standing fifteen feet from the large, round table at the back of the restaurant when Velvet stood and walked to us.
“Cheyenne, we’re so glad you came. Come sit with us. You’re beside me.”
She hugged me, and I had no choice but to hug her back and then follow, because she held onto my hand. She’d barely acknowledged my presence before, and now she was hugging me?
Mad Dog stood and hugged me as I neared. “Frost says you go by Cheyenne and Shy, is that right? Do you have a preference?”
“Most people call me Shy.” My voice didn’t want to work. My throat was so tight, I barely got the words out.
Mad Dog had never fucked me, but he’d been the one who told me the rules. He’d been the one to ask those horrid questions on the video. He’d also ordered me to give a blow job to a new-ish prospect once while they talked to him about his new duties, and he’d ordered me to bend over and spread my ass cheeks for another prospect after the guy had beat someone up who’d bothered one of the apartment complex residents. I’d been his reward. Now Mad Dog was telling me I was welcome to go into the MC’s restaurant with Frost anytime we wanted.
But not the clubhouse. He didn’t tell me I was welcome there. Also, I was welcome in the restaurant with Frost — the unsaid words being that I still wasn’t welcome to walk in alone.
I didn’t want to look around the table. How awkward, when I’d fucked six of the eight people present. I needed to say something, so I looked at Mad Dog and said, “Ya’ll must not be as short staffed as you were.”
He glanced around the table and looked back to me. “Things are still tight, but our businesses are operating without their managers for a few hours because we want to make you feel welcome. You’re important to Frost, and Frost is important to us.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to remind them that I’d walked away, but Frost pulled my chair out and ordered me to sit. I was getting way too used to obeying him, because my legs bent and I sat before I realized I was going to. He pushed my chair in, sat beside me, and held my hand.
The waitress arrived, everyone placed their order, and then there was conversation. It felt surreal. I wasn’t used to these men seeing me.
I think part of me had seen my little fling with Frost as just that — a fling I’d look back on with fondness in a few weeks. Clearly, he saw it as more. He was working to integrate me into his life. I hadn’t thought that was a possibility.
Frost was obviously moving forward with it.
And his brothers seemed to want me to know things would be different now that Frost had claimed me.
When Frost took me home, a wolf was on my front porch, but it wasn’t Gil this time.
I came off the back of the bike and took my helmet off in the same motion.
“Nora! Why aren’t you home?!”
She came off the porch towards Frost, growling and snarling, with the hair at the back of her neck standing up.
Instead of showing fear, Frost squatted so he was eye-to-eye with her. “Well, aren’t you pretty. What has you so upset, pretty girl?” He’d moved so fast coming off the bike and taking his helmet off, but now he seemed completely relaxed. I tried to breathe easier, too. He’d been around new shifters, he knew it was up to us to help tone things down.
She snarled a little louder, and he chuckled. He never lost his smile, nor did he sound threatening. “If you come at me, you’ll find yourself on your back with my hands around your throat. You’re more than welcome to sniff me, but no teeth. Nora? Can you control the wolf?”
She gave an even more vicious snarl, and turned to go back to the porch, where she stood, still aggressive.
The message was clear — she wasn’t letting him in the house. She didn’t want him to put her on her back, so she’d moved away, but she wasn’t backing completely down.
“Oh no you don’t, girly,” I told her, my hands on my hips and my feet shoulder width apart. “Frost is my guest, and you’re disrespecting me with your actions. Straighten up this instant, or I’ll strip right now and we’ll address