Her Grizzly Outlaw by Jenika Snow

your face that you do—then you need to tell him.”
    Tarren nodded. They spoke about it for
a few more minutes. Alexis trying to get to the heart of it all was obvious,
and she wanted to just spill it all out, but not at the clubhouse. “I honestly
don’t know what Lucas wants out of life...”
    Alexis smiled softly, and Tarren knew that no matter what happened she’d always have
someone she could talk to, no matter what. She may not have said it all to Alexis,
but her friend had known.
    Tarren stood. “Thanks for listening to
me. I honestly have had no one I trust as much as I do you, Alexis.”
    And then Lucas and Nico pulled up on their Harleys, and the sound of their
engines was so loud it blocked everything else out.
    They both stood and walked over
to the window to stare out of it. Nico and Lucas were
off their bikes and speaking to each other. And then like out of some cheesy
porn movie, Red, a club whore for the Grizzly patched in kids, came sauntering
out of the clubhouse. She stopped beside Nico , but
instead of her going after Alexis’s man, she moved her red claws toward Lucas.
Red all but pressed her tits against the side of Lucas’s arm, and when he
turned away, disengaging her from him, she walked over to his bike. God, that
damn slut was like watching a train wreck, and Tarren wanted to look away but couldn’t.
    Red moved her hands along the
gleaming chrome and leather of Lucas’s bike, and although she couldn’t hear
what the bitch was saying, her body language told them she was trying to seduce
Lucas.
    “God, what a skank,” Alexis said,
and they both started laughing. It pissed Tarren off
for sure, but she did love the fact that Lucas didn’t even pay attention or act
like he cared.
    “Yeah, well at least she isn’t
all up on her like I thought she might be,” Tarren muttered under her breath. Red was pretty much posing on the bikes like she was
in some kind of damn Harley magazine.
    “If you guys are together he
wouldn’t do anything to betray you.”
    But they weren’t together, no
matter how much Tarren wanted that. She looked over
at her friend. Alexis clearly thought there was more there than the reality of
the situation, and maybe she would be with Lucas once they spoke and once she
came clean. Hell, he might tell her he was in love with her as well. Her heart
sped up at that thought. Nico headed toward the
clubhouse, and she knew Lucas would be coming in soon, too. She didn’t want to
see him right now, not after all this time, and the awkward exchanges they had
had over the last few years, but her car was parked right by his damn bike.
Yes, they had spoken just last week when she had come to his welcoming party,
but even then the exchange had been strange. She needed to get home, sit down
alone in her room, with the quiet around her and only her thoughts as her
company. Tarren needed to decide how she wanted to go
through with this.
    “Okay, I better get out of here.” Tarren turned away from the skank and gave Alexis a
hug. Nico was already moving into the meeting room, and Tarren kept walking
through the main room, passed the pool table, over by the front door, and
looked out the window once more to see only Red still standing by Lucas’s bike.
She hated that she was so nervous around him, that things had changed so much
between them over the years. Tarren was a coward, and
weak for wanting to avoid him until she figured shit out.
    She grabbed her sunglasses out of
her purse, opened the door, and before she stepped outside she was slamming
into Lucas’s hard chest. He grabbed her arms to steady her, looked at her in
the face, and this pained expression crossed his face.
    “ Tarren ,”
he said her name low, like he was breathless almost. God, he looked so good, so
masculine, and a little dirty because he had been clearly working on his bike.
But he smelled clean, like fresh sweat and a mixture of his cologne. He was
only twenty-two, the same age as she was, but he seemed