I expected Priest to share in my frustration, to roll his eyes and call the guy a jackass. What I didn’t expect was for Priest to look not concerned or annoyed—but hurt.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Priest asked. “How long has this been going on?”
Shit. Priest talked like I’d been actively hiding this from him—and I guessed I had been. I’d thought I could deal with it on my own, and now, Stefan had gone and gotten the rest of the club involved. And from their confused gazes, it was obvious that I wasn’t going to be able to get away with talking about this privately. I sighed.
“All right.” I raised my voice a little. “I’ll explain everything, but I really only want to do it once, so if you want to hear, gather around.”
With murmurs of assent, the club members quieted and fixed their attention on me, including the wide-eyed prospects. I hoped this wouldn’t drive them away from the club—we needed some fresh blood. Well, if this did drive them away, it’d save us some trouble later, I guessed.
“I met Stefan—or Xavier, I guess—last year at Stallions, up in Monterey. I was out there, well…” I cringed a little. No point lying, though. At least Dante and Tru would be glad to be right. “I was out there to get laid. Not looking for anything serious, just blowing off some steam. So I picked him up, brought him to my hotel and that was the end of it.”
Priest raised his eyebrows, nodding at me to continue.
“Then a few weeks later, I went back up that way,” I said. God, this was embarrassing, laying out the history of my recent hookups to almost every single member of the club. “And Stefan was there again. I usually don’t go for repeats, because it complicates things”—I laughed darkly—“as you can see. But at the time it was easy. I didn’t have to do the usual song-and-dance of meeting someone. So we hooked up again, and this time exchanged numbers. And I thought maybe I’d have an easy hookup when I needed to blow off some steam, something low pressure, low stakes. Something that didn’t matter.”
“Seems like it didn’t quite go how you expected,” Priest said.
“You could say that,” I said with a grimace. “He wouldn’t stop contacting me for a month. Calling, texting, all that shit. Talking like we were in a relationship, when I’d made it super fucking clear that we were purely casual, and were exchanging numbers for simplicity’s sake. And he’d agreed to that! He was—is—delusional. So finally, I answered his calls to tell him to fuck off, and that I didn’t want to see him again. Or hear from him, in any capacity.”
“And that didn’t work either, apparently,” Blade said. “You must’ve really blown his mind.”
Stillness fell over the room—and then I laughed. Couldn’t help it. Some of the tension in the room broke, and a grin even spread across Priest’s concerned face.
“Seems like it,” he said. “He really came all the way out here to try to sneak into the club to see you again.”
“What’d you do to him?” Tru teased. Then he elbowed Dante. “Must run in the family.”
“That guy is not Dad’s type,” Dante said with his eyebrows raised.
“Not what I meant, but thank you for confirming,” Tru said delightedly. “So, what is Mal’s type, then?”
“Guys,” I said warningly, but I couldn’t quite keep the smile off my face. It did make my anxiety ease a little, having the usual laughter and teasing floating around the room. Obviously, my boys weren’t judging me. “That’s not the important thing here.”
“Well…” Dante said thoughtfully, then cast his gaze meaningfully at Priest.
“Ah, guys more like Priest,” Tru said with a serious nod, then pantomimed writing that down on the palm of his hand. “Got it. Let the record state—”
“Tru,” Priest said with a big, disbelieving laugh. “That’s not the point here.”
Then he glanced at me, and his grin softened into something a little closer to a smirk.
Shocked arousal curled hot in my gut. I’d expected Priest to deny Tru a little harder, or just—react a little more seriously. This smirky little acknowledgment was not something I was prepared for. My mouth dropped open, which made Tru cackle.
Then Priest cleared his throat, his expression smoothing into something serious, like he hadn’t realized how he was looking at me. “So. This is the first time Stefan’s actually shown up face to face with you? Since Stallions?”