by R. J. Lewis
He appeared for a moment slightly disappointed. “I told you I’m not that man anymore.”
“I know, but I can’t risk you going out there,” I told him, a plea in my tone. “Please, don’t confront them. That’s what they want.”
“A bunch of guys are coming,” Jem intervened. “Like I said, it won’t come to anything.”
Conor flicked his eyes at him now, and his expression changed slowly. “If you get someone else to fight my battles, this’ll never stop, Jem.”
Jem hesitated, appearing conflicted now as he looked at me. “Think of Charlotte, Conor.”
Conor’s nose flared. “It’s for Charlotte that I’m not going to stand behind the blinds like a scared little boy.”
I began to shake my head, “Conor –”
He stormed past me and to the door. Jem grabbed him by the arm just before he got to it, pleading, “Conor, you have to be rational, man. You have to be cool about this.”
Conor didn’t rip his arm out of Jem’s hold. Instead, he went still and stared at Jem, responding calmly, “Have a bit of faith in me, Jem.”
Jem reluctantly let go, but it wasn’t what he wanted to do. Breathing harder, he forced a nod at Conor. “Then I’m coming with you.”
My body felt heavy with dread as I watched Conor turn to the door and whip it open. Looking utterly fearless, he stepped out and Jem followed right behind him, while I just stood there, unable to move my feet.
It was the shouts flooding the air that prompted me out of my dazed state and to the door. Conor was standing on the porch, Jem was at the bottom of the steps, and before us, at the end of my driveway, were over a dozen men prickling with fury.
“Don’t you go out there,” Megan scolded from behind me.
I turned back to look at her. She was outside the living room, flicking glances at Penny and then me, her expression pleading for me to stay put.
“This is not your fight,” she whisper-hissed. “The second you poke your head out there, you’re just another target for those dirty piranhas.”
“I can’t have Conor lash out –”
“He’s already decided what he wants to do. We can’t put a stop to that. He decides his fate, not us.”
She was right. I knew that. I couldn’t babysit his every move, but it was hard. It was so hard to not chase after him. I had no control, no way to sway him because Megan was right. No matter the change in him, he was determined to face his problems head on.
But the risk was too great to take. He might need me. I couldn’t leave him out there in front of all those people.
Without waiting for a response, she disappeared back into the living room. My body burst with adrenaline. I didn’t need to do anything, I told myself. I just had to be there for him. Just stand beside him and remind him I was there and he needed to be careful.
Determined, I looked back at the door and froze, my heart jumping in my chest at the sight of Billy standing in front of it, blocking my way.
“No,” he whispered, adamantly. “No, Char.”
But he needs me.
“Not this way.”
Move.
Billy shook his head. “No. Give him a chance.”
I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.
He was right. I knew he was right.
“This is your fault,” I fumed, tears pricking my eyes. “This is your fucking fault, Billy.”
He looked down at his feet, too ashamed to meet my eye.
Heart in my throat, I quickly moved out of sight, hurrying back to the window to peer out.
Chapter Thirteen
Thames
Was it bad that, aside from Paul’s red face standing in the far back, he didn’t recognize a single face bristling before him? There were older men, men his age, men even younger than him that he was certain he’d never even met.
He stood there, unflinching, eyes moving along the crowd of faces, asking himself just what in the fuck he’d done to piss them off. This couldn’t have been about Billy. That little shit was dirty, even to their standards.
This was something else entirely.
“Stay off the fucking driveway,” Jem growled, pointing his finger at the crowd.
They shouted obscenities then. He heard the random words thrown his way.
He wasn’t welcome.
He needed to leave.
He was going to get hurt one of these days.
The town wasn’t his to disrupt, never was, and never would be.
Conor Thames needed to leave and never come back.
But they weren’t shouts you’d hear from a truly enraged crowd of people. They sort of sounded weak and forced.
All of the words slid off Thames like water off a duck’s back. He felt his lips flinching, felt like he might smile, and he didn’t want to. He really didn’t, but these guys weren’t stepping forward, they weren’t moving in his direction. They stared him over, picking him apart, looking more devastated the longer they studied him, realizing he wasn’t going to be easy to put down, and it wasn’t just the look of him – it was more than that. They sensed his darkness. They saw it in his face, in the way he peered at them coldly, unafraid. The cheeky bully from the past was all gone. He was all man, and something else too.
The something else bit scared them.
Disrupting the shouts was the sound of a car screeching down the road, stopping abruptly in the middle of the street in front of the house. Thames recognized the car, had rode in the backseat of it not too long ago. He felt something in his chest stir as the door of the black car slammed open and a furious body stepped out. Jem stood up straighter, looking stiff from surprise as the crowd turned in time to see Locke opening the trunk of his car and pulling something long out.
By now the men had gone quiet, their attention glued to Locke as he strode past them, slinging a shovel over his shoulder. His expression was dark, his body foreboding as he eyed the men he passed with cold eyes. He walked to the front yard, stepping over the flowers and along the trimmed grass.
Then he stopped and stood before the men and, grabbing the shovel in both hands, he plunged the end of it into the ground and used his very expensive leather monk-strap dress shoe to press it into the earth so that it stood upright before them.
“Take one step forward and you’ll be using this shovel to dig your own grave,” he threatened. He stared at them hard as the silence stretched, and then he raised his brows. “Test me. Come on, test me.”
No one tested him.
Eyes darted from Locke to Thames and suddenly their faces cleared and some even shrugged because, pfft, there was no trouble – what trouble? If Conor Thames wanted to be in town, had anyone said otherwise? Not them. Surely not them. Locke had it all wrong and they were going now – yeah, they didn’t mean anything by it.
In under a minute, the men had scattered in all directions, climbing into their cars. They sped out of there, but not too fast because Locke’s car was in the middle of the road and, shit, they weren’t going to fuck with his car, no way, but, fuck, one man may have gotten too close and he was sweating bullets, but it was okay because he didn’t actually graze the car; he raised a hand in apology at Locke as he safely drove the rest of the way down the family neighbourhood.
Thames felt the smile stretch across his face. Locke turned around to look at him, his eyes softening.
“Already the drama finds you, Thames,” he remarked lightly.
Thames nodded. “Always.”
“How’d you know?” Jem asked haughtily, his tone strange as he eyed Locke with nothing light in his own expression.
Locke didn’t even look at him. “Charlotte,” he simply answered.
Thames spotted the odd tension between the two men but decided not to address it. Instead, he gave Locke a meaningful look and said, “Thanks.”
Locke stiffened a nod in return, saying nothing.
“You should come in,” Thames continued. “Out of the cold, all of us…”
&
nbsp; Jem didn’t respond, and Locke took a step back, glancing briefly at his watch. Thames instantly recognized it. No matter the expensive suits and shoes and haircuts, Locke always wore the same watch since he’d graduated high school. It wasn’t anything special, but Locke had worked a shitty job for months and months and splurged on it one day in what seemed like the most impulsive purchase. It was a Seiko square watch with a plain blue face. At the time it was four hundred dollars, and Thames knew it meant a lot to Locke to purchase it. Such a curious thing to see it still on him.
“I was in the middle of something…” Locke began to say.
“I recognized some of those guys,” Jem interrupted, his tone sharp. “They’ve been a problem in town for a while now. I’m curious why you haven’t run them out of here.”
Locke flexed his jaw, snarling, “I didn’t realize running unsavoury people out of Blackwater was my job, Jem.”
“You’ve driven all kinds of them out before.”
“If you want me to kick out every shitty person, who’d end up going to your bar?”
Jem took a moment to absorb that insult and then he chuckled, but it was not out of humour. “You can come around here and play the hero all you want, buddy, but it doesn’t erase what you’ve done to this place.”
Locke smiled coldly at him. “Tell me what a hero does then, Jem, so I understand it right.”
Jem didn’t respond, but his expression twisted to confusion.
Right then the sky thundered loudly, and the clouds opened up with heavy rain. The three men stood still, eyes darting from face to face, a strange undercurrent of emotions filling the space between them.
How had they ever buried the past before? Because right now it was present like a ghost: you couldn’t see it, but you could feel its haunting touch.
Poking her head out the door, Charlotte called out, “Get in before you get drenched.”
They were already drenched and didn’t care. The tension wasn’t broken. Something was happening there on the driveway between them. Something Thames didn’t understand, but he knew it had to do with Locke.
There was something about Max Locke that followed Thames everywhere he went. It was like his presence was around him at all times, and it didn’t make sense to feel that way.
Or did it?
It left Thames a little uneasy.
It rained like this that day, he thought just then, looking at Jem now. Jem looked back, his eyes sad.
Could it be they were thinking the same thing?
The rain pounded harder on them, and they stood still, taking it on like…like the rain could wash away their sins.
Was such a thing possible? Could your sins ever truly wash away? At what force did the rainfall have to be for that to happen?
“I’ve got somewhere to be,” Locke finally spoke, his voice detached. “I’ll have some men drive by the house intermittently in case of trouble. Here’s the key to that car, by the way. It’s at the motel, where you wanted it.”
He didn’t wait for a reply. He pulled out the key to the SUV and tossed it to Thames to catch. Then he left quickly, like he sensed what wasn’t being spoken and he couldn’t bear confronting it.
Neither of them were ready to.
Jem didn’t stick around either. Drenched and cold, he turned his steely eyes to Thames and tried hard to mask his emotions.
“I gotta get back to the bar, buddy.”
“You sure?”
Jem nodded. “I know you need your space.”
He sounded like he needed it too.
He waited in his car, and not long after Megan followed, giving Thames a tight hug. Respecting their space, she left with Jem.
Thames stood on the porch, wet, cold…confused.
He teetered on a truth that was hidden in plain sight, but he couldn’t place it.
But it was in Locke.
It was in Locke, he was certain of it.
He watched the headlights disappear down the road, thinking how different everything felt now. He couldn’t shake the feeling of grief, wondering when, along the way, everything changed.
That night, Thames sat on the edge of the bed, staring down at his wrist as he traced the number there with his index finger. He’d never appreciated the number before. He’d hated seeing his flesh marred by the permanent ink, reminding him of his place in the crew.
But right then, reminded of what it stood for, he felt peace at the sight of it.
“You’re only part of the crew when you’ve endured hell and unimaginable pain,” Holden told him. “Ravens stand for lost souls. They represent loss and death. The only reason you’re part of us now is because you know exactly what that loss feels like. You know what it’s like to take life away, and like the dark plumage on a raven, you have a similar darkness surrounding you. It’s a darkness that feels heavy and cold, and it’s your driving force within this prison to keep you going.”
Then, when the number had been inked in place, red and stinging on his skin, Holden said, “Welcome to the crew, bro. Your place here was earned. Your protection within these walls starts now.”
“Conor.”
He jerked his head up. Charlotte was standing outside the bathroom, a towel wrapped tightly around her body. Her face was flushed red, her hair down and wet. The scent of her body wash wafted to him, so feminine and so Charlotte.
“Dove,” he whispered, eyes trailing her bare shoulders, “why are you in that ridiculous towel?”
She glanced at the towel, confused. “What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s on you.”
Her lips spread into a wide grin. “What’re you going to do about it, Conor?”
“Come closer and find out.”
He’d tear it off her with his teeth if he had to. God, anything to get that fucking towel off and his hands on that soft skin.
Biting her bottom lip, she looked over at the bedroom door. “Is Penny asleep?”
“I read a chapter from this weird as fuck dragon book. She fell asleep halfway through.”
Charlotte laughed. “She doesn’t like that book, you know.”
“She asked me to read it.”
Her expression turned tender. “She likes to hear your voice, I think.”
Cute. But he didn’t want to talk about dragon books and Penny right now. Not when his dove was wrapped in that ridiculous fucking handkerchief of a thing.
Looking at her deeply, he said, “The door’s locked. Come to me, Char.”
“But…are you alright?”
“I’m alright, why?”
“You just looked a little sad.” Her eyes flickered to his wrist, curiosity growing.
He turned his wrist over so she couldn’t linger too long on the tattoo. “I’m only sad you’re still wearing that towel. Get your ass over here.”
God, he loved how timid she looked.
Blushing, she went to him, her eyes moving over his frame. He was in just his briefs, he’d showered before she did, and his hair was still damp and falling over parts of his forehead. He knew she liked seeing him like this. Her eyes grew heavy the second she neared. Within reach, he grabbed her arm and pulled her to him, ripping the towel straight off her body, muttering heatedly, “This is a stupid towel, pup. It’s like a fucking square, can’t absorb shit either. Look at you, your skin’s still wet. You teasing me with this shit?”
Her laugh was short as he pulled her down over him, making her wrap her legs around his hips. He immediately dropped his head to her chest, kissing her bare breasts. Her hands tangled in his hair as she breathed heavier.
His large hands ran down her back, cupping her ass cheeks. He pulled her closer, sucking her nipple, feeling her heat everywhere. He licked up her breast to her throat, sucking fiercely at the tender flesh there, making her squirm against him.
“Conor,” she breathed out, tugging at his hair now, feeling needy in his arms.
“Yeah, dove,” he murmured.
“You drive me crazy, you know that? I am
so crazy for you. I can’t stop wanting you…”
Her hands ran down his neck. She pressed her forehead against his, staring into his eyes with that yearning look, as she roamed her hands down his chest. The second her fingers needily gripped his briefs, lightly grazing over his hard cock, he spun around and placed her down on the mattress.
“Conor…” Her voice trailed as he crashed his mouth against hers. She wrapped her arms around him and opened her mouth, immediately sliding her tongue between his lips. He felt her body go tight, felt her legs spread, moaning her approval when he flicked his tongue back.
He was pent-up, ravenous, unable to hold back. He slid his briefs off and, in one easy stroke, he thrust into her warmth. Into all that goodness. He groaned, eyes shut as he felt her all around him, gripping his dick. He could already feel her walls twitch around him, like she might come just from that stroke alone.
He was so impossibly hard, so swollen and tender, and all he wanted to do was devour her. He did not want to be gentle.
God, she deserved gentle.
“Dove, I want to take you so hard, please tell me not to,” he pleaded, eyes still shut, forehead pressed against hers. “Please, tell me to be slow. My body always listens to you, baby. Tell me what you want.”
“You have my permission to let go,” she whispered.
He tried not to. Really, he did. He buried his face against her neck and pumped into her slowly, feeling every inch of his length slide in and out of her. The pleasure was almost too much to bear. He parted his lips, tasting her skin as he went, trying so fucking hard to reel his need in and make love to her.
But how could he make love to her when his eyes were shut, when his face was hidden, when his hands were trembling against her body?
“I win when he’s down?”
“You win when he’s dead.”
He moved faster, possessed, emotion buried behind his eyes. She gripped his back tightly, already up for the ride, moaning beneath him as he buried himself to the hilt time and time again.
