up around his neck, his hands under her ass, her breasts rubbing against his chest. She was small enough that he’d be able to lift her easily, wrap those legs around his hips, her pussy grinding against his cock…
“Ace.”
Kickstand pulled him out of his fantasy, and he swatted the junior patch, clipping him behind the ear. “Don’t even think about it. If she’s not his, she’s mine. Even if she is his, she’s gonna be mine. Been a long time since I had some civilian pussy.”
Damned if Kickstand didn’t lift an eyebrow. “Maybe she likes blonds.”
“Maybe you don’t want to have your ass kicked so hard you wind up in the fucking U.S. of A.”
Kickstand gave him a resigned look, his moment of rebellion quashed by the reminder of his junior status in the club. “She might turn you down, Ace. A classy girl like that…”
“Never.”
“Because of your charm, wit, and pretty, banged-up face?”
Ace snorted a laugh. He had never felt self-conscious about the scars on his face, or his slightly crooked nose. They were mementos of the life he’d left behind when he joined the MC—his badges of survival.
He clapped Kickstand on the shoulder, letting him know he was going to let the disrespect slide, because the girl was fucking hot, and if she hadn’t caught Ace’s interest, she would have been spending the night in Kickstand’s bed. With his charm and boy band good looks, Kickstand was a favourite with the ladies.
“Because the good girls always want the bad boys, and there’s no one at this party who fits the bill better than me.”
He was on a ride that would never end.
* * *
Sophie followed Jason around the house, a smile plastered on her face as he introduced her to his eclectic group of friends. It seemed that everyone at the party had at least one visible body part pierced or tatted, and they were high, stoned, or drunk. Well, except for the bikers standing in the corner. She couldn’t see them all, but the three nearest to her were clearly not here to party although they were all holding drinks. They stood alert, watchful, almost as if they were guarding someone. If those one-percent patches on their leather vests meant what she thought they meant, they weren’t just bikers—they were outlaws. The baddest of the bad. Bikers who had turned their backs on civilian law to live the life they wanted to live, the way they wanted to live it. God, to have that kind of freedom…
She shook herself and pushed thoughts of jumping on the back of an outlaw’s bike and escaping the devastation that was her life out of her mind. Vancouver was her new beginning. New police department. New apartment. New friends. She glanced over at Jason snorting a line of coke from the crescent of a woman’s breast. The woman’s short green-spiked hair and thick black eyeliner were a stark contrast to Jason’s unassuming, innocent look. At least until he stood and wiped a few crystals of white powder off his nose.
Same brother.
“I gotta make a call.” Jason brushed a kiss over the woman’s cheek and winked at Sophie, as if he hadn’t just committed an indictable offence that carried with it a maximum penalty of seven years in jail. “I’ll meet you at the bar in the kitchen. Andre’s handling the booze tonight. Tell him I’ll have a vodka and seven, hold the lime. He’s the one with the piercings.”
Sophie’s teeth rattled as she wove her way through the crowd toward the kitchen. She didn’t mind heavy metal music, but Anthrax was a little too morbid for her taste.
“What can I get for you?”
Rendered speechless by the bartender’s multiple facial piercings, Sophie just stared. His lips, tongue, eyebrows, eyelids, cheeks, and ears all sported tiny silver barbells, studs, or rings. Jason always had unusual friends. Too bad she wasn’t into the Frankenstein’s monster look. One year after her divorce and she hadn’t met a man who took her breath away.
“Are you Andre?”
“The one and only.” He stepped back and gave her a mock bow. “I assume you’re Jason’s sister. He said you’d be coming tonight, and you’re the only person here who fits the description of conservative, uptight, but sweet.”
“He said that?” She didn’t know Jason thought she was sweet. Although Jason had always been her protector, they’d spent their childhood butting heads until Jason dropped out of school and moved to Vancouver. Over the years, he’d returned to Toronto for the