“We’ll ask him some questions. Figure out where to find Ricky, and where to find the girls.”
“Ask him questions,” Elijah said flatly. Full of doubt.
“Do you really want the dirty details?”
He made a face. “No.” He sighed. “You really think you’ll find Allie and Nicole?”
“I hope so.” Carter knocked him lightly in the shoulder with a closed fist, and it didn’t inspire the same shock and awe that Ghost’s touch had. He was trusted; it felt good. “Get home. Keep a watchful eye.” He didn’t tell him that Hound and Rottie would be parked in front of his house all night to keep an eye out. No sense terrifying the poor kid.
~*~
Fred turned out to be white, blond, and in his early thirties. He had the physique of a former athlete gone soft, and the piggish nose of overbred Southern Old Money; the flushed cheeks, the colorless lashes. “Oughta be a football coach with a face like that,” Ghost told him, before he left the garage and left their hostage in Mercy’s very capable hands.
That had been an hour ago. Carter wasn’t sure why he’d stayed – he was sipping the whiskey Fox had brought him to keep his stomach from getting too jumpy. He guessed it was something about Mercy praising him, Ghost praising him; stepping up, again. If he was going to be a member of this club, he couldn’t keep shying away from the unsavory aspects of it. In meant all in…even when Mercy was doing what he did best.
Walsh was on secretary duty, as usual. He sat on a work bench, clipboard in one hand, pen poised with the other. His expression was weary, with only the faint lines on his brow to indicate any disgust in the proceedings. “If you’ll cooperate, all of this can stop,” he said, not for the first time. “I honestly don’t understand why we’re going through this whole charade. Give us Ricky, give us the girls, and the pain will stop.”
Fred sat slumped in the chair he was taped to, head hanging, sweat-soaked hair falling across his forehead. A long, sticky line of blood dripped down off his lower lip, and finally landed with a wet splat on the floor with the rest of it.
Mercy laced a hand in his hair and lifted his face; eyes glassy, face etched with a numbing kind of pain. Blood trickled over his lower lip, and ran down his chin. “I took the back ones,” Mercy said, almost sweetly, his voice low like a purr. “Fuck around anymore, and I’ll take the front ones, too. Good luck charming teenagers with dentures.”
His mouth moved, and he murmured something unintelligible, the blood bubbling between his lips.
“What was that?” Mercy lifted the pliers again.
“No,” Fred choked out, voice slurred, mouth full of blood. “I’ll…okay…okay…”
Mercy kept hold of his hair, and used it to turn his head so he faced Walsh.
Carter took another sip, dimly aware of Reese and Tenny walking circles around the edges of the light, like circling sharks moving in opposite directions.
Walsh said, “What’s your real name?”
“Pete – Peter Weston.”
Walsh wrote it down, and lifted his brows. “Where are you from, originally?”
“Here. I – I grew up” – he swallowed with an audible gulp – “here.”
“Doing what?”
“I work – I work for the mayor. I’m his – personal assistant.” His eyes fluttered closed a moment, and Mercy and Walsh shared a look.
Walsh said, “What’s the mayor’s personal assistant doing selling drugs to minors?”
“He told me – Mayor Cunningham, he said it had to be me. He couldn’t do it.”
“Why would he want to do it anyway?” Walsh had an alarming amount of patience in these situations, but Carter detected a hint of strain. The patience was wearing thin.
More blood welled and dribbled. Carter saw Mercy’s hand tighten in the man’s hair. “Had to – had to – take the Dogs out.”
“A mayor who wants to get rid of the Dogs. There’s an original thought.”
Mercy chuckled.
Walsh said, “Any particular reason – Merc, he’s passing out.” A quick slap roused him. “Why does he want to take the Dogs out?” Walsh repeated, slower and louder.
“It…isssa for the plan. The big plan.”
Walsh sighed. “What plan?”
Peter’s eyes fluttered closed again.
“Shit, he won’t last much longer.” Walsh stood, and went to stand in front of him, snapping his fingers to get his attention. “Hey, hey, look at me. Where’s Ricky?”
He stared up at Walsh with unfocused, tear-bright eyes. “He’s gone,” he said, and then the pain finally pulled him under.
“Shit,” Walsh said, turning and stalking away. He wiped his hand over his mouth, jaw tight afterward, and, in that moment, beneath the soft glow of the overhead light, he seemed more like a man – uncertain, frustrated, worried – than the stone-cold Money Man of the club.
Carter was surprised by the way it unsettled him.
“Secure him,” Walsh said, gathering himself. “Keep him quiet. When he wakes up, we’ll try again.”
Carter drained off his drink, went to ask Ghost if he would be needed for a little while, and then he was on his bike.
Thirty-Four
“You don’t need to stay with me,” Leah said. She felt like a broken record.
“Do I look like I mind?” Ava asked. They were sitting at the kitchen table playing doubles solitaire, the slap and slide of the cards a much-missed Southern comfort for Leah.
Night had fallen, and Evan was watching some kind of awful reality show over on the couch, and Leah was starting to wonder what exactly they were waiting on. She didn’t think Ava planned to spend the night, not with her kids back at the clubhouse, and she couldn’t imagine Evan would be ordered to stay here while Ava drove back on her own, in the dark. The lateness of the hour only made everything worse, she figured.
“No, but…” She lowered her voice. “How long do you think it’ll be like this? Will I be able to go to work tomorrow?” Despite Ian knowing the current situation, she loathed the idea of calling in sick so soon into her tenure with the company.
“Yeah, I think–” She was interrupted by a knock at the door. “Speak of the devil.”
Evan turned off the TV and went to answer it.
“Check first,” Ava reminded.
He did, and then unlocked and opened the door. Leah was expecting Mercy, come to collect his wife, but it was Carter who stepped inside, and she was immediately all butterflies and champagne fizz inside. The day’s stress and fatigue melted away, and she couldn’t keep from smiling broadly.
Ava’s little chuckle indicated she’d noticed.
Leah kicked her under the table as Carter walked toward them.
He looked tired, she noticed. A little pale and worn-down.
He smiled at her, though. Just at her, his gaze fixed, and a little color bloomed in his cheeks.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
“Oh, God,” Ava said, standing. “Y’all are still at the awkward ‘hi’ stage. I’ll leave you to it.”
Belatedly, Leah tore her gaze from Carter. “Wait, you’re going? You headed back home?” She shot a glance toward the window, the night inky black beyond the glass.
“To the clubhouse. The kids are probably already tired, and Mercy’s there.”
“If it’s not okay for me to be here alone, then it’s not okay for you to drive alone,” Leah reasoned.
“Don’t worry, I’ve got Evan,” Ava said, gesturing toward him with a flourish…then making a face.
“I saw that,” Evan said, pouting a little.
“It’s fine,” Ava said. “We’ll be fine. I can even text you if you want when I get there.”
“Please.”
As they left, Carter said, “I wouldn’t worry too much. Ava shot a man’s face clean off once.”
Leah felt her brows go up. “When?”
“In Louisiana.” He shrugged, and sat down in Ava’s vacated chair. “Cards?”
&nbs
p; The door clicked shut.
She nodded. “Nervous fingers, I guess.” She displayed them, and found them trembling slightly – though the tremors weren’t from nerves. Not mostly. More like anticipation.
He studied them seriously a moment, and nodded.
“Are you my bodyguard for the night shift?” she asking, aiming for teasing.
But he nodded again, serious and drawn tight. “Hold on,” he said, and got up to go slide the chain home on the door, and check the deadbolt.
“Oh,” she said, as he stood a moment, fingertips braced on the panel, looking out through the peephole. “Ian sent two guards to the chop today to watch out for Mom and Dad. Big guys. They looked like they just got done fighting Sly Stallone or something.” Her chuckle came out faint. Why was she so jittery, suddenly?
He turned, and walked back toward the table, unhurried, but with a clear purpose. His expression was so serious, like it had been this morning.
“You know,” she said as he neared, “if you didn’t want to go to all the trouble, we could stage a very public argument and then keep clear of each other. No one would think I was important to the club, then, and no one would have to–”
He reached her, and took hold of her hands; they’d been fluttering around her head as she spoke. Closed his over them, warm, and firm, and callused at the base of each finger from his handlebars. He tugged her up out of her chair, and reeled her in toward him.
She went up on her toes automatically. “Babysit me,” she finished on an unsteady breath. “Carter?”
His own breath, when he released it, wasn’t all that steady either. “I know I ought to be doing this the slow way. The right way. A gentleman and all that–”
“You’re a gentleman.”
“I’m really not.” He released her hand and cupped his palm around her throat, thumb skating up her pulse, speeding faster, faster by the second. “We haven’t even had a real date. I said I would take you to dinner.”
His gaze, trained on her mouth, was nearly feverish. She hadn’t been able to tell that, from a distance, when he’d first walked in. He’d been quiet, calm – he’d been restrained. Eyes dilated, pulse visible in his throat, he was about to snap, and such blatant evidence of his want was electrifying.
He said, “But…”
“It’s been a shit day.”
“Yeah. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
She slipped her arms around his neck and met his kiss halfway.
His lips were warm, and chapped, and his tongue flicked hot and wet right away at the seam of her lips. She opened to him, and it was instantly incendiary; slick, and deep, and dizzying.
His hand slid up to cup her jaw, cradling her face, holding her to him.
She could touch too, she realized, belatedly through the haze of desire; she trailed her fingers up the back of his neck, into the short hair at his nape; softer than it looked, almost fluffy, thick and slippery as she burrowed through it, feeling greedy, pulling him down to her more firmly.
His tongue was wicked. She’d never kissed or been kissed like this, and a part of her felt she ought to be ashamed right now of the wanton moan building in her throat, but she couldn’t be. Not when it felt this good. Not when she could feel how much he wanted her – very distinctly, as his hips pressed in close, and she could feel him stirring half-hard behind his fly.
She’d pulled back last night. Too much too fast. But she’d been tailed by a bodyguard all day, and the club was going to war; girls were getting snatched off the street, and nothing was safe, nothing was guaranteed – nothing but the surety that this was going to be good. So fuck it. Fuck restraint.
She didn’t realize he’d been waltzing her steadily across the room until her back hit the kitchen counter.
“Shit,” he muttered, swaying backward, breaking the kiss, putting a bit of distance between them.
That wasn’t acceptable, but it gave her a chance to peel her shirt off over her head.
His eyes popped wide, falling right to her breasts, her purple, floral-stitched bra. “Oh,” he said. “Okay, we’re doing this.”
“Uh, yeah,” she said, an unexpected laugh bubbling.
He grinned, and shucked his cut; it landed on the floor with a heavy sound, and then his hands were on the hem of that tight white t-shirt she’d admired this morning.
She had one fleeting moment of doubt, as his gaze stayed trained on her chest. She wasn’t a busty girl; couldn’t hope to compare to the sorts of women she’d seen around the clubhouse, with their overflowing halter tops struggling to contain D-cups. But his gaze was only heated and ardent, and then he got his shirt off, and it wasn’t her chest she was thinking about anymore.
She’d strolled past the practice fields a time or two in her days at Knoxville High; had shot appreciative glances toward the players during spring and fall training, shirtless, glistening, still contrastingly lean and edged with puppy fat in places, young guys not yet in their prime, but full of promise.
Carter Michaels was in his prime now. Holy hell. Naturally lean, he’d been lifting wights, and he’d put on muscle, stark contours along his pecs and abs.
Without thinking, she reached out and traced his Adonis lines with her thumbs, watching the flickering in his stomach as he sucked in a breath in reaction.
“Damn,” she said, voice lower than she’d ever heard it. It was the only coherent word she could form. He was gorgeous, and her mouth was dry, and his stomach caved in beneath her fingertips as she trailed them up his washboard abs.
When she reached his pecs, she spread her hands over them, felt the heat of his skin, the thud of his heartbeat. Felt his nipples draw up to sharp points. He was affected; she was affecting him. It was a head rush of the best kind.
She lifted her head to meet his gaze, finally – and was shocked by what she found there. Negative tension marked his brow. His mouth was closed, now, set, nostrils flaring as he breathed. He looked apprehensive; she could see him withdrawing from the moment, shutters coming down in his mind.
She lifted a hand to touch his jaw, startled by the tension there, the leap of a muscle beneath her fingertips. “Hey. What’s wrong?”
He shook his head. “Nothing.” His hands landed on her hips, right at her waistband, and skated lightly up and down, petting her waist. One corner of his mouth twitched up in a pitiful smile. “Like what you see?” His tone was off; more mocking than cocky, almost bitter.
“Yeah,” she said, right away, and his quick nod was wrong, too.
How could anyone who looked like him be self-conscious? Unless…
She swallowed, and took a leap of faith, hoping, thinking, she was reading him right. “Yeah,” she repeated. “You’re okay. If you’re into muscles and stuff.” She made a face. “But mostly I just like that you’re sweet, but that you came in here ready to throw down, because I don’t know about you, but I’m keyed the hell up after today. Let’s bone, and then make nachos, huh?”
His brows shot up. His gaze cycled through surprise, alarm…and then melted into something amused. And fond. And soft.
He breathed a quiet laugh through his nose, and when he smiled, she felt the tension in his jaw ease a fraction beneath her palm. She stroked the sharp edge of it; smoothed a thumb across one pretty cheek.
“You’re weird,” he said, affectionately, and he put his arms around her and pulled her in close. Pressed a shockingly chaste kiss to her forehead.
It was amazing how quickly the mood had shifted, but she couldn’t regret it, not standing pressed skin to flushed skin, his strong arms tight around her, his chin propped on top of her head. Couldn’t regret the way this brought them closer than kissing could. Both were wonderful in their own way. And it was reassuring to see that he had doubts, too; she wasn’t alone in this, they were together.
“There’s a lot of girls who look at your body, aren’t there?” she asked. “And don’t look any further.”
She felt his chin move as he swall
owed. “Yeah.”
“Same here. Just…for different reasons.”
His hands circled on her bare back, calluses catching at the satin band of her bra. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too. It sucks being this beautiful sometimes,” she joked, and he snorted hard enough to ruffle her hair.
She did understand, though. How many times had she been judged on sight? For being Asian. For being small. For having pink hair. For being, as one of her Chicago coworkers had been overheard to say at the water cooler, “too fucking perky.” People had assumed she was good at math – she was, but she didn’t appreciate the stereotype, thank you very much. Men had called her an anime character, and men had called her ugly, and there probably weren’t many people alive who hadn’t had to push past erroneous first impressions, and prove themselves as multidimensional.
It would have been easy to see someone as beautiful as Carter as lucky…but it had been all too easy for some, she guessed, to only see Carter as beautiful. As a sex object, or a dumb blond.
He played with the length of her hair; traced idle fingertips along the bumps of her spine. “This is a really weird time for us to be doing – this.”
“To be fair, is there ever a time around here when it’s not weird?”
“No.” He sighed. “Not really.”
“It’ll pass,” she said. “It always does.”
“Yeah.” He didn’t sound convinced.
The seconds ticked by as they stood there, fingers exploring one another’s skin, swaying, a little, she began to realize. Side-to-side, at first – but then she felt a tell-tale twitch in his hips. Felt his muscles clench and release beneath his skin.
She smoothed her hands down to the small of his back; found the twin dimples just above the low rise of his jeans, and pressed her fingers into them until she felt him shiver all over – and press a little closer, hips twitching again.
One of his hands slid up beneath her hair, skimming back and forth across her upper back. The other moved to the band of her bra, with purpose this time; he slipped his thumb beneath it, and tested the give of the fabric; followed it all the way across, under the clasp, over her ribs, and then back.
Homecoming (Dartmoor Book 8) Page 37
