Against my volition, my belly swayed so I could test the validity of this statement.

This statement was valid.

Very nice.

A growly noise slid up his throat.

Crazy nice.

I melted deeper into his arms, running my hands inside his cut and over his pecs.

Also super nice.

“I see the answer to my question is yes,” he said.

What was I doing?

I halted the progress of my hands.

“I’m not intentionally turning you on,” I told him, and that was actually (kind of) true.

“Baby, watched you do your skip-jog to your car yesterday and stood on the steps to a cop shop fighting back a hard-on. Essentially you gotta breathe in my vicinity and I’m struggling with a boner.”

I started giggling again.

“She thinks it’s funny,” he murmured.

“Maybe we should go inside,” I suggested.

“Definitely you should go inside and get me a beer. I’ll be in when I can walk in the door and my dick isn’t entering the house before me.”

And more giggles.

“Get used to that,” he ordered.

“What?” I asked, still laughing.

“A time in your life where you’ll spend a lot of it laughing.”

Oh man.

I stopped laughing.

“Baby,” he whispered, “go get your man a beer.”

“You want Fat Tire, Coors, or Corona Light?”

His expression shifted like he was hiding something.

And what he was hiding was looking hurt.

“Fat Tire,” I said swiftly, having seen him drink that not only at the Compound when I was with Shy, but also order it at Colombo’s in the times he was not there to have cannoli and coffee but there to have pizza at the bar and I’d find times to break away and chat with him.

The veil drifted away and Snap was all good again.

It was in that moment I felt it imperative he knew.

So I told him.

“I was as into you as you were into me, Snapper. It was just all messed up then and it’s all messed up now.”

“Heavy shit tomorrow, honey,” he replied.

I nodded.

“Beer,” he reminded me.

I nodded again, started to pull at his arms but then stopped and rolled up on my toes to touch my lips to his before I pulled free and went in to get Snap’s beer.

The lip touch was about Sephora.

It was about Joe-joe-kah.

It was about the bed.

It was about Corona Light.

And also about tequila.

It was about the laughter.

And the tears.

It was about the house.

But oddly, most of all…

It was about the paint.

Chapter Five

Dawn

Rosalie

The sun was shining when my eyes opened.

So it was a sun-washed, tanned, defined, partially tatted male torso that my eyes hit the instant they opened.

I knew where I was.

I was in my new bed in the carriage house pressed down the side of Snapper.

And I knew why I was there.

I’d scratched the surface of precisely how extraordinary being a part of Chaos was.

But more, I’d dug deeper into just how extraordinary having Snapper in my life could be.

To say Carissa and Joker had filled my cupboards was an understatement. It was a wonder the kitchen didn’t sink down into the foundations a foot, it was groaning so much from food.

We made a dent in it eating chips and dip and sandwiches and drinking beer and wine, cosmos and tequila shooters (I just had beer).

It was all fine and dandy until (what it did not take very long to learn was) a hilarious woman named Elvira came over with her incredibly handsome fiancé Malik and then all hell broke loose when she and Mom talked the other women into playing quarters on my coffee table.

I decided to hang on the floor in the corner by the stairs with Snap and Joker, letting Travis and Nash (Lanie and Hop’s son) crawl all over us.

We got into tickle wars, fake wrestling, and generally being human jungle gyms while chatting. Or the men did this. Any time one of the little ones did something that might jar me, Snap snatched them up and let them crawl all over him.

It was sweet.

It was Snap.

And seeing how amazing he was with kids was doing a number on me.

While we sat and drank and played with the boys, we talked about Joker’s builds (he was young, younger than me, but he’d become the guy at Ride who designed and built their custom bikes and cars), Carissa’s plans to become a hair stylist, and going through properties on Snap’s phone that he was considering adding to his real estate empire.

It was then I learned that he didn’t just buy them. He bought them, fixed them up like the one we were in, then rented them undoubtedly at high rates in order to attract a certain tenant that wouldn’t give him shit or leave his places trashed and probably lined his world with cash.

He wasn’t trying to be a real estate mogul.

But as I listened to him talk casually to Joker about how he handled six properties, his work at Ride, and his work with the Club, like it was nothing, not to mention looking to add to his modest but growing dynasty, he just simply was.

A biker becoming a mogul.