Page 72 of With Spite

I stood up, and she reluctantly let me go.

That hadn’t been my intention when I stood, so I reached for her and pulled her into my lap after I took a seat.

She came willingly, her head resting against mine.

“Katana comes with a whole lot of baggage,” I said. “I never knew what happened. Beau doesn’t even know what happened. But she’s pretty particular about only dating guys that are fully trustworthy. She sees them being patched into our club as fully vetted ‘good’ guys. She’ll date a Dixie Warden. She will not date any random man off the street. That’s why we think she’s with one of us.”

“And why not Shaw?”

Shaw.

“Why do you know Thumper’s real name?” I grumbled.

“Shaw.” She added emphasis to his name. “Hates that name. I can’t believe y’all call him that.”

“Katana gave him the name.” I grinned.

“I know,” she said. “He came in for a doctor’s appointment. Was having a…” She trailed off, remembering that she was law-bound not to disclose what Shaw had come in for. “Anyway, he gave me his real name. Then told us that he hated the name ‘Thumper’ with a passion. So, I’ll not be calling him by that name.” She sat up and leveled me with a look. “Now, talk.”

“Shaw,” I drawled, “wanted to ask Katana out. And eventually he did work up the courage. But before he could actually ask her out, he walked in on Katana calling him a ‘scared little rabbit’ when it came to domestication. They had a bit of an argument, and she started calling him ‘Thumper.’ It stuck.”

“Burn,” she said. “What makes you think that Shaw couldn’t be the father, though?”

I thought about it for a long moment before I said, “Mostly they fight like cats and dogs. I guess that doesn’t mean that they couldn’t have done it. But Katana is all about domestication. Thumper—Shaw—is all about living life to the fullest. Absolutely, positively, no settling down allowed for Shaw.”

“Sounds rather sad. For both of them,” she said. “Are you still hungry?”

Not in the slightest.

“Not really.”

She reached for the box, which shifted her on my lap, placing her ass a little more fully over my cock, and pulled one of the to-go boxes a little closer.

She popped the box open, and the smell of bacon filled my nostrils.

She held up a piece of bacon, and I took it.

She slathered some butter on a biscuit, then smashed some bacon, a runny egg, and some of the cheese onto the biscuit and handed it to me in the box.

I took it, surprised that I’d never thought of the combination.

I took a bite, mostly out of curiosity, and found that it was fantastic.

“Oh,” I said. “This is good.”

She smiled and slipped off my lap, which I immediately didn’t like.

But she came back with a glass of orange juice out of my fridge for both of us.

She didn’t take her seat in my lap again, but she did grab the closest barstool and sit almost directly next to me.

She did the same with her own biscuit and happily munched away.

I finished mine and made another.

Only when I was done did I say, “I should probably call my family.”

She took a sip of her drink and said, “I’ll be right here.”