Hal watched on as the girl seated next to Valentina Abruzzi tossed her hair, widened her smile, and homed right in on that sonofabitch, Riker. What was it about that guy, Hal wondered for the millionth time. Fucker attracted women to him like bees to honey, and Hal just couldn’t understand it. Sure, the guy was well-built, but there wasn’t a lot of brothers in the club who couldn’t bench press their own weight and then some.  Besides, Riker always looked just a little dirty to Hal. His leathers usually had a thin layer of road dust on them, and his knuckles were covered with jailhouse tats.

Hal realized that the women hanging around the clubhouse got off on that type of thing—they weren’t the real discerning type.  But still, how dumb could the bitches be? Riker’s room might as well have a revolving door.

Brother cared more about quantity than quality, that was for sure.

Band-Aids. That’s what the brothers called the unclaimed girls who hung around the MC looking for something more permanent.   Never seemed to occur to them that sleeping their way through fifty guys wasn’t the way to go about finding Mr. Right.

But then again, these girls weren’t exactly Mensa candidates either.

The reason why the brothers called them Band-Aids was because they were cheap, got the job done, and were disposable. The bitches all looked the same to Hal. Every stitch of clothing they owned seem to be tight, tiny, and had the Harley logo on it spelled out in glitter. They had big boobs, bony asses, and the same strange-colored hair—a weird brassy-puke yellow. It was as if they had all pooled their pennies together and bought a batch of cheap hair-dye wholesale. The worst of it though, for Hal, was the look of desperation in their eyes.

But really, when it came right down to it, Hal was not exactly Prince Charming either and had no right to judge anyone. He paused in thought here and decided to give himself due credit. Maybe considerate wasn’t the word for it, but at least the bitches weren’t slamming into one another and clawing at each other like feral cats outside his bedroom door. And he was honest in a way he knew a lot of guys weren’t. Even before the war fucked him up, Hal had always been upfront about what he wanted and needed from a female.

And now those wants and needs were…different.

Yeah, that was one name for it, Hal snorted in self-derision as he reached out and downed the shot of tequila that sat on the bar in front of him.

Focus.

Strength.

Control.

Those were the things that held him together now, and he worked hard to keep that control—to a physically punishing degree. It was as if relaxing his body, even for just a little, would shatter the tenuous hold he had on his emotional stability.

His VA counselor had explained it all to him. Apparently, there was still a lot of shit that his system hadn’t worked through yet. She told him that his body and his mind were still trying to work together to find a balance between a soldier’s life and civilian life.

Between war time and peace time.

Between living and dying.

The therapist had reassured him that while it might seem to Hal that his recovery was frustratingly slow, it was also steady. He was doing all the right things to achieve his end goal of full recovery, but it was still a long, painful process.  The counselor explained to Hal that until his mind adjusted to civilian life, his body would continue to idle at the same heightened state that had saved his sorry ass on the battle field. It was as if his system needed a constant rush to stay at a functioning base line. With the help of therapy, he had found ways of dealing with that constant, driving need. A strenuous workout routine, a high-speed road trip on his Harley, and ice-cold showers helped.

Basically, the more intense the stimuli were that went into his short-circuited brain—the calmer he felt.

This made Hal pretty much a mess when it came to dealing with the tedium of everyday life.

But it also turned him into one cool, calm, and collected, yet very dangerous machine when it came to handling a crisis situation—and it made him real damn special in the bedroom. Violent sex wasn’t just a matter of recreation for Hal, it was a necessity, and not in that wimpy-ass Shades of Black or Blue or whatever the hell color that mommy-porn was all about.

He was not interested in safe words.

Or spanking an ass red.

Or a locked room filled with toys.

Hal liked to fuck women at gunpoint.

He enjoyed running a dull-edged blade down their spine, across the small of their backs, and over their asses. And sometimes—if they were willing—he liked to do other things.

But Hal always acted on full disclosure. And he always— always made sure the bitches got off first.

Yeah, he was a real gentleman that way.

But still, his newly acquired taste for violently controlled sex didn’t exactly make him relationship material, not that Hal gave a shit. He wasn’t in the market for a woman and had absolutely zero interest in starting a family of his own.

He figured just like everything else, the kink shit would work itself out in time.

Besides, everyone had their own private demons; everybody had something they had to fight against to survive.

Hal scanned the room and his attention naturally fell on her.

Valentina Abruzzi.

With her doe-like eyes, long, silky-sable hair, full breasts, and the kind of hips that made a man want to grab on to, Valentina was one fine-looking woman for sure—and she was also a total badass. Who would have thought under all that beauty, Valentina possessed more courage than most men he knew—that beneath all that smooth skin and graceful elegance, beat the heart of a warrior.  Who would have guessed that Gianni Abruzzi’s daughter—a woman born of such wealth and privilege—would have the strength to survive what had happened to her.

Hal remembered, word for word, what Valentina said the first time he had met her.

“It’s crowded places that I find difficult. And tight spaces. And places where there’s too much noise or too much quiet. And the dark. I’m afraid of the dark. Oh, and really, really bright light. I’m afraid of that too. So basically, it’s everything. I’m afraid of everything.”

He had wanted to reach out to her then to tell her that fear was good, that fear made you strong—that fear kept you alive.

But, of course, he hadn’t.

He had stood like a goddamn idiot, rooted to the kitchen floor. He’d been so intent on her, so transfixed by her story, that for the first time since the bombing, he hadn’t given a shit about his seriously damaged face and had looked at her straight on.

And she had never even flinched.

Valentina hadn’t looked on Hal with disgust or pity; she simply stared right back at him with those beautiful, dark eyes. Then she graciously thanked him for his service, softly expressed her condolences for the loss of his men, and walked out the door.

The loss of his men.

Not even Glory had dared to rip open that wound …

“Penny for your damn thoughts?” A gruff voice sounded out next to Hal.

“Huh?” Hal shook his head slightly as he focused on Prosper. “Hey, boss, nice party. Your woman and the girls did an excellent job putting it all together.”

Prosper pointed to the shot glass in front of Hal and signaled the bartender for two more before he snorted in response.

“Yeah, nice of Abruzzi to give up the place for the reception. I remember the hassle that my boy, Reno, had to go through to rent out a place. No one would give him a venue ‘cause of his ties to the club. Ended up marrying Claire in the backyard of the lake house. Rained like hell that day, too. We made it work, but still this place is a hell of a lot nicer.”

“Yeah, it was cool of Gianni to offer it up for the reception. Made my sister really damn happy. Guess I owe the Italian for that,” Hal said in agreement.

“And you figure the best way to repay that favor is to eye-fuck his daughter all night long?”  Prosper pinned him with a stare. 

“What the hell are you talking about?” Hal shot back in surprise.

“For the past twenty minutes straight, brother, your eyes have been boring a hole into the back of Valentina Abruzzi’s head. Don’t have any idea how Gianni missed that, but you are sure as hell lucky that he did.”

“Shit…  I was just thinking about…I didn’t mean to…” Hal’s voice trailed off.  After a pause he asked, “You think she noticed?”

“Nah. She can’t see you past that big-ass flower arrangement in the middle of the room,” Prosper answered warily as he tried to cipher out the situation. He sure as hell hadn’t mistaken the hungry look that Hal had fixed on Valentina.  The last thing the tenuous alliance between the mob and the Saints needed was to have one of his boys dick around with Abruzzi’s daughter.

Not gonna happen.

“You thinking about fooling around with that sweet thing, you better think again, brother.” Prosper warned him.

“Told ya, Boss, my mind was wandering. I have no fucking idea where my eyes landed.” Hal hedged.

“Girl’s been through some shit.” Prosper pressed on because that was a bullshit excuse if he ever heard one. If there was ever a guy whose mind never wandered, it was this guy.

“I know all about the shit that girl’s been through.” Hal growled out.

“Yeah? Then you know ” Prosper leaned in to make sure he was making himself understood. This conversation was about to get damn uncomfortable, and he sure as shit had no intention of repeating it.  So, with a low growl, Prosper continued, “Know what a woman like her doesn’t need? She doesn’t need the kind of guy who’s going to run a blade over her ass and fuck her with a 9-millimeter pointed to the back of her head.”

Hal froze stock-still for a millisecond.

Then, with clenched fists, he turned his back on his president, walked across the crowded reception hall, and slammed his way out the door.