Page 2 of Coveted By Cupid

“Yes, sir,” he says earnestly. “I’m a quick study. Whatever the job is, I’m sure I’ll excel at it.”

“Good,” I say, pleased. “How long have you been a student at CSU?”

“Almost six years,” he answers. “I’ll be graduating in the spring.”

“You know the campus well then, da?”

“Oh yes,” he says, nodding. “Real well. I could give tours. What is it you need me to do?”

“The job is…unorthodox. It is not everyone’s cup of tea. You’ll be doing something similar to your friend here,” I say, motioning to my scout. “As a scout, you’ll be recruiting others to join the labor portion of the business. You’ll get a list of characteristics our clientele are looking for in a recruit. Your job is to find someone who checks all the boxes and inform me and my men where the recruit is located, allowing us to…set up a meeting. Each recruit you land, you get a few grand.”

The guy nods along, smiling. “Sounds doable. When do I start?”

I smirk, turning to my scout in the backseat. “Тебе повезло в этот раз.”

She gives me a thin, tense smile, doing her best not to reveal her nerves in front of the recruit who is watching our exchange.

Returning my attention to the college kid in the passenger seat, I pull out a slip of paper from my inside coat pocket and hand it to the guy. “Here’s your list. Find a potential source that fits all the criteria and notify our friend here in the backseat when you find the person.”

He takes the list from my hand, reading through the checklist with a furrowed brow of intent. When he’s done, he looks back at me with an unfazed expression—still clueless what I plan to do with the potential victims he finds me.

“Okay, I can work with this. How much time do I have to find someone who fits all this?” he asks, holding up the list.

“Two weeks. If you can’t fulfill the order, you don’t get paid.”

I lean into his space, getting right in his face to let him know I mean business. He blinks in surprise, shrinking against his seat.

“Don’t fuck this up. You’ll not like the penalty for failing.”

CHAPTER ONE

CUPID

When you have a road name like Cupid, you take a lot of crap during your prospect years. Not the case when you’re the President of the Royal Bastards MC for the Loveland, Colorado chapter. There have been a few fools who dared to snicker at my name, and I made them kiss the asphalt with their teeth for disrespecting me. It’s not about lacking tolerance. It’s about setting an example for others who dare to overstep our MC.

Royal Bastards are not to be fucked with, and it’s my job as the Loveland Chapter President to discipline those who try.

It’s not like I chose the name on my leather cut. That honor belonged to my biker brothers when I patched into the Royal Bastards years before.

Do I enjoy being named after a damn cherub?

Fuck no, at least not in my early days of club life.

Sure, I was pissed for a spell when the crew started calling me Cupid. But the name wasn’t going anywhere, and neither was I. Besides, when your surname is Amor, you know a ridiculous amount of Roman mythology from your dork adolescent days, and you have a knack for setting up your brothers with their ole ladies, the name Cupid fits.

What doesn’t fit is the illusion of weakness my road name gives others. While cupids are depicted as sweet little angels, I’m anything but. One look at my mean mug makes that abundantly clear to anyone assuming otherwise. It’s just an obnoxious, oxymoronic joke my brothers like to tease me about and others test against me.

Could I have protested the name choice my biker brothers had chosen?

Not without taking a lot of shit from the club and a beating.

Instead of being a whiny bitch over a joke, I did the only thing I had power over—I embraced my road name.

Hell, I even had the Roman god’s other half—a butterfly representing Psyche—tattooed across my chest with Cupid’s arrow pierced through it, sort of like the creature is pinned to me forever, filling the void of a woman’s place beside me, one I know I’ll never have. There is no woman who could bring me inner peace while accepting the life I lead.

Thank fuck for that. This life is hard enough without love mucking it up. I’m content being a matchmaker and never the matched, and I don’t intend to give up bachelorhood if I can help it, not unless Miss Perfect zips on by, lassos my attention, and drags me after her.

Fat chance it will happen.