Page 46 of Indecent Lies

“Nah, just a friend staying with me, I’m helping her out while she’s had a bit of trouble.”

“Yeah, Axel auctioning off that little girl,” Jed hissed. “He’s a piece of work. You should bring your girl around for dinner, my Helen would love to meet her.”

Yeah, that wasn’t happening but he appreciated the gesture all the same.

How could he self-punish if people kept being fucking nice to him?

That night as bad luck would have it, he took Poppy out for dinner, having breathed in paint fumes all day. And instead of going to Otis’ bar and grill, a knownSoulshangout, they went to Boondocks Lounge and didn’t you know, nearly everySoulsboys was there.

They clocked him almost as soon as he clocked them and he nearly reversed his feet, if not for Poppy sashaying her ass up to the bar to perch on a stool.

Giving him ahurry uplook.

“Is that your old club over there?” She whispered into his shoulder when he leaned an arm on the bar and ordered two drinks. “Yep.”

“Do you want to leave?”

Yeah, he did. But he wouldn’t.

“Nah, it’s fine. Grab a menu.”

Food ordered; they found a booth out of the way though his hearing was on high alert for any sense of trouble. He was already getting the stink eye from Capone.

“I can’t believe you were in a motorcycle club, Tait. Was it fun?”

Fun might be the wrong word he’d choose.

It was togetherness. Knowing you belonged somewhere and that at any time, there was someone who had your back.

“Yeah,” he replied.

“Do you miss it?”

Her hand covered his and at the same time they inhaled when jolted zips shot through both their arms. Before she could pull her fingers away he locked on around them and stroked her knuckles with a thumb.

“Is that what you wanna talk about, Poppy? How much I’ve changed? How I’m not the same guy you knew a million years ago?”

She blinked and watched how he stroked her fingers. “You are different.”

“So are you. You’re no longer a little girl who would follow me around the country club or dog my steps at my family’s estate.”

She blushed to the cap of her hair and Texas held back his grin.

“That’s because everyone else there sucked, you were the most tolerable.”

He just smirked.

“Did you…” she cleared her throat. “Did you do dangerous things?”

Back and forth, her eyes followed the pattern of his stroking thumb.

She had skin like silk.

Skin he shouldn’t even be touching seeing as how she was a taken woman.

Story of his life.

Any day now he expected a knock on the door with her fiancé coming to take her back home where she belonged.

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