Page 66 of Pirate

“I do!” Sophia argued. “He’s not your father. What right does he have to punish you like that?”

Pirate squeezed his hand on her knee in warning. He tipped his head to look over his shoulder at her. “He’s my President, Soph. He has every right, just as he would if he were my Commanding Officer when I was a Marine.”

“Not to the point where you’re in severe pain!” she snapped. “Hedidn’t see the condition you were in yesterday.Idid. You could barely walk and you passed out so completely that you didn’t wake up when Jumper carried you to bed.”

Pirate looked away from her, but didn’t look at Steel either. “I don’t need you to defend me, Sophia. I can take care of myself.”

“You do remember me telling you that I love you, right?” Sophia shot back at him. “So you’re going to have me defending you. A lot. Because you won’t do it for yourself. You think I don’t see it? How you take care of everyone else but ignore your own comfort and pain? Well, you’re stuck with me now, you stubborn pirate. Because you ‘claimed’,” she air-quoted, “me, you’re going to have to put up with me defending you. Even if it’s against him,” she pointed a finger across the living room at Steel. “Suck it up, buttercup.”

Turning to Steel, she expected to see him scowling at her. But he wasn’t. If anything, there seemed to be a look of pride about him. “Takes a strong woman to survive our lot,” he told her. “Iknew you would have the backbone for it, but didn’t know if you had the heart. It’s good to see you do.”

Sophia actually found herself smiling at him. “Thank you.”

Steel turned to Pirate. “Listen to your woman. You need to learn how to stand up for yourself and stop putting others first. That includes your own brother. As for me, I might have the right to punish you but I don’t have the right to torture you. There’s a difference. In the future, whether I ask or order you to do something, I expect you to only comply if you are physically able to. Your health and wellbeing is not worth your pride. Do not make me have to keep a special eye on you like I have to Bones. Do you understand me?”

Slowly, Pirate nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Good. Now, I need to address both of you.”

Pirate glanced over his shoulder at Sophia at the same time that Sophia looked over his shoulder at him.

“Whatever your reasons are for keeping your marriage a secret?—”

Sophia felt Pirate stiffen in front of her as her eyes widened. She gasped, “What? You know?”

Steel’s look told her that he was currently questioning her sanity. “There is very little that goes on in my club that I don’t know about. Yes, I know the two of you got drunk in San Francisco and got married on a wedding pirate ship.”

Sophia didn’t know why she felt so uncomfortable that Steel knew about their marriage.

Pirate rubbed her leg reassuringly. To Steel, he said, “We’re still getting divorced. We want to forget about the whole thing and start over.”

Steel was quiet for a moment and then he nodded. “That is your choice, obviously. It’s good to know and makes what I was about to say null and void. I appreciate your openness.”

“We have to—” Pirate started, but another knock sounded at the apartment door.

Both dogs raised their heads, letting out barks of alarm. Sophia frowned. Who the hell was at the door now?

Sophia made to get up, but Steel waved her off. After a quick command in Dutch to the dogs to stay, he walked over to the door and opened it.

“Steel?” Sophia recognized Demo’s voice, laced with shock. “What are you doing here? Paige just left. Something’s going on with Jenna. I?—”

From their position on the couch, neither Pirate nor Sophia could see the front door. They were sitting on the wrong side of the couch for that viewpoint. At the sound of a sharp squeak and then pounding boots on the exterior hallway, Sophia scrambled up from behind Pirate to see what was going on.

She saw Demo standing to the side of the open apartment door with Paige’s two sons, Nelson “Nelly Bean” and Michael “Mikey”. Demo had Nelly Bean in his arms with the little boy’s arms wrapped around his neck. Mikey was at his legs, playing on a tablet in a silicone kid’s cover. Both Nelly Bean and Demo were staring down the hall, in the direction Sophia would guess Steel just took off running in.

“What’s going on?” she asked. Now that kids were here, she was glad she was wearing pants after all.

Paige and her boys had moved into the apartment complex just over a month ago after selling her monstrosity of a house. Sophia didn’t know all the details but she’d picked up on bits and pieces of Paige’s financial crisis several months ago. The poor woman was struggling to make ends meet and keep a roof over her boys’ heads when a popular foot fetish site she’d been modeling on was hacked. One of the viewers who had been purchasing the pictures of Paige’s feet had used the hack to trackPaige down. He broke into Paige’s acupuncture clinic and took both her and Abby hostage until the club rescued them.

Demo and Paige were dating but not living together. Sophia didn’t judge them for that decision. Not every relationship had to move lightning fast, like the other club relationships seemed to be. Demo spent some nights with Paige and her boys in her apartment and others at his new house on the club’s property. Jasmine had mentioned that Paige was helping Demo pick out furniture and such in anticipation of moving in but wasn’t ready to make that leap yet.

Sophia was pretty sure Paige’s apartment was on the top floor, a level above Jumper and Pirate’s fourth floor apartment.

Demo ushered Mikey inside and then closed the door behind them. “I’m not sure. Paige got a call, something about Jenna. She immediately took off. Unfortunately, I only have my sled here so I called a prospect to bring an SUV over with car seats so I could get there too.”

Pirate hobbled over behind Sophia. “Is Jenna okay?”

“I literally know nothing more than I just told you. I knew you had to take it easy today and wasn’t sure if you wanted to hitch a ride over with us.”

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