Dauntless (Sons of Templar MC #5)(6)
I rolled my eyes, yanking my elbow out of Lucky’s grasp. “No problem here, dude,” I addressed Tyson. “I was just leaving.”
I didn’t look back after I turned on my heel and walked into the crowd. As much as I wanted to.
That was it. Our first proper meeting after three years when I’d stormed into his clubhouse to retrieve my best friend who had incidentally lost her V-card to his brother. It wasn’t love at first sight then, and it sure as shit wasn’t love at first sight now. But I found as I was walking away, my mind already on what the syringe in my handbag held, that I couldn’t completely forgot the hazel eyes and the easy smile.
I expected he would lose interest. He seemed like he either needed Ritalin or was taking too much. Like an overexcited puppy that wouldn’t stop wagging its f*cking tail.
Except puppies were cute.
Lucky—yes, that’s really his name, or the only one he’d give me—was not cute. Not in any sense of the word. He may have been slightly goofy with the sense of humor of a seven-year-old, but he was hot. Hot in a way that had him invading my drug-addled dreams. Filtered through my foggy waking mind. His muscled caramel skin exposed to me and his sinewy arms wrapped around me. It was not good. Not because I found him hot, but because I actually found him something else. He didn’t just arouse me on a carnal level; there was something else, a connection that seemed too fantastical and real all at the same time.
It was dangerous. I didn’t need real connections. I needed that like I needed a root canal.
The fact he’d been at the club at least three times a week for three weeks and counting was pissing me off.
Pissing me off in the way I’d come to look forward to our banter when I ‘mingled.’ The way I was disappointed when he didn’t turn up. Despite whatever high I was riding that night, only he made me feel different. Better. But when he didn’t turn up, when I was convinced he’d finally realized what I was, it was worse. Much worse than any low a narcotic offered.
His presence was something my addict mind craved. So f*cked-up.
“You changed your mind about me taking you away from all this and giving us a nice quiet life in the country?” his deep voice asked, silky and smooth across the rough ridges of my mind.
I took a breath and turned from the bar, hoping to hide the way my eyes were just a little too bright. I was an expert at hiding the effects of the junk. It was the effects of him that I was trying to conceal. I didn’t want to show him that his presence did something to me. That would be bad for both of us.
“Hell frozen over yet?” I asked, trying not to drink him in too obviously.
As always, he was wearing his cut and faded blue jeans. A white Henley showed off the ridges of muscle underneath the fabric. I itched to see it freed from its polyester cage and run my hands, or mouth, along it.
“I’m workin’ on it. Got a hundred air conditioners going full blast as we speak. Man downstairs will not be happy with the electric bill, but you’re worth battlin’ the Devil for,” he replied, jerking me out of my daydream.
I gave him a look. “Those lines work, ever?” They were totally working.
He grinned. “Sixty percent of the time, they work every time.”
“You know those are about eighty percent urine, right?” I nodded to the nuts he was stuffing in his mouth.
Lucky stopped chewing, his eyes bulging. “You’re shittin’ me,” he said through a half-full mouth.
I shook my head, the corner of my mouth quirking despite the ice queen routine I was trying to perfect. “I’m sure you’ve been to a few bars in your time. I figured you’d know by now that you’d ingest as many bodily fluids from licking a toilet seat as you would from snacking on those.” I paused, tilting my head and running my eyes over his cut. “Though, as a biker in a club that owns its very own strip club, I’m sure you see your fair share of bodily fluids,” I added sweetly. Someone who looked like him would get the attention from the girls who worked at their club. I knew a few of them, and they all swore it was the best gig they’d had in the biz; the money was good, they were treated well, and the hotties from the Sons of Templar MC frequented the place.
Much better than the rat-infested shithole I worked at where we got paid shitty, treated even shittier, and the clientele looked like they had girls tied up in their basements.
Which was why it baffled me that Lucky was even there. It pissed me off too.
Lucky grinned at me. “I only exchange bodily fluids with people I’ve taken to dinner first.”
Somehow, he made that line actually send tingles down my already-sensitive skin.
“Why are you here?” I snapped, my withdrawals making me twitchy, cranky. Okay, cranky was an understatement. I felt like I wanted to murder this attractive idiot with a rusty fork. Or kiss him. I wasn’t sure which.
He quirked his brow. “I really like the chicken wings.”
Despite the snake in my belly and the ants on my skin, I smiled, slightly. “You enjoy salmonella, then,” I retorted.
He stepped forward, not close enough to touch me but close enough that I could see his face illuminated in the dingy light. “I enjoy the company and the conversation. Salmonella helps me keep my delightful figure.” He rubbed his flat belly over the top of his tee. I followed its journey and could actually see the outline of his six-pack.