She smiled, skin heated from the vision of him moving over the top of her, hands cradling her face while he stared into her eyes as if he needed to memorize something important. Maybe more.
Hours passed as she lay there, running every conversation she could remember through her head. Gabe, Derek, Fury—she passed each word through the sieve of what she knew now. As Gabe, he’d been the near-brother to her best friend, an ever-present protector she and Tabby both depended on after Mason left the holler. But her memories of him then were tied up in the doings of things. A grin flashed alongside a creek as they collected crawdads, the weight of his arm across her shoulders when she found out Davy had left.
When he was Derek, the memories were more complex. Remembered tension between them had been colored by the outcome for so long, it was hard to pick the threads of that lens away, leaving her the moments that lay between. His startled laughter when she gave an unexpected answer during their first dinner together, hand darting out to cover hers then yanked back as if her touch was acid. That avoidance giving way over the course of the evening to an incredible connection she’d embraced, and he had clearly fought. Fought and lost. He didn’t come to me with the intent of seduction. After examining their moments together, that much was clear. There’d been a plan of wooing, but he had not intended for them to wind up in bed together.
The same in Lamesa when he came to her as Fury. He had kept his distance for days, treating her like an unwelcome chore assigned by a project manager. In many ways, she guessed that much was truth, because Davy had set him on her. Davy can’t know who he is, she thought, and that awareness gave her a moment of toe-curling terror. Because if Davy didn’t know and eventually realized, then found out what had happened in Nashville, he would be…furious was probably too small a word. He’ll kill him.
Even after coming back from his trip with Bella, Gabe hadn’t intended for them to sleep together. That was all me. He’d held her as she came apart, lost in the nightmare of her memories, willing to stay with her through the worst of it. If there’d been any seduction in that hotel room, it had come from her side of things. He’d even asked her more than once if she’d been certain it was what she wanted. Once they were in bed, and even before—after she’d been able to clearly articulate her definite interest—he had been all-in, fully present in the moment. Exactly like he’d been with me before. Tenderness covered his fierce hunger like a thin veneer of civilized, but she had no doubts sleeping with her had been on his mind. He’d admitted as much. He just wasn’t going to act on it. Either time.
Outside influences. The idea trailed through her head, and she turned to her side, tucking her hands under the pillow. In Nashville, he had conned her out of money, pretending to be something he wasn’t. But in bed, he’d shown her exactly who he was. It had been a lot of money she couldn’t easily afford to lose like that, but she’d made it through okay. No lasting damage. He’d gone to jail, paid for it with five years of his life. A bad exchange on his end, no doubt. When he’d gotten out, he hadn’t come to her. Hadn’t found her and explained or apologized, but—Bethy snorted, I would’ve shot him on sight back then—it was probably a good thing.
The lessons had been hard but served her to this day when she approached negotiations. Not that I’m excusing his behavior. But without that experience to guide her, there were a dozen more situations that would have been even more costly, both emotionally and monetarily. Never again had become an instinctive mantra, repeated until it was an embedded part of her psyche.
In Texas, he had again clearly set out to deceive her about his identity. Who wouldn’t? He had no idea how she’d dealt with things, and she knew from talking to Chase that the man Fury had worked his ass off to get into her brother’s club. If she’d recognized him, it would have screwed everything up for him. Self-preservation because of outside influences. Am I justifying what he did because I want more? She didn’t think so. There was only one way to find out. Road trip.
“I need to talk to Davy anyway, telling him about Michael needs to be a face-to-face conversation.” She rolled to her back, eyes adjusting to the faint light easing into the room around the curtains. Reaching up she twitched them aside again, the breaking dawn not quite erasing the brightest stars in the sky. Please make Davy not kill him.
First one then the other
Mason
“I want you to bring her the fuck to me,” Mason roared into the phone, hand tightening down on the device as he swung to glare at the men in the room, all now frozen in fear of whatever he had heard over the phone that could bring him to this level of rage. “You bring her right the fuck to me.”
Disconnecting the call, he twisted and scanned until he saw the faces he wanted. “Slate, Deke, to me,” he clipped, stalking towards the secure room in this Ohio clubhouse where they conducted business and church. A thought hit him, and he paused, then pulled his phone out of his pocket where he had thrust it and dialed. They needed to make sure there weren’t any bugs in this clubhouse since it wasn’t one that he used frequently. “Myron, Ohio sweep. Who?”
There was a pause as his tech and money wizard caught up with his shorthand speech and then he heard, “Gunny.”
Disconnecting, he dialed another number, barking his question as soon as the call connected, “Where are you?”
Not cautious, because he never held back with Mason, not anymore, Gunny said, “Fucking my woman. My own bed.” He sucked in air audibly, then clipped, “Where you need me?”
Tipping his head to look at the floor, his tone more moderated this time, Mason said, “Sorry, brother. Need you in Ohio yesterday. Need you to bring cleaning supplies when you come.”
There was noise in the background, a soft feminine moan that made Mason wince, then a loud, fast, slapping sound of flesh against flesh. “Goddammit, Prez.” The moan came again, and Gunny hissed. “Fucking hell, babe, you comin’ again? My fucking pussy. Hell.” His breathing sounded hard and fast in Mason’s ear. “Fifteen minutes, in the wind,” Gunny grunted, and the call disconnected.
Mason reached out, deliberately locking and placing the phone face down on the table near him, seeing Deke do the same.
Altering his direction, he strode to the door, stiff-arming it open as he walked into and through the yard surrounding the farmhouse that was now a biker clubhouse. Surrounded by cornfields, the house looked like any other all along the blacktop country road, except for the chosen mode of transport for the occupants. For five minutes he walked out into the field, hearing the footfalls of his brothers behind him, listening to the sibilant sound of the corn shocks sliding across their leathers, slipping past the denim of their jeans. He came to an opening in the field and stood beside the wellhead sprouting from the ground like a mutant crop, and cocked one hip out, propping a foot on the metal pipe.
Looking at his two men, he knew they understood things had gone to shit, and saw their bone-deep belief that he would, that he could fix it. His mind whirled, stuck in what he had heard on the phone call earlier.
“Feds in our phones,” he said, and they nodded. Expected, when you were involved in a one-percent club, when you were national, when you were leadership. “Feds in our houses.” Picking up bugs when you did sweeps meant you were on someone’s radar, something he didn’t like but knew it also was expected. That invasion of their world, where they lived, existing alongside the citizen lives, but taking up a whole different kind of atmosphere, was anticipated.
“Feds in our ranks.” He said these words quietly and saw the shock on their faces. Fucking Bethany, he thought, only Bethy could fuck a Fed’s informant and not know it. In his head, he imagined he heard Bingo, not cutting him any slack, saying, Only an arrogant boy would patch a fed’s informant and not know it.
Deke’s voice was low, riding dangerously close to the edge of control when he asked, “Who?”
“Fury,” he said, his voice just as measured for the moment, but that control was slipping further out of reach with every b
reath. “Pike heard something, followed up on it, found a lead.”
“No fucking way.” Slate spoke immediately, shaking his head, rejecting the idea. “No fucking way, Prez. Pike’s always seeing conspiracies in his mind. You know that.”
“I do know that, but this has legs,” he gritted out. “You think I’d have this chat without at least following up on this shit?” Pike was the president of the St. Louis chapter, his hold on that charter tenuous at best, having been brought to the floor only two weeks ago. Recalled to Chicago, he hadn’t come willingly, and once there hadn’t played the conciliator; instead, he’d barked laughter and threats. Mason had already regretted giving the man the president nameplate, and now deeply regretted letting him roll off the parking lot that night still breathing.
Still, when he’d called claiming info, Mason had picked up the phone.
“No fucking way,” Slate repeated himself firmly, and Mason had a moment of uncertainty. Then Deke spoke, and that uncertainty fled like clouds before a storm.
“I can see it,” Deke said. “I don’t like it, but I can see it. Him coming up the way he did. How all-in he was with folding his boys into Rebels, more than pulling his weight on shit jobs for months and gaining trust, easing into the leadership on a fast track.” Deke took a breath, then cut his gaze to Mason and ventured, “Fuckin’ the national president’s sister.”
“She showed in the Fort. Tequila’s bringing her here.” Mason swung his gaze, looking at the corn moving and swaying in the breeze. Life all around them; dust in his heart. He had seen pictures of how she was with Fury, seen how the man was with her. Looked at her like she held his heart. Fury looked at Mason’s sister the way Mason knew he looked at Willa and that sucked. It sucked hard, mostly for his Bethy, because now he knew it didn’t mean anything. “Feds all up in our shit. Our boys’ll be bringing her in hot. Then she and I will have a fucking chat. Gunny’s comin’ to sweep the clubhouse, need that done before I talk to my sister about the fucking CI she was with.”
Slate shook his head again, still resistant to the idea of Fury being on the wrong side of the blue line. “Walk me through what Pike has, boss.”
“Pike has Memphis. We knew shit was bad there, knew it when we sent Hoss in. Knew it when he settled things out as best they could be, but we kept Memphis.” Memphis had been a mistake to charter from the get-go, that town drowning in corruption from so many directions there wasn’t enough territory to support shit. All of which meant any space they carved out, everyone else in town wanted.
The shit there had finally been cleared by Hoss, who went down for a day and stayed three weeks, leaving twenty-two bodies in his wake, spilling blood that ran deep. “Ling had papers on him.” Ling was a longtime dealer in that town, had fucked more people over than they had the population for, but he kept on. Until he wasn’t able to anymore, seeing as how he had a hole in his head that couldn’t be plugged. “Had papers on Fury from Lalo.”
“You see those papers, boss?” Slate asked the question casually, but they all knew it was important. Mason shook his head, waiting. “No papers, just Pike’s word? Really, Mason?”
“Could do without the shit from you today, Slate,” he gritted his teeth as he spoke, frowning when he saw Slate again shaking his head.
“Pike’s a fucking liar. We’ve caught him more than once. Shoulda cut him back when we found his charter fucking the laws, boss. You’ve seen him fuck brothers’ women, laughing as he handed them back, feeling he was above it all.” Slate leaned in, his face tightening as his voice came out tense and harsh. “Did you make a call based on Pike’s intel alone?”
“Fuck.” Mason’s hand reached for his phone and only then remembering he had left it inside, fearful of the ears he knew might be listening. Slate grinned and reached into both front pockets, pulling a phone from one and battery from the other. Grabbing them, Mason quickly assembled the phone, tapping in a memorized number. “Stand down,” he said into the phone, waiting for the shouted instructions on the other end to be passed along, glad the meaty smacks of fists against flesh stopped immediately. “Bring him to me.”
Mason looked down, then back up at his brothers. “He’s fucking my sister. I fucking hate his ass.”
Slate grinned, then tossed another rock onto Mason’s grave as he said, “Wait until Willa gives you a baby girl, see how you feel about someone fucking your baby.”
***
Bethany
Bethany was nervously checking her mirrors yet again because there were three bikes trailing her car. They had been behind her for fifteen minutes as she navigated her way through Fort Wayne, headed from her hotel to the clubhouse where she would be finally able to see Fury and decide if this was more than a one-night stand. Hopefully.
She glanced into her mirror again, same three bikes still reflected there. She recognized one of the riders, the other two she didn’t. At the next light, the one she knew roared around her and swooped back in front of her car, then slowed down, the rider making insistent motions towards a store coming up on the right. She followed his bike in, keeping her eyes on him as he pulled to a halt in an empty section of the parking lot. She had barely gotten the car in Park when her door flew open; Bethy shrieked and lurched away, her seatbelt preventing any real retreat.
“Phone, keys, wallet.” The mass of black leather standing in her door said the three words as if they made sense, and she tilted her head, looking up at him. He scowled, the tattoo on the side of his neck jumping with his visibly racing pulse. Growling now, he snapped, “Don’t like repeating myself, girl.”
“What?” She was confused because he hadn’t really said anything, then things became clear when he leaned into the car, snagging the keys from the ignition. His head moved, scanning the inside of the vehicle and he reached out, pulling the cord from her phone and dropping it to the floor of the car before putting the phone along with her keys in his pocket.
“Wallet.” Down to a single word, she realized what he must want and quickly grabbed her purse, handing him the whole thing, shoving it into his hands. “Good enough,” he said and took a step back.
Hoss moved forward into the opening, holding out a leather jacket. “It’s chilly today. Put this on, Bethy,” he said, and she took the garment from his hands.
Holding it protectively in front of her, she asked, “Where’s Mason?” This wasn’t an ambush in a dark hallway, but even standing in the open in a parking lot she felt the terror trying to claw its way up her throat.
“Takin’ you to him, sweetheart,” Hoss said gently. “He called this in, wants you where he is as fast as we can get you there.” What if Mason’s hurt? They’d tell her if he was hurt, she felt certain of that. If he was okay, that meant it must be someone or something else.
“Where’s Fury?” That question caused him pain, and he had to look away before he answered.
“Not with Mason. I’m not sure beyond that. Put on the jacket, Bethy.” She did, and with a hand on her back, he pushed her steadily away from the car. She looked back as the door closed and saw the lights blink once, heard the beep as the locks engaged. Glancing over, she saw the man with her keys stuffing them and her phone into her purse, watching bemused as he shoved that into one of the saddlebags on his bike.
“Climb on behind me,” Hoss said, and she saw more pain move through his face, remembering it was only two months since his wife had passed. That passing sudden and brutal. If Hope were still here, she would have been riding behind him. Bethy knew that, and couldn’t wrap her head around the fact that today, he wanted her there.
“You’re taking me to Mason?” She wanted to hear him say it plainly. Flat-out, she wanted, no needed, that certainty. Holding to her control with a brittle grip, close to losing the battle with her fears, she waited.
Straddling his bike, Hoss held out a hand as he nodded. “Yeah, takin’ you to him.”
Wordlessly, she swung onto the seat behind him, reaching up and gripping the sides of his waist.
/> Within minutes she felt frozen, her fingers so cold she didn’t know how much longer she could hold on. Glancing forward over Hoss’ shoulder, through wind-whipped tears she saw the speedometer hovering around one hundred, and decided she didn’t want to know if they went faster. Hunkering down behind him, she tried to protect herself from the wind as best she could. An hour later they slowed, their procession of one entering a small city, riding sedately to a small house on a small street, unremarkable in any way.
Standing up off the bike, Hoss offered her his hand, supporting her when her legs would have given way. Arm around her waist he walked her up the cement path, onto the porch, and into the house without even a knock. She saw a startled woman’s face appear and then disappear in a doorway, Hoss walking them straight through the house and out the back door. Stepping off the small back porch, he strode directly to an older model truck sitting in the driveway. He reached out a hand to open the passenger door and gently, wordlessly, urged her to get in.
Once convinced she was settled, he slammed the door shut, walking around and climbing into the driver seat. Fingers to the visor overhead, he pulled out a set of keys and shoved them into the ignition. Twisting them, starting the truck, he never even looked back at the house as they drove away, but Bethy did. She saw the same woman’s face in the window, fear stark on her features.
Twenty minutes later, they were on a remote back road, tall fields of corn surrounding them on either side. As he slowed and turned into a driveway, she stared at the house they were approaching. Well kept, its yard yellowing from the late season. Still she noticed two things that struck a chord of disquiet in her chest.
Rebel Wayfarers MC Boxset 4 Page 51
