enough of that going on with Lily. She says we’re like two peas in a pod.” My eyes flared at that, then the whole alcohol poisoning thing happened and I remembered that hurt like a motherfucker. “Two peas in a pod, my ass.”
“Ugh, want my hands on that ass, babe. Whose stupid idea was this?”
I snorted. “Yours?” I peered over the balcony where my friends and, I’d admit, family were gathered. There were only four of us—Tatána and Amara had refused to leave the clubhouse—and even though the likelihood of them agreeing to attend was low, I didn’t really want to invite my old friends from Crosskeys, the country club, over to a biker’s wedding.
Not because I was ashamed, because I really wasn’t, but if they’d sneered at my fiancé, or had given Lily shit over Link or her familial situation? Or mine, for that matter?
Fists would fly and I’d be breaking some daddies’ hearts at how much it would cost to repair those broken noses in plastic surgery.
Just thinking about my mom’s reaction alone made me feel sick. Her response to the news we were getting married made me feel like pulling her hair out—her disrespecting Sin wasn’t on, and it had resulted in me saying shit I wished I could take back. No way was I going to condone her treating him like crap though. No. Fucking. Way. Still, it sucked that my mom wasn’t here but that was on her. Not me.
I sucked in a breath and asked, “You’re sure about this, aren’t you? I won’t divorce you, you know?”
Sin laughed. “You keep threatening that, but that ain’t much of a threat to me, darlin’.”
Grinning, I twisted a strand of hair around my finger as I leaned against the patio door and looked out onto the strip. “Gonna be so weird to be a wife.”
“Why? It’s not going to change much.”
“You mean, you won’t expect your pipe and slippers after you get in from a long hard day of bikering.”
“Yeah, bikering. That’s what I do.”
“All words can become a verb.” My lips twitched.
“Sure. I’ll expect to use my slipper on some fine part of that tush of yours, especially now I know you get off on—"
“It was a heat of the moment thing.”
He laughed. “Yeah, tell that to my dick. You were so fucking ready—"
“Padraig!” I growled, making him laugh harder. “My h
angover in no way makes this conversation manageable.” I blew out a breath. “Anyway, I gave you the message.”
“Twenty minutes too late,” he said with a pout.
“As if I was going to change my mind anyway.”
“I know,” he replied, this time confidently. “Just wanted you to know you had an out.”
I rolled my eyes. The man was obsessed with thinking I wasn’t going to go ahead with this. More fool him, because this bitch?
A biker’s bitch all the way.
So when we’d rolled into Sin City yesterday, he’d told me that I had until eleven AM to get in touch with him before he’d think I was canceling. I’d blown it off. Until, of course, I’d woken up too late to call him.
The idea of him maybe even thinking for a second that I was canceling had me biting my lip. “I love you. I’m not going anywhere.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t want an out.”
“I know.”
“Then why give me it?” I almost whined.
“To cement in that beautiful head of yours that we’re it for each other. Ain’t no shit we can’t get through.”
My eyes watered at that, and it had nothing to do with four-hundred-dollar-a-shot tequila, either. “This is because of Mom, isn’t it?”
He blew out a breath. “Maybe.”
“I kind of hate her right now.”
“Can’t blame you. She’s being a cunt. But it’s a phase. She’ll get over it. We all will.”
I bit my lip, thinking back to all the hateful shit she’d said two days ago when we’d left on the massive road trip to Vegas where Sin wanted to get hitched. I’d have been happy sticking close by, but he’d wanted to come here and hell, why not? Wasn’t every day that a woman tied herself to a man for the rest of her life, was it?
“Yeah. I didn’t believe what she said,” I told him.
He smiled. “Of course you didn’t, Tiff. She can say what she wants. Can try to tell you her shit don’t stink, but angel, I’m fucking yours. You get me?”
“I get you.” I gulped, and unknowingly, pressed my hand to my heart. “Sin?”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t want to wait until two PM.”
He snorted. “It’s only a few hours, baby.”
“Yeah. Too long. I’m yours. I want the fucking world to know it.”
He fell silent a second, then he rumbled, “That’s fighting talk.”
A breath hitched from my lips. “I know. Come and get me.”
A laugh escaped him, one that lit me up from the inside out, and then his words? Melted me. As he always would. “On my fucking way, angel.”
STEEL WILL BE ROARING TOWARD YOU SOOOOON!
www.books2read.com/SteelSerenaAkeroyd
Afterword
Darlings,
I hope you’re ready for more of the Satan’s Sinners’ MC… and are ready for Lancaster to get his comeuppance.
STEEL is now live on Amazon (www.books2read.com/SteelSerenaAkeroyd), and CRUZ, book five, will be live at the end of October 2020.
As it stands, don’t forget, some of the characters you met along the way, from Declan and Brennan to Finn, they’re part of a crossover universe… You don’t have to read them, as these series are standalones, but why wouldn’t you when you can fall for some more sinful heroes? ;)
The Five Points’ Mob Collection starts with FILTHY. (www.books2read.com/FilthySerenaAkeroyd)
Read on for an excerpt from FILTHY.
Thank you for being here,
Much love,
Serena
Xoxo
FILTHY
Finn
Obsessive habits weren’t alien to me.
They were as much a part of me as my coal-dark hair and my diamond-blue eyes. Ingrained as they were, it didn’t mean they weren’t irritating as fuck.
As I rifled through the folder on the table in front of me, staring down at the life of one pesky tenant, I wanted to toss it in the trash. I truly did.
I wanted not to be interested in her.
Wanted my focus to return to the matter at hand—business.
But there was something about her.
Something. . .
Irish.
I was a sucker for my own people. When I was a kid, I’d only dated other Irish girls in my class, and though I’d become less discerning about nationality and had grown more interested in tits and ass, I’d thought that desire had died down.
But Aoife Keegan was undeniably, indefatigably Irish.
From her fucking name—I didn’t know people still named their kids in Gaelic over here—to her red goddamn hair and milky-white skin.
To many, she wouldn’t be sexy. Too pale, too curvy, too rounded and wholesome. But to me? It was like God had formed a creature that was born to be my downfall.
I could feel the beast inside me roaring to life as I stared at the photos of her. It wanted out. It wanted her.
Fuck.
“I told you not to get those briefs.”
My eyes flared wide in surprise at my brother, Aidan O'Donnelly’s remark. “What?” I snapped.
“I told you not to get those briefs,” he repeated, unoffended. Which was a miracle. Had I been speaking to Aidan Sr., I’d probably have lost a finger, but Aidan Jr. was one of my best friends, as well as a confidant and fellow businessman.
When I said business, it wasn’t the kind Valley girls dreamed their future husbands would be involved in. No Manhattan socialite, though we were wealthy as fuck, would want us on their arm if they truly knew what games we were involved in.
My business was forged, unashamedly, in blood, sweat, and tears.
Preferably not my own, although I had taken a few hits for the Family over the years.
“My briefs aren’t irritating me,” I carried on, blowing out a breath.
“No? You look like you’ve got something up your ass crack.” Aidan cocked a brow at me, but his smirk told me he knew exactly what the fuck was wrong.
I flipped him the bird—the finger that I’d have lost by showing cheek to his father—and he just grinned at me as he leaned over my glass desk and scooped up one of the pictures.
That beast I mentioned earlier?
It roared to life again when his eyes drifted over Aoife’s curvy form.
“She’s like your kryptonite,” he breathed, tilting his head to the side. “Fuck me, Finn.”
“I’d rather not,” I told him dryly. “Now her? Yeah. I’d fuck her anytime.”
He wafted a dismissive hand at my teasing. “I knew from that look in your eye, there was a woman involved. I just didn’t know it would be a looker like this.”
I snatched the photo from him. “Mine.”
My growl had him snickering. “The Old Country ain’t where I get my women from, Finn. Simmer down.”
Throat tightening, I grated out, “What the fuck am I going to do?”
“Screw her?” he suggested.
“I can’t.”
He snorted. “You can.”
“How the fuck am I supposed to get her in my bed when I’m about to bribe her into selling off her commercial lot?”
Aidan shrugged. “Do the bribing after.”
That had me blowing out a breath. “You’re a bastard, you know that, right?”
Piously, he murmured, “My parents were well and truly married before I came along. I have the wedding and birth certificates to prove it.” He grinned. “Anyway, you’re only just figuring that out?”
I shot him a scowl. “You’re remarkably cheerful today.”
“Is that a question or a statement?”
“Both?” The word sounded far too Irish for my own taste. My mother had come from Ireland, Tipperary to be precise—yeah, like the song. I was American born and bred, my accent that of someone who’d been raised in Hell’s Kitchen but, and I hated it, my mother’s accent would make an appearance every now and then.
‘Both’ came out sounding almost like ‘boat.’
/>
Aidan, knowing me as well as he did, smirked again—the fucker. “I got laid.”
Grunting, I told him, “That doesn’t usually make you cheerful.”
“It does. I just never see you first thing after I wake up. Da hasn’t managed to piss me off today.”
Aidan was the heir to the Five Points—an Irish gang who operated out of Hell’s Kitchen. It wasn’t like being the heir to a candy company or a title. It came with responsibilities that no one really appreciated.
We were tied into the life, though. Had been since the day we were born.
There was no use in whining over it, and Aidan wasn’t. But if I had to deal with his father on a daily basis? I’d have been whining to the morgue and back.
Aidan Sr. was the shrewdest man I knew. What the man could do with our clout defied belief. Even if I thought he was a sociopath, he had my respect, and in truth, my love and loyalty.
Bastard or no, he’d taken me in when I was fourteen and had made me one of his family. I’d gone from being his kids’ friend, the son of one of his runners, to suddenly being welcome in the main house.
All because Aidan Sr.—though I was sure he was certifiable—believed in family.
I shot Aidan Jr. a look. “Was it that blonde over on Canal Street?”
He rubbed his chin. “Yeah.”
Snorting, I told him, “Hope you wore a rubber. I swear that woman has so many men going in and out of her door, it should be on double-action hinges.”
He scowled at me. “Are you trying to piss me off?”
“Why? Didn’t wear a jimmy?” I grinned at him, my mood soaring in the face of his irritation. “Better get to the clinic before it drops off.”
Though he flipped me the bird as easily as I’d done to him—I was his brother, after all—he grumbled, “What are you going to do about little Aoife?”
I squinted at him. “She’s not little.”
That seemed to restore his humor. “I know. Just how you like them.” He shook his head. “You and Conor, I swear. What do you do with them? Drown yourself in their tits?”
Heaving a sigh, I informed him, “My predilection for large tits is none of your business.”
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