the girls fanned out in the space.
“Where is everyone?” Cleo asked, looking around the deserted shop with a frown on her sweet face. “I thought you were booked from here to eternity with clients?”
“We are,” Nova agreed, pushing off the wall to slowly stalk toward us. “Had Sara reschedule everyone. Shop’s closed. That means no old ladies, no hang-arounds, no anybody save Lila and me. So out.”
Tay hopped up on the reception desk and swung her short legs back and forth as she stole a maple candy from the little skull dish and popped it in her mouth. “We won’t get in the way. Or do you suddenly have stage fright or something?”
“Awe,” Harleigh Rose crooned, “Does the great seducer have trouble preforming?”
“Guys,” I warned, seeing the shift in Nova’s face, noticing the animal quaking dangerously against the chains that locked him in his gut.
They ignored me.
They were women used to their Old Men, mellowed by love, plenty of orgasms, and mutual respect.
But Nova wasn’t anyone’s Old Man.
He had a hell of a lot of respect for the club women.
But he was not the kinda guy who brooked an argument when he wanted shit a certain way. He might have been more affable than the average biker, but he was still a hardcore badass, and taking shit shoveled at him by my women when he was already pissed would not end well.
“I’m gonna tell ya one more time,” Nova said slow and rough, face darker than I’d ever seen it, his beautiful features cast in granite, his lip practically curled up in a sneer. “Get outta my shop. I got things to discuss with Lila, and I’m not havin’ her hide behind you like she’s done for the last two fuckin’ years.”
Lou studied him for a long moment, the leader of our coalition even though I was the one they were all there for. Her face softened, the badass fading into the angelic.
“You got things to say to Lila, you make sure you think before you speak,” she advised. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”
“Love ya, Lou,” he said in a way that seemed like he didn’t mean it. “But I’ll fuck Lila right here, right now in front of all of you if you don’t get outta my sight in the next thirty seconds. You got somethin’ to say about my life choices? You wanna stick your nose in my business? Be my guest and critique my fuckin’ form.”
Lou blinked then turned to face us with her mouth in a little ‘o’.
“We’re gonna head out,” she mouthed at me then whirled her finger in the air, and the girls stepped together into a little group and fled the shop.
Harleigh Rose was the last to leave, whispering with a wink, “Good luck, and use a condom,” before she shut the door behind her.
Slowly, the hairs on the back of my neck standing up, my system flooded with adrenaline like prey sensing it’s being stalked by a predator, I turned to face Nova again.
He stood in the middle of the shop, arms crossed in a way that made his tatted arms bulge, the muscles beneath his skin like coiled rope. There was an expression on his face, a determination to the set of his jaw and the flare of his nostrils as he breathed like a bull before the sprint, telling me I was in trouble.
Heat arrowed straight down my spine and pooled between my legs.
Because I wanted that, whatever trouble Nova wanted to dole out. I’d take his ire, his frustration, even a degree of violence if it meant he would take it out between my legs.
I had a feeling angry sex with such a man would eviscerate me for good.
“Now what?” I asked, breathless because even the feel of him in the empty store with me was too much for my nervous system, the air stripped of everything but the scent of him, rich with spice and musk and leather.
“Now…” Nova said as he prowled toward me in an aggressive swagger, the right side of his step slightly more exaggerated than the right. It shouldn’t have been sexy, but it was, the movement of his broad shoulders, the flex of his muscles through the thin, worn denim of his old jeans.
My mouth went dry, my tongue glued to the roof of my mouth as he stopped in front of me. He slowly lifted a hand so we could both watch as it moved to my chest, flattened to the