by Stacey Lynn
Jules’s eyes darted to Sophie and worry made wrinkles line her forehead.
“She’ll be fine.”
“I know that,” she whispered, “but he’s still out there.”
I stiffened, unable to look at her, certain she’d see the deception in my eyes. “We’ll find him. Soon.”
Except we already had. Our Denver charter had deposited one Rob Walters to Jasper Bay during the middle of the night. When I’d gotten the text in the morning, it’d taken every ounce of self-control to not bust the hell out of the apartment before Jules and Sophie woke up.
So I was lying to her about where I was going. But it was for a good cause. And Sophie would still be safe with Liv at the club.
Everybody wins.
Except for Rob.
“All right, all right,” she muttered, finished off her coffee, set it on the counter, and picked up her keys. She walked to me, kissed me with abandon in the kitchen, right in front of Sophie, and didn’t care when I grabbed her ass, hauling her up my body so she was flush against mine.
I ended the kiss, set her back on shaking knees, and grinned.
“Be good,” I told her.
She scowled teasingly. “You too.”
I’d be good. It’d be the best kill I’d made yet and I had to fight a smile, knowing I was looking forward to it.
Shit, the guy could scream like a little girl.
The jagged cuts pouring thick red blood down his thighs and his arms probably didn’t help.
I grinned, re-entering a storage room at the club’s salvage yard—one of the legit businesses we ran in addition to the auto garage at the clubhouse.
Rob looked exactly how I figured he’d look: brown hair, which had probably been gelled back in a nice and preppy look days ago. His black dress pants, light gray dress shirt, and his dark red tie had been discarded hours ago, leaving him only in a pair of black boxers. His hair was a matted with sweat, hair shit, and blood.
But I still hadn’t been able to vanquish the evil glint in his light blue eyes, no matter how many times we’d sliced the guy. The deal had been simple once we’d confirmed how powerful his dad was. The last thing we’d wanted was to have blowback coming back to the club just because we fucked with the wrong kid.
Yet this asshole knew it—knew he was untouchable—and after Daemon nodded for me to go ahead and end this shit, I was ready.
Rob’s eyes met mine and he smiled. A full set of perfectly straight white teeth gleamed bright in the poorly lit, hot and airless room. At least they had been. Now they dripped blood from the cuts inside his mouth from repeated punches to his jaw. One of his eyes had swelled and he could barely see out of it, but that hadn’t stopped him.
His skin was lighter, most likely due to the blood loss, but the dipshit was so crazy he was still smiling like he knew at any second we’d be untying him, sending him home to dear old daddy.
He hadn’t said much to me, except telling me to fuck off when I pressed him about his plans for Sophie and leaving Jules the hell alone.
But somehow, in my brief disappearance from the room, something had changed in him. Something registered in his expression when he looked at me.
“You’re the brat’s dad.”
A muscle in my jaw tightened—partly because he kept calling Sophie a brat, and partly because he was starting to click puzzle pieces together.
“Nope.” I raised my .38 and aimed it at his head. “And I’m pretty sure I’ve told you not to call her that.”
Next to me, Tripp and Finn snickered. They’d been doing that all morning long, acting like they were sitting ringside in Vegas at UFC Championships. At one point, one of the bastards had actually left to make popcorn.
“But you like her,” he taunted.
I moved closer and the idiot wasn’t scared enough to flinch. I almost admired his ability to look death in the face and stay the course of crazy-fucked-up-ness.
My hand tightened on my gun, and my thumb flicked the safety. “You gonna leave her alone?”
His head dropped, falling forward slightly, and I glanced at Daemon. Silently he shook his head, telling me not yet. We still wanted to know what he’d planned, who else he’d hired, who else was following her, and until we got that information, it was best to keep him alive.
“She tastes good, doesn’t she? So warm and sweet when her thighs are spread wide for you—”
“Enough.” I took a step forward, my gun inches from his damn brain.
“Jaden.” I ignored Daemon’s warning that came in a low, husky growl and kept my eyes focused on the dick in front of me.
Red fury boiled my veins as his smile increased. My hand tightened on the trigger.
“You know that bitch screams her lover’s name while she sleeps? For months, all night long, I fucking had to listen to her scream for Scratch.”
I heard the screech of a metal chair scraping on concrete, felt the heat of a body behind me, one as tightly coiled as I was. I didn’t move when I vaguely registered Finn’s voice.
“Jaden, mate.”
Rob leaned forward, pressed his forehead against the barrel of my gun. “And she screams his name when she comes, too. Might not at first, she might be able to fake it with you, too, but eventually, she’ll start wanting him more…”
My hand was shaking. This fucking dipshit was telling me everything I’d already worried about.
That no matter how much Jules thought she’d get over Scratch, she never would, and I was just an easy substitute.
My arm shook slightly, my muscles trembling from tension at hearing this slick bastard describe the way Jules was in bed.
“And eventually, it’ll drive you mad,” he continued. “She’ll have your dick so pussy-whipped, you’ll do whatever it is you can do to beat that asshole’s name and memory out of her head.”
The blast from the gunshot reverberated loudly in the small room. Daemon jumped, moved behind me, and swore.
“Fucking hell,” Finn muttered when I lowered my gun. “That looks like shit.”
I looked at the guy, now practically missing a head, his brain matter splattered all over the wall behind him, and on my chest and cut.
Shit.
“Jaden.”
I turned to my Prez, my best friend, and pressed my teeth together. Daemon clasped his hand on my shoulder and shook it back and forth.
“We’ll clean him up, get the hell out of here.”
I couldn’t speak. My hand still held the gun as if I’d need to use it again immediately, as if the threat hadn’t just exploded all over the walls behind me.
And maybe it hadn’t. Because in two short sentences, the dead prick had voiced every concern I’d had about finally getting Jules under me.
She’d always compare to me to my brother.
“I got it.”
Daemon pulled me closer, whispered in my ear so the others, who were already beginning to bag his body, couldn’t hear. “Get the fuck out of here and go get your shit together.”
My teeth ground together, my nostrils flared as I panted, the adrenaline from killing a man still loading my veins with an inexplicable high.
Nodding, I slid the gun to the back of my jeans and took one last glance at the dead asshole on the floor at my feet.
An almost empty bottle of Jack Daniels dropped loosely from my fingertips. I’d popped the top on it hours ago, after I hauled my ass back to the clubhouse to my small room and showered Rob’s blood and brains off my body.
Too fuckin’ bad I hadn’t been able to erase his words.
Sophie had somehow sensed my mood when I’d shown up, and chose to stay close to Liv instead of following me and clinging to me like she’d done for the last week. Could have been due to the blood I had drying all over me, but I tried not to think about it.
Tried not to think about the fact that maybe she only stayed so close to me for the last week because I reminded her of ‘picture daddy.’
And certainly tried not to think that may
be that psychotic prick had been right: that Jules looked at me and saw Scratch, my brother, and not me.
For a moment, common sense had shouted that I was being a stupid asshole to think about it… to think about Scratch.
But then the haze and burn of cheap whiskey flooded my veins and irrationality consumed me as I sat in my room, only dressed in the towel I’d wrapped around my waist after leaving the shower hours ago.
I only knew time had passed because the sun was no longer glaring into my western-facing windows. Daemon had stopped by to tell me Rob had been taken care of.
And Faith, once she showed up after her shift at the tattoo shop, had talked Ryker into bringing me dinner.
It still sat on a tray next to me, completely untouched.
A shame, really, because the steak Ryker had grilled probably would have soaked up some of the liquor and made me clear-headed.
But that wasn’t what I wanted. I craved the darkness the whiskey provided, an escape from the weight of knowing I’d taken a man’s life. Regardless of how much he deserved it, that shit weighed on your shoulders.
So when Shania-Shayla opened the door to my room, her bleached blond hair covering whatever small scrap of clothing she wore, barely covering her tits, I felt my lips spread wide into a grin.
I leaned back against my pillows as she shifted her stance against the doorframe to my room.
She propped a hand on her hip, pressed her surgically enhanced boobs out, and flipped her hair. “Wanna invite me in?”
I brought the whiskey bottle to my lips, wishing I could give her a different answer than the one I already knew was going to fall from my lips. When I opened my mouth to answer, a woman’s voice floated from the hallway, straight to my dick.
“He’s busy and taken.”
My dick seemed to like the possessively clipped tone. It pressed up against the towel, instantly pushing for freedom.
I didn’t bother hiding my reaction as Shania-Shayla’s eyes dropped to the bulge. I grinned at her and shrugged, more of a ‘sorry-not-sorry’ response, but she didn’t seem too disappointed as Jules appeared in the doorway.
Both of the women sized the other one up, in that bitchy way all women have in them, before the club bunny pushed off the doorway and threw her hands in the air.
“Just checkin’ on the man,” she grinned, backing away while Jules walked inside my room, ignoring her.
“Go check on someone else,” she said, still not looking at the club bunny. “I think Pappy’s free.”
From behind Jules, Shania scowled.
A twisted laugh escaped my throat as she walked away.
“That wasn’t very nice.”
Jules shrugged, closing the door behind her. “What? Getting rid of your toy?”
“Sending her to Pappy. The man reeks.”
Her lips twitched as if she was fighting a smile. Then it broke through, for just a second, before her lips pulled into a tight, thin line. My expression matched hers as soon as I remembered why I’d gotten so drunk in the first place.
I’d been at the club for two hours, showing up after work to pick up Sophie, and wondered why Jaden was hiding. Daemon and Ryker had filled me in as soon as I showed up, telling me about Rob. At least, telling me parts about Rob.
My heart almost stalled in my chest when they told me Jaden took care of him. I didn’t need to know what they meant specifically.
Jaden had killed a man. For me. For Sophie. And while Rob was a jerk of the worst type, a man who thought he could beat women and stalk them and kidnap their kids with no thoughts of consequences to their actions, tears fell from my eyes when they told me he was dead.
Tears of relief because he was gone, and tears of gratitude because I was thankful for it.
What kind of sick person did that make me?
But when I’d looked at Sophie, warm and safe in my arms, her little brows furrowed as she wiped away my tears, I realized it didn’t make me a horrible person at all.
It made me a mom. It made me someone who would fight, willing to do anything, for the safety of her children.
And I didn’t care who was hurt, as long as my flesh and blood would be safe.
That didn’t fully explain, though, why Jaden had been holed up in his room for hours, according to Daemon. Although he’d warned me that Rob said some things—things about Scratch—that had fucked with his head.
I could only imagine what those would have been.
Nerves running rampant, I made my way to his room, leaving Sophie with Faith and Ryker as they plopped her bottom onto one of the pool tables and watched as she smashed the pool balls into one another and flung them across the felt top.
My steps faltered when I saw one of the club bunnies, scantily dressed and leaning against the doorway to Jaden’s room, breasts pushed out in offering. I almost stopped and turned away.
Then I remembered the way he’d looked at me all week long in my apartment, a powerful, possessive, searing gaze in his eyes whenever he caught me worried.
Now I stood in his room, sweaty palms pressed against the outsides of my thighs as I tried to hide my body’s trembling response.
He looked at me with clouded, whiskey-filled eyes, laying back on his bed, two pillows resting behind him and only a towel wrapped around his waist. The bottle pressed to his lips, he looked at is if he’d forgotten he was holding the thing. Probably because it was half empty and he’d spent the last few hours guzzling it in an attempt to forget something.
I inhaled a deep breath, ignoring the way—from even feet away—I could smell his masculine body wash that had somehow, in the last week, permeated the space in my bedroom and bathroom.
I’d probably never be able to get the smell out of my apartment or my pillows—not that I wanted to.
“Daemon told me what happened today,” I began, and quickly forgot the rest of what I was going to say when Jaden pushed himself unsteadily off the side of his bed.
“Yeah?” His eyes flashed and darkened. “He tell you I had to scrub the asshole’s brain matter off my face, too?”
Jesus. I flinched. But I only saw the visual image behind closed eyelids when I squeezed them shut and quickly opened them.
Clearing my throat, I choked out an answer. “No. Not that part.”
“He tell you what the asshole said to me? Taunted with me with?”
Fury rolled off his shoulders and his thick biceps with such palpability, I could almost see his blood boiling beneath his inked and tanned skin.
“No, but –”
“But nothing.” His hand gripping the bottle of Jack Daniels lifted and pointed at the door. “Get the fuck out of here.”
My knees shook. I looked at the door behind me before facing Jaden with my own confused expression. “I came to tell you thank you.” My voice was meek, quiet. But it broke through the intensity of Jaden’s drunken, angry scowl.
It almost made me laugh. Only a week and I’d forgotten how much I’d hated and lusted after his hardened features.
God, I was whipped. Totally done for.
I took a step toward Jaden, and then another. Watched as his expression darkened further and a storm raged behind his dark brown eyes. He was fighting for something, I could feel it.
Perhaps it was absolution over taking a life. I’d give him that.
My eyes caught the bulge underneath the white towel as Jaden stood frozen still in front of me, his chest heaving with slow, angry breaths. If he was horny, I’d take care of that, too. Something about seeing Jaden all pissed off again made me want it.
Want him.
He caught the way my cheeks flushed, the way I licked my lips with heightened anticipation, and reached out, gripping my shoulder.
His hand wrapped around my shoulder, elbow locking so I couldn’t move closer.
“You going to fuck me while thinking of Scratch? Going to scream out his name when it’s my dick inside you?”
Or… perhaps that could be his problem.
I jerked back, but his grip on my shoulder was strong—tight and digging into my skin.
“What?”
He leaned forward, hissing, and I tried not to wrench away from the massive whiff of whiskey that filled my nose.
“You think of him when I fuck you? Just like you did with that asshole? Scream Scratch’s name when he’s making you come?”
I leaned back, smacked his hand off my shoulder. “That’s what’s got you so pissed right now?” I huffed a breath, took a step back to put space between us. Tears stung my eyes at the memory, the night I’d done that with Rob.
The first morning after he’d used me as a punching bag. All night long I’d been tormented of nightmares of Scratch’s death, the meaninglessness behind all of it, and how he would have been so damn disappointed in the decisions I’d made since he was buried.
And yeah, I’d woken up screaming his name. With Rob on top of me.
The memory of that morning, the tears that had fallen like a forceful waterfall, with Rob taking what he wanted from me—what he thought I owed him—without any regard to how I felt or what I wanted, slammed into me, knocking me back a step.
I wiped tears from my cheeks, eyes stinging with salty memories that fell before I knew I was crying.
“You’re an asshole,” I whispered, spinning on my heels.
Jaden called my name, his throat scratchy, sounding unsure of himself.
I shook my head and cleared my eyes, wiping the stain of tears from my cheeks before I looked back.
“You think I don’t remember Scratch? Jesus, I do. Every damn day I think of him, wondering what he’d think or how he’d smile when he saw Sophie take her first step, say her first word. God—how would his face have lit up when she had her first smile? I know the pain of living without him, Jaden. I feel that ache burn deep every single damn time Sophie’s eyes light up.”
I swallowed, not taking the time to see the look of regret flash across Jaden’s eyes as I continued. “You think I don’t feel the burden of his death? That had I not been scared to tell him I was pregnant that everything would have ended differently? That’s all it would have taken to keep him alive—one fucking phone call from me—and he’d be here, raising his daughter. I live with that guilt, that regret, every single day, knowing my immaturity killed him.”
