“After dinner, then,” Slash said, nodding at Detroit who’d been working on the meal for over an hour already.
And so, after dinner, we all piled into the SUV and I drove us into town, deciding to be the DD for a change, so everyone else could let loose.
I didn’t want to drink.
Sometimes, when I drank, that dark shit I had in my mind? Yeah, it wanted to come out to play. And that side of me had no place in a neighborhood bar. It barely had a place in an outlaw biker gang.
The thing was, it had been far too long since I’d gotten a chance to act on that side of me. The longer I went without an outlet, the more that shit refused to stay at the back of my mind.
Until I got a chance to feel someone’s pulse speed up then die off because of me, or have my hands covered in their sticky, hot blood, or hear their screams just before their lives got snuffed out, I had to be careful about letting my guards down.
“Lula, the love of my life,” Raff greeted Detroit’s cousin as we walked inside The Bog to find her grabbing a soda from behind the bar.
Lula was all feminine softness with her high cheekbones, soft jaw, big light brown eyes, great rack, wide hips, and thick thighs. Her long, curly black hair with caramel-colored highlights was pulled away from her face. That, paired with the glasses on the tip of her nose, and the subdued black blazer she had on gave her a sexy librarian look.
“Oh, Lord. Look what just blew into town,” she said, shaking her head at him, but a smile was tugging at her lips.
“I just had this feeling that you missed me,” Raff told her as he slid onto a stool and reached out for her hand that he cradled between both of his. “And I couldn’t let you suffer like that.”
The night pretty much went like that. Raff keeping Lula from work by hitting on her, getting more and more ridiculous as the hours passed. Sway, as usual, found a group of the prettiest girls, and ushered Riff and Detroit over toward them. Even though Detroit wasn’t really the casual sex sort of guy.
And Slash, well, he sat and brooded.
As was his nature.
Somehow, though, he seemed even broodier than usual, and the way his gaze slipped toward the knockout bartender, Nyx, I couldn’t help but wonder what she’d said to him to piss him off more than normal.
He didn’t join the others as their little party got louder as the time ticked close to midnight. The fact of the matter was, most chicks were scared of Slash.
Superficially, it might have been because of the awful scar that sliced through his face, giving him a hard look. It could have also been his deep, gravel voice. Or just the “fuck off” aura he wore around him.
But he didn’t tend to try to join in on all the flirting and shit with Sway and the others, knowing it wasn’t really meant for him.
I was just about to make my way over toward him, figuring I wasn’t going to be hooking up with anyone either if I was going to try to wrangle all the drunk fucks back to the clubhouse—likely with their tipsy chicks as well—when something just made me stop, made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
I learned really early in life not to ignore that shit. Our senses were a gift from the universe. Society was what taught us to turn away from them, to dismiss them as woo-woo or whatever other term was popular in the common vernacular.
But the way I was raised, yeah, I trusted those senses, those instincts.
So I stopped and turned, following the buzzing sensation tickling down my neck and arm.
I didn’t understand at first when my gaze immediately went to some dude sitting at the bar, trying to chat up a chick who clearly wasn’t into it.
I mean, was that shitty? Sure. But it was a bar. That was pretty much what went down in one. It wasn’t enough that it should have drawn my notice.
It was right then, though, that a woman came walking up behind him, her brown hair looking almost unnaturally shiny under the overhead lights.
There was just something about her gait—slow, deliberate. And the way her hand went into the pocket of her black linen shorts.
Curious, I turned completely, watching as she moved behind him, standing at the bar as if waiting for attention from Nyx. Before Nyx could even spot her, she was gone.
But not before I saw her drop something into the pushy guy’s drink.
It wouldn’t be the first time I’d seen someone have something dropped in their drink. Every single other time, though, the person who had the drink was a woman.