by Nina Levine
I frowned. “You thought you and King would get back together?” She’d told me the other day she wished things could have been different between them, so I figured that meant they had no hope of reconciliation.
Her words were a mix of disappointment, hurt, and bitterness when she answered me. “I’ve always held out hope, Devil, but that man will never change. No woman will ever be able to compete with his first love and beat her for the top place in his heart.”
I watched as she walked away, defeat clinging to her body so hard I wondered if she’d ever get over it.
I took hold of Hailee’s hand. “You good, darlin’?”
She nodded, no hint of hesitation to be seen. “I’m good.”
When we found King in his kitchen, he passed me a glass of rum. “Drink up, brother, you’re gonna need it for what I’m about to tell you.”
I took the drink and knocked back half of it. When King thought news was that bad I’d need alcohol to stomach it, I knew something was up.
King’s eyes fell on Hailee. “Who are you?”
“Hailee.” She sounded calm and unfazed by him, but her body was tense.
“And?” He clipped out. King wasn’t known for his patience with the women club members dated. Not until they became official. Then, he had all the time in the world for them.
“And I’m hoping this won’t take too long because Devil was about to take me home and fuck me before he received the call to come here,” she said, her body losing some of its tenseness.
King stared at her in silence, his face blank. You could bet his mind wasn’t blank, though. That brain of his would be processing thoughts at a rapid pace. Finally, he threw the remainder of his rum down his throat and said, “Jen, take Hailee into the lounge room. I want to talk to Devil alone.”
Jen shot a look of anger King’s way and started to say something, but King’s face clouded over with a dark warning and he barked, “Now!”
Her face scrunched up and she spat out, “You can be a fucking asshole when you want to be.”
King’s eyes didn’t leave her. “Yeah, well it takes a bitch to bring it out in me some days, and you’ve managed to hit the fucking motherload today.” He tracked her movements as she exited the room, Hailee in tow. When we were alone, he jerked his chin towards the backyard and said, “We need to take this outside.”
I followed him all the way to the middle of his yard. Darkness cloaked us and the heat of the night stuck to our skin. We were in the middle of a fucking heat wave in Sydney, and it wreaked havoc on my ability to think straight at times. However, my thoughts were clear as fuck. Something had spooked King and I sensed danger ahead.
“We found Shannon,” he started. “He won’t be a problem for anyone anymore. But he told me some of the shit that Jen told him while they were together, and it’s likely to come back and bite us in the ass.”
“Jesus, what did she tell him?”
“A lot of shit about how the club operates. Who supplied us back when she and I were together. Who our allies were, and our enemies, that kind of shit.”
“A lot of that has changed, though, King. How will that hurt us? Especially if he’s dead now.”
His voice dropped. “She told him about Moses. And I’m guessing that if the feds are sniffing around about that, he’s told them or someone else.”
“Fuck.” I raked my fingers through my hair, a sense of dread snaking through me. “Why the fuck would she tell him that? And what exactly did she know?”
“That’s what we’ve been arguing about. She swears she was drunk when she told him and that she didn’t tell him much at all. She doesn’t know the full story of what happened, because I never told her, but I’m guessing she knew just enough to give the feds a fucking hard-on.” He blew out a harsh breath. “I swear, women are more fucking hassle half the time than they’re worth. I should have known that Jen was sneaking around the fucking club sniffing out gossip and information.”
After spending time with Jen that week and seeing a different side to her, and then hearing her desperation tonight to reconcile with King, I paused for a moment while trying to take in all this new information. It would be easy to brand Jen as a malicious and vengeful bitch, and while she definitely fit that bill, I knew she was so much more complex than that. Not that giving her an inch of forgiveness would help the club, yet I couldn’t quite bring myself to despise her completely.
“Okay, so we can’t go back and change what’s been said or done. And I know you, King, as much as you’re angry with her now, you’ll end up standing by her, for the baby’s sake if nothing else. Which means that going another round with her is pointless. Why don’t you let me talk to her and see what I can find out?”
He remained silent for a beat; the only sound coming from him was his angry breaths. His anger made me think he’d say no to my request, but he surprised me when he agreed. “That woman will be the absolute fucking death of me one day. I know that, yet I can never say no to her. I can scream at her until I’m fucking blue in the face and feel like my chest has been ripped open with rage and hate and love. And yet, I can’t fucking say no.” His words fell out of his mouth along with his anger. In the end, all he seemed to be left with was an overwhelming sense of powerlessness. It reminded me that the only time I’d ever seen him like that also involved Jen.
“I understand, brother.”
And, I did. What he said about her dredged up my deeply buried feelings about my father. Feelings of hurt that were threaded with rage and hate and love also. However, just like King, I knew that if my father reached out to me now, even after fifteen years, and offered me hope that things could be different, I wouldn’t be able to say no. Even though saying yes could destroy me.
“Talk to her, Devil. Find out what we need.”
I headed back inside and found Jen and Hailee talking in the lounge room.
Jen glanced up at me. “Hailee has a wealth of knowledge about morning sickness. I’m hoping she might have the cure for me.”
Jen and King were so fucking similar. I guessed that was why they clashed so much. They were the only people I knew who could go from one extreme of emotion to another in less than ten minutes. Gone was her anger and in its place was something close to calm and happy.
Hailee touched her arm gently. “That remedy hasn’t worked for everyone I’ve told about it, but it has had some great results.”
“What’s the remedy?” King asked from behind me.
I stepped aside so he could join us. When he didn’t enter the room, I glanced back at him to find his arms crossed over his chest and his hard stare back in place. While he seemed resigned to the truth of his relationship with Jen, it didn’t appear that he was going to make it easy for either of them.
Jen’s wary gaze lingered on him. “A glass of milk and a milk arrowroot biscuit before getting out of bed in the morning. We’re not sure if it will help much in the afternoon, but I’m mostly sick in the morning now, so I’m hoping this will cure it.”
King listened intently and then nodded before giving his attention to Hailee. “Hailee, I think it’s time you and I had a chat. I figure that any woman Devil brings to my home must be one he intends spending some time with, which means she’s also a woman I want to get to know.”
Hailee’s eyes revealed her surprise, but she didn’t hesitate to stand and agree. The earlier apprehension I’d felt had eased and had been replaced with confidence that King would treat Hailee well.
Jen turned to me after they left and said, “He wants you to talk to me, doesn’t he?” She sighed. “That seems to be his way of dealing with me these days.”
I sat next to her. “He does, but it was my idea. Clearly, you two weren’t getting anywhere.”
Her caustic reply came straight back. “Clearly. But that’s because he wasn’t willing to listen to anything I had to say. Which, correct me if I’m wrong, seems to be King’s go-to response when he doesn’t get his own way. He’s always been like that.
”
If I was going to get anywhere with her, I needed to ease her into this. “He does like things to go his way, Jen, but aren’t we all like that? He’s not perfect, that’s for sure. But are you?”
She fired up at that. “No, but I never said I was!”
“I know. And I also know that he’s hurt you deeply. I don’t know the ins and out of it, and I don’t want to know. But I do know that he cares about you, even when you feel like he doesn’t.”
Her body sagged and the spirit she’d brought to her fight with King, drained from her. “I know,” she whispered, her voice close to breaking. A tear slid down her face. “I can’t help myself from fighting with him. We just bring the worst out in each other sometimes. And then at other times, he’s amazing and I remember why I love him so much.” A guttural sob tore from her and she clapped her hands over her mouth as she looked at me in horror. “What have I done, Devil? He’ll never forgive me for this.”
I sat quietly and watched while she fell apart. There wasn’t anything I could say in answer to her question. I didn’t know what this would do to their relationship. I suspected he would forgive her, but maybe he’d simply stash it away as another knife to his heart and hope like hell he could still look at her without despising the shit she’d done to him and his club.
I reached for her hands and pulled them away from her face. “Jen, listen to me.” When I had her attention, I continued, “What’s done is done. You both have to figure out how to live with it, but the only way you’re gonna do that is if you speak honestly and tell him, or me, exactly what you told Shannon. We need to know what we’re dealing with here so we can put measures into place to protect the club and everyone involved.”
She nodded, back and forth, over and over, like a crazed woman. Gulping back her hesitation, she said, “All I knew about Moses was that he was dumped on the club’s doorstep one morning and that the club whore who birthed him killed herself later that day. The next thing I heard about it all was that the baby and the father went missing.” She slid sideways on the chair, closer to me, and lowered her voice. “But I know that their disappearances weren’t because the father took the baby and left. I heard King talking about it on the phone one night, saying that he had no clue what happened to the child, but that all the tracks were cleared up and no one would be able to prove a thing later on.”
Fuck.
“And that’s what you told Shannon?”
Fear radiated from her as she whispered, “Yes.”
King was right to be worried, and I felt the distinct urge to drown in a bottle of rum. I stood. “I’ll pass this info onto King.” I struggled to look at her myself; I wasn’t sure how King would manage it without wanting to throttle the life out of her.
Her fingers clawed at me, gripping my arm as I tried to leave. “Wait!” She stood. “What do you think King will do now that he knows all that?”
I raised a brow. “You’re fucking kidding me, right?”
She remained silent.
Easing out of her grip, I said, “What do you think he’s going to do, Jen? You betrayed his trust and you’ve put him and everything he values at risk. I think you know what he’ll do.” The thing was, though, that I figured he’d do what he already told me he’d do—he wouldn’t be able to say no to her. Plus, he wouldn’t leave a child to fend for itself with Jen as its mother.
She blinked rapidly a few times. “Yeah,” she said with quiet unease.
I left her then and hoped I never had to see her again. Betrayal like she’d dealt to King wasn’t something I could understand, and if she were in my life the way she was in his, I wasn’t sure how I’d ever deal with it. Forgiveness would be a hard battle.
I found him and Hailee. She took one look at me and knew something was up. “I’ll leave you two to it.”
As he watched her go, King said, “I like her.” He then turned to me. “But I’m not going to like what you’re about to tell me, am I?”
I shook my head. “No.”
After I relayed the information to him, he sat in silence for a long time before finally saying, “If she wasn’t having a baby, I’d kick her out in a heartbeat.” I felt every ounce of his dilemma. With one final glance at me, he said, “Why do we continue to love those who cut our hearts out and let them bleed all over the floor while telling us they really do love us?”
16
Hailee
I snuggled up to Devil and traced patterns on his belly. It was still early, somewhere around six, and he hadn’t stirred. Usually he woke around that time, but this morning, he slept like the dead.
He’d been a little off after we’d left King’s the night before. Whatever they’d been discussing had greatly affected him, King, and Jen. When we finished up there, none of them were talking. Devil and King seemed okay with each other, but neither man could look at Jen.
He’d even been subdued while we had sex. Rather than being wild and passionate, it had been slow and deep. Instead of looking at me like he wanted to consume every part of me like he usually did, his eyes had held something else all together. I’d felt like he was trying to read me. As if he’d been trying to figure something out. But we’d fallen asleep almost straight away, so I didn’t get a chance to ask him about it.
“What secrets do you have buried deep?” I whispered as I kissed his chest.
I’d known him for almost two weeks and felt completely at ease with him. And yet, I hardly knew anything about him. Our relationship still felt right, though, and I hadn’t experienced the usual new relationship nerves. I desperately wanted to know him on a deeper level, but I didn’t want to push him to share anything he didn’t want to. It wasn’t the way I liked my relationships to go. If a guy wanted to take his time to open up to me, I could live with that so long as I felt he was invested. And Devil had made it abundantly clear he was invested.
He cut into my thoughts when he murmured, “Mornin’.”
I almost jumped out of my skin when he spoke. Turning my face up to his, I found those eyes of his that saw everything, focused on me. The intense way he often watched me never failed to stir butterflies in my stomach. “Morning.”
He placed his arm around me, sliding his hand down my back to rest just above my ass. “You sleep well?” God, how I loved his voice first thing in the morning. I mean, I loved it all the time, but particularly when it was husky from sleep.
Despite being skin-to-skin with him, I attempted to wriggle even closer. By the time I was done, I was practically lying on top of him. “I did. Did you? You were so tired.”
“It’s been a long week. I’m glad it’s over, because now I’ve got you all to myself for two days.”
I grimaced. “Well, I do have two massages I have to give and then I have that wedding to perform at tonight, remember? Which means I have to leave just after one to get there and set up. And that means I have to start getting ready at about eleven thirty.”
“Fuck, it takes you an hour and a half to get ready? What do you have to do?”
I pulled a face and huffed at him. “I love how guys think women just magically appear all beautiful. Honestly, if you knew the number of hours we spend doing hair and make-up and getting dressed, you’d realise just how lucky you were to be born a male.”
He grinned and pressed a quick kiss to my lips. “Keep talking dirty to me, gorgeous. You know my dick gets hard when you go all spitfire on me.”
Ignoring him, I said, “So, that means we have about eight hours before I have to leave you. But I am free all day tomorrow.”
His arm tightened around me as he said, “I’m counting on it.”
That intrigued me. “Why? You got something planned?”
He ran his fingers lightly over my skin. “I thought I’d take you on a long ride up to The Entrance.” A sexy smile spread across his face as he added, “Maybe get you in a bikini and spend the day in the sun.”
I traced his lips with my fingertip and said, “A bikini, huh? What if I don’t do
bikinis?”
Lines creased his forehead as he frowned. “Why the fuck wouldn’t you? Your body is made for a bikini, Hailee.”
“Maybe I don’t like men ogling me.” I didn’t. I hated it. And I hadn’t worn a bikini since I was about fifteen.
“They wouldn’t want to so much as look at you while you’re with me.” His mood darkened a little, and I knew that me wearing a bikini could be a very bad idea.
“Well, I don’t own a bikini, so this whole conversation is a waste. Now, tell me, what did you and my brother discuss last night? We never did get around to talking about that.” He’d told me we would talk about it when we got home, but after visiting King, that was all forgotten.
He stalled, and I thought maybe he would try to fob me off, but he didn’t. “He gave me the usual grilling a brother gives his sister’s new guy.”
I would kill Aaron when I saw him next. “I’m sorry. He does this to every guy I see. He’s a complete asshole to them and usually scares them off.”
Devil rolled, taking me with him so that I ended up underneath him. Caging me in with his hands planted on the mattress either side of me, he said, “Nothing and no one is scaring me off, Hailee. Don’t worry about your brother. He’ll come around when he realises I’m not going to hurt you.”
I hadn’t realised that I was concerned about Aaron convincing Devil to walk away, but the relief that engulfed me when he said no one could scare him off told me otherwise.
Smiling up at him, I attempted to coax him into the shower. It was my preferred place for him to fuck me in the mornings. “I think we should move this to the shower.”
He grinned, knowing exactly where my mind had gone. “You know I’m always down for that.” He moved swiftly off the bed and I followed right behind, only to be caught by surprise when he lifted me over his shoulder to carry me into the bathroom. Chuckling at my surprise, he said, “And don’t think I’ve forgotten about that bikini. I’m making it my mission to convince you that you should wear one.”
