With a sigh, I gave in. “Fine.” Picking up the tray, I gave him another smile. “Thanks for the new toy.”
“Use it if you have to.” He went and picked up a rag and started wiping down the bar top as I walked away to give the drink to the biker sitting near the Original’s booth with a few other regulars.
“Yo, sweetness. Another round back here.”
I cringed at the man’s voice and gritted my teeth as I went to get five more long necked, brown bottles of beer. As I lifted the tray the door opened and Bash walked in with Spider and two of the Originals. Uncle Jack, as everyone tended to call him, along with the one who everyone called Razor—Spider’s uncle. Razor wasn’t anything like I had expected. When I had first pictured Spider’s uncle, I’d seen him as more like Spider. Instead Razor was shorter by at least six inches, leaner and with an easy smile. But as nice as he had seemed to me, I’d also seen some of the Angel’s Halo members walking carefully around the man. I’d learned that next to Uncle Jack, Razor was the one you didn’t want to piss off. Ever.
“Hey, Willa. A round of beers and a bottle of Jameson when you get the chance,” Bash called over as he followed the others to the Original’s booth.
“Tell Hawk,” I shot back as I headed toward the pool tables. “I’m busy.”
“I said when you get the chance, woman. Don’t hurt yourself on that sharp bitch blade you’re carrying around.” I shot him a glare and he gave me a smirk that had me rolling my eyes.
“What crawled up her ass?” Razor said with amusement lacing his tone. “You been messing with the girl again, Spiderman?”
“Not yet,” I heard Spider assure his uncle, causing the other three men to laugh and me to nearly drop my tray loaded with the beers at the ‘yet’. How fucked up was it that I was looking forward to ‘yet’? I was such a masochist when it came to that damn man.
Ever since Raven had run away we had called a kind of truce and had been getting along pretty good. By that, I meant that we hadn’t been slinging insults at each other and I hadn’t had daydreams of cutting his dick off and shoving it down his damn throat. Then there was that near kiss that had left me wetter than I’d been in a long, long time and aching for days.
I wasn’t going to think about that right now. Not when I still had a few hours of walking around with drenched panties, which just wasn’t comfortable at all.
By the time I reached the pool table where the five bikers were playing, they were getting rowdy. The guy who had pinched me earlier seemed to be their leader, the one the other four looked to for guidance on how they should act. He was cockier than the others, and honestly not all that horrible to look at with his scruffy beard and lean build. His nose, on the other hand, had obviously been broken a few times. Unlike Spider’s broken nose, which gave him more sex appeal, this guy’s gave his face a hooked kind of appearance.
I set the tray down on the pool table beside the one they were playing on and started handing out the beers. Hooked nose was the last to take his and as he reached out for it caught hold of my wrist in an almost bruising grip. I wasn’t able to hide my grimace and he sneered at my small sign of pain. “How about that dick sucking now, sweetness.”
Bile rose and I reached for the baton that I had strapped to my thigh before coming back here. Before I could grasp it he caught my other hand and pulled me roughly against him. The smell of his breath made me actually gag as the mixture of beer and smoke invaded my nose. Those two scents mixed together were not sexy at all.
He was hurting my wrists and I tried not to whimper as he backed me toward one of the other pool tables. The smirk on his face along with the pain he was inflicting was pissing me off and my knee came up before he could guess at my intentions, clipping him right in the balls. The biker bent in half with pain, but didn’t release his hold on me. His four friends boxed me in and I knew I was in trouble. They weren’t happy that I was ruining their fun.
I opened my mouth to scream for help. I intended to scream for Hawk, or even Bash, but neither were the name that left my lips. “SPIDER!”
The sound of a chair’s legs scrapping over hard wood flooring didn’t seem to make the five men worry. A few of them laughed that I had screamed for Spider. Did they think that he wouldn’t help me? Even though we had our problems, Spider keeping me safe had never been something I would have questioned. He was a good man—when he kept his dick out of other pussies.
“Spider only takes care of one female, sweetness. Raven ain’t around tonight,” the one to my left informed me as he reached out to touch my hair.
“Motherfuckers.” The roar made all five of their heads snap around, even the hooked nose leader who was still trying to suck in a deep breath. “Get your hands off my girl.”
Their jaws dropped and four of the five jumped back from me as if I’d suddenly been diagnosed with some kind of contagious zombie infection. “We didn’t know, man,” one man said, but he was ignored as Spider walked toward the hooked nose biker who still had his hands wrapped around mine.
Still in obvious pain from my direct hit to his favorite appendage, the hooked nose man straightened to his full height, not backing down from Spider. I gulped as I got a closer look at the man storming forward. The bull ring in his nose quivered with every exhale, his black eyes like some monster’s in a science fiction show as they obliterated the man who was hurting me, making the term ‘if looks could kill’ something to worry about. His entire body was flexing, six feet six inches of pure male perfection on a mission to eviscerate the danger to his woman.
I bit my lip as the words ‘his woman’ repeated in my head over and over again before shaking that crazy thought away. I wasn’t his woman. That was a crazy road to drive down again. A road that would only lead to my heart being broken all over again.
“Let her go. Now.” Spider’s voice, normally raspy by nature, was almost demonic sounding as he stopped mere inches from the man holding me captive.
A movement behind Spider caught my attention and I found Hawk, Bash and the two Originals flanking their enforcer. The other bikers who had been in the bar were filling the doorway behind their MC officials. It was obvious from the look on Bash’s face that he knew he wasn’t going to be needed, but wanted to watch the show while making it plain to everyone present that he would always stand behind his enforcer. His best friend.
“First I heard she was your woman,” the hooked nose biker got out in a stronger voice than I would have given him credit for, seeing as he was still wheezing for oxygen after the damage done to his balls. “Closest I’d ever seen you with a woman was Raven Hannigan and since Bash came sniffing back around it looks like you missed your chance to tap that.”
I heard Bash growl something violent but that didn’t scare me nearly as badly as the look that entered Spider’s black eyes. Oh shit. I knew that Spider and Raven were close. As in brother-and-sister close. Best-friends-for-fucking-ever c
lose. Without taking his eyes off the other man’s face, Spider reached out and gripped the man’s right hand. He screamed as the enforcer bent his wrist back so quickly that he dropped my hands just as I heard bone breaking.
Moving quickly now that I was free, I stumbled back against the pool table before Spider threw the first punch that landed the hooked nosed biker on the floor, his nose once again broken and spurting blood as he lay on the floor unconscious. Two kicks to the man’s ribs startled him awake. Spider crouched down beside him and wrapped his hand around the man’s windpipe. “A few rules you should know, Murphy, since you’re new to the area and all.” He tightened his hold and Murphy struggled as he tried to push Spider’s hand away. “Rule number one… If you can’t touch Raven Hannigan, that sure as fuck means you can’t talk about her in any way. Understand?” Murphy, turning purple in the face, quickly nodded. “Rule number two… We’re going to extend the ‘no one touches Raven Hannigan’ law to Willa as well. I catch you or any other fucker so much as looking like you’re going to touch her, I’ll slaughter you. Clear?”
Spider didn’t let Murphy answer before he released him. Standing, he kicked the man on the floor in the ribs again before turning to face me. As soon as his eyes met mine some of the rage seemed to dim in his eyes and he reached for me. I fell into his arms and breathed in his scent as his arms tightened around me. “You okay?” he asked low enough so that only I could hear the question.
All I could do was nod. My heart was racing with a mixture of lingering fear of Murphy and his friends as well as lust starting to consume me. Vaguely I heard Bash ordering some of the others to get Murphy out of the bar—he was going to deal with the man himself later in the week apparently. Spider’s big hands were rubbing up and down my back, warming me up and bringing my entire body to life under his touch.