by Karen Renee
Still, he ran his fingers under his nose. Her scent lingered, which reminded him of her taste. He liked the taste of women, but hers turned him on more than others.
So, yeah.
Today he would pay the price for pushing her boundaries and he would do it gladly.
He fired up the shower to wash away her scent, find his relief from bringing her pleasure, and prepare himself for building stronger allegiances with his brothers.
His gut hadn’t lied three weeks ago. Stephanie was a distraction he didn’t need, and her actions today showed she wasn’t the woman he needed right now.
IN A STRANGE TWIST of fate, Roman was the only brother inside the clubhouse, other than the three prospects. It didn’t sit well with him to find so many brothers missing, but he saw this as an opportunity.
“Got a minute, Roman?”
“Always, Prez.”
He jerked his head toward the room they used for church, and Roman followed.
Har closed the door behind Roman. “You got an opinion on our pot business?”
His brother stared back at him, his expression blank as a statue. After another moment he said, “The money’s nice, but that’s going to be harder to come by soon. I don’t want to see us deal the harder shit. Comes with more headaches than we have now.”
Har nodded. “You have ideas on new ways to bring in money?”
Roman’s head wobbled. “There are plenty of ways to make money, but they all require work. Some don’t want to do any work.”
“Right,” Har whispered.
“Which is bullshit.” Roman’s eyes had turned fierce.
“So, if we decide on a new business avenue, you’re willing to put in some work.”
A small smile flitted across Roman’s face. “So long as the others are pulling their weight, yeah.”
Har nodded. “Fair enough, brother. And, if you don’t mind—”
One of Roman’s hands shot up. “Forget it. This conversation stays between you and me.”
Har smiled. “Yeah. Thanks, Ro.”
As he moved to the door, Roman paused to look over his shoulder at Har. “And I’m sure you already know this, but Massive is allergic to real work.”
He leaned against the conference table for a while after Roman left. He knew Massive and Wreck were intent on keeping the marijuana business, but his gut told him they were the heart of the problem.
Contending with them would require finesse.
A sultry voice interrupted his concentration. “Har, honey...”
He glanced up. Layla, a sweet-butt who had been around for over seven years, stood in the doorway with a come-hither look on her face.
“What do you want, Layla?”
“Well,” she drawled. “Can I come in here? You look really tense, but I bet me sucking you off would relieve that.”
His eyes narrowed. “You know better. Women don’t come in here, and I was on my way out anyway.”
She stepped back. “Fine, fine. I can take care of you in your room.”
He pressed his lips together to keep his temper in check. With her wavy dark hair, dark eyes, and voluptuous figure, Layla had looks, but she’d also had every one of his brothers. There wasn’t anything she wasn’t open to sexually. Adventurous sex had it’s time and place, but he was over it.
And she isn’t Stephanie.
He blew out a disappointed sigh.
This shit had to stop. Stephanie drew the line in the sand, and he could respect that – would respect it.
“See. That tells me you need some attention, Harmful.”
His eyes rolled. “No, Layla. You need to back off. I’m in a foul mood and no offense, but you aren’t helping.”
He closed and locked the double doors behind himself. When he turned around, she stood in his space, her tits pressed against him. “But I want to help, honey.”
“Won’t say it again, Lay. Back off.”
He’d fucked up. She hated being called ‘Lay,’ and he did it because it was how he thought of her. Just a woman out for a lay. It was insulting to her, but sometimes the truth hurt.
Her face screwed up with pouty anger. “Don’t call me that, Har.”
“You move back and move on, I won’t call you shit.”
Her head reared back. “Jeez. Almost sounds like you got a ball and chain.”
His teeth clenched. “I don’t, but you need to get the fuck away from me. Now.”
With a roll of her eyes, she turned away and teetered on her high-heels down the hall.
He pulled himself together and sauntered to the bar. Brute sat with Roman and Har took a stool on Brute’s left.
“You got a spare bedroom at your place, right?” he asked.
Brute shot him a look. “Why do you ask?”
“Your stepsister is why I ask.”
“We just moved all her shit into a completely empty side of your house, man. What the fuck?”
“It wasn’t that much shit, and I think she’d be better off staying with family.”
Roman leaned forward. “You fuck her?”
He clenched his teeth. “No. I—”
“You want to fuck her,” Roman muttered.
Har tilted his head back for a beat. “No, I just think she’d be better off with her stepbrother.”
Brute stared at him for a while. “You’re full of shit. And part of me wants to say fucking her would be wrong of you, but she and Susan are right. I haven’t been their stepbrother in over a decade. I’m not her family any more than you are.”
Har looked away. The way this shit day had gone, he shouldn’t be surprised this wasn’t working out. When he turned back, a prospect had put a bottle of beer in front of him. He took a swig, aware both of his brothers were staring at him.
Brute laughed. “You like her.”
His brows furrowed. “No. She’s prissy.”
Brute laughed harder and louder. “Man, she rides a Harley and deals poker. She doesn’t even have a manicure on her nails. She’s anything but prissy.”
“Damn. I want to get know this chick,” Roman said over his beer.
“Shut the fuck up,” Har growled, which only made both men howl with laughter.
“Fuck it. I’m outta here,” he said, and left.
Chapter 9
Don't Get Along with Gravy
Stephanie
THE PANDORA APP ON my phone blared Sting’s “Shape of My Heart,” while I made rosemary-garlic mashed potatoes.
The house probably smelled like a bad cafeteria because of the wide variety of food I had cooking. In the oven, I had a lasagna baking, alongside a pork roast. Both smelled great when cooking alone, but side by side was putting my sniffer to the test. Which had to be why I couldn’t decide what to eat for dinner, tonight.
I took a generous sip of my Southern Prohibition beer but nearly spit it out when Har spoke over the music.
“Jesus Christ, what are you doing?” he demanded.
Once I had my choking under control, I said, “I’m batch cooking. Lasagna, pork roast with mashed potatoes and roasted asparagus, though I have to put that in next.”
He stared at me for a long moment before he sauntered to the oven and cracked the door open for a peek then closed it. His eyes met mine just as the song changed to a jazz cover of “Shape of You.”
The lyrics were much easier to hear in this version, and I realized how overtly sexy the song was. I twisted toward my phone to hit the fast-forward button, but Har grabbed my arm and wrapped his other arm me.
“I’m sorry about earlier, Stephanie.”
I’m not.
Being held in his arms rekindled the doubts which plagued me all afternoon. “Thanks, but you don’t have to apologize. I didn’t stop you, so if anyone should apologize, it’s me because that whole thing makes me a cocktease, and I’m normally not.”
He chuckled. “Hate to tell you this, but you always are one whether you mean to be or not.”
My brows drew down. “What?”
“You move through a room, a man takes notice. And don’t let this go to your head, but my cock always notices.”
I shook my head and put my hands on his arms to unwrap them, but he wouldn’t budge. “Thanks for that, but you know what I meant.”
“Yeah. But, I won’t try anything with you again. You made that clear Friday night and I pressed my luck any damn way, so I’m sorry.”
“All right. And, um, just to let you know, I got you two six-packs of craft beer from the store. It comes from a place in Hattiesburg.”
His eyes landed on my open can. “Seems I’m down one already, am I right?”
I shook my head. “I bought my own six-pack.”
He finally let me go, but his head dipped lower. “You fit all that shit on your bike?”
I chuckled. “No, I used a grocery delivery service.”
His lips pulled together and I expected a rebuke. “This isn’t the original, is it?”
It took a moment before I realized he was talking about the song. “It’s a cover. The app should tell you—”
He touched my phone and the screen lit, but my angle was such I couldn’t see it. Har must have since he nodded and his face looked like he was making a mental note.
The song ended and in the short pause I heard his stomach growl. “I know you said I only needed to get you beer, but seriously, I have enough food for an army and I can’t decide what I’m eating for dinner. You pick. Lasagna or pork roast, and I’ll plate you up some dinner.”
His lips quirked and he dug into his pocket pulling out a half-dollar coin. “Heads or tails, Combes.”
I rolled my eyes at him calling me by my last name. “You decide.”
“I flip it, you gotta call it. That’s how it works, woman.”
I huffed out a breath. “Fine. Heads.”
It landed on tails and he grinned. “You really do have some shitty luck. Guess we’re having pork and those potatoes. You makin’ gravy?”
I shook my head. “Gravy and I don’t get along. The upshot of that is I’m cutting down on the amount of fat and starch I eat, since that’s basically all gravy is.”
He blinked and made that face where I suspected my words hurt his ears. “How do you not ‘get along’ with gravy?”
I shrugged. “When I make it one of two or three things happens. It’s too lumpy, too runny, or tastes more like butter than gravy.”
His brows furrowed. “Tastes like butter?”
I nodded. “Or so douchebag Wycliffe told me when I tried starting a gravy from a roux.”
He shook his head. “We’ll get to the roux in a moment. He’s the guy who cleaned you out?”
I smiled. “Yeah, but as you might have guessed it was an alias which led authorities nowhere and made my credit card company think I was coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs.”
His smile was small, but I could tell he fought smiling bigger. “All right. Well, how much butter did you use?”
“Too much, but I think it was three tablespoons. And just to say, I added the same amount of flour.”
He nodded. “Your roast gonna have juice?”
I nodded, because we were skirting double entendre territory.
He dipped his chin at me. “Then, I’ll make the gravy.”
“You do gravy?”
He arched a brow. “You makin’ somethin’ of it?”
I chuckled. “I would never. Thanks. It should be out in ten minutes.”
“YOUR MOTHER TEACH YOU to cook like this?”
I threw my head back and laughed. To most, his question wouldn’t seem so hysterical, but the notion of Mom teaching me to cook was just that funny. I leveled my eyes at him. “No. She hated cooking. Being older than me, Suzy got saddled with dinner duty at a really young age and most often we ate frozen dinners or other frozen food items... if they were on sale, anyway.”
He shook his head. “Sorry I asked.”
“Don’t be. In a weird way it makes me more appreciative of the food I make. Sometimes I fail at making a top-notch dinner, but even when I half-ass it, that tastes better than nearly anything out of a freezer.”
His head bobbed as he chewed his food. “So where’d you learn?”
“To cook? TV, and a friend of Turk’s took me under her wing when I mentioned I wished I knew what the hell to do in a kitchen. She gave me the lasagna recipe, but we’re not eating that.”
He shot a side-long look at me. “Friend of Turk’s?”
I nodded. “Cathy. I believe she’s someone’s Old Lady, but since she never wore her cut in the kitchen I don’t know who she belonged to.”
We lapsed into silence, not for the first time, but this one didn’t feel as comfortable.
I broke it to ask, “Where’d you learn to make gravy?”
A brief frown pulled at his face. “Dad. He was a firefighter and since he had to know how to cook, he decided me and Ben had to learn too.”
“But not Corinna?”
His eyes took on a faraway look. “No. It wasn’t that he didn’t care, but he thought that was on Mom.”
I nodded and finished my food. Sitting next to Har did things to me. Made me feel comfortable when I shouldn’t, made me want things I would never have. The sooner I got away from sitting next to him, the better.
While I packed the lasagna into lunch-size containers, Har picked up his beer, tipping it toward me. “How did you know this would be any good?”
I shrugged a shoulder. “I didn’t, but you said craft beer, so I took a gamble.”
He rinsed his plate and started washing the empty lasagna pan.
“Har, you said if I cooked, I cleaned.”
He twisted his hands up and back down. “Doesn’t matter, Steph. One pan isn’t gonna kill me while you deal with the meat and potatoes.”
“Okay,” I whispered.
He dried the pan, tucked it away, and folded the dish towel, putting it next to the dish strainer.
I took in a deep breath for courage. “Har, before you go...”
He stopped and looked at me expectantly.
I couldn’t believe I was going to ask this.
“What if I change my mind about no strings being a myth? Would your offer still stand?”
His arms folded across his chest while his chin dipped and he closed his eyes for a few seconds. Then he looked at me with disappointment, which puzzled me. “No, Combes. It wouldn’t. You were right. Woman like you has expectations, and you should. I can’t fulfill those for you. You’re welcome to stay here as long as you need. Thanks for the food. You’re a great cook, even if you don’t get along with gravy.”
Har
SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGED, and a woman confounding him still topped the list.
Stephanie’s random and bizarre question threw him for a serious loop. A huge part of him wanted to tell her the offer stood, but he knew better. Indecisiveness did not work for him. Unless it was regarding something trivial, like what to eat for dinner, at which point he was fine with a coin toss. He knew she couldn’t separate the physical from the mental, so he wouldn’t open that door. No matter how much he wanted to do it.
He needed to get out of the house.
On the road he normally knew where he was going, but tonight he operated on autopilot. He found himself at the casino where Stephanie worked. The tables were full, which made it rankle with him that Stephanie had to take the night off. He almost wondered if she were being given the short end of the stick for some reason.
That wasn’t his business.
He shoved those thoughts aside. The wait list for a decent table was ten players deep so he left the poker room and found a spot at a craps table instead. After he lost half his stack at the table, he took his chips to the cashier cage and left.
Fifteen minutes later, he rode around the lot outside clubhouse, noticing there were more cages than usual. Maybe Brute, Cynic, and Block – their treasurer – had decided to throw an impromptu party. He could only hope the cages belonged to women he’d neve
r met before.
When he walked inside the clubhouse, he couldn’t believe how dense the smoke was. There were plenty of women in the common room, but none of them immediately appealed. Brute sat at the corner of the bar with a blonde and a brunette hanging on him.
“What’s goin’ on brother?” he asked, as he leaned against the bar behind the blonde.
She looked at him from the corner of her eye, then her manicured eyebrow arched.
Brute grinned at him. “What’s it look like? It’s Saturday night.”
Wreck sidled up to Har, a cigarette hanging from his mouth. He was one of those smokers who could talk around the cancer stick in his mouth. “Hear you’re talkin’ to brothers one-on-one behind our backs, Prez.”
Har kept a blank expression while Brute stiffened and muttered, “What the fuck, Wreck?”
The women exchanged a look at the tense vibe and slunk away.
“You not gonna answer, Prez?”
Brute slammed a fist on the bar. “Why should he—”
Har held a hand up. “I shouldn’t answer this bullshit, but no, I’m not talkin’ to anyone behind your back, Wreck.”
“Roman,” Wreck snarled the name like it tasted bad.
He suspected Wreck of having something against Roman, but he never thought Wreck was racist. The glint in Wreck’s eye and the way he said Roman’s name told Har otherwise.
“What’s it matter if our President has a conversation one-on-one with a brother, Wreck?”
“Inside church?”
Brute looked at Har. “Seriously?”
Har had to be careful. Not only could Wreck fly off the handle and misconstrue this to the rest of the brothers, but Har needed to figure out how much Wreck knew. He didn’t think Roman would run his mouth, and especially not to Wreck. But how else would Wreck know they’d had a sit-down at church without the other brothers?
Then he remembered Layla showing up.
Har glanced at Brute for a moment and shrugged. “I don’t hang in brothers’ rooms, and if I want to have a conversation without sweet-butts around, my options are limited.” He looked at Wreck, “But I want to know, what it is I’m doing behind anyone’s back?”
