"Dad!" Andi shrieked a little, pulling out of my arms. "Um..."
"Baby girl, your business is your business," he said, giving her a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. It fell from his face entirely when he looked at me, though. "Your business, though, yeah I'm all in on that," he declared.
"Dad, don't," Andi tried.
"I just have some things to cover with him," Reeve said, shrugging.
"It's okay," I told her, giving her hand a squeeze. "I can take it," I assured her. "We'll be back," I added. "Try to get some sleep, okay?"
"I'll try," she agreed, lower lip wobbling just the tiniest bit.
I wanted to go back to her, to assure her that everything was going to be okay, that she didn't have to worry.
But I couldn't give her that.
It wasn't the life I led.
And if she was going to be part of my life, then this sort of uncertainty was something she would need to learn to live with too. Even if I hated that.
"Reeve—" I started as we moved out into the hall.
"Wasn't that long ago that my little girl came home, collapsed on the floor, and woke me up because she was crying so hard," he said, making my stomach clench, knowing I'd been the cause of that, knowing I'd done that to her. "Now," he said, stopping before the doorway to the common area, "I admit, the girl cries waterfalls over a dead bumblebee. But if you ever make her break like that again, I don't give a fuck about my oath to this club, I will make you pay for it."
"I'd want you to make me pay for it," I told him, shrugging.
"I've been watching you moon over her since you were in kindergarten. Figured maybe you'd grow out of it. But then saw that it wasn't going to happen.
"I watched you lose yourself when you thought you lost her. I know that no one in the world is going to love her like you do," he said, sighing. "No one could ever deserve her. But you're as close as anyone is going to get to being worthy. But I expect you to prove that to her every single day of her life."
"I'm going to need to buy her a farm, aren't I?" I asked, wincing.
"At least five acres, I'd say," he agreed, smiling.
"Guess I will start looking into that," I told him, finding that I was actually excited about the prospect. Sure, I could bring her in on it, but Andi, she fucking loved surprises. The bigger and more well-thought-out, the better. She had a birthday coming next year. Giving her keys to her dream house sounded like a great way to celebrate.
Now I just had to survive through the night.
Which was looking more and more likely as we drove into the new neighborhood as one big unit, going in the direction of the one fully finished house, but finding maintenance trucks in the driveway.
"Was it you, you fuckers?" a man asked, striding toward Reign and Fallon with a fearlessness that spoke of someone from out of town since no one born and raised here would step to the Henchmen with the anger bouncing off of his nerve endings.
"Was us what?" Fallon asked, already off his bike, moving to tower over the older, shorter, much rounder in frame man.
"With the blood and the garbage everywhere? The new owners came to view it today and lost their fucking minds. You been squatting here with your biker buddies?" he asked.
"Do we look like we've been squatting here?" Fallon asked. "We're looking for who was here too. They leave anything behind?"
"Besides a good ten grand in property damage? No. You find them, you tell them that me and my lawyers need to have a word with them."
"Yeah, I don't think you want us to do that," Fallon told him. "You ever stop to worry where all that blood came from?" he added, brow quirking up. "Did you clean it all up yet?"
"It's gonna take a few days."
"Mind if we look around?" Reign asked, but he was already pushing past the man, going toward the front door.
"What the fuck are you doing here?" Fallon hissed when we made it into the kitchen to find Danny leaning over the bloodstained kitchen table, checking out the blood.
"You guys are slow as fuck," she declared, giving him a saucy smile as she used a pen to pick up a bullet she found near the leg of a chair.
"Stop touching that shit," Fallon snapped, moving forward.
"I have every right to be here as you do. More, even. My man was shot. Your girl was, what, a little scared?" she said, rolling her eyes.
"She was kidnapped," I clarified.
"Right. Yes. And then returned. Unharmed."
I'd never hit a woman. I'd never had the urge to hit a woman. But I could have slapped her for the way she kept downplaying what Andi had been through. But, I reminded myself, Danny had been raised in an MC, and had likely needed to fight her way to the top in a male-dominated world where everyone thought she wasn't qualified to run shit. It made her hard and jaded and tough on other women who hadn't been through something similar.
"Need I remind you that Toll is going to need to walk with a cane. Probably for the rest of his life. So you're just going to have to forgive the fuck out of me for being less than moved by the vet's little ordeal. I mean she was here and she couldn't get any more information out of them? Why they were here? What they want?"
"She was a little busy pulling a bullet out of some guy's stomach," I told her.
To that, she shrugged as she squatted to gather a pile of pictures. "Not a bad one of you," she declared, holding out a picture of me. "Or you, Daddy," she said, shooting Reeve a wicked look.
"Enough," Fallon snapped, reaching for the pictures.
"Oh, are you going to physically stop me?" she asked, giving him a look that was heated, but it was impossible to tell if it was anger, or interest, or a combination of the two. "That would go against your little 'we don't want war' approach to having us in town, wouldn't it?"
"What? And you do want war, Danny?" Fallon asked. "Our club is bigger than yours."
"Ours has more chapters than yours," she shot back. "And fewer morals."
"Children," Reign said, sounding a mix of frustrated and amused. "We're not going to war over some fucking crime scene. Or even this goddamn cartel. If they are even still in town. So enough with the chest puffing," he added, shaking his head. "Way I see it, Danny, if they are around, we have a mutual enemy. Sharing information would get us further than stepping on each other's feet."
"Hm," she mused, pressing her lips together. "I'll think about it," she decided. "How are you healing up, old man?" she asked, slapping a hand roughly on his shoulder.
"Careful," Reign warned.
"Oh, but where's the fun in that?" she shot back, giving him a wicked smile as she passed, forcing a path through our assembled crowd. "Toll wants to make good on the date he started with Andi," she said, coming to a stop in front of me.
"No."
"Oh, but I think he's going to ask."
"Then he can look forward to his other fucking leg not working too."
"Ah, I see," she said, eyes dancing. "God, you guys are all so mushy and romantic. How sweet," she teased to the group at large before she made her way out of the kitchen.
"Christ, someone needs to take that bitch down a few pegs," Fallon declared, getting a whack to the back of the neck from his father, likely because his mother wouldn't like him using that particular word.
"This bitch?" Danny asked, leaning back into the room, giving Fallon a hard look. "Oh, I'd like to see someone try," she said, the words landing like a threat before she walked away, for good this time.
"The fuck is the matter with you?" Reign asked Fallon, sighing. "We don't have enough problems? You need to keep stirring up shit with her?"
"If she keeps butting her head in our business, yeah."
"Christ," Reign said, sighing at some of the older men in the group. "Were we this fucking stupid once too?"
"Pretty much," one of them agreed, smiling.
"It's gonna be a rough couple of years while you morons get your crazy out, I guess," Reign decided, following Danny's path out.
"Spread out and see if there is anything useful to
go on," Fallon declared. "Then we will head out and try to figure out where to go from here back at the clubhouse."
We spent an hour there, picking through trash, looking in bedrooms and the basement, finding nothing but a forgotten pocket knife and a well-worn copy of The Art of War and even after a lot of back and forth, no one could decide if it was a coincidence of sorts, or a veiled threat.
In the end, we all went back to the clubhouse with our adrenaline still buzzing, having no outlet for it.
"Tell her we are going to have someone here tomorrow to do a sketch of the fuckers," Fallon told me on his way through the clubhouse to the backyard.
"I tried!" Andi insisted, shooting up in bed, eyes wide open. "Okay, well, I didn't try that hard," she admitted as I moved into the room, kicking out of my shoes, and remembering to lock the door this time. "Are you okay? Is everyone okay?"
"They weren't there."
"What? No, they were!"
"Were, yeah," I agreed, tossing my cut on the top of my dresser, putting my gun down next to it. "But they'd cleared out."
"Well... that's a good thing, right?"
"We won't know until we see them again. Or we don't," I told her, shrugging.
"So, everyone has to stay on lockdown here?"
"Got somewhere better to be?" I asked, giving her a smile as I got to the side of the bed, reaching up to pull off my shirt.
"Well, when you put it like that..." she said, pulling the comforter up for me to join her. "Absolutely not."
Chapter Sixteen
Andi
I tiptoed out of the bed, not wanting to wake up Niro or Nugget who was nestled up behind his back, his little feet twitching in his sleep.
I'd been up for almost an hour, shutting off my alarm before it could ring, then slowly untangling my limbs from Niro. Head off his shoulder, body off his chest, and so on and so on, doing it in such slow increments that my muscles were burning by the time I was done. But he was a light sleeper, and I didn't want to wake him up.
It was ridiculous, but by the time I got to the bathroom, I missed him already.
I was a sap. I'd always been a sap. But it seemed intensified with Niro. Maybe because my love for him was already so deep, so rooted in shared experiences and trust and loyalty.
And I was being even more clingy than usual, likely because of the long separation we'd had. I felt like there were a million things to catch up on, a thousand stories to tell. I just needed more time with him.
But regardless of that, I had to get ready and go to work.
The morning before there had been no time to untangle from him, to miss his warmth. The sleepiness and then staying up late exploring each other's bodies had made me sleep through two of my alarms before I finally woke up, barely having time to jump into my scrubs and get to work for my early shift on surgery day.
Niro and my father had been on guard duty—one at the front, one at the back of the building—while I spayed and neutered and removed foreign bodies lodged in stomachs and even did one c-section on an expectant French Bulldog.
Then Niro had brought me back to the clubhouse for a nap, some food, and then a long night of exploring each other's bodies.
I was still lacking sleep, but I was too happy to care.
"Trying to sneak out without me?" Niro asked, making me jump, ramming my arm into the shower spout. Turning, I found him standing there, holding the shower curtain open.
"You're not on-guard today," I reminded him, knowing they were subbing out his father and Finn. "You have to watch our baby," I reminded him as I heard Nugget's nails tap across the tile in the bathroom.
"Mmhmm," he agreed, stepping into the shower, pulling the curtain closed as he reached for my bar of soap. "But I just need to make sure you cleaned up properly," he suggested, reaching for me, turning me, and pulling me back against his chest, his hand slipping the bar across my belly. "Like here," he said, his hand sliding up, the smooth bar sudsing over my breast. "I think you missed here."
"I think you might be right," I agreed, leaning back, tucking my head into his neck.
"Can't have that," he decided, moving across my chest, then slipping downward. Over my stomach, my hips, then between my thighs. "What about here?"
"I... I... it's good to double-check," I said, feeling the rumble of him as he dropped the bar of soap as his finger started to circle my clit.
His cock hardened against me as his fingers slipped inside me, thrusting lazily for a long moment before turning, stroking against my top wall.
"Niro, please," I whimpered, grinding back against him.
A rumble moved through him as his fingers left me, as he reached to slide himself between my thighs, then surged inside.
"Fuck," he hissed, his forehead pressing into the back of my head.
My hips moved in slow circles even as he started to thrust into me, his hand slipping between my thighs again to work my clit as his other arm anchored across my belly.
"Niro..." I whimpered, feeling my walls tighten, feeling that nearly painful apex.
"Come," he demanded, thrusting harder, faster, as his finger pressed against my clit.
"Shh," Niro hushed, hand slapping over my mouth as the orgasm crashed through my system. "Fuck," he hissed, pulling out, and I could feel the warmth of his release on my back as he cursed out my name, his forehead slamming onto my shoulder. "Fuck," he said again, taking a deep breath. "We need to be more careful about that," he decided as I turned, leaning up to press a kiss to his lips.
"Probably a good idea," I agreed, wrapping my arms around him. "I want to be a mom, but I think I need like three more dogs first. At least."
"I can get behind that plan," he said, giving my ass a little slap. "Now stop fucking around and get ready for work, would you?" he teased, scooting me to the cold end of the shower as he got under the spray.
I wanted every single morning to start exactly that way, I decided as I dried off and got dressed.
We crept through the common area, taking out Nugget, making a quick breakfast. And it was all so familiar, yet so new at the same time.
Because it was still Niro. My Niro. The Niro I had done basic, everyday things with. Like walking Nugget. Like making food. Like sneaking around so my parents or his parents didn't wake up.
But it was also different.
Not just because our hands sought out reasons to touch each other. Or because he kissed me until I forgot what day it was and what I was supposed to be doing before I got into the car with Pagan and Finn, the latter of whom was asleep in my backseat using one of my sweatshirts as a pillow. There was just a new dynamic that was exciting and maybe even a little scary.
"His brother convinced him to hit up Chaz's last night," Pagan explained when I looked over my shoulder at Finn.
There were times when I was a kid that I wondered what it would be like to have a sibling. But when I looked at the way Fallon and Finn fought and competed with each other, I was always reminded to be grateful for not having that be a part of my life.
So with one half-inebriated and exhausted bodyguard and another with a penchant for violence like his son, I went to work.
Like it was any other normal day.
Because it was.
Until, of course, it wasn't.
"So, someone got a new puppy!" I said, smiling down at the chart.
Who didn't love puppies?
All the firsts, watching them explore this big, new world, the sweet little kisses.
I was starting to get a little puppy fever now that I had a steady place and friends and family to help out if I had a long shift.
It had been a bit of a rough day with patients. I had some bloody wounds to prove it. So getting to end the day with a new puppy who would love all up on me because he had no reason to fear the vet yet was exactly what I needed right then.
"Hey lil' mama," a familiar voice said, making my head shoot up from the chart I was looking at, seeing A standing beside the stainless-steel scale table, his h
and settled on the back of a blue-coated, pink-nosed pit puppy. "Lookin' better," he added, doing a quick once over of me as my heart surged up into my throat.
I tried to take a step back, only to see someone move from behind the door, sliding it closed, then leaning against it.
"Oh!" I said, surprise managing to block out the fear for a moment as recognition hit. Sure, I'd spent most of my time looking at his stomach, but I found you didn't really forget the face of the man you pulled a bullet out of. Especially when you'd done it under duress. "Are you okay?" I asked, knee-jerk. Sure, my expertise might have been toward critters, but I was pretty sure that it didn't matter what your specialty was, when you committed your life to healing the sick and wounded, your mind always went there first.
"He's fine," A told me, drawing my attention back to him.
"I, ah, why are you here?" I asked, though I was sure I already knew.
"Funny thing. I remember the two of us having an agreement. You heard that too, right?" he asked, looking over at his man.
"That's the way I heard it."
"You were unconscious," I snapped, immediately regretting the words.
"Fucking that biker put some spirit into you, huh?" A asked, smirking. "Guess that's good. It's good, yeah? Better than all that curling up in bed crying. Nah, don't worry, Doc," he went on when I felt myself stiffening, "I didn't put any cameras in your place. Can spot that red-rimmed eye look a mile off, though."
"I didn't want to tell anyone. I was keeping your secret. It wasn't me. There was... there was another witness who came forward," I told them, not wanting to throw Toll under the bus, but not wanting to be murdered in my own exam room either. I mean, even if I screamed, would Pagan and Finn get here in time? Were they even okay? How did A and his guy get in when they were stationed around the building?
"That's the way of it, huh?"
"Yes," I insisted, willing him to listen. "I swear. I tried to deny it. But no one believed me."
"Hard to be a single woman up against an army, yeah?" A asked, running a hand down the puppy's back. "Might want to remember that," he added. It was a threat, yet it wasn't. Almost like he was going to let this go?
Andi and Niro Page 17
