by Evelyn Glass
“Fuck,” he muttered. “Fuck, fuck, fucking… yes… fucking yes…”
“Let me take care of you,” she said, catching his hands in hers. His eyes widened as she knotted their fingers together and gently pressed his hands down below his shoulders. She felt the flex in his arms and knew he could easily overpower her. It made his acceptance of her power that much more delightful. She leaned forward, getting a better angle, and she rode him. It took her out of the position she wanted most, but the low growl he gave told her that it was exactly what he wanted, and that was all right for now. His hips thrust up, hard and fast until the easiest thing was to move with him, letting him fuck her, even from here.
The moment when he came was nothing but exquisite. His eyes closed first, and his hips surged as his back arched. She rocked with him, holding him deep inside of her, feeling his pulsing cock wrapped up inside of her. For the first time in her life, she wondered what it would feel like to have this moment without latex between herself and her lover. To feel that pulse of arousal and completion deep inside of her, swirling like a transfer of energy between the two of them.
She didn’t realize he had been silent throughout his climax until he dropped back down to the bed, gasping and cursing like a sailor.
“Jesus,” he murmured.
She thought they’d be done, but he pressed up against her in one swift motion, rolling her onto her back. She gave way with a little squeak, laughing. He dropped himself down to her belly, kissing his way down to her curls.
“This okay?” he asked. Ten minutes before, she would have said no, but she nodded her yes as his teeth closed over her clit and she surged against him. His fingers filled her quickly, curling up and stroking that sweet spot as he licked her clit, pressing it delicately with the flat of his tongue before flicking at it and making her gasp. She pressed her hands up over her head, pushing against the headboard to keep from burying her fingers in her hair and fucking his face until she screamed. He kept moving in slow, steady turns. She was gasping, cursing, and desperate for completion, but it wasn’t quite enough.
He pulled back just a little bit from her, his fingers still moving deep inside of her.
“Show me how you like it,” he said, his voice low and rough.
“Oh God,” she murmured, and she was too tired to argue or to feel embarrassed. She took two fingers and pressed them down onto her clit, firm and hard, a little higher than where he’d been. She moved faster than he had been, feeling a bright red blush flood her cheeks, and feeling the roiling pleasure begin to curl into a tight little ball in the pit of her stomach.
“Yeah, baby,” he whispered, pressing one quick, hard kiss to her fingers. She felt the beginning of the peak, and trusting her instincts, turned her fingers so that they were presented to him, glistening and soaking. He groaned with something that sounded like pure pleasure, and sucked them into his mouth, hard and fierce, as he curled his fingers hard inside of her and pulled.
Emma felt like she’d burst into flames. Somewhere else, she could hear a low, gasping moan escaping her throat. She could feel her hips bucking, riding his hand like she’d ridden his cock earlier, and she knew without question that she wanted to stay this moment forever. His fingers curled up in her, his tongue licking every drop of her wetness off her fingers while he moaned and suckled and a second peak came, hard on the heels of the first, and that time she screamed. She clawed at his back, pulling at him, and he climbed her body, pressing soft kisses into her as he kept up that slow, steady pull with his fingers, dragging every last drop of pleasure out of her until she finally collapsed into stardust, her body pulsing around his fingers in fitful convulsions that sent shivers through her entire self.
When her eyes opened, he was there, stroking small circles over the softness of her belly and smiling.
“You went away for a little bit, there,” he said, his voice gentle and teasing. His eyes were so kind. How could a man with such vicious tattoos be so incredibly kind?
“I did,” she murmured back, rolling over on her side, towards him. He obliged by wrapping his arms around her, cuddling her gently into his chest. It felt delicious, sweet, incredibly warm and precious.
“Rest for a little bit,” he said. “I’ll keep an eye on you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Plus, there’s guards outside. Connell has us covered. Rest. Tomorrow will probably be just as long.”
“Okay.” She let her eyes close as she dropped slowly into the relaxation, and let it pull her down into sleep.
###
Dean
Dean held himself perfectly still until he was sure Emma’s breathing had evened out, and she was falling gently into sleep. He’d gone off like a rocket when she’d leaned forward, dropping her breasts into his hands, and then pinned him down to the bed. He’d been tempted to flip her over, press her into the mattress with his weight, and fuck her until she saw stars, but he’d been doing this for her, not for him. She’d given him exactly what he needed earlier. This time was for her. To take her mind off what they’d seen.
Now that it was over, now that she was asleep, and he was alone with his thoughts, he was having trouble shaking the image of Fred’s head separated from his body. He couldn’t decide what the hell was going on. An attack against the Titans, or an attack against him in particular? From the Scorpions or from a third party? There were too many options, and until he could narrow them down, at least a little, he didn’t know how to move forward.
His baby girl, along with the woman he trusted to look after that child, were out there somewhere. God, he hoped they were still out there. He couldn’t let the thought drift all the way through his mind of what would happen if he saw them the same way Fred had been. He needed them both back, safe and healthy.
He looked at Emma as she lay on the bed, her face relaxed and calm. He’d never seen a woman come as hard, as completely, as she had when she was riding him. He’d thought she might come apart entirely, the way she was heaving and surging on top of him. He’d felt so honored, holding her as she sagged throughout.
It was selfish to wish she’d stayed away. He still felt himself wanting it.
He slipped carefully out of bed, making sure not to disturb her. He pulled the covers gently up over her shoulders, watching her roll over gently and snuggle into them with a smile on her sleeping face, and then he pulled on his boxers and left the bedroom.
After he’d put her back on the bike, he’d followed Connell’s directions to the letter. He’d driven through the back roads of town, navigating through the absolute edges of Scorpion territory until he got to one of the safe houses that Connell had set up, years ago. It’d been a long time since the Titans had been involved in any direct, serious conflicts, but in Connell’s mind, that wasn’t the same as it being impossible. Besides, many of the full-timers were in the club because there weren’t too many other members of society that wanted anything to do with them. At least the Titans didn’t sell drugs or weapons. For a lot of the patched members, they’d done their time for offenses that should have been minor but were treated differently because of the color of their skin or the shallowness of their pockets. Getting a job once, you had to check the box marked YES for felon, which wasn’t an easy task. Dean and Connell hired anyone who knew their way around a garage and promised to stay clean of hard drugs. They created a society for the people who’d been pushed out to the edges.
But sometimes shit went down, and for better or worse, they were the kind of people that the law tended to look to first. They were the ones who were more likely to be dragged in for a crime when the police needed to make it look like they were taking action, even though there were no leads, and nothing was happening. It looked good, and how could they even fight back? From a cold-hearted point of view, he could understand the choice.
He didn’t like it.
He didn’t like that he was dragging Emma into this world. At the time, the only thing he’d been able to think of
was to take her away from the school — keep her close to him so that she couldn’t make things worse. Now, things were a thousand times worse than he’d even anticipated, even considered, and this innocent woman was stuck in this with him. If something happened to her or Mia or Abbey —
No. He couldn’t think that way. Nothing was going to happen to any of them. Somehow, he would get all four of them out of this — together and alive. No, he didn’t know how yet, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that he was a determined son of a bitch, and he would figure it out. He had to.
His phone rang. He glanced at it in surprise. It was the spare, the one no one had the number to except for Connell and Abbey. Connell would be calling him on the landline, not the cell. The number on it was one he didn’t know. There was absolutely nothing good that was going to come from answering this call.
He picked up the phone anyway. “Hello?”
He heard harsh breathing that sounded, somehow, feminine. “Dean? Dean? Is that you?”
His heart started slamming in his chest, so hard that he thought it was going to tear through his skin and rip a hole in his shirt. “Abbey? Are you okay? Are you hurt.”
“Dean.” She sounded completely panicked, her voice high and thread-like, sounding on the verge of panic. “Dean, it’s me. It’s Abbey.”
His entire body twisted with the need to hold her and protect her from whatever was happening. She sounded so much like Sam, and he didn’t want to be thinking about Sam right now. “I know, sweetheart. I hear you. Where are you? Are you okay?”
There was the sound of flesh on flesh, and then a sharp cry from his sister-in-law. A harsh, masculine voice was on the phone. Dean felt his hands tighten, the knuckles of his free hand creaking, the one holding the phone sounding like it might begin to stress the metal frame. He forced himself to take one breath. Just one. He would kill the stupid shit who had decided to hurt his family.
“You know who this is,” the voice said.
“Funny thing,” Dean said, struggling to keep back the snarl. “I don’t have a fucking clue since this is the first time I’ve heard from you all day.”
“Come to the Scorpions club. Pay the toll. You get in, you get the woman back. You do anything else, and I’ll kill her. You fucking hear me, you piece of shit?”
Dean managed to keep his hand on the phone relatively relaxed, but the one down by his side was clenched so tight it was shaking. “You ever see that Taken movie, the one with Liam Neeson?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
He was shocked by how quiet and calm he sounded. Maybe to someone else he would sound like a man about to do a deep dive with an AK-57, but compared to the chaos in his heart, his voice and his mind were calm and placid. “The thing about that movie is that he gave you warnings. He told scum like you that he was coming. What he was going to do. Bro, I’m going to tell you this. There isn’t going to be a warning for you. You hear me?”
There was a moment of almost eerie silence, and then a spat curse. “Come to the Scorpions clubhouse. Pay the toll, and she’s yours. And it doesn’t have to get messy.”
“It’s already messy,” Dean said and disconnected the call. He looked through the doorway, and Emma sleeping placidly in the bed, and then he shook his head, tired. He wanted to curl up and sleep. He wanted to keep his promise to Emma that he would personally watch over her and keep her safe. But he wanted Abbey and Mia safe and home. And he didn’t know her well enough to wake her and trust that she could handle whatever came next.
The guards outside would have to be enough. He took himself out to the bike and started it again.
Chapter Thirteen
Dean
His heart thrummed in his chest like a strummed guitar string as Dean stepped out of the townhouse. Across the street, two of the Titans members sat in an older pickup truck, keeping an eye on the safe house. It wasn’t the subtlest solution in the world, but they also weren’t a secret goddamn organization. The whole situation was pretty far out of their arena at this point.
He needed to get a message to Connell, but the person on the phone had been painfully clear that if he reached out to anyone, he’d be hurting Abbey. He wouldn’t take that risk… at least not in any way that was likely to be seen. Yes, there was a chance that the safe house was being watched, but if that were the case, it was game over in so many ways. He needed to trust someone over something, or he might as well give up.
He tapped on the window and waited while it rolled down. Ryan, a young white man who kept his hair buzzed Marine short, gave him a curious look.
“Just stepping out for some groceries,” he said. And held his breath, hoping that Ryan would remember the passphrase Connell had set. It had nothing to do with groceries. The safe house was well stocked with non-perishables. Someone was always here, bringing a fling for a night or spending a few days in a business suit, making the house look like it was a basic short-term rental situation, not affiliated at all with the Titans.
It took a second, and then Ryan nodded. “Understood,” he said.
It was the best Dean could hope for. He stepped away as Ryan rolled up the window. His heart was still thrumming as he walked to his bike and straddled the seat. He looked back at the safe house one more time, trying to convince himself he was doing the right thing. He wasn’t sure at all. Shouldn’t the right thing feel better than this?
He twisted the ignition, put the bike into gear, and pulled out.
###
Dean had known where the Scorpions’ clubhouse was his entire life. It had always been a place of which he was aware. As a kid, it had been a place to avoid unless he wanted to head farther down the dark road he was already on. As an adult, it had been the symbol of what he and the Titans were trying to build — and what they had to avoid in order to make it happen. He had spent a substantial portion of his life defining himself in opposition to the Scorpions.
Seeing the burnt out husk of the clubhouse as he drove up to it was an odd experience. He was twisted between surprise, gratitude, and horror. What in the world had happened? The Scorpions and the Titans had existed in quiet tension since the end of World War II. Those vets had come home and founded two clubs for the men who couldn’t seem to find their way back into the rows of pretty houses with picket fences and jobs that needed ties. Who didn’t feel like themselves unless the wind was in their faces and they knew they could pick up stakes and move whenever they needed to.
Whatever flames had taken the building under had been put out, and there wasn’t much left but rubble and the bare bones of the old warehouse. There wasn’t much heat coming from the building anymore. The fire department had come and gone, leaving the area taped off and barricaded. The street lights gave him some visibility, but not a lot. He parked his bike and dismounted, then just stood, staring at the wreckage of the old clubhouse.
He wanted to pull out his phone and try to find some news coverage, see if anyone had any idea what had happened. If they were thinking arson, it seemed unlikely the building would be unguarded, but how much effort would the cops put into figuring out what had happened to a bunch of thugs? He knew how he and his kind were thought of in the civilized world. It was part of why he’d become so reluctant to bring Emma any further into this than she already was.
He stared at the building and thought about how he could disentangle her from this web. Was there any way? Or was the game already over? Was she already a target?
“Is that you?”
The quiet, feminine voice behind him made him spin on his heel. A small woman was standing under the streetlight, her arms wrapped tightly around her narrow frame. It took him a moment to remember her name — Naveena Sen. She’d been a year behind him in high school, and while they had never been friendly, they’d nodded at each other across many different classrooms. Her parents had immigrated from India by way of England, but she’d been born here.
“Naveena,” he said.
“Dean Patterson,” she
said. He could hear a waver in her voice, a kind of ragged edge that made him think she’d been awake for hours longer than she should have been. She took a few steps toward him, and he could see that the makeup under her eyes had run. She had probably been crying. Her long, curly brown hair was tangled. That was all he’d noticed before she flew at him.
He braced himself for a slap, but he didn’t expect a solid punch to the stomach. She knocked the wind out of him, and he folded over in a gasp, his stomach aching and his diaphragm paralyzed for a moment.
