Pranked (73 page)

That’s where Ash and his brothers came in. That’s where the transactional nature of our relationship comes into play. He wanted to fuck me, and I wanted security for myself and my sisters. And, if I was being honest… I wanted to fuck him, too.

No reason to tell him that, though. That was an important rule when it came to men like Ash Brody—you could never give anything away, especially not your heart. Not to someone who called women “love” and never meant it.

Better this way,
I thought to myself as I exited the bathroom, leaving Ash to linger behind me.
Better if no one knows the whole truth about you. Better if no one gets close enough to figure you out.

But as Ash grabbed my ass just as I cleared the door, I had to admit to myself a sad truth: he had at least one thing figured out about me, and in retrospect, it turned out to be the most dangerous thing of all.

M
y ass hadn’t even hit
my seat yet and Reid was already grating on my nerves. “There he is,” he said as I joined him and our younger brother, Wyatt, at a small table near one of the TV sets. “How’s the syphilis?”

“Fuck you,” I replied. Not my best comeback, but what could I say? After what had just gone down in the Trick Shots bathroom with Hannah, I was a little drained. And if I was going to put up with Reid’s bullshit tonight, I was going to need a drink. Stat.

A waitress passed us and I reached out for her, my fingers closing around her wrist. She stopped, and I felt her pulse quicken as she looked down at me, her eyes wide.

“Hey, babe,” I said, my words coming thick and lazy—the result of delicious afterglow. “You mind grabbin’ me some whiskey? On the rocks.”

The waitress—I wanna say her name was Kimber—tossed her hair and flashed me a pretty smile from between glossy lips. “Sure thing, handsome,” she said, just as I knew she would. “Any kind in particular?”

I returned her smile, but part of me noticed how it was nothing like Hannah’s—how it didn’t seem quite as meaningful or genuine. “Surprise me,” I said.

I let her go, and she tittered as she hurried away from me, approaching the bar where Hannah had returned to her duties pouring drinks for assholes like me. I tried to catch Hannah’s eye as she listened to Probably Kimber relay my order, but in true Hannah fashion, she wasn’t giving me the time of day. Damn, that girl was hot and cold, and it frustrated me to no end.

See, most women looked at me in the same way Probably Kimber did. It was a gift, a natural talent I’d been cultivating since I was twelve or so, one that afforded me all kinds of leeway and got my ass out of more scrapes than I’d care to count. They were like open books to me, written in a language that few men were as fluent in as I was. Yeah, I struck out on occasion, but more often than not I had my pick of the litter. It didn’t take much—a smirk here, a smoldering gaze there, a too-forward comment or two to make ‘em laugh, and the next thing you knew…

Confidence. That was the key to most women’s hearts. Or at least, to the slice of heaven between their legs.

Which pissed some guys off. Guys like Reid, whose egos defined them and were put off by the very idea of some dude getting more pussy than they were. He was glaring at me from across the table, snarling something about my lack of preference in whiskey brands, I’m sure.

I just shrugged, still stealing glances at Hannah. But no matter what I did, she wouldn’t look my way.

Damn her. After a fuck like that, I was sure she would’ve dropped the Ice Princess act…

But Reid was talking again, pulling me from much nicer thoughts. “Well,” he said, setting down his beer bottle, “you always were a man of discerning tastes.”

I gave him a hard and weary look, the one I reserved almost solely for him. I knew he wasn’t talking about the whiskey. Not really. He was doing his damnedest to knock me down a peg because he thought I’d wasted his time showing up late for our little meeting. And, okay, I had. But only because I had better things to do.

No, that’s not entirely true. There was another reason, too—I loved pissing Reid the hell off.

At present, however, I wasn’t in the mood for his passive-aggressive bullshit. If he wanted to snipe, fine. I’d just have to lay down some suppressing fire.

“At least I have some,” I shot back, regarding his beer. “Real men drink liquor, Reid. Not Coors.” I curled my lip in disgust, then glanced over at Wyatt, who’d thus far been silent. It was cruel of me to pick on him, but his stupid ass was the original reason I’d called this meeting, so I had no qualms about venting some of my annoyance in his direction. “And whatever the hell
this
is,” I added, turning his bottle around and staring at its label in shock. “
Pabst
?”

“Fuck you,” Wyatt muttered, pulling his beer out of range, his attention momentarily drawn away from the TV screen and the MMA fight playing across it. “I like PBR just fine.”

Of course he did. Because he was still a goddamn infant. And as such, he had no business getting thrown in a holding cell because of a stupid turf battle that could’ve been a whole hell of a lot worse. A battle that had started because Wyatt was doing his level best to go down the same hellish road our father had so many years ago.

The Bright Falls Beasts were a black mark on all our records. They were the local chapter of an MC dear old Dad had founded back in the day, one that left a legacy of bloodshed and terror. A legacy that had been assigned to the three of us by proxy. We were his sons, and as such, we carried the sins of our father. None of us more than me—I was the eldest. I was the one he’d groomed to take over someday. Out of the three of us, I’d been the most involved.

I’d done things I knew I could never fully outrun. I knew my hands would never be completely clean. And sometimes, it felt like I should’ve been more forthcoming with Reid and Wyatt about that. Especially now, when Wyatt’s dumb ass was so close to ruining the more noble reputation we’d all been working so hard to build over the past few years.

Sure, we were still the Brody Bunch, still the bad boys, still the ones mothers raised their kids to stay away from. But slowly, we were throwing off the mantle of “public nuisances” and well on our way to earning our keep in this town. I used to get pulled over all the damn time for what we called “driving while Brody,” but in the past six months, I could count on one hand the amount of times I’d been hassled by some cop with a grudge. I’d kept my head down. Took legitimate jobs. Stayed far, far away from anything to do with the Beasts and their crumbling empire.

At one point, during the height of Dad’s reign, they had stretched all the way from Arizona to Montana, and as far west as Washington and Oregon. They were the most feared gang north of the Rio Grande, rivaled only by the cartels down in Mexico. They lived up to their name, lived up to their patches that marked them as one-percenters. Comes from that time the American Motorcyclist Association commented on the public’s perception of motorcycle clubs, stating that ninety-nine percent of members were decent, law-abiding citizens. Which left one percent as outlaws. In my youth, that distinction appealed to me. What young man didn’t want to be seen as dangerous, as powerful, as the heir to a kingdom? It was a status that came with all kinds of benefits, including, but not limited to, a steady supply of wanting, willing pussy.

But that shit all takes a backseat when your dad goes off the deep end and starts shooting at the Feds. It’s around that time, when you’ve just turned eighteen—when you’re looking at the faces of your younger brothers and knowing nobody’s gonna take them in—when you’re thinking how Mom’s been dead for years, and maybe if she wasn’t, the Beasts wouldn’t have ended up quite so bad—that you start worrying about bigger problems. Like how the fuck you’re gonna keep your family intact after you watch your father get hauled to prison on live TV. Or killed.

Neither Reid nor Wyatt had any idea the kind of deal I made to keep their asses out of the fire. To get custody of them both so neither one of them had to live through the horrors of foster care. I tried my best to shield them from that sacrifice, thinking it was the noble thing to do. But on days like today, I wondered if I’d done them some kind of a disservice. Reid was an ungrateful bastard, and Wyatt treated our old man’s legacy like it was something to be proud of. Like the mighty had fallen, but would someday rise again.

It gave me goddamn chills.

“Come on, you said you wouldn’t harp on this shit,” Wyatt whined when I brought it up to stop Reid’s persistent, snide remarks.

It worked. Reid glanced at me, then at Wyatt. The expression on his face told me he’d forgotten all about me showing up late to the party. “Why? What did you do now?”

Wyatt sulked. So I filled Reid in.

“Fuck’s sakes, Wyatt,” he hissed. “Are you
trying
to put targets on all our backs again?”

“I didn’t do nothin’ wrong,” Wyatt insisted, and I watched him clench his hands into fists. Wyatt had one hell of a temper. Sometimes it was amusing. Other times, it was destructive in all the worst ways. I sipped my drink—the one Probably Kimber had brought while Reid and I were still trading verbal blows—and shook my head at Wyatt’s shitty explanation. “I was just hangin’ around when shit happened to go south. That’s all.”

Reid and I exchanged looks. He looked just as exasperated as I did. And who could blame him? Even if Reid wasn’t clued in on every aspect of how the Beasts worked, he’d been involved too. Low-level stuff, but enough to mark him almost as bad as me. But at least his juvenile record was sealed, thank Christ. One of the conditions of the deal I’d made to buy us all our freedom.

The deal Wyatt was now throwing in my face.

I didn’t want to be thinking about this. I didn’t want to be
talking
about this, again, for the umpteenth time. I wanted to be nursing my whiskey and thinking about Hannah, about the way her lips had felt on mine, about how she’d wrapped herself so tight around my cock. I wanted to relive the sexy way she arched her back and moaned with her panties stuffed in her mouth—how damn dirty she was. Was she like that with all the guys? Or was that something she’d done just for me?

Shit, why did I care? She was just another woman in a long line. Sure, she stood out from the crowd, but at the end of the day, she wasn’t mine. And I wasn’t hers, either.

We’d had our moment in the sun. Maybe we’d get to have a few more. But that was it. That was
always
it.

So then why couldn’t I stop thinking about the arrangement we’d made, and how that meant I’d get to spend some more time with her? Maybe because I hadn’t fulfilled my obligation yet, and because I could see that Hannah’s sisters had arrived, two pretty young things dressed like they’d stepped right off the cover of some historical novel. Wyatt had noticed them, too. While we argued, he stole glances at them during the breaks in conversation, singling out one in particular. The younger looking one. The blonde.

Huh. Okay, maybe what Wyatt was missing in life was an incentive. Maybe, like Dad, he needed a good woman to keep his nose clean, to turn him into a man instead of the little shit he was well on his way to becoming. Maybe putting him in charge of that girl’s well-being was the answer to all our prayers. I just had to get Reid to go along with it.

But how? Admittedly, I hadn’t thought this through. When Hannah told me she would fuck me in exchange for a favor, I’d leapt at the chance. I’d never considered that Reid was a selfish bastard who was only interested in what he got out of life. I’d been thinking with my dick, and now I had to come up with some way to entice both Wyatt and Reid into doing what shouldn’t have been so fucking hard to convince them to do.

I loved my brothers. But sometimes I wanted to shake them until candy came out.

Fortunately, the next time I paid Reid any mind, I saw he was staring at one of the girls, too. He was doing his best to not be conspicuous, and failing miserably. I watched him and Wyatt for a moment, thinking hard. Now that Reid was eyeing the trap, I just had to find something to bait it with. Something that would put him front and center. Something that would stroke his ego.

I remembered the way he’d sneered at me when I grabbed that waitress earlier. And then it dawned on me. I knew exactly what would hook Reid into my plan.

I had to give him the opportunity to one-up me.

“So, I see you two have finally noticed we’re not the only ones in the room,” I said the next time Reid glanced back at the bar.

“Finally?” he said, slinging an arm over the back of his chair. I smirked. I was willing to bet he’d only noticed the one he’d set his sights on. That boy had tunnel vision when it came to whatever he found himself lusting after—cars, medals, trophies. Women.

“Yeah,” Wyatt said slowly, his ears turning a bright shade of red. Despite his temper, he really was the most sensitive out of all of us. Maybe
because
of his temper. “Wonder what those clothes are all about. What’s their story?”

Reid scrunched up his face. “ ‘Their’?” Looked like I was right. I cut in before he could ask any additional stupid questions.

“Uh, yeah, Reid. There’s three chicks over there. Didn’t you see ‘em?”

Reid whirled, seeming genuinely confused. I shook my head and raised my eyes once again to Hannah, who had taken time out to sit with them at their table by the bar. This time, she surreptitiously caught my gaze and I felt the world slow just a little. It was those damn green eyes of hers, like two pieces of jade set into her lovely face, framed by hair the color of rich, dark coffee. She looked so different from her sisters, dressed in their bonnets and black dresses, every inch of them covered. It was hard to believe that Hannah had come from a background like that. She looked like she’d always lived this life.

Knowing where she came from made me wonder how she’d wound up in Trick Shots, tending bar. She’d never told me. As far as I knew, she’d never told anyone. Anytime I asked someone about her story, they’d just shrug. Seemed all anyone knew for sure was that she’d shown up a couple of years ago, desperate for work.

I knew very little about the Amish community just outside Bright Falls’ borders. I wasn’t alone in that—they kept to themselves, save for the odd excursion into the local Wal-Mart or feed store. I knew that years ago, I’d seen some of the younger ones milling about, unattended by their parents. Rumspringa, they called it. Hannah had clarified that much in our deal, at least, letting me know it was a time when the young adults got to explore the outside world to make a decision on whether or not they wanted to commit their lives to the church.

I didn’t know much more about it than that, other than her sisters weren’t supposed to come. There must’ve been a story behind that too, and suddenly, staring at the three of them, I wanted to know every last detail.

“I think they might be Amish,” I told Wyatt, feigning more ignorance than I had a right to. “I’ve seen a few buggies on the outskirts of town. They’ve got a village there. Usually I only see men.”