Page 7 of Lawless
The girl wrinkled her nose with displeasure. "The big, scarred one? He's scary."
"You ought to be a lot more scared of us," I warned her. Jandro nodded in agreement.
She looked back and forth between us and Shadow a few times, chewing her lip. "He's just not as handsome as you two and Gunner, though. And Gunner says I'm not his type," she whined.
"You fuck men for smokes and liquor," I snapped at her. "Before the Collapse, you would have fucked for money. If you're gonna beg, don't be a chooser."
She shrank back as I raised my voice at her, and finally scurried away. Jandro shook his head at me as he laughed quietly. I reached down to pet Hades again, only to find my dog was no longer at my side.
"What the—? Hades!" I looked around, no sign of my four-legged beast anywhere. He never left my side unless I gave him a command. If one of these service bitches actually fucking did something to him...
Next to me, Jandro just chuckled. "Looks like we're not the only ones who want to sniff out Miss Mariposa." He nodded toward the kitchen and I followed his gaze.
As the leader of the most notorious MC in the Southwest, I saw a lot of weird shit before, during, and after the Collapse. But I never saw anything like what played out before my eyes that very moment.
Hades had walked right up next to Mariposa as she chopped cheese cubes and salami. He stared at her intently while she appeared to be talking to him in a low voice. Then he sat.
My dog fuckingsatfor another human being. To add insult to injury, he tilted his head and licked his greedy lips as she held a cheese cube a few inches in front of his nose. The morsel of food grew closer and closer to him until he scarfed it off of her fingers.
And if that wasn't enough, he licked her hand and allowed her to scratch his head. No one, not even men in my own club, had been permitted to touch him that way.
I raised that dog since finding him in a pile of rubble next to an abandoned house. We were cleaning up and scavenging after a border battle, and heard something like a baby screaming bloody murder. He could fit in the palm of my hand and those little puppy lungs wouldn't shut the hell up. Not until after we raided a vet clinic down the road and I got my hands on some puppy formula.
I'd never cared for an animal in my life, so I wasn't sure what brought me to hold onto the little mutt rather than put him out of his misery. All I knew was Hades and I developed a bond closer to friendship between people, rather than animal and owner. Gunner told me he felt similarly when he found Horus as a chick.
I found Hades a few months after losing Daren, so I chalked it up to filling the void that my little brother left behind. That was a year ago, and Hades had been loyal and protective only to me since the beginning. He even guarded me while I slept and saved our asses from being ambushed several times. So imagine my shock when he just wandered off to get a piece of cheese from some girl we'd never seen before.
"Hades!" I bellowed loud enough for the whole place to hear me.
The damn dog finally turned to look at me, still licking his chops from his treat like he did nothing wrong.
"Get your ass over here, mutt."
As he trotted back to my side, my eyes lifted to catch Mariposa's once again, before she turned her back to continue her work.
Three
MARIPOSA
Tom wasn't kidding about these bikers having voracious appetites. They drank the beer and ate all the meat and cheese we put out faster than we could refill them. When the service girls came down from their rooms in their high heels and flimsy dresses that left little to the imagination, the Steel Demons consumed them with their eyes just as greedily. Some of them, anyway.
Reaper didn't seem interested in the girl practically humping his leg, nor did the Hispanic man who sat next to him. But I felt their eyes on me far more than was comfortable, and it made my skin crawl.
You're new here. They're curious and are probably going to test how much shit you’ll take. Just do your job and roll with it.
I slammed the tap handle back with more force than necessary just before the beer sloshed dangerously close to the pitcher's rim. This was actuallynotmy job. This was why I went into debt for a top-tier nursing degree—so I wouldn't become a walking piece of meat for men to ogle. Tension and conflict had been brimming for years before the Collapse. Everyone knew war was coming, and I wanted to help in a way that was meaningful.
A high-pitched squeal and the sound of flesh slapping pulled my attention away from my painstaking care not to spill any beer as I walked. Next to the blonde man with the falcon on his shoulder, a woman was already riding the cock of a fellow biker. She bounced on him with gusto, putting in the work while the man she rode all but ignored her, talking to the blonde man next to him as if this was a completely normal occurrence.
The man sitting on the other side of the sex rodeo polished off his beer pitcher and scooted closer to the cowgirl. He smacked her ass once to get her attention, which had been on the blonde man. When she turned her head to look at who spanked her, he said something and put a hand over his crotch. She leaned over, yanked down his zipper, and proceeded to suck him loudly while still bouncing on the first guy. It was like a trainwreck I couldn't stop myself from watching.
"Get in on this, Gunner! Her asshole's free," laughed the guy getting his dick sucked, stretching his arms wide along the back of the couch.
The blonde man shook his head with an amused chuckle and said something I couldn't hear, the falcon on his shoulder ruffling its feathers as its sharp eyes darted all over the room.
Someone poked me in the back, startling me out of watching the debauchery happening before my eyes.
"Don't watch like that," Gretchen muttered. "They'll think you want to join in.”
