Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 76807 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76807 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
“Okay,” Sage said, letting Sully throw an arm across her shoulders and lead her outside.
“What the fuck, Brooks?” I asked when we were alone. “I’m not a little girl. You can’t go around telling people to keep their hands off of me.”
“I can when they’re my club brothers,” Brooks said, face annoyingly blank.
“But why?” I asked, exhaling hard, then taking a long swig of my drink, grimacing at Meadow’s heavy-handed pour.
“Because I don’t want them touching you.”
“But why? Since when do you care who I sleep with?”
“Clay—“
“Oh, my god. I seriously doubt he meant that you should chase every man who might be interested in me away. Newsflash, Clay never cared who I dated.”
“Dated.”
“What?”
“Dated. Not casually slept with. Because that’s all these guys want.”
“Maybe that’s all I want too.”
“Did you ever fuck Clay’s friends?” Brooks asked.
I was going to go ahead and pretend that hearing Brooks talk about fucking didn’t send a little thrill of interest through my body.
“Clay’s friends were too old for me when we used to hang out like that.”
I mean, as I aged up myself, I hung out with people my own age, not with Clay’s friend group. Besides, Brooks had been the only one of Clay’s friends I’d ever been interested in.
“Clay wouldn’t have let you fuck his friends,” Brooks said. And he really, really needed to stop talking about fucking. “He would have warned them all away from you. Like I just did with those fuckers.”
The thing was, he wasn’t wrong about that.
As much as I hated to admit this, given their distance over the past few years, Brooks is the only person on the Earth who probably knew Clay better than I did.
It wasn’t that we weren’t as close as siblings could be. We were. But there were just things a big brother didn’t tell his little sister. It worked both ways. I definitely had secrets I kept from Clay. Or just things that were too awkward to talk about. Like when I lost my virginity. Stuff like that.
But Brooks knew all those more personal details that Clay wouldn’t have shared with me. And, admittedly, Clay likely would have also let Brooks in on his concerns and frustrations more than he would have with me, seeing as he’d been my caretaker, and it was his job to protect me from those grown-up things.
“You’re a biker.”
“What?”
“You’re a biker too. So, if they’re all bad guys, does that make you one too?”
“I didn’t say they were bad guys. I said they are only interested in fucking. And they’re not going to be fucking you. Period.”
“This is ridiculous, Brooks. You see that, right?”
“Seems perfectly rational to me.”
“Of course it does,” I grumbled, taking another long swig of my drink, because all this talking about fucking had a warm tingle moving through me. “Am I allowed to go out and hang out with everyone, Dad, or do I have to go home and do my homework?” The words were sharper in my attempt to cover up any signs of my desire.
“I’m not trying to stop you from having a good time,” Brooks said, suddenly sounding tired.
I believed him.
I mean, I’d been out every night since the rave, and he hadn’t shown up once.
Maybe I’d gotten my point across.
And I was going to go ahead and pretend that I hadn’t been scanning the crowds at each place I’d gone, hoping to catch sight of his stupidly good-looking face.
Because that was plain crazy.
“Okay,” I said, exhaling hard. “How about you give me a tour?” I asked.
“Sure,” he agreed, half turning away to wave an arm at the room. “Self-explanatory,” he said. “In here is the kitchen,” he told me, leading me into a small space featuring a round table big enough only for three.
“Down this hall are all of the rooms,” he said, leading me there.
“Bedrooms?” I clarified.
“Yeah. The patched brothers who choose to live here get a room here. All the prospects stay in a common room,” he said, leading me toward that very room.
“Prospects?” I asked, looking at the high walls with the windows near the ceiling, the bunk beds, lockers, and a large bathroom area.
“Guys who want to join the club, but aren’t full-fledged members yet. They kind of… earn their keep while we decide if they are a good fit or not.”
“You make them clean the clubhouse, don’t you?” I asked, shooting a smirk at him.
“Sometimes with a toothbrush,” he agreed with a smirk. “Though I usually reserve that for fucking Sully.”
“He seems like he might be a… handful,” I agreed. Guys who were that laid-back and charming were always good at getting out of doing things they needed to do.
“He is,” Brooks agreed.
“Why is he still here if he’s a pain in the ass?”
“He’s… got some skills the club is interested in having. Was in the military for a while.”