She liked flirting with danger a little too much.
And, sure, many criminals acted that way. But people who did it as a career learned really quickly that danger was something you really tried to avoid at all possible costs. You didn't paw at it like a cat playing with a mouse.
Those were experience lessons, though, ones we tried not to make her learn the hard way, knowing just how steep the consequences could often be.
So we made sure she was trained.
We let her tag along, pitch in with some extra muscle when it was necessary.
But mostly, we had her on the grunt work.
She was the one who clocked the most time on the dark web chasing down leads, finding new contacts that seemed trustworthy. And then Camden and I were the ones to meet up with them, to take the risks.
So, really, if she was willing to put in all the legwork here on tracking down these pain in the ass guns again, why not let her? Why not keep ourselves from acquiring another enemy?
And she was right, too.
When it came to dealing with an MC, I would always much rather deal with one of their younger bloods than the older, more established members of the club. The presidents were the kind of men you didn't want to fuck around with. So if we could avoid that, avoid being put on their shit list, then that was likely the smart path to take.
As for the latter part of her argument, yeah, no. That was not happening.
It wasn't that he wasn't good looking.
I'd seen him up close two days in a row.
I was a red-blooded straight woman.
So I was affected.
Tall, well-built, with that perfect caramel skin, brown eyes, easy smile with perfect white teeth that somehow made this badass biker have goddamn dimples? Yes, it was all working for me.
But that didn't mean I had any plans of ending my drought with the likes of an outlaw biker.
It wasn't the outlaw thing, though. I had no issues with criminals. What little bit of dating or sleeping around I had ever done, it had pretty much exclusively been with those who skirted the edges of the law.
It made more sense.
I didn't have to pretend to be someone I wasn't around them.
That being said, you don't fuck where you work. So anyone in my line of crime was off-limits. So that meant all arms dealers, traders, collectors, black market sellers... they were for business only, not pleasure.
I had mouths to feed.
I didn't need to snatch food out of them simply because I was hard up for an orgasm.
So no matter how attractive I found the man's dimples, I was not planning on sleeping with him.
I mean, I wasn't even that hard up, was I?
It had been...
"Ugh," I grumbled, dropping down across from Cam, reaching for another old-fashioned donut, never having been big on sweets, instead being known to go into the fridge and bite into a block of cheddar cheese like it was a burrito when I was stressed, not reaching for a bar of chocolate. Cam was the one with a sweet tooth in our little house. Jelly donuts especially. But he also had a thing for coffee rolls or the occasional marble frosted.
"Just realized you haven't been laid since the Fourth of July, huh?" Astrid called, knowing me way too well.
"Shut up," I demanded, sighing.
"And Camden, if you have lost track, the last time you got lucky was around Easter," she reminded him, voice grave.
My gaze slid to his, seeing the same look of shock and disgust on his face.
We'd been busy.
Sometimes things like that fell to the wayside.
Especially since - as a whole - we didn't do the relationship thing. So having to actively go out looking for sex was just a chore.
It was bad enough for me. And, let's face it, most women could just about walk into any bar and find someone willing to warm her bed for a night.
Cam, yeah, I wasn't sure how he managed to land chicks when he did. Sure, he was stupidly good looking, but not even being able to offer a pick up line seemed to greatly hinder the chances of taking someone home.
He did manage though.
Not often, per se.
Not as often as a man like him could if he were able to communicate, but more often than you would imagine when he couldn't even say hello to the women.
"After this job," I mumbled so that only he could hear. "Then we can pity our sexlessness. But now, we need to work." Cam's pointer finger and middle tapped the tabletop hard twice to get my attention, making me turn to him, seeing him take those same two fingers and wave them around my body, making me look down to realize I might as well have been naked for as little modesty as the kimono was giving me. "Right. First, I get changed. Then we work."