I released a frustrated breath. “She ran from her past for a reason. Isn’t that what Cherry did? You still chose her.”
“That was a different kind of past and you know that, since you had Chastity and she was involved in all that mess too. Hell, she was the cause of it being an issue for my woman.”
“I know, but not everyone is Chastity.”
“No, and thank fuck for that! I just want you to tread carefully, Brother. She left a bad situation behind. Running won’t be an option for her again before long. So don’t screw things up.”
“What the hell would I do to screw things up?”
“You have a past that could breeze back into town on a moment’s notice. Are you going to drop everything for what you already lost or keep moving forward when that happens?”
“Is Chastity coming back?” I asked, my full attention now on my brother.
“See,” he told me as his accusing finger lifted in my direction. “That reaction right there is what I’m warning you about. If you start something with Myra, where does that leave her, should the woman you were going to propose marriage to, come back into your life?”
“We’re only friends. It leaves her exactly in the same position.”
“Yeah, okay. Do me a favor then, think with your big head on this one.”
I grinned at my brother. “I always think with my biggest head,” I reassured him as I grabbed my crotch before heading to the bar to get a fresh water with lemon. There would definitely be no more drinking in my future. If I happened to one day get my other ass cheek tattooed, I was going in knowing what was happening. I still had to get Tango back for that bit of fuckery.
On the way to the bar to refresh my water, I was stopped by one of the BRATs the guys had dubbed ABC. It wasn’t because she was stupid or anything. Her name was literally, Audrey Boyd Carter, and that’s how she always introduced herself, using all three names. She should have been at the clubhouse that night instead of Ruby’s, but I decided to be polite as she tried to talk to me. I’d been so close to the bar, a fresh drink, and okay – another close-up peek at Momma Myra. I kept the disappointment at the interruption out of my eyes and smiled at the woman instead. I figured she was going to hit me up for a dancer position.
“Hey, Rabbit, I heard you’re with Gabby now.”
“Who?” I asked, honestly not recognizing the name.
“Gabby. You were just with her…”
“Oh, that! No. I was just blowing off some steam,” I explained when I realized she must have been talking about my one drunken night when I banged a BRAT in the clubhouse. She was a new girl, so in my drunken stupor I didn’t think she’d read too much into it being me that was banging her. I had become somewhat of a challenge for the girls over the years since I made it a point not to shit where I ate.
Yeah, they were there for convenience for all the brothers, but the problem was, I eventually wanted to settle down with one woman and start a family. I didn’t think it would be okay to start something with a woman and then drag her through the clubhouse where all of my previous conquests were collected and ready to give her shit. I knew how much flak my friend Charlie had endured over the years thanks to Rage’s antics before she came along. I didn’t want to ever put another woman through that.
I stopped and really took notice of ABC then. There was a devious little twinkle in her eye that should have been a warning to me. Unfortunately, I’d already turned and made eye contact, ready to brush ABC off, and I missed all the cues the BRAT had been sending me. “I could help you blow off a lot of steam,” the woman cooed as she plastered herself to me and ran her hands over the crotch of my jeans.
Myra rolled her eyes before turning her back to me. Once our connection was severed, I returned my attention to the woman trying to attach herself to me like a leech, and just as unwanted.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I asked the question in a low, menacing growl.
“Helping you to blow off steam?” Her voice wavered as she realized she had misread my lack of movement for wanting her attention.
“I didn’t ask for, or want, your attention.”
“But I thought -”
“What you claimed to think was that I belonged to one of your friends, another BRAT of the club. What you just showed was a complete lack of loyalty.”
“That’s not really fair to say to her,” an all too familiar feminine voice chimed in. “Here’s your drink,” Myra took my empty glass and replaced it without acknowledging the fact that it was just water with lemon. “Club girls aren’t supposed to be loyal to other women, especially where club brothers are concerned. You can’t be mad at them for living by your rules that require them to be disloyal to other people and to keep their mouths shut about it when it happens.”
I just stood there, not knowing what to say to that. When I didn’t manage to get anything out, Myra walked back to the bar and started immediately serving another customer as if she hadn’t just dropped a shitload of wisdom in my lap. Is that what the club had been doing? Were we inadvertently breeding disloyalty? The guys always thought that it showed loyalty to the proper people, since it was all about respecting the brotherhood above all, but now I had to wonder. Women tended to see things in a very different light than we did. Maybe this was why they had so many problems in the Charleston Chapter with the club girls?
“She’s right, you know?” ABC broke into my thoughts, to inform me, even as she made it sound like a question. “It’s the one thing I hate about my position with the club. I feel like in certain situations, I’m damned if I do, and damned if I don’t. If a married man wants a piece of me, I have to be okay with it. Not that it happens a lot with the guys from your chapter, but you know what I mean. If his woman comes after me for it, you guys all think it’s a fun sport to watch what happens.” ABC had once belonged to the Tallahassee Chapter of the Aces High MC. When they came up for Sturgis a few months ago, she opted to stay. Chances are, those experiences she was referring to happened when she was with their chapter. Not that Tallahassee was a bad one, just that they were a bit on the wilder side and under their previous president, they had been prone to a few shit shows that ended up being a bit of an embarrassment.
“Would you still have sex with the claimed men if given a choice?” I asked her, suddenly disliking the whole system the club had in place.
“No, I would only be available for single men if given the choice. There’s less drama that way. Most of the other women wouldn’t care about it though.”
“I’ll make sure it becomes your choice,” I told her.
She seemed frightened by that prospect. “I’m not trying to make waves here.”
I swatted her worries away. “Don’t worry. You won’t lose your place for making that decision. I’ll talk to Iceman about it in the morning, and we’ll get some changes made. Sorry about before. I never thought about it from the perspective of one of the club’s girls before.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Why would you? Normally, our opinions don’t matter, but we know that’s our lot in life.”
“I’ll be making a few changes. You need a way to air your grievances.” She nodded at me and then ducked away quickly, as if she was afraid she’d catch fire for standing too close to me.
When ABC left, I turned to see Myra grinning my way. “What?” I asked as I moved close enough to the bar to park my ass on a stool.
“If you’re telling the truth, you just did a really good thing. Most club girls are there because they need to feel safe and the world has left them with few options. It sucks for them that they have to lie, hurt one another’s feelings, and deal with pissed off old ladies and girlfriends all the time.”
“You sound like you speak from experience,” I told her, wondering and waiting to see if she’d fill in more information about her family, her ex, or whatever happened to force her to run. I knew he cheated on her, and the family took his back in that, but I didn’t really know much else.”
Myra shook her head in answer, but decided to elaborate. “Not as a club bunny, which is what we called them instead of BRATs. What the hell does that even mean?”
“Bitches Relinquishing Ass and Tits,” I told her with a straight face. It was a ridiculous name the men had come up with once night when we were all sitting around drinking years ago. It stuck because we all thought we were so fucking clever.
Myra laughed and shook her head in mock disapproval. “That’s what I get for asking questions,” she told me as she filled another order. When she came back to stand in front of me, she filled me in on a little glimpse of her previous life.
“I was a club princess, and more,” she started out as a sad look replaced her amused smile. “I was friends with some of the girls when I was younger, our friendships were ruined when they had to betray me and keep quiet about it. They couldn’t even look me in the eye anymore. At first, I thought it might have been because my dad was cheating on my mom. Then I wondered if my uncle was up to no good too. I never thought the worst though, the truth as it turned out, that they were sleeping with my boyfriend.”
“Which club are you with and whose old lady are you?” I asked, feeling both anxious about her answer and oddly devastated that her answer might make her completely off limits.
“I am my own woman. My ex-boyfriend lost any rights to me when he chose a random hook-up over me after trying to get me pregnant.”
“Wait,” I held up a hand while fisting the other because there was no way I just heard her right. “What do you mean? He was purposely trying to knock you up, succeeded in getting you pregnant, and then left you?”
She was mid-nod when one of the waitresses interrupted. “My, I need three Coronas and one Tom Collins.” Myra spun to make the drink while I turned my attention to the waitress.
“Who the hell orders a pussy-ass drink like a Tom Collins in a strip club? That for one of the girls?”
She laughed, shrugged, and then pointed to my drink. “Someone was having it made for you. They thought it was what you were drinking.”
“They thought?” I glanced down at my water with lemon and dropped my head back. If I was a praying man, I’d take the moment to pray for better luck in life. “It’s fucking water, with lemon.” I told her as I slid the top half of my body across the bar to grab Myra’s attention before she made that fucking weak ass drink.
Myra was too busy to talk much after that, so I took off and headed home. There was a time when I loved living at the clubhouse, but my patience for it was running thin again. Hell, if I was a woman, I’d say my biological clock was ticking. There was just this drive inside of me to go have a normal family. Not that I would give up the club, but there was a difference between being a member and living there. It stopped being so much of an escape when it was both what you were escaping from and where you were headed to all in one.
The Next Day
“Ice, you got a minute?” I called out when I noticed Iceman slip out of his room at the same time I was leaving mine.
“Yeah, what’s going on Rabbit?” I took my time, telling him about the discussion I’d had with ABC and how Myra put it all together in a different light for me the night before. “So, you want to change our policies concerning who the club girls fuck, and whether or not they’re able to complain about shit?”
“Yeah, I think it might keep us from having similar problems with Charleston, and even the shit that went down here when Charlie first came to stay here.”
“I can see the soundness of a decision like that, but we’re going to have to get the officers in on this and table the discussion.”
“I figured as much. They should all be here within the hour,” I told him.
“Well shit, you were going to try to bamboozle me, weren’t you?”
I laughed at that. “Nah, just figured you might not be in the greatest shape to be up so early,” I attempted to explain without calling him out on his recent behavior outright.
Iceman blew out a breath and ran his fingers through his short, cropped hair. It had once been a lot darker, but the silver that was peppered through the military style was becoming more and more evident since he’d kicked Carol to the curb. It most likely had to do more with the fact that he hadn’t exactly been kind to his own body since she’d been gone, than it did with her no longer being around.
“It’s okay, Rabbit. I haven’t been much of a president lately, but that’s going to change.”
“Hope so, you know we have your back, no matter what, right?”
“Brotherhood,” he answered back.
“Brotherhood,” I parroted while meaning it in my soul.
There was a unanimous agreement once we were able to meet with all the officers. Unfortunately, they left it to me to tell the girls. That was not news I relished delivering, especially since ABC had insinuated that the newer girl, Gabby, thought more of our tryst than there was. Still, I got the ball rolling, so I went to deliver the news.
I had been right to worry about being the one to drop the bomb on the girls. Hell, as happy as some of them were, you’d think it was a straight up rainbow and glitter bomb, but the worst reaction belonged to Gabby, as predicted.
“I knew you cared, but this just proves it. You made me so happy by looking out for my girls today, baby.”
Charlie and Myra just happened to be walking by as Gabby basically shrieked those words at me. Fuck my luck, because if it wasn’t for the unfortunate timing kind, I would have none at all. Hands grasped my face in order to turn my eyes from Myra’s retreating form, back to the woman currently acting like I did something specifically to please her.
“Why are you touching me without my permission?” I asked her, causing her face to wrinkle up as she frowned.
“Is this a new game you want to play? Are you going to be my daddy dom?”
“What the fuck?” I damn near shouted as I took a step back. “I don’t know what you’re on about.” I admitted to her.
Gabby’s bottom lip poked out in a pout. “After the other night-” she started to say, but I cut her off with a loud sigh.
“Are you the one I had on the pool table?” I asked as nicely as I could. For all the good that did me when tears started to pool in her eyes.
“Yes, of course it was me. You’ve never slept with any of the other girls.” Yep, and that’s why I phrased it like that. I knew it would hurt her a little bit, but better that than her deluding herself based on my lack of track record with anyone else.
“No offense meant, sweetheart, but I was plastered that night, pissed off, and honestly I don’t remember much of it. You were there and available. It’s not something I normally do, but I assure you, there was no hidden meaning. We fucked. End of story.”
By the time I managed to set that record straight, Charlie and Myra were walking by again, close enough to have heard me. Seriously, fuck my luck!
Chapter 13 - Myra
After overhearing Rabbit both help the club girls, and set the one he had actually been with straight, he and I didn’t cross paths again all week. It probably helped that I hadn’t been back to the clubhouse since then. I sat there, at the bar, waiting for Charlie to get her butt in gear so that we could go do some shopping. My boobs were already two sizes larger than my largest bra. There was no way I could continue to go without at least a couple of them to help hold up their newfound weight without squishing them into four separate entities on my chest. The rest of the clothing, I could make do without. I needed to save money and men’s sweatpants at Walmart were a whole lot cheaper than maternity pants. It didn’t even matter that I had to roll them over a few times at the waist still, or roll them up at the bottom. Damn the store for being out of the cuffed versions that might have kept themselves up. Not that it mattered. What mattered were the giant jugs I couldn’t figure out how to holster.
“What are you up to, Little Momma?” Rabbit asked just as I’d been checking out my swelling mammaries. Great, the man had perfect
timing.
I smirked at the new nickname he bestowed me with though. “Waiting on Charlie to get dressed.”
“Were you naked together?” He asked as he wiggled his eyebrows in what I’m sure was supposed to be a lascivious way, but ended up looking goofier than all hell. “Just what are your intentions with my bestie?” He asked before I could answer his first ridiculous question.
“I’m going shopping with the lovely Myra today,” Charlie answered instead, as she walked up and planted a kiss on my cheek. Then she turned her attention back to Rabbit and grinned. “Did you want to come?” Somehow, I think he only heard the double entendre that she didn’t actually realize she’d made, and not the actual question.
“I always want to come,” was his answer. I simply rolled my eyes as we all left the clubhouse and piled into my suburban.
It wasn’t until we were actually in Victoria’s Secret that Charlie realized her mistake in inviting Rabbit. He took one look at me, then the mannequin I was standing next to and back again several times. Right as the sales woman approached, he said, “I don’t know what Victoria’s Secret was exactly, but it looks like you may have grown out of it.”
“Oh my goodness,” the woman managed to get out before turning and walking away from us.
“Rabbit!” Charlie hissed at him. I just rolled my eyes and put the bra down because he wasn’t wrong. I was short and curvy even before my pregnancy, now I was short and stupidly curvaceous.
“Nah!” I told Charlie. “He’s right. I think I might need a specialty or maternity store for what I have going on now,” I explained as I glanced down at my giant boobs.
“Do they need to be-” Rabbit started to ask a question, but Charlie punched him in the gut to shut him up.
“If you even think about asking what you were about to, I will make sure you never have the chance to find out with a woman in the future. You will no longer be able to spread your seed.” It was only then that I realized what he’d been about to ask. I rolled my eyes at him again for about the tenth time on our little fiasco of a trip.
The Restart and the Remedy (Aces High MC - Dakotas Book 3) Page 9