Announcing the deal to the brothers the next morning had gone down pretty much how I had expected it to. No faces of shock or surprise met my eyes, most of them having figured it out beforehand. But this club wasn’t a dictatorship, and I didn’t want to go ahead with the deal if the rest of the brothers weren’t on board. But when I offered to go tell Charon right there and then that his deal could fuck off, none of the brothers concurred. They agreed with my decision, and Jasper even pulled me aside, mentioning that even though the club agreed with this choice, offering the boys a way out was the right decision.

Since then, the club was eerily quiet. We heard no more news from Charon, and had no more incidents with the Black Jacks. Furthermore, Anna was avoiding me by holing herself up in her office on the other side of town, and she even started going back to her own house instead of sleeping at the club. Ignoring my dick’s opinion, I was fine with it. I knew what I’d said to her had put her on the spot, and confronting what both of us knew was the truth was something I knew she had never been planning on doing. But once she stopped fighting and accept it, I’d be here.

Telling her about Sasha and the kids wasn’t something I’d planned. The only other one I’d told had been Roscoe, and despite the other brothers having their suspicions, I’d never felt the need to share it with them before. But somehow, having it off my chest, having somebody else know about my little girl didn’t feel as bad as I thought it would be. In fact, it felt like a relief. Without knowing it, I had felt it was something that stood been between us, but now it was in the open and Anna had listened to my story without any judgment or sympathy. She’d simply accepted that it was just another part of me.

“You look happy,” Lamb interrupted my thoughts. I looked up at him to see his sharp face and pale brown eyes frowning at me. “It’s disgusting.”

“Fuck off,” I grumbled, wiping the smile off my face and shooting him a comfortable scowl before taking a sip of my beer. When I looked back at him, his expression had sobered and he turned his back to me, revealing the skull and wings of his Black Angels cut. He was dressed in his club clothes for once as he began to mill around the bar, restocking for the party tonight with all the new booze that had been delivered this morning.

“You sure about this party?” Lamb asked.

“Yeah.” I sighed. “Can’t let them think they’re getting to us. But I don’t like how quiet it’s been, so I’m not letting my guard down; Pipe’s only allowed to let in members and affiliates. Nobody we don’t know.”

“That a goo—” Lamb began, only to be cut off by a loud squeal.

I spun on my stool to where the girls were sitting, watching as Mallory pulled out a long leather jacket. Her face brightened with the biggest smile before she pulled her curly red hair into a pile on the top of her head and slid the jacket on.

“Spin!” Kay demanded, wagging her finger in the air.

Mallory turned and presented her back. The black leather was christened with the same Black Angels’ skull and wings patch along with the official “Property of Hunter” rocker underneath.

“What do you think?” Mallory looked like a kid on Christmas morning as she asked for Kay’s opinion first.

“Hunter will love it,” Kay whispered, a soft smile taking over her face. “You know what?” Kay turned and took off down the hallway to her and Bell’s club room, where they kept some of their shit. Everybody’s eyes followed after her in confusion until she returned only moments later, donning her own black leather cut.

Wrinkles covered the old thing. Holes had been stitched, and the colors had slightly faded over the years, but Kay had been Roscoe’s old lady for almost forty years, and I knew leather never stayed that good quality unless it was well taken care of.

Kay hugged the leather over her front, almost looking self-conscious in the thing. I got up from my stool, shaking my head as I headed over to the women.

“Beautiful,” I said, throwing my arm over Kay’s shoulder, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “Roscoe loved it when you wore that thing.”

Kay was like a mother to the boys in the club. She was a strong woman, had balls of steel, and was more than ready to kick our asses if we needed it. But she was also a gentle soul, and Roscoe had been absolutely whipped by this woman. He’d chosen well.

“Don’t let Hunter see you in that thing.” I turned to look over to Mallory. “He’ll end up sobbing like a little bitch the rest of the night.”

She laughed, her cheeks blushing a bright red. She was a sweet little thing but didn’t hesitate to bust my balls over shit like when Hunter and I ended up in lockup on his bachelor party. It was Jax’s fault, really.

“Speaking of bitching,” I said, looking over the gathering of girls. “I see Anna’s not with you girls.”

“Ha.” Amanda, Polo’s old lady, who I was more surprised to see since she didn’t come around the clubhouse all that often, scoffed. Now, here was a woman who took busting balls as a hobby. "You know very well why she’s not here, Wolf.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I chuckled, earning a pinch in my side from Kay, who rolled her eyes at me as she walked away.

“You might as well go find her,” Mallory said, reluctantly sliding off her new cut and putting it back in the delivery box. “You need to get out of here while we decorate this place.”

“The decorations just arrived.” Lamb gave me a shit-eating grin, and suddenly, I didn’t like the fact that Lamb had been put in charge of ordering them.

“Can’t have the birthday boy here, now can we?” Kay returned to me, pushing me toward the door just as Mallory swung it open.

“All right, all right. I’m leaving,” I said, throwing my hands up. Kay couldn’t move my huge size, but she’d been around the club for decades, so she learned a thing or two about getting guys twice her size to move, techniques I’d rather not acquaint myself with again.

“Tell your bitch she better be here tonight, or I’ll drag her here myself,” Kay threatened as a parting gesture before my own club doors were shut in my face.

Women.

* * *

When I stepped into Anna’s office, she barely noticed my arrival. She was wearing her sexy uppity glasses as she stood looking down into a cardboard box, her knuckles pressed against her mouth, concern woven into her features.

She was dressed in one of her dress suits, a black one with a tight blue blouse underneath, nearly the same baby blue of her eyes. For a moment, I was thrown back to the day I met her smart ass, wearing a suit similar to this in those red-hot boots she could pull off with anything. Her mouth had grabbed my interest back then, and it hadn’t lost it since.

I shut the door, the lock clicking and snapping Anna out of her head. The light glinted off her glasses as her head flicked up to see my face. The whites of her eyes widened in surprise. “Wolf!” she exclaimed, her hands slamming down on the lid of the box.

I looked down at the box. “What’s that?”

“Something for a client,” she said, lifting it off her desk and moving to place it in a chest on the other side of the room, filled with more brown boxes stamped in red ink reading “Evidence.”

She locked the chest, depositing the key back into a small compartment in her desk before turning to face me.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, propping her hand up on her hip like she did every time she felt like taking a bite out of me.

“Looking for my bitch,” I growled, my steps slowing as I prowled closer to her end of the room. “She hasn’t been around recently.”

“Maybe she got tired of your demanding ass calling her a bitch,” Anna retorted, crooking an eyebrow at me. It was a pathetic effort to try to disguise the slow step back behind her desk.

“I don’t think so.” I passed the side of the desk, watching as her tight-ass dress suit’s blouse couldn’t hide the quickening of her breaths. Her back hit the edge of the desk, and her hands fell back to brace her.

I reached out to grasp her hips, loving how her skirt hugged the curves. I let my hands skim down the sides until my fingers just grazed the skin below the hem of her skirt.

I kept my eyes on my hands as I watched them wander with a mind of their own when they hooked one finger under the edge of the skirt, sliding up her thighs and pushing the material up along with it.

My hands slid up under her ass, cupping the soft, full cheeks. I squeezed them in my palms, looking up to catch the hot, breathy moan as it tumbled out of her lips. A hot flush overtook her cheeks, but it was the glazed, lustful eyes that held mine through the lenses of her glasses that had me lifting her ass and dropping her onto the edge of her desk.

“How about you tell me how much you missed me?” I growled, pressing my nose into the nape of her neck, my short beard brushing along her skin, the thrum of her pulse like a drum in my ears. “Come on. It’s my birthday after all.”

“Fuck you,” she hissed.

“Yeah, definitely my bitch.” I chuckled, pulling back to see her scowl at me.

I was jerked forward when her legs hooked around my back until the denim of my jeans pressed into the silk panties exposed as her skirt rose over her hips. “Are you going to stand there all day, or are you going to fuck me, old man?” she growled, punctuating it with a squeeze of her thighs.

“You better hold on then, girl, because I’m going to give you the best fucking of your life.”

“Bring it on, big boy.”