So, I avoided the watchman and continued my Wednesday night as if he didn’t exist. I helped Ruby tuck her curves into a tiny sequined costume, sewed the buttons onto half a dozen more just like it, served drinks because Margie had called in sick and mopped up the puke in the bathroom after the bachelor party went awry thanks to too many tequila shooters.
I was mindful of the women, dancers and customers alike, who gravitated toward him as the night carried on. They were beautiful women who had no qualms about displaying their wares and their interest but the man seemed to have no qualms about rebuffing them, sometimes brutally if their sour mouths and thunderous brows were anything to go by.
Still, he watched me.
It was quarter to two in the morning and things were winding down at The Lotus. The bachelor party had long since departed, the couples looking to heat up their love life had found their ignition and left back to their beds and it was only the devout that remained. It was my favourite time of night at the club because the men who lingered were regular enough to have made friends with the crew, including me.
“Been watching you all night, girl,” Harlow told me as I handed him a frosty new pint.
I wiped my hands on the dishtowel tucked into the back of my shorts and shrugged as if I didn’t care, as if I hadn’t been aware of that gaze the entire night. As if it and the man behind it weren’t driving me crazy.
“Nothing new,” I said, because it wasn’t.
I was pretty and men seemed to have a sixth sense that I was young, too young. It made them unusually hard for me.
“You noticed ’im too.”
I shot Harlow Barton a look over my shoulder as I wiped down the counter. He had once been a large man, fit and virile due to his years in the navy, and though age had softened his figure, not much slipped by the old coot’s sharp eyes.
“No shame in admiring a pretty face,” Tinsley quipped as she skipped up to the bar, her doctor-given breasts bouncing becomingly in her brief white crop top. “I’ve been staring at him all night. He’s been holding court to dangerous looking men all night and half of them weren’t bad-looking, either.”
“You stare at all the pretty men,” Reno interjected, leaning back in his chair to gesture to himself. “That’s why I always catch you looking at me.”
Tinsley rolled her pretty brown eyes. “This guy isn’t just pretty, he’s, like, magnetic or something. The only woman in here who hasn’t hit on him yet is Loulou and you know how she is.”
“Yeah, stuck up,” Reno muttered, but the sides of his slim mouth crooked up so I would know he was joking.
I shrugged. “I’ve got high standards.”
“You’ve got that Reece Ross,” Tinsley said, her face taking on a dreamy quality as I handed her the drinks for her last table. “Anyone with the good luck of landing that kid wouldn’t look elsewhere.”
I didn’t fully agree with her but I couldn’t argue that Reece was an awesome guy. Ever since the night he’d corrupted me, his words not mine, we’d been pretty much inseparable. We partied, both with drugs at friends’ houses and with tea at church luncheons. He occupied both of my worlds and took pride in the fact that he’d introduced me to the dark side of Entrance. He liked Louise and Loulou but I had the feeling he thought I was having a gag, that Loulou was this fun alter-ego pastime I had going so that I could forget about the problems that faced Louise.
He was right and he was wrong.
He was right because Loulou had cancer but it didn’t define her so, it wasn’t a problem for her.
He was wrong because in every way that mattered, Loulou was the woman I wanted to be. She was the dark heart of me brought to life, unbound from the scripture and familial guilt of my youth. It was the section of my soul that found violence a necessary tool of retribution. That felt passion like a thunderclap and hatred like a burning thing in my gut that needed to be acted upon. Loulou was base, instinct and brimstone. She had so many flaws so beautifully accepted, that they became honed weapons and gleaming treasures.
She was unashamed and free.
If anything was a phase, it was Louise. And she was fading fast to give way for Lou.
Zeus’s Lou.
The girl who had recognized Zeus Garro as a kindred soul from across the church parking lot and run toward him as bullets flew all around.
I couldn’t have him. I knew that and felt it like the echo of the bullet wound in my chest.
But I could be the woman he’d created, the one he gave me the confidence to be.
So I liked Reece. I liked kissing him because kissing was fun, and I liked talking to him because he had things to say unlike most of the friends I’d had all my life. But I didn’t love him, and I never would.
“Look at her gone all gaga over the boy,” Reno cackled as he slammed down his warm mug of beer. “He’s a lucky feller, I’m sayin’ it right now.”
“Damn but if I was ten years younger,” Harlow said with a sigh.
Tinsley giggled. “More like forty.”
Reno laughed too but I reached over to pat Harlow’s hand and give him a little wink. “Ten’s more like it, Harlow baby. I like my men older.”
The old man’s creased face creased even more with warmth. “You’re a good girl, Loulou. Too good for the likes of Zeus Garro anyways.”
I froze.
“What?” I whispered, my lips barely moving because for some reason, I was afraid to move.
“Zeus Garro, Prez of The Fallen MC and a meaner motherfucker there never was,” Harlow explained.
“I know who he is. Why did you bring him up?”
He frowned, his eyes skittering over to Reno and Tinsley who both watched me with concerned confusion.
“Babe,” Tinsley was the one to say, stepping backward to open up my line of sight to the man who had been sitting in the booth all night watching me. “Zeus Garro’s the man who just bought The Lotus from Debra.”
My eyes burned with the need to look over, tears building from the tension of holding back the impulse.
“Tinsley, don’t fuck with me,” I whispered and somehow there were tears in my throat too.
“Honey, I’m not. Look,” she urged gently, no doubt wondering if I was a crazy person.
I didn’t care.
I didn’t care about anything in the world in that moment except for the fact that Zeus Garro was in my space.
Did he know I was there?
Yes, of course he did. He’d been watching me all night.
What the fuck was he doing here?
A muscle below my left eye ticked.
I had to look.
My heart beat thrummed like thunder in my ears and sharp thrills of anxiety and excitement zipped across my skin like fingers of lightning as I swiveled my head to look over at the booth, to take in the man I’d been in love with for what seemed like forever.
And then I saw him.
Gorgeous, more gorgeous somehow than ever before. His enormous frame took up the entire back of the red velvet booth and his mess of curling brown hair caught in the light like it was dipped in gold. He looked powerful and dark. A god in his den of iniquity.
And his eyes were on me. Even across the room as I was, I could see the glint of silver, feel the intensity of his intent.
His eyes were on me, but his arms were around Jade, locked tight around her topless body as she ground her latex-covered sex against his leg and licked a long line up his neck to his bearded chin.
Then, as he’d done when I was a little girl, he winked at me, and turned his head just enough to take Jade’s seeking lips with his own. And all the while, his eyes still hooked mine.
My heart seized and not for the first time in my life, I felt like I was dying.
Zeus.
I liked my girls a lotta ways.
I liked thin, plump, thick with muscles or soft with curves.
Liked blonde, brunette or red, anything in-between but a little more partial to light, the mostly fake kinda blonde women f
ound in a bottle. They reminded me of the biker babe posters I’d first jerked off to as a kid. Still any woman with some gumption no matter her looks or stylin’ would do.
As I said, I liked my girls a lotta ways and I liked takin’ her a lot more ways than that.
They only thing I did not like was young ones.
Seen enough old bikers stick their wick in fresh honey to know it didn’t lead to good things. Plus, I had a teenage daughter who didn’t need to catch wind of me fuckin’ a girl closer to her age than mine.
Then came Louise Lafayette.
The mayor’s daughter.
Same age as my youngest fuckin’ kid.
And the fuck of it was, I’d never wanted anyone more than I wanted her.
Which explained why I was sittin’ in The Lotus, a piece of shit titty bar on the outskirts of Entrance that most of my brothers and I couldn’t be bothered to go to because the dancers were decent but the décor had more stains than even bikers were comfortable with and that was sayin’ something.
I was there ’cause of the girl I’d known most of her life who had somehow turned into a woman, and a fuckin’ fine one at that. I’d watched her all night, wonderin’ at first if she knew it was me sitting at the back booth ’cause she was makin’ an art of avoiding my eyes and the last time I’d seen her, I’d brow-beaten her pretty bad. Wanted to get my point across, get her set on the straight an’ narrow, only looking back I’d been too harsh. Despite my reputation, I wasn’t a harsh guy, at least not with my family and definitely not my kids, yet I’d been fuckin’ brutal to Lou that night. I’d sat on that for a few weeks, wonderin’ why and when I’d come up to the answer, I wished to God I hadn’t tried to figure it out. The answer was simple as fuck. I’d been angry and surprised that the little girl I’d been writing to for years—too many years—was not a kid anymore.
Even drunk as fuck and rank as shit, Louise Lafayette took my fuckin’ breath away.
It mighta been all that pale hair that mussed up in sexy disarray all around that heart-shaped face. I wanted to drive my hands into it, fist it tight and bring that phenomenal bee-stung mouth to mine. Wonderin’ what she tasted like had been drivin’ me crazy for months. In my dirtiest fantasies, she tasted like cherry lollipops, the kind she’d liked as a kid.
I was sick. Sick with lust for a girl nineteen years younger than me and morally sick because of it.
So, if I’d been too hard on her it was to take my mind off the way her out-fuckin’-rageous curves felt against my body when I’d hauled her into my arms. It’d been ’cause of the fury I felt at some dumbass preppy fuck touching her while she was outta her mind with drink. It’d been ’cause I’d forced myself to stay away so she could live a good life, the kind of life a girl with a soul as beautiful as hers should live. And I’d seen her throwin’ it away.
Problem was, as harsh as I’d been, Lou didn’t seem to give a fuck.
I’d started watchin’ her again. Not creepy, you get me, but just a casual eye. Have one of my brothers do a drive by her house, get my son, King, to keep watch of her at school where she seemed to excel—no surprise, she’d always been a smart girl—and keep an ear turned towards my H.R.’s chatter on the off chance I caught a hint of Lou’s name.
So, I’d learned Lou led a double life. My kids reported Louise Lafayette was a good girl who did her homework and hung with those religious “angel” bitches I’d once told her to charm. My boys told me different. They told me about Loulou Fox who wore next to nothin’ and worked at the shitty titty bar off Highway 99.
The temptation was too fuckin’ great. It seemed that the sweet kid in the frilly white church dress with the bows in her hair had grown into a rebel, a woman not content unless she was livin’ hard and livin’ free.
I couldn’t say I was surprised. I couldn’t say I didn’t have a hand in nurturin’ that in her but now I could see it’d always been there, just waitin’ to take over.
With or without me, Loulou Lafayette was going over to the dark side.
And I’d decided I’d be the welcoming committee.
So there I was sittin’ in a booth in The Lotus, makin’ out with one of the dancers so when Lou finally got her head outta her ass and realized I was there, she’d know I wasn’t there for romance or fuckin’ flowers.
I was there to teach her right and proper how to live the kind life she was barrelin’ toward without gettin’ herself pimped up, drugged down or washed out. She was givin’ in to the devil on her shoulder and I was bound and fuckin’ determined to be the voice of Satan.
There would be no hearts, not even any fucking.
Louise was a seventeen-year-old daughter of the bastard who’d been makin’ my life a livin’ hell for years.
She was the definition of off-fuckin’-limits even for a man like me who didn’t go in for rules.
As solid as I was on the point, it still rocked me like a sucker punch to the gut when she finally turned those massive blue eyes to mine, our gaze connecting like two mechanical parts meant to work in sync.
Fuck me, she was a wet dream come to life.
Then the hurt came.
It washed over her features like acid, contorting her features until she was as close to ugly as she could ever become.
I felt that pain in my chest. Had to fight the instinct to punch myself in the face ’cause that’s what I woulda done to any other motherfucker that put that look on her face.
Instead, I hammered that final nail in the coffin of her childish dreams with a ruthless bang.
I winked at her.
Just like I had when she’d come to visit me that first time in the hospital.
I fuckin’ winked at her and her acid washed face crumpled into ash, skin pale, features lax.
Fuck me but I ruined her with that wink.
Remorse burned through me and I nearly gagged into the bitch whose mouth I was eatin’ at.
“You okay, baby?” she purred into my ear.
I didn’t take my eyes off Lou even as she jerked outta her misery and turned away from me to talk to the old-timers sitting at her bar. She said somethin’ real quick then hustled out of sight.
“Done with you, sugar. Go wax a pole or somethin’,” I told the dancer, gently but firmly shoving ’er off my lap.
She blinked at me but she was a dancer, she knew how it was, and she strolled off without givin’ me lip.
I was grateful. It was hard to tell if I wanted to rage at someone, beat ’em senseless to get rid of all the guilt under my skin or burst into fuckin’ tears like a twelve-year-old chick.
“Z,” my brother Bat called out as he rounded the booth. “Let’s roll out, brother. Nova’s got a party goin’ with those biker models back at the compound.”
I nodded at my now-warm glass of bourbon and tipped it back. The burn settled me some so I could look up at Bat without lookin’ like a pussy.
“Wow, what the hell’s up with you?” Bat asked.
Damn the perceptive bastard.
“Nothin’,” I said as I made to get up from the booth.
“Nothin’ my pasty white ass,” Bat snorted as he sat down, blocking my exit. “Tell me what’s got you lookin’ so fucked. Last time, it was Farrah O.D.ing again.”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t fuckin’ mention that bitch’s name. Haven’t seen her in three years an’ another fifty wouldn’t be long enough.”
“Z, brother, you know I won’t push if you gotta keep it down but there are some serious ghosts in your eyes and fuck knows, I gotta sense what that looks like.”
My mouth twisted in a grimaced smirk because if anyone knew pain, it was Bat. He’d served in the military for fifteen years before being honourably discharged after the rest of his battalion was killed in action durin’ an air raid in Iraq. He’d been my best friend before he’d been my brother and I knew better than to keep shit from him ’cause he was a fuckin’ hound dog at sniffin’ it out. I’d kept ’im outta Lou-surveillance duties for exactly that fuckin�
�� reason.
Still, he knew enough of the story to get me when I said, “Lou’s here.”
“The fuck?”
“You heard me.”
“Please tell me that isn’t why we bought this shithole?”
I glared at him. He may have been my brother, but no one questioned me, especially about the betterment of my fuckin’ club. “King had a point about diversifying our investments. We got the garages, the trucking company, the tat shop, Eugene’s bar and now a titty bar. They’re cash cows and it’ll keep the boys happy, they got a place closer than Vancouver to go to get some quality pieces.”
“The only thing of quality here is your little church mouse,” Bat argued.
“We bring in Maja and she’ll get ’em sorted,” I said, referring to my VP Buck’s old lady. She’d worked at a titty bar over in Calgary for years before hookin’ up with Buck and she was a class act, just what this place needed.
That and about thirty gallons of bleach.
“It may be a good investment, I get you wouldn’t do bad by the club, Z, but this is about way more than that. This is about the fuckin’ girl.”
“Watch your fuckin’ tone, brother,” I growled, my fingers flexing around my empty rocks glass.
I needed to work out this sick fuckin’ feeling. A bag at the gym, a warm pussy in my bed and a couple hours of physical therapy with both ought to do it.
“You want someone to bow and scrape to the almighty Zeus Garro, go to one of the fuckin’ prospects or get some pussy ’cause I’ve been tellin’ it to you straight for twenty-five years and I’m gonna keep right on doin’ it ’til you drive us both into an early grave.”
He stared at me dead in the fuckin’ eye, serious as shit.
I threw my head back and laughed because he was the only man still walkin’ on this earth that would throw back at me like that.
“Fine, you fuck. It’s about the girl too,” I conceded.
Just then, the girl in question came striding back into the bar, walking amidst the now empty tables picking up used glassware and empty bottles. My throat ran dry at the sight of those curvy long legs in those tiny little black shorts, the thick wedge of deep brown skin between the low rise of the hem and the edge of her thin, white crop top. Couldn’t tell if she was wearing a bra but it was clear she’d gone outside to recuperate from her shock ’cause her hard little nipples were clear from across the room where I sat watching her.
Welcome to the Dark Side (The Fallen Men Book 2) Page 8