I felt Puck’s eyes touch me, although he didn’t say anything.
He never did.
Five years ago, I’d felt him watching me like a physical touch. He’d been the seventh stranger Teeny told me I had to fuck. He’d been different from the others, though. It probably sounds twisted, but I remembered feeling a mixture of fear and excitement when Teeny gave me my marching orders. Puck was actually young and good-looking—in any other world, I might’ve even tried talking to him, or at least stalking him discreetly.
Of course, that was before I got close and realized just how big he was. Tough. Scary. And not just because he had that nasty scar across his face, either. Nope, even in that room full of dangerous, scary men there had been something different about him.
Then he’d started touching me, and I’d forgotten to be afraid.
I’d had no idea up to that point how good sex could feel, or that there might be a reason women let themselves go crazy for a man’s attention. And when we’d sat near the fire and he’d held me, and later when he made me come for the first time ever? For a while I pretended I was a normal girl at a regular party, not just a biker whore’s brat learning to earn her keep.
Yeah, Puck hurt me.
They all hurt me.
At least he didn’t know, and once he figured it out he held me and then we’d slept together in one bed. I was safe for a while. Of course it didn’t last, but nothing good ever lasted around the Longnecks MC. They were like a festering wound that oozed pus and spread infection to whatever they touched.
Case in point? My mom. After five years she and Teeny were still together, still fucked up, and still trying to use me. She’d called me last month with some story about a broken water heater, begging for money. Again.
I didn’t hate her anymore, though. When things got truly bad, she’d done the right thing and sent me with Puck. She’d never defied Teeny like that before—I knew he’d beaten her after I left. Came close to killing her and kicked her out for a week . . . then she went crawling back to him. Unbelievable.
“You coming with?” Puck asked, stepping toward me. I jumped. What the hell? Puck watched me, occasionally said hello. Like, once a year. He never, ever invited me to do anything with him because we had strict boundaries. He prowled around, I pretended he wasn’t there, and I lived life safe and sound where Teeny could never get to me.
Now Puck stared at me, obviously waiting for an answer. I shook my head, unnerved. Then Puck reached out to catch a lock of my hair and tuck it behind my ear.
What. The. Fuck.
Beside me Carlie stiffened, her smile fading. Great. Not only was Batman changing his M.O. without warning, he was doing it in front of his girlfriend. Just what I needed.
(Okay, that wasn’t entirely fair. She obviously had a thing for him and I’d bet a hundred bucks they were sleeping together, but so far as I knew Puck never pretended or lied to get laid. He wasn’t into commitment. This was well known to every woman in Callup foolish enough to crush on him. Essentially all of them who had a pulse and few borderline cases, too. I’d watched Melba checking out his ass once—you can’t unsee something like that, trust me.)
“I really can’t go to breakfast,” I said, my voice shaky. “I need to talk with Eva.”
“Don’t bother,” Blake said with a grin. “You’re fired. Me, too.”
“Did she say that?” I asked, feeling a little sick to my stomach.
“Oh yeah. She said it loud and clear. Repeatedly. I’ll go back with you to pick up your check at the end of the week so you don’t have to face her alone.”
I closed my eyes, wondering why things couldn’t have just stayed the same, even if it was just for another six months. Not that I should be surprised. My reality had never been smooth before, so why should it start now?
Think positive, I reminded myself.
Crap. Now I was bummed and I wanted to bitch-slap my brain for being so annoying.
“What the fuck happened out here?” Danielle asked, her arm suddenly around my shoulders. I immediately felt better. Danielle and I balanced each other out perfectly—she was batshit crazy and insanely optimistic. Make that dangerously, recklessly optimistic. As for me, I spent nearly all my time focused on staying sane and getting ahead. That didn’t leave much time for things like actually living my life.
We’d met each other our senior year of high school, when she’d offered to drive me back and forth to town in her shiny new Jeep Wrangler. This spared me from the horror of sharing a battered school bus with every hormonal teen living in the greater Callup metropolitan area. After a particularly harrowing ride home in her car one night (long story short, it took us six hours to travel thirty miles and by the time we pulled into town, we had matching tattoos of chipmunks wearing scarves) I decided it was my job to keep her from accidentally killing herself.
In return, she pushed me to do fun things, reminding me at least once a week that I was only twenty-one and perhaps the fate of the universe didn’t literally rest on whether or not I balanced my checkbook to the penny. Along the way, she taught me how to do smoky eye makeup, how not to freak out when a guy asked me to dance, and how to “borrow” music off the Internet. (When I pointed out that “borrowing” music was stealing, she agreed and started using iTunes for her downloads. To finance this, she “borrowed” her dad’s credit card.)
“Well, apparently me and Blake no longer work here,” I said, leaning my head against her. “I don’t know if you’re fired or not.”