Move the Sun (Signal Bend #1)(31)
“Well, I’d’ve gotten pretty for you if I’d known you were dressing up. Nice boots.” He handed her a helmet, but before she could put it on, he hooked his arm around her waist and pulled her against him.
With his other hand on the back of her neck, he drew her head down for a lingering kiss. “Mmmm. Nice. I assume you know how to ride bitch?” She gave him a look that said it was a stupid question. “Okay, let’s give the people a thrill.” He swatted her ass and released her, and she mounted the bike behind him.
oOo
Isaac didn’t often ride with a passenger. It was an intimate thing, riding with a woman wrapped around him—more intimate, in his mind, than sex. Lilli rode well, moving with him smoothly, instinctually. They seemed to be physically in sync in all sorts of ways. He was well on his way to a boner by the time they approached No Place.
As usual on a Saturday night, Tuck’s was packed. The music was blaring through the walls and out into the parking lot. There were a few clumps of people drinking around their trucks, not having yet made it into the bar. Isaac pulled up in front, noting that most of the Horde were already inside. He liked the club to keep a strong presence here, especially on Saturday. Live music and a larger number of women tended to make the men extra scrappy.
They dismounted, and Lilli handed him the helmet he’d lent her. She passed a careless hand over her hair, and that seemed to be the extent of her concern about it. Damn, he loved that, a woman who just was who she was, looked like she looked. He’d noticed that she’d primped some tonight, but he couldn’t even tell for sure what she’d done. Her beautiful grey eyes stood out more, and he liked that just fine, but they weren’t buried under black crap, like a raccoon. Whatever fuss she’d gone to tonight, it was working.
He took her hand—she flinched a little, but didn’t pull away—and he led her inside.
Didn’t take long for them to have the attention of the room, despite the dim lighting and the live band. It was too early yet for the dancing to get really started, so people were arrayed at the tables, which had been pushed along the walls to make more room for the dancing that would come. The wags had had a couple of days now to get the word out. Isaac nodded and smiled as he led Lilli through the room, shaking the hands that were extended, but not stopping to introduce her. He wanted to get to the bar and have her meet his brothers first. They all had opinions about her and about his interest in her. They would be her toughest audience.
Looked like almost all of the Horde was lined up at the bar. Before they’d arrived at the bar side of the room, the band—Jesse’s Wild Bunch, one of the regular acts that cycled through, playing shit-kicking country with a little bit of blues mixed into the third set—announced its first break, and the sound of the room shifted down to conversation level, at least until somebody got around to feeding the juke.
With his hand at the small of her back, Isaac gently pushed Lilli to step in front of him. Then he just went down the row. “Lilli, I’d like you to meet my MC brothers: Showdown, Bart, Havoc, Dan, Len, and CJ. Down there at the end is Rover, he’s prospecting for the club.” Each man nodded cordially when his name was called. Lilli stood in place while he named them. Then, when he was done, she walked down the line with her hand out, shaking each man’s hand. She smiled prettily and said something low to each; they leaned down to hear and then came back up with a smile.
Holy f*ck. She was flirting. She hadn’t even flirted with him. By the time she got down to Rover, who was f*cking blushing when she was finished with him, she’d won the whole crew of idiots right over. She walked back toward Isaac with a little pop in her sway. Minx.
She turned back to his brothers. “You boys fancy doing a couple of shots of tequila with me?”
Havoc piped up from his seat halfway down the bar. “Never leave a lady drinkin’ alone. My daddy taught me that.”
Lilli leaned over and caught Rose’s attention—actually, she’d had Rose’s attention for that whole show, but now the bartender came over with a dry smile and a wink. “That’s shooters for the line, then?”
Lilli winked back. “Yes, ma’am. The good stuff. And we’ll probably go a few times.”
Rose nodded. “The whole show?”
“Absolutely.”
Isaac stared at Lilli in bemused awe while Rose lined up nine shot glasses and expertly filled them with Patrón and set them in front of the Horde and Lilli. She dealt cocktail napkins like playing cards and put a wedge of lime on each one. Then she handed Lilli a shaker of salt.
“There you go, sugar. You get it started.”
Lilli grinned at Rose and then at Isaac, who had not picked up his glass. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. This was a different, vastly less guarded version of the woman he’d been spending time with.
His brothers, all of them, were staring at her hand as she licked the space between her thumb and forefinger. She did it slowly, her tongue extended just enough and sharpened to a firm point, fully aware of her audience. Then she shook salt over the wet spot.
Isaac’s cock pulsed and swelled.
She offered him the salt shaker but he shook his head. Shrugging, she slid the shaker to Showdown.
Every man salted his hand. Isaac couldn’t believe that, either. These were men who drank their booze straight. Fuck, they hardly bothered with glasses. And here they all were, salting their hands, with little lime wedges on napkins in front of them.