Taking a Dare - A Hellion MC Novel by J.A. Hornbuckle

of the girls, I
think her name was Tight, admitted with a sly smile. "We was
leaving the room and he actually said goodbye and bounced his hand
on my butt. Twice. I counted."
    "You ever notice he never fucks the same Honey two
nights in a row? It's like we're on fucking rotation or something."
I glanced over at the girl who'd spoken, Carmi I think her name
was, who was frowning into the huge bowl of fruit salad.
    Dee, who was frying up sausages on a large electric
griddle at the bar, spoke up. "He's got issues. Doesn't seem to
want or need to be connected to anybody but the brothers. Though, I
heard there had been a girl he'd jonesed on when he was younger.
Who broke his heart and screwed up his head. But it may have been
just a rumor or some crap."
    I blinked hard at her words and felt my stomach
clench. Since I knew he'd never had a girlfriend before me, I could
only figure the reason he never wrote back was because he'd found
someone else. Something I'd considered but now couldn't deny after
Dee's words.
    I put all the info I'd heard and shoved it on my
internal scale of 'do I or don't I go the next step with him?'
    If these Honeys were right, Dare was too closed off
for me to consider getting with long term. I knew I needed more
when I gave it up to a guy. Maybe not all the romantic shit, but
damn-well more than what the girls had said Dare gave them!
    I compared the hard-fucking man they described to the
sensual, sweet boy-man my heart remembered. A man who didn't want
or need the softness and care a woman could bring to the guy but
who'd seemed to crave it when he was young. I couldn't envision,
couldn't even imagine, them as being one and the same
person.
    And to compare either one to the man I'd almost
succumbed to the night before? It was mind boggling and I just
wasn't up for it.
    Shit! There was no way my Dare, not the Dare
of my heart, behaved like that.
    I knew how a club's rumor mill worked and knew that
the girls had more than likely added their own pieces to the
stories they'd told. It was a damn given that everybody fudged when
they told a good tale but only to make their story even better in
the retelling. More interesting if even in their own eyes.
    But the Honey's stories were all very similar and the
descriptions very much the same. So similar, I couldn't deny the
kernels of truth in them.
    Still, he was a low down, dirty bastard for basically
using the Honeys instead of his hand if that was the way he treated
them.
    Even if his amazing outsides didn't show it.
    Even if he'd never once treated me like that.
    I'd spied him from my place in the line of Honeys as
we'd carried in the food, bracketing the pans into the holders that
were set up. Following Dee's lead, I took the step and a half back
to lean against the back of the bar after setting my tray of food
in its holder. The hard wood digging into my tailbone provided a
much needed distraction from my contemplations.
    Thoughts that told me that in spite of what I'd
heard, my scales were definitely on one setting.
    I still wanted to be with him.
    And was more than willing to have him if for no other
reason than to complete our story and have the memory of him—all of
him—with me the rest of my days.
    I'd just have to keep reminding myself that temporary
was all it could ever be, all that I could hope to have with a man
called Dare.
     
    *.*.*.*.*
    From her glossy brown hair to the heeled boots she
was sporting, Dare couldn't imagine a more beautiful woman. It
wasn't just the way she was dressed, showing more class than all of
the Honeys combined. No, it was the sum of her…of all of her
that had him dazzled.
    And when she smiled at the girl next to her, he was
gone.
    Fuckin' lost in that bright smile.
    God fucking damn! He wanted to drag her off to the
nearest available room around the back and continue on with the
previous night's play . And this time to do it even better,
longer and with more of the adult doings.
    Although what they'd shared the