Page 19 of Vengeance (Ruthless MC 4)
Hyena chuckles. He appreciates her sense of humor more than any of us and advocated for her like an OJ lawyer when Vampire tried to add no talking back to the list of rules.
But he lets her know, all the same. “You don’t handle things by yourself anymore. We take care of you—complete care of you. That’s the most important household rule.”
“You take care of me,” she repeats, like we’re speaking a foreign language.
I can tell she’s already regretting letting us put her off last night with a promise to go over the household rules in the morning.
“But I can take care of myself.”
We all silently agree to disagree with that one.
“Well, how about clothes?” she asks into all our silence. “Can I at least have my sweats?”
“Are you cold?” Hyena asks. “I can turn up the heat.”
“No, I’m not cold." She glances around the house.
The legit construction branch of the Reapers helped us build it a few years ago. When Waylon and Hades got their big surplus of Fairgood money, the co-prezzes decided to expand the club out of Tennessee—complete with chapters in Iowa and Louisiana and a safe house that unofficially belonged to their enforcer team in western Nebraska.
“I just don’t think I should be walking around your weirdly nice log cabin buck naked without any clothes—oh my gosh, wait, tell me that’s not another one of your rules.”
Our second deafening silence makes her eyes flare with alarm.
She takes a step back from Hyena and his towel and dips her head. “Is this the conversation we have before you put me in the basement with a basket of lotion?”
“No,” Vampire assures her. “That’s not what’s happening here.”
“The house doesn’t have a basement,” Hyena adds because I guess he didn’t think she was creeped out enough.
He laughs and catches her by the wrist when she tries to take several more steps back. “Relax, I’m only messing with you, Doc.”
“But why would you establish rules like this?” Doc glances between him and us, her expression full of alarm and fear. “For me? Or for anyone? Like is this is your protocol for the women you sleep with outside the roadhouse? Part of your fetish?”
She thinks we do this all the time—not one specific time for one specific woman.
I exchange looks with my chosen brothers. We don’t want to lie to her, but it’s obvious she’s not ready for the full truth.
“We’re just weird. That’s all,” Hyena improvises. He wraps the towel around her shoulders like a blanket. “You’re right. This is our fetish, and taking care of you completely is part of how it works. But you’ll get used to it. I promise.”
He tugs her forward with the towel and kisses her on the forehead. “C’mon, I’ll make you some breakfast. What do you want? We’ve got Frosted Flakes or Chex. Or I was just about to put together one of those egg scrambles with some bacon, cheese, and sausage.”
“That sounds yummy,” she admits.
Some of the alarm fades from her face, and to my relief, she doesn’t ask why we happen to have her preferred cereals already stocked.
“I can’t remember the last time I had a breakfast that didn’t come directly out of a box or wrapped in some piece of plastic I had to take off before putting it in the microwave.”
“Great!” Hyena points a hand toward the table. “Sit down, and I’ll whip that right on up.”
There are only three seats at the table, and Doc starts to sit down in the empty chair. But Vampire says, “That’s where Hyena sits.”
She pauses in midair. “Do you have another chair?”
“No,” Vampire answers.
If I was in charge of the talking, I would have said it in a nicer tone. But I can tell this is Vampire’s way of poking at her. Testing her boundaries to see where they’ll break—his version of a human perimeter check.
So, I stay quiet and simply watch to see how she’ll react.
“Where should I sit, then?” she asks, looking all around, as if maybe there’s some answer she’s not seeing.
Vampire glances at me, and I scoot back, offering my lap.
We both wait. And though I can’t see him, I can sense Hyena behind us, watching from the stove.
She hesitates. Then hesitates some more.
But eventually, she shuffles over to my side of the table and takes a tentative seat on my lap.
Stay cool….
I know I’ve got to stay cool, but the feel of her in my lap, her soft bottom settling onto my erection, makes my heart speed up. My dick’s aching so bad, I have to control the urge to paw at her. Instead, I concentrate on helping her keep on the right side of the rules.
And she doesn’t fight me when I gently remove the towel from around her shoulders and drop it to the floor.
