Dead Man Walking (The Fallen Men #6) - Giana Darling Page 0,134
with my woman in a way he won’t lose sight of her anytime soon. I got no reason to kill for her when she’s already mine. You got an issue with me, though, I’m only too fuckin’ happy to sort it out right here and now. ’S been a while since I had anythin’ like a good fight, and you look like you can take a punch.”
The entire compound, dressed for a party but ready for war, held its breath.
Nicholas Rivers glared at my unruffled Irishman for a long moment before he tossed back his head and roared with laughter.
I blinked in shock as he rocked forward to clap a friendly hand on Priest’s shoulder before he walked back to Z and took his hand in a pumping handshake.
“Heard stories of The Fallen, but this shit is better than the telling,” Nicholas said through his chuckle, his face made handsome with harsh smile lines. “I’m looking forward to cracking a beer and seeing what the rest of you motherfuckers are like in real time.”
Zeus’s face broke into his charming as the devil smile as he raised their joined hands and called out, “Let’s get down to it! Someone start the fuckin’ music and grab this man a beer.”
Over the roar of the crowd and the churning of bodies as men swung off their bikes and The Fallen sluts rushed out to greet them in slicked-on halter tops and little miniskirts, I caught eyes with Priest and laughed under my breath when the left side of his mouth tipped in a minuscule smile just for me.
“I think he was always lonelier than he realized,” Cress murmured from beside me.
It was one of the first times I’d seen her without Prince since she and King had returned from Alaska, and the beauty of her dolled-up biker style took my breath away.
“You look like a Disney Princess in the middle of a teenage rebellion,” I told her, noting her heavy eyeliner, painted-on jeans, and the little white crop top straining at her breasts.
She laughed, sliding an arm around my hips. “Baby-free, honey, I gotta make the most of it. The goal is always to get King to take me before we even leave the house and again during the party.” She leaned in conspiratorially, so much more open and freer than I’d ever known her to be before she married King. “So far, we are one for two.”
“Oh, my goodness.” I laughed at her as she ushered me into the party through the masses of bodies already smoking, drinking, and dancing to the music Curtains was playing through the surround speakers.
The winter air was biting, but the party still raged on the blacktop outside the clubhouse, lit with Christmas lights strung by old ladies that reflected off the rows of Harley Davidson motorcycles lined up like dominos to the side of Hephaestus Auto.
It was the first night in so many that the entire club let loose to party and relax. We didn’t get many nights without worries, not when we were in or associated with one of the most notorious criminal motorcycle gangs in North America, but when we did, we let loose.
Within two hours, half a dozen brothers were fighting for bets on the tarmac, still more throwing knives at Priest’s old wooden cross in the back with blindfolds on and beers in their hand. Women were half-naked and grinding on men’s laps or working one of two poles set up in the clubhouse, two of them putting on quite the show at the bar where my cousin, Carson, the new prospect and in a very committed relationship with another man, looked incredibly ill at ease serving around their mostly naked, writhing bodies.
I was used to it all.
A den of iniquity if ever I’d seen the definition of it.
Low rock pulsed through the space, my heartbeat thrumming to the same tempo as if I’d been entranced. I danced with my girls, with Lila dressed in all fringe, Maja with her Farrah Fawcett hairdo, and Hannah in a pair of assless leather chaps, only a sequined set of panties beneath it.
Priest didn’t dance, and I didn’t ask him to, but his dark eyes watched me from the bar where he sat with Bat, Dane, and Wrath shooting the shit, and when a man from the T-Squad tried to claim me, Priest was out of his seat in a heartbeat.
The poor T-Squad brother took one look at Priest barreling toward him and turned on