the live music they would tell stories. Mostly those stories consisted of bragging about fights fought or lovers loved, though Brienne could not help but to be mesmerized. Roland was quiet through much of it, listening intently to the stories and sipping his mead, though he never took his eyes away from Brienne. She could feel his gaze upon her, even when she wasn’t looking at him herself. She was so comfortable in his presence, among his people, that it was beginning to frighten her.
She had been bold back at the frat party, though now that she was out here in the forest with the odd bikers she had begun to wonder what in the world she was doing. As if he’d sensed her growing unease, Roland reached out and pulled her to him, taking her comfortably into his lap as if she weighed little more than a doll. They shared his mead, each time they drained his cup another would appear, brought by one of the other bikers. Though her head had gotten a little foggy thanks to the mead, she could tell that Roland was a leader of some sort within the group, and that the other campfire belonged to another gang entirely.
Though the two groups seemed on good terms, sharing mead, conversation, and music, there was a growing tension that Brienne became aware of. Before long Josyln and Kelly were rather drunk, as most freshman college girls were prone to do, and they had begun dancing to the music of a particularly bawdy jam being laid down by the musicians. As she watched her friends dancing she noticed an achingly handsome man watching her from the fire of the other group. He was smaller than Roland, and from the look of him his strength was more of the tightly chorded muscle of an athlete compared to Roland’s burly workman brawn. His face was leaner too, and younger, giving him a sinister and feral look that while attractive also stirred other feelings in Brienne. She felt like prey all of a sudden, and that man was most certainly the predator. Roland noticed the shift in her posture and responded by beckoning one of his people to him. A grizzled older man with streaks of silver in his beard approached Roland and took a knee to listen to his leader.
“Womack, it looks like Arn might be considering taking our little get together in a different direction than we’d hoped,” said Roland as he looked across the fire towards the other group, “Why don’t you take our new friends over to his fire and introduce them.”
Womack nodded and as Brienne watched he waited for the sing-song story to finish and before the next began took the two girls by the hand. They were both reeling from drink and dancing, and went along happily. Brienne couldn’t help but smirk at just how stereotypical those two were being, the usual college freshman girls happy to be led by the nose into whatever adventure they could find. She was no different, she told herself, even if she wasn’t getting nearly as drunk or making as much of a scene. There were plenty of other women around the party, though most were at least in their twenties, some in their thirties or older, and most were paired off with men and didn’t seem to mind engaging in public displays of affection.
“So why didn’t you send me over there too hmm?” asked Brienne coyly as she sipped more of Roland’s mead.
“You are mine, and I want him to see that,” growled Roland, his masculine energy practically radiating from his skin, “But we are here to make a sort of peace, so why not gift him with the good company of your friends?”
“Chauvinist much? Gods you really are forward aren’t you?” said Brienne as she playfully hit Roland’s chest, “So what kind of peace could possibly be negotiated by a few drunk college chicks? This some kind of biker thing?”
“Yeah something like that, stick around long enough and you’ll see how it is,” Roland responded as a smile spread across his face, the light of the fire making his features shift from
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