To that, I got a collective chuckle from all the gathered men, a deep, sexy sound I hadn't anticipated.
"That's my name," Virgin declared, giving me stupidly perfect white teeth. The man belonged on toothpaste commercials.
"Oh, gee, your mom hated you, huh?" I teased, getting another chuckle.
"Virgin grew up in an MC. That name is what is known as a road name. Sugar over there is not his real name either," Colson clarified, waving to another ridiculously good-looking guy.
"And I'm Huck," the biggest of the assembled men, one with a jawline that could cut glass and a really bad black eye, informed me. "I'm from the sister chapter."
"Sister chapter," I repeated. "I never realized I would need a biker-to-English dictionary," I declared. "Does such a thing exist? Can I find a copy for sale somewhere?"
"A sister chapter is just another MC exactly like ours, but in a different place with different people."
"Right that makes perfect sense. You'll forgive me. I haven't had coffee in all of twenty-five minutes. I'm going through withdrawals."
"Let's fix that," Colson said, moving out from behind me, heading over toward the coffee pot, pouring me a cup.
"I didn't get your name," I said to the last man standing there. Tall, long-haired, bearded, with an almost wolf-like appearance to him.
"Roan," he told me, giving me a small smile.
"Is there some kind of rule that short men can't be bikers?" I wondered aloud. "I think each of you is over like six-two. Some short guy is going to get turned away and sue for discrimination. Your boss should be informed of the potential lawsuit," I teased.
"Maybe someone will tell him when we find him," another voice said from behind me, making me stiffen and jump to the side, finding someone quite a bit younger than the others, tall, fit, but not overly bulky, with dark hair and light eyes and the kind of bone structure that would never go out of style.
"Yo, kid," Huck chided, voice firm, waving a coffee cup toward me.
"What? You think he hasn't told her?" the guy asked, jerking his chin toward Colson.
"I haven't actually," Colson said, handing me my coffee. "This is Fallon. Our president's son."
I didn't know much about bikers and their hierarchy. But I knew enough to know that the president was the guy who ran things, the one all the others looked up to.
And their president, apparently, was missing.
That was why Colson was living at the compound, why Jelly and Freddie were under armed guard, why the men had all clearly been in very recent fights.
They were scared about who took their leader, worrying their women and children might be targets, and on missions to bring their president home in one piece.
It all made so much more sense, even as a part of me wanted to reject it because it all seemed too crazy to my very average, painfully normal ears.
"When was the last time you slept, little prince?" Huck asked the younger man, giving him a firm look.
"Fuck off, Huck," the new guy declared, shrugging. "I will sleep when my father is home with my mother," he added, tempering his previous words. And no one seemed to hold a grudge, knowing none of them truly understood the kind of stress a son felt at the loss of his father.
"Come on," Colson said, leading me back out of the kitchen. "Air was getting thick in there," he added as he led me through the living room and out the back door, the cool morning air biting at my skin, chasing away any lingering tiredness as I raised my coffee to drink. "Fallon is a good guy. But anyone would turn into an asshole after several days without sleep, and more questions than answers."
"Plus he looks like someone jumped him," I added, recalling the bruises, the cuts, wondering how many were actual injuries inflicted upon him instead of ones he'd gotten from inflicting pain on others. "I get it. People do crazy things out of love for someone."
"Like go into gang territory and threaten the members with a bat," Colson said, nudging my shoulder.
"Mama Bear Mode is a freak occurrence, only getting engaged when their cub is in danger. I have absolutely no control over the stupid things I do when it happens."
"You're a badass, Eva. Take the compliment," Colson told me, shrugging as he looked off on the trees in the backyard. Buried back there seemed to be an old car. A perfect make-out spot if we were a couple of horny teenagers.
But we were boring old adults with kids and mortgage payments.
"What are the women like?" I asked, part out of pure curiosity, the other part wanting to know for research purposes. Who ended up with bikers? Did any normal women get into this lifestyle because of a super hot guy, who is invariably tall and well-muscled? Or was it only other criminals?