by Lynn Burke
We moved away from the window, but my mind refused to leave the sedan thing alone. Twice before noon, I texted Maci to check on her. She’d sent a sad emoji face as her second reply, so I gave her a call.
“What’s wrong?” I asked when she answered.
Her sigh hinted at tears. “Just tough being here without her, you know? I’ve been caring for her so damn long…” She sniffed, and the desire to hold her, take her mind off her grief clenched my fist.
“What can I do?”
A huff of laughter eased the dent between my brows. “Just a process I have to go through,” she said, and I imagined a smile on her lips even though tears probably wet her eyes. “I’m thinking I need to find a new place, though. Leave these memories behind and start over.”
“You can crash at my place until you find something,” I heard myself say. So much for not making myself vulnerable… I wanted her come hell or high water. If she tore my heart out, proving to not be as loyal as I wanted in an old lady, so be it.
“Seriously?”
“Wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it.”
“I just might have to take you up on that offer,” she said, her smile definitely widening, and my own lips twitched in response as I pushed my fears behind a steel door in my brain.
“It’s supposed to be in the sixties this weekend,” I said, needing to take my thoughts elsewhere. “Want to take a bike trip to the mountains? Get away for a couple days?”
“I’d love that.”
My mouth tried to smile, but I forced a grimace knowing how ugly I’d appear even though Hawk worked on the other side of the shop.
“I thought maybe I could take you to the pond while we’re up there.”
Silence hit my ear, and I cursed inwardly at suggesting it. She’d want to wait for her sister, not have a near-stranger tagging along for sprinkling her mother’s ashes.
“I—I’d like that,” Maci finally responded, her voice quiet. Small.
“What about your sister?”
“She always hated the camp.” Maci heaved a sigh over the line. “I’ll call her, but I’m sure she won’t mind. She’s said her goodbyes.”
“We can go up Friday. Take the back roads and stay at a little B&B up near Pine River Pond.”
“Sounds like a plan.” The smile returned to her voice. “Can I cook dinner for you tonight?”
“I’d love that,” I said, echoing her words, praying like fuck that she’d prove herself in the long run, or my heart would look like someone had taken a mallet to the fist-sized piece of flesh.
****
Hawk and I went to the club for lunch a little while later. We sat in Jonny’s office while Capone grilled up our burgers. Yeah, I might fall over of a fucking heart attack from eating them so damn much, but the man cooked one hell of a good patty.
“Same men?” Jonny asked Hawk, his brow raised.
“Sure of it,” Hawk replied.
Jonny stood and rounded his desk, grabbing a pair of binoculars from a small closet before making toward the door. “Upstairs.”
Hawk and I followed on his heels, up to the third floor. He entered the door of the room overlooking the club’s front without knocking.
“The fu—” Rucker said from the bed where two women worked him over, his curse cut off when landing on the three of us. Shelly and another skank started to back away, but Jonny ignored the trio and strode to the windows. We followed, and Rucker grabbed both women’s hair, pulling them back toward his dick. “Back to it, girls.”
Fucker didn’t have a self-conscious bone in his body.
As Shelly wrapped her lips around one of his balls, I turned away, pulling up beside Hawk.
Jonny held the binoculars to his eyes for a few seconds while the whores let out fake-ass moans alongside Rucker’s real ones. Jonny handed off the binoculars to Hawk.
The sounds from the three on the bed distracted me while I waited my turn to check out the fuckers in the sedan. I imagined shoving my cock down Maci’s throat, her swallows as I blew my load between her lips.
Hawk bumped my elbow, his brow raised, binoculars held toward me.
I cleared my throat and lifted them. My brow furrowed as I took in the two men. A redhead in the passenger seat, a bearded blond in the driver—same fuckers. Both sported tattoos and a couple face piercings.
“Anyone you know?” Jonny asked.
“Not your typical FBI, if that’s what they are,” Hawk muttered.
“Either they’re going to attempt getting in under cover,” I said while staring at the blond, who sent a tingle of unease down my spine, “or those motherfuckers are thinking about stirring up some shit.”
I lowered the binoculars, the memory of the blond’s face etched in my brain.
Jonny peered at me with his dark, assessing eyes—so like his father’s who’d sat in the president’s chair before him—but I didn’t shift. No one had shit on me. I had nothing to fear.
Rucker let out a low groan behind us. “Fuck, yeah. Just like that…”
“What do you want to do?” Hawk asked.
“Go stir up some shit,” Jonny and I both said at the same time as a shot of adrenaline spiked in my blood.
My lips actually pulled up into a grin.
“Blow your fucking load down Shelly’s throat already,” Jonny said to Rucker while turning for the door. “Then get your ass downstairs.”
The three of us trampled back down the stairs and downed a shot while waiting for Rucker. Only two other Gliders sat at the bar, and Jonny lowered the music to tell them it was time to confront the fuckers watching the club.
Once Rucker made an appearance, the six of us headed out the club’s front door, Jonny in the lead. I imagined what we looked like, striding toward the sedan—badass motherfuckers, fists clenched, confident strides, and murder in their eyes. Must have scared the shit out of the two men, because they lit out when it became apparent we headed their way.
“You have a brother?” Rucker asked as the sedan sped past us.
I jerked my head his way to find him peering at me. “No. Why?”
“’Cuz that monster driving is an ugly brute, just like you.”
One of the other brothers chuckled under his breath as we turned back toward the club, but I didn’t take offense. My mind chewed on what Rucker had said, that tingle of unease rippling down my spine again.
We ate our burgers at the bar, the eighties music still lowered. While wiping his mouth on a napkin, Jonny glanced at the closed club door as though he could see through it clear to the street, two blocks down where the sedan had sat. “They’ll be back, but probably not until after dark same as every night.” He leaned on the bar to catch both Hawk’s and my gaze. “Can you come back tonight at nine?” he asked, keeping his voice low.
I nodded without thought as Hawk also dipped his head in agreement. I’d have to reschedule the two tatts I had planned for that night, but it wouldn’t be a problem.
“Have your ladies stay at home. Let’s keep this as quiet as possible with no drama.”
Again, we both nodded.
“I think if it’s just the three of us and we act a little more nonchalant, maybe they won’t jet before having a few words.”
“Worth a try,” Hawk said.
“I’m game for whatever.” I met Jonny’s serious gaze—he knew exactly what I meant.
Lips pursed, he nodded. “If it comes to that.”
Hawk and I headed back to his shop, my mind on violence and the knowledge I had to protect Maci. She’d nabbed me with the first glance. Fucking owned me with the first kiss. Held my future in her hands whether I wanted her to or not.
Resigned to that fact, I prepared my heart and mind to be fucked over when she finally decided she’d had enough of my ugliness, enough of my lifestyle. But in the meantime, if knocking off a few assholes kept her and my brothers safe, I wouldn’t hesitate to throw down.
Maci
Grinning and heart light, I poured a little m
ore heavy cream into the alfredo sauce I had brought up to a simmer. A couple handfuls of shrimp, and I nodded. Ought to be perfect. I tested the linguini, deciding it needed another minute or two.
The rumble of Digger’s truck pulled close, and my pussy tightened, nipples pebbled. It had been all of twelve hours since I’d seen him, and my body craved his nearness. I’d grabbed one of his shirts when I’d first arrived an hour earlier, and had decided to wear that to make him dinner—and nothing else. The navy-blue t-shirt hung to my knees, hiding my nakedness, but not my hardened nipples.
Digger hadn’t even gotten all the way in the door before he groaned. “Fuck. Me.”
“After,” I said with a wink over my shoulder. “Don’t want dinner to get cold.”
He growled and swept me up into his arms, his hands on my ass. Nothing to do but wrap my legs around his waist, so I did. The attack he landed on my mouth spun my head. Accelerated my pulse until my heartbeat thumped in my ears. His disfigurement didn’t hinder his ability to kiss me senseless.
My pussy clenched on nothing, desperate to be filled with all eleven point six inches of his huge cock.
“What’s for dinner?” he asked while trailing kisses down my neck.
“Shrimp alfredo.” I gasped and ground myself against his hard ridge as he bit me, my fingers tangling in the hair atop his head.
“Damn.” He heaved a breath and tilted his forehead against mine. “I’ve only got a couple hours before I have to be back at the club, so let’s hurry up and eat so I can devour you for dessert.”
All kinds of yummy warmth flooded through me. “Gotta put me down first,” I whispered with a smirk.
Another groan, and he reluctantly put me back on my feet.
I turned on weakened legs to dump the linguini in the alfredo pan, and Digger tugged on the back of the t-shirt covering my ass.
“Christ, what a witch you are.”
Giggling, I sidestepped to put dinner on the table before he revealed my nakedness beneath. “Why do you have to be back at the club later tonight?”
“Jonny wants to have a little chat with whoever has been watching the club and following me.”
I hesitated in setting the pasta on the table a couple heartbeats, my stomach in a vise as Digger sat. “Something like that could escalate.”
He peered at me, sending a shiver down my spine—so not the kind I’d been looking forward to all day. “It could, yes, which is why I’m giving you this.” A clink on the tabletop drew my attention to his hand. A sheathed knife rested beneath.
“I’m going, too?” I asked, my voice a squeak as I sat down hard.
“No.” His gaze slid over my lips and along my collar bone before returning to my eyes. “But whoever the fuck is following me around … I don’t have a good feeling about their intentions. I want you to have some sort of protection on you when you aren’t with me. It’s only a four-inch blade, but it will be enough to take a man out if he ever thinks to touch you.”
I swallowed. Knowing he lived a dangerous lifestyle and possibly being threatened because of it were two totally different things. “You think I’m in danger?”
“If someone is after me, what’s to stop them from hurting you to get to me?”
Shit. “I—I’m a caretaker. Someone who set aside her life to keep another alive…”
Even through the whiskers on his jaw, I noted the tension. “Maybe you ought to get out while you can.”
My throat thickened as the vise on my stomach tightened. “Is that what you’d prefer?” I whispered. Everything about Digger drew me in, and the thought he wanted me gone turned my stomach sour.
“No.”
I chewed on his single word while gnawing the inside of my lower lip and the pasta grew cold.
He pushed the knife across the table.
Blinking up to meet his gaze, an overwhelming urge to accept the knife—character and life be damned—swept over me. “You want me to stay.”
“I hardly know you, but the thought of being without you feels like that blade would if it was buried in my stomach.”
Holy fucking shit. I stared. How was it possible to feel what I did, what he did, after a mere weekend together? Stuff like that only happened in romance novels and fairy tales, not real life, and especially not between two polar opposites.
“Say something, Maci.”
I swallowed again, trying to work enough saliva into my mouth to get words out. “You want me to be your old lady?”
“Yes.”
Grin, cry, or flee? I asked myself while studying his face. The softness in his gaze, the longing, loosened the clamp on my stomach.
My hand trembled, but I reached across the table and pulled the knife closer. Only a four-inch blade, I noted while pulling it out of its sheath.
“Capone forged it. It’s a boot knife.”
“Cooks and forges knives… Who’d have thought?” I murmured. Turning the blade in my hand had the overhead light glinting off the polished metal. The hilt fit my hand perfectly.
“You’re killing me here…”
I lifted my head, a smile growing on my face. “I’m scared shitless over all this—” I motioned a hand between us and toward the front door, “—but I can’t just walk away from you.”
He expelled a breath, seeming to melt in his chair. A definite twitch lifted the scarred corner of his lips.
“You’re smiling.” Even I could hear the wonder in my voice.
“Ugly as shit, isn’t it?” he asked, his eyes still betraying the insecurity wrapped around his self-consciousness.
“Not at all.” I stood and leaned over the table, cupping his face in one hand. “You’re hotter than hell. Every single part of you. Scar included.” He leaned toward me, and I kissed the disfigured side of his mouth, sliding my lips up over the whiskers attempting to cover the scar running clear up to his ear. “Now, eat your dinner, so you can tie me up and fuck me until I forget my name.”
He groaned, and I sat back, a saucy smirk tilting my lips.
“Witch,” he muttered while reaching for the alfredo.
****
Digger didn’t tie me up. Didn’t wrap his huge hands around my neck to bring me to the edge of passing out before climaxing. No spanking. Nothing but tenderness, sending wave after wave of unnamed emotion rolling over me, sweeping me up in the undertow. Whatever it was, whatever the energy I felt between us, I craved it. Couldn’t imagine life without it.
Had I lived before? Not really, I realized as I snuggled against his side, my cheek resting on one of his hard pecs. One of his arms lay beneath me, his palm resting on my lower back, keeping me close.
Eyes closed, I soaked in the warmth of his skin, listening to the steady thump of his heart beating in time with my own.
“What are you thinking?” he asked, his chest rumbling under my ear.
“That tonight could go terribly wrong,” I whispered. “That the strong beat against my cheek…”
Digger smoothed my hair away from my face, tangled his fingers through my messy locks, and tilted my head back. “We’re just going to go have a chat with them.”
I could barely make out his face in the darkness. “And if they do more than chat?”
“Then I’ll finish whatever they start.”
His confidence twitched my lips even though my stomach twisted. “I’m not ready to be without you, so you damn well better.”
“I will.” He squeezed me tight against his side. “Promise.” A few minutes later, he kissed the top of my head and slid out of the bed, leaving me alone and cold.
I hugged the comforter under my chin, breathing in the scent of his laundry detergent and lingering traces of his skin as he dressed in the darkness.
“I’ll be back,” he muttered from the doorway with an Arnold accent.
I should have laughed. Should have smiled, even, but I found my eyes filling with tears. “Hurry,” I whispered, knowing I wouldn’t fall asleep until he did.
Digger
>
Nine-ten, and Jonny headed for the door, Hawk and I on his heels. Just like he’d expected, the sedan had returned—but only because it had followed me from its spot outside my fucking house. The second I’d walked out and locked my front door behind me, I’d felt their stare. A quick glance down the street had confirmed my suspicion.
We ambled across the parking lot, and for a split second, I hesitated as realization of the stupidity of our actions sank into my head. What if they had guns and wanted us dead? A quick drive by, bullets flying, would easily drop just the three of us.
We all packed heat, but we were sitting ducks, our movements lit by the parking lot’s lights while they sat in darkness, possibly readying their firearms. The hairs on my neck stood on end.
“Jonny.”
My single word stopped him dead in his tracks. He glanced over his shoulder at me, brow raised. Hawk, too, stopped, turning to look at me.
I peered at the sedan, unable to see jack shit in the darkness beyond the parking lot as my breath fogged in front of my face. “I got a bad feeling about this.”
“What’s up, Digger?” he asked as I continued to stare at our watchers.
“They have the upper hand. If they think we’re going to start shit, they might try to finish it. Finish us.”
“Fuck.” Hawk’s word tore from his lips, and his hand twitched at his side.
“Don’t do it,” I said, my voice low, every muscle in my body tensed to grab my gun, same as Hawk. My legs flexed to spring into action if need be, but starting shit wasn’t in our best interest. “I think we ought to go back inside. Rethink this.”
“Jonny?” Hawk asked when he didn’t respond right away.
“I trust your judgment, Digger.” Jonny faced the sedan again, giving them his full attention for a few more seconds before turning back toward the club.
I gave my brothers a few paces’ head-start to make sure the sedan stayed put before turning my back on them. My ears strained for the shifting of gears, for tires crunching on gravel from behind me.
Nothing happened, and by the time I walked back into the club, the adrenaline in my blood needed to be used up. Mighty fucking fast.
