Loverboy (Dartmoor Book 5)

by Lauren Gilley

  “Which is why we’ve got to find her,” Ian said.

  “Find her how? I always assumed you’d…taken care of her a long time. You and all your pimp money.”

  “Excuse me,” Ian said, affronted, “I am not a pimp.”

  “My mistake,” Tango scoffed. “It’s so much more respectable than that.”

  “Guys,” Whitney said, voice a sharp little sliver through their brewing argument. When they both turned to her, she said, “So how can you find her?”

  “Oh, I could find her,” Ian said. “But the second I start tugging on threads is the second she packs up and skips town. She’s in Knoxville; we’ve got to flush her out without tipping her off.”

  “So someone has to do some snooping,” Whitney said, the gears whirring behind her eyes. “Someone neither she nor her people would recognize.”

  The small, dark grin Ian gave her sent chills running up Tango’s spine.

  “The club is gonna handle it,” he said, and Ian snorted.

  “Yes, of course, because it’s not like Carla’s people know who the Lean Dogs are.”

  “She…”

  Wait.

  Tango sucked in a breath. “She knows the Tennessee Dogs.”

  “Like I said…”

  “No, I mean. She doesn’t know all the Dogs.”

  “Someone from another chapter,” Whitney guessed, gasping a little. “Like a mole.”

  Ian steepled his fingers together, gaze moving between the two of them. “Well, maybe she’s not useless after all.”

  “Fuck you,” Tango said, without much heat, because he knew Ian never did learn how to give a compliment. They were both ruined boys.

  Whitney said, “Do you know anyone who’d be a good fit for the job?”

  Tango smiled. “Yeah, I do.”

  ~*~

  “Ghost thinks it’ll be good for me to tell all the guys about what happened to me. About Carla,” Tango admitted later, after Ian had left and they were still sitting on the couch.

  Whitney made a sympathetic noise and snuggled in closer beneath his arm. “What do you think?” She rested her head against his chest, fingers plucking at his shirt in a way that was soothing.

  He took a deep breath. What did he think? It was a comfort to know that, by this point, he could say whatever he needed to say in front of Whitney, and she’d still love him. How could anything be worse than what he’d already told her? It couldn’t.

  “I think it’s the scariest thing I’ve ever thought about doing. Scarier than slitting my wrists,” he blurted, then winced.

  Whitney managed to shift even closer, her voice soft and kind. “That’s scary.”

  And then it all just poured out, like it had last night. His sick trauma word vomit. “MCs don’t have gay members. They just don’t. It’s not ‘bro’ enough, or whatever. And I’m not gay – not that there’s anything wrong with that, Ian is, I mean…But I’m bi. And I’m pretty damn sure bi is far enough away from straight that the guys will all see it as gay. And then when they know what happened, what I did…I just…”

  “Hey. Hey, stop. Come here.” Whitney sat up and slipped her little arm across his shoulders, managing to pull him into her chest like she was much bigger than she really was. “One thing at a time, okay?”

  He nodded and dragged in a breath, breathing in the sweet smell of her skin off her sweater. And another note, a little punch of sour he couldn’t place.

  “Okay,” he said. “Okay, um, the gay thing. Bi thing. Whatever. They don’t know about it, and, um, it’s not allowed,” he said into her shoulder. “So that’s grounds for stripping my patches.”

  “What does that entail?”

  “They take my cut. I’m not in the club. And I have to lose any Dog-related tats.”

  “Do you have any of those?”

  “Two. On my arm.”

  “What.” And here her strength faltered a moment. “What do you have to do to get rid of them?”

  “Sometimes guys get them cut off, or burned off.”

  She gasped quietly.

  “But you can get them covered up with other tats. Or blacked out with ink.”

  “Okay.” He felt the tiny thunder of her heart against his chest, through the softness of her breasts. “Okay, so that wouldn’t be too bad. Having them covered up.” She stroked the back of his head, his neck. “What would happen if you weren’t in the club anymore?”

  It chilled his insides to think it. “I’d have to get a new job, for one. Probably find a new place to live. I’d – I’d have to start over. Totally from scratch.”

  “Scary.”

  More than she even knew. He’d never been on his own, not really. From his mother’s home, to Miss Carla’s clutches, to the club that had raised him up as a son, given him a home, a livelihood, and a ready-made batch of friends.

  “Is there any reason you have to tell them?” Whitney asked, pulling him back to the moment with gentle fingers sifting through his hair. “Can’t it stay our secret?”

  Our. Because they were together. Because she was with him in this.

  “You know how we talked about someone else finding Carla? Yeah, if I’m gonna call in a favor, everybody’s gonna want an explanation.”

  What he didn’t say was that he was tired of living with shadows in his periphery, wondering if each day was the day one of his brothers found out all his dirty secrets.

  “I don’t know what to do,” he admitted.

  Her nails scratched lightly at his scalp. It was the most comfort he’d ever had from a woman, because his mother was mostly a smudged memory these days. Whitney was alive, and warm, and so good to him, right here in the present.

  “I want to tell you something,” she said.

  “Okay.”

  “My boss sent me home early today because I couldn’t stop throwing up.”

  “What?! Are you – are you sick? Do you need–”

  “I’m not sick, I’m fine. Don’t get up. I was…sort of freaking out about what you told me. I just kept thinking about you, being so young, and being forced to…” She gulped audibly. “It just got to me. And I puked in a trash can, and I felt really stupid afterward.”

  “Oh God.” He wrapped both arms around her and crushed her hard. “Whit, Jesus, I’m so sorry. I never should have said anything. I can’t believe–”

  “No, no, stop that. I don’t like it, but I’m an adult, okay? It’s not that I’m not tough enough to hear it. It’s just I care about you so much, and when I think about what you went through – you, sweet, wonderful, wonderful you – it just…it was awful. I just wanted to make it better for you. I wanted to take the hurt away, and I knew I couldn’t, and I hated it. I felt so powerless. I felt like I’d do anything I could to help.”

  He sat back a little, arms still locked around her, and stared at her earnest face in wonder.

  “You know why I felt that way?” she asked. “Because I love you. And you know what? I don’t know how a club works, I admit it. But those guys love you too. And I can guarantee they’ll want to puke and bash heads when you tell them.”

  His eyes burned, and he blinked hard.

  “No one will be disgusted with you. No one will hate you.” Her smile quivered. “That’s just my two cents anyway.”

  Tango pulled her in close again, and this time he knew the sour scent was vomit, and he hated himself for making her sick.

  But he loved her. And she loved him. And if what she said was true…If his brothers…

  He had to try. To stop Carla, to spare other boys, he could do that. He could expose the dark marks deep beneath his skin and lay himself at his brothers’ feet. They’d saved him, after all. So maybe…

  Just maybe…

  ~*~

  Ian fired off a text – I want in when you find Carla – and then laid his phone on the kitchen counter, resolved not to mess with it anymore tonight.

  “Who are you texting?” Alec asked from his seat at the island, not jealous, just curiou
s.

  “My favorite frenemy.” Ian smiled as he imagined Ghost Teague rolling his eyes. “Not to worry.” He climbed onto the stool beside Alec and poured himself a glass of cabernet, ignoring the way his hand trembled. “What do you want to do tonight, darling?”

  Alec had unbuttoned his collar and hung his tie on the coat rack just inside the door when he first arrived. Cuffs rolled up to his elbows, hair mussed from raking his fingers through it, he looked as casual and undone as Ian had ever seen him.

  He shrugged. “I dunno. I don’t really care about going out.” He swirled his wine and sent Ian a sideways look, considering.

  “What?”

  Alec’s eyes slid away, and he took a small sip of wine. “Nothing.”

  “Oh no. Nothing never means nothing.” Inwardly, Ian groaned. He didn’t have the emotional fortitude for the conversation that was obviously ramping up. “What is it?”

  “It’s nothing,” Alec insisted. And then: “It’s just that…I wonder, sometimes, what we’re doing. You and me.” And then came the bold, doe-eyed glance, full of longing and a dozen questions.

  “Oh, Alec,” Ian sighed. “Please don’t tell me you’re asking that.”

  “Too bad, ‘cause I am. I’m just curious. I wanna know.”

  “Of course you do. Doesn’t everyone?”

  Alec stared at him.

  “What do you want me to tell you?” Ian asked.

  “The truth.”

  Ian groaned and put his head down on the cool marble of the counter. “Bloody hell.”

  “That bad, huh?” Alec deadpanned, but from Ian’s vantage point, peeking out of the corner of his eye, Alec’s gaze was full of hurt.

  Ian straightened. “Love. Listen to me: you don’t want to stay with me. This between us – it’s good. It’s very good. But you’ll get tired of me.”

  Alec bristled. “Isn’t that for me to decide? I may be younger than you, but I’m not some stupid kid you can just decide stuff for.”

  “And to think you were so docile and accommodating when I hired you.”

  Well if that wasn’t the wrong thing to say…

  Alec’s eyes widened, and his jaw clenched, and for a moment, Ian was sure he was about to explode. But he swallowed his response. Said, “Are you just trying to push me away on purpose?”

  “You tell me.”

  “You are,” Alec said, with what Ian assumed was more certainty than he felt. “You’re trying to keep me out.” He tapped the side of his own head to demonstrate.

  God, there wasn’t enough wine in the world for this conversation. Ian drained what he’d poured in two long swallows and refilled his glass. “Don’t presume to know what I’m thinking. Dangerous business, that, considering I write your paycheck.”

  Alec looked like he’d been slapped. “That’s not fair.”

  “It’s entirely fair, darling. Everything’s fair in love and war, after all.”

  “When we’re here, when we’re not at work,” Alec said, stumbling over his words, breathing hard now, “I’m not your damn employee.”

  “Oh no? Do you think because I let you fuck me that somehow the balance of power has shifted? That you’re the big man now, and I’m just your little bitch?”

  The stem of his glass snapped beneath the pressure of his fingers. Ian felt the bite of broken glass and didn’t react, holding the fractured pieces together. That was something at which he excelled – keeping broken things contained.

  Alec must have heard the muffled crack, his eyes flicking to the glass, and back to Ian’s face. “I never said that, and I don’t think it.”

  “Liar.” Ian felt an awful sneer break across his face. “Every man wants his very own bitch.” And maybe, in truth, he’d seen Alec as his little bitch, with his obscene politeness and deference. Turned out that was an office personality, though, and once he got comfy, the real Alec was an annoying asshole.

  “Well let me tell you,” he said, twisting on his stool so he faced Alec. “You picked the right one. I’m a professional bitch. I’m a genius at taking cock. I make it look easy. World Class Bitch, that’s me. You won the fucking lottery when it comes to ass, love.”

  Alec stared at him, horrified. “Why are you saying this? I never wanted–”

  “To acknowledge that you’re gay? No, no one ever does, do they? They want to have their girlfriends, and wives, and mistresses, and pretend, deny what they are. And when they have a fistful of cash, they come down to the club so they can fuck boys. Just like all the rest, aren’t you, Alec?”

  The unobtrusive track lighting struck Alec’s eyes at a strange angle, so he almost looked like he might cry. He said, “Ian, what are you talking about?” in the gentlest voice, as if he thought Ian might snap like his wineglass stem.

  Oh, the glass. He glanced at it and saw dark red drips falling from his hand to the countertop; he didn’t know if they were wine or blood. He leaned forward and carefully set the glass in the sink, staring afterward at the thin slices in the meat of his palm, the dark smears of crimson and purple.

  “Ian,” Alec said, voice cracking. “I’m not afraid to be gay. That’s exactly the thing – I don’t want us to hide. I want to be with you.”

  Ian curled his hand into a fist and watched the blood drip, drip, drip.

  Over on the opposite counter, his phone beeped with a text alert.

  “That’ll be Kenneth,” he said, and got to his feet.

  Twenty-Seven

  Whitney woke to the quiet black of the wee hours Friday morning, and found Kev awake, watching her, his eyes a shine of glass on the pillow beside hers. He was going to tell his brothers today, and her stomach grabbed, a brief shiver of fear. She was so proud of him, though. Grateful for the chance to be afraid, because he’d trusted her enough to lay his secrets in her hands.

  This, she thought, was what it meant to be an old lady. To share his nerves in the dark, thrumming with quiet energy, the weight of love keeping her from flying off into madness. In that moment, she didn’t wonder if he wanted to ink a proprietary tattoo into her skin, or if he thought of her that way. There was no room for doubt in the dark hours before dawn. Only certainty, and a quiet desperation.

  “Kevin,” she said, his name a flash of silver through the shadows.

  He shifted closer toward her, and her hand slid up his chest, the warm skin of his throat, his pulse jumping under her palm.

  Their kiss tasted like sour morning breath, and it didn’t matter.

  Whitney opened her mouth and let him lick inside, angling her head to give him access. His fine grain of stubble rasped at her chin, and she breathed in the faint salt smell of tears just beneath his eye.

  He eased her over onto her back and settled between her thighs, braced with an arm beside her head, his other hand running slow patterns up and down her side. Easing her sleep shirt up inch by inch, until it was bundled up beneath her arms, and her bare skin, kissed silver by moonlight through the blinds, was revealed to him.

  Whitney tugged at his shirt and he pulled back, ditching his clothes in a few practiced moves, not even leaving the bed. Then he was warm and naked against her, his cock hot and hard against her thigh.

  He ducked his head to trail gentle, damp kisses across her breasts, teasing and sucking at her nipples, feathering his slick lips down her sternum in aimless patterns.

  She whined quietly in the back of her throat and lifted her hips when his hand skimmed down her belly and found the damp place between her thighs. “Yes,” she murmured. “Please.”

  But still he went slow, showing such care, fingering her until she was slick and ready. They hadn’t used a condom the last few times, knowing he was clean and that she was on birth control. He eased into her entrance with measured, shallow little thrusts, finally sliding home, buried to the hilt. She was never going to tire of that possession, the fullness of having him so deeply rooted in her body.

  She felt a heartbeat in every inch of her skin, and didn’t know if it was hers or
his. He didn’t move at first, just held still, like he needed to feel that they were joined, soak it in.

  He rested his forehead against hers, close enough she almost thought she could make out the blue of his eyes. “I love you,” he said.

  “I love you too.”

  ~*~

  “Are you sure?” Mercy asked, the picture of concern, all drawn up inside his huge frame like he intended to hit someone on Tango’s behalf. Probably he did.

  Tango raked his shower-damp hair back into a bun at the back of his head and secured it with an elastic. “I’m sure.” And strangely enough, he was. That morning, snuggled deep into the afterglow with Whitney, listening to the birds start their four a.m. chorus, he’d felt his fear melt slowly out of his lax muscles. All he could do was be honest in an effort to help that poor kidnapped boy, and countless others like him. If his brothers couldn’t handle that, then so be it. He still had Mercy, and Ghost, and Mags, and Ava, and Aidan. He still had his Whitney. He would survive, whatever the verdict, and for once – God – survival sounded like something he wanted.

  It was a bitter morning, frost still heavy on the grass and the bikes that had spent the night parked outside the clubhouse. The sun limped gray and weak up a gunmetal sky, slowly by degrees, and their breath plumed in front of them, white smoke.

  They both heard the approaching growl of what they recognized to be Aidan’s bike, the ring of the pipes echoing off cold pavement. A moment later, Aidan drew into view, bundled up against the cold, and turned in at the gate, coasting to a halt in the empty parking space in front of them. He killed the engine and tugged the end of his tightly wound scarf out of his jacket collar. “He tell you what kinda idiot shit he’s gonna do?” he asked Mercy.

  “Yeah,” Mercy sighed. He shoved his hands in his pockets, his huge shoulders drooped, and he looked sad. Sad enough that Tango’s stomach hurt.

  Aidan dropped his helmet on his handlebars and pushed his sunglasses up into his hair. His eyes were the color of rich hot chocolate in the early light. “I’m gonna ask you one more time: please don’t do this.”