Chapter 20

Locke 

I don’t usually notice women when I walk into a room. I register them, sure, the same way that I register everything else – positions, exits, tensions brewing beneath conversation, who’s armed, who’s nervous, who’s lying – but that kind of awareness is functional So when something cuts through that discipline before I’ve even taken three steps inside the clubhouse, I take note of it. 

I let my attention do what it always does, travel slow and steady, taking in the room in pieces I clock Brick by the wall, Hawk at the bar, Mayhem pacing just enough to tell me something’s on his mind… and then it catches. 

On her. 

For one rare, dangerous second, my brain stops giving a fuck about anything else 

She’s standing at the bar beside Jade Callahan, one hip angled casually against the wood as she listens to something being said to her, and there’s nothing forced about her presence. nothing carefully arranged or attention-seeking. And she’s also truly, breathtakingly beautiful in all the ways that speak to me. 

Curves beneath a loose sweater that somehow makes me more aware of them instead of less, the line of her waist narrowing into hips I immediately know would fit perfectly beneath my hands. Dark curls spilling over her shoulders in thick, unruly waves that drag my attention toward thoughts I have no business having, thoughts involving those curls wrapped tightly around my fist while that sinful mouth parts beneath mine.