HIS BABY’S KEEPER

by Evelyn Glass

  “You see, Ms. Mills,” Mr. Black said. “We know the girl is alive. We believe she has the information we need. But Mr. Jay has prevented us from being able to ask her some very necessary questions. All we want to do is ascertain whether or not the girl is any danger to us.”

  “If she doesn’t know whatever it is you’re worried about, what happens then?”

  “We apologize for the inconvenience, and send everyone on their way with our apologies and compliments.”

  “And if you find out she does have information you need?”

  Black’s smile got a little bit wider, animalistic. “Well, then things will get a little bit more complicated. Unfortunately. We’ll have to hope that we can all come to some sort of arrangement. I hope, for everyone’s sake, that it is possible.” The smile faded away like the sun as a cloud passed over it. “I’d hate to even think about what would happen if we couldn’t.”

  Emma tried to hide the shiver that ran down her spine. “And what does Jay have to do with all of this? Surely if your intentions are as innocent as you say, then he should want to bring the girl to you.”

  “If only Jay were as rational as you,” Black said, smiling that shark smile again. “Unfortunately, he seems to have his own opinions. He’s taken the girl somewhere else. I want you to get her back. I’ll ask my questions, and you’ll be on your way.”

  Her mind spun as she tried to think of a way out or a way through it. There was nothing she could think of, other than sheer, blind obedience. At least for now.

  “Okay,” she said, feigning frustration and acceptance. “Fine. I’ll do what you want. For Mia’s sake.”

  “Good,” Black replied. “Excellent choice. I’m so glad that we’re going to be working together, Ms. Mills.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Dean

  Dean was on the road again, the wind hard in his face. On his bike was where the world made the most sense, and where things were easiest to cope with. Especially hard things, like this—when the Scorpions had shown up at the clubhouse, spinning a tale about Emma being walked out of the mall by men in suits.

  Connell had half a mind to dismiss it, but the Scorpion member had described the outfit Emma had been wearing to a T, and what reason did he have to lie? Dean had taken to the road with half the Titans at his back, and half the Scorpions on their way. The Scorpion had sent the location where the SUV had taken Emma to his club and led Dean and the Titans there personally.

  Outside the old office building, he took just a moment to make sure that everyone was ready. And then they rushed the door.

  Dean had been in more than a few firefights in his life, but he’d never enjoyed them. He’d never felt good about firing a gun, and he’d never been entirely sure if he’d killed another person. He didn’t want to know. He’d been sick enough over the various beatings he’d given. But this was his daughter, and the woman he— loved was an awfully strong word. But he cared about Emma. He cared about her a lot more than made any sense given the short time he’d known her. And if he had to kill someone because they meant her harm, well, then that was just what was necessary to keep her safe.

  With his siblings at arms, he rushed through the door, through a confusing series of corridors and old cubicles, coated with dust where they weren’t draped in plastic sheeting. The building smelled like mouse shit and something else, darker, that he couldn’t quite place.

  There were clear tracks through the dust to follow, and he followed them easily into the dark maze of the building. He could hear voices, and after a few turns, saw lights. He held up a hand before he and the rest of the club members rushed the room, spending a moment getting an idea of what was happening.

  He could see a long conference table. Several men in suits around the table. They looked lazy, soft. One at the head of the table looked like a hell of a snake, but not the kind who would be a threat in a fight. More of a threat you wouldn’t want against you at a table like this one. There were guys in suits all around the table, the kind who wore dark sunglasses inside and had their fancy suits cut so that they wouldn’t betray the shoulder harness worn underneath them. And at the end of the table was Emma. He recognized her from her dark, curly hair in a ponytail, and the set of her shoulders. She was nervous, but not as much as she could’ve been. He waited until the others with him were close by, guns out. His heart throbbed in his ears as he took a deep breath, let it halfway out, and then nodded.

  They boiled into the room in a rapid wave. He couldn’t track each moment as it happened. He reacted on instinct and movement, rather than consideration. There were shouts around him, of “Don’t move,” “On the ground,” and “Listen up scum.” He saw one of the standing suits go for a gun and saw him fall backward, clutching at his shoulder. Another moved, close to Dean, and he brought back the gun before bringing it down hard across the man’s temple, crumpling him to the floor like a sack of potatoes. It felt like ages, but it was just a few moments before the men were surrounded, put in their places, hands up in the air or down on the ground. Connell seemed to have the situation contained, and when he shared a quick nod with Dean, Dean let himself go to Emma.

  She all but flung herself up out of the chair, wrapping her arms around his neck and throwing her weight so hard against him that he wavered slightly on his feet.

  “Hey,” he let himself murmur into her neck, looking up at the ceiling so that the stinging in his eyes wouldn’t turn into something embarrassing. “Hey. You’re okay. You’re okay.”

  “Damn right I am,” she whispered back, and he could hear choked wetness in her voice as well. “But I’m getting really tired of this damsel in distress routine. Real tired.”

  “Well, tell you what,” he said. “Next time, you can rescue me. Deal?”

  “Yeah. That sounds good.”

  He pulled back enough to see her face and give her the shit-eating grin he knew she loved. “So how did a pretty girl like you end up in a—” He looked around, considering. “Crappy broken down office building like this?”

  Instead of laughing, though, the joy on her face stilled down into something between fear and worry.

  “They have Mia,” she said. “Or they know who does. But they don’t know where she is. And Dean… we have to get to her first.”

  Dean forced himself to loosen his grip on Emma, but before he let go, she squeezed his hand. He moved to Connell, who had his gun on the man who had been sitting opposite Emma, at the other end of the table.

  “This is Damian Roth,” Connell said, his voice calm and level. “Runs a few banks downtown, but more importantly, keeps money clean for any number of dirty interests in the area.” He gestured with his chin at one of the Scorpions, a tall and burly man with curly black hair and dark brown skin. “Carl ID’d him. Says the Scorpions used to use his services, but that the company went dark a few years back, then resurfaced with a shiny new client list, and old friends were no longer welcome.”

  Dean nodded. He put his hip up on the table, trying to look conversational and “Good Cop.”

  “I suppose you’ve already tried tracing the feed back to that camera?” He pointed at the screen without letting himself look at it. He didn’t want to see his little girl’s face, twisted with stress and worry.

  Roth didn’t look up and didn’t say a thing. So much for “Good Cop.” There was no way Dean was going to be able to control himself in the face of a pissant in a business suit who thought he didn’t need to speak to a man who had a question. Connell was just going to need to be “Good Cop” for a change.

  Dean shifted his balance so that his foot rested on the edge of the chair, the steel toe of his motorcycle boot resting right on top of Roth’s junk.

  “I’m not a patient man,” he said, keeping his voice as calm and level as he could. Which wasn’t very calm or level at this point. “I’m going to ask again. And if you don’t answer me, I’m going to squash your fucking pencil dick into paste. We clear?”

  He saw Roth’s jaw
clench, but the man didn’t look up. He glanced at Connell, who nodded and gestured at one of the women who’d come along with them. She went to the bank of monitors and started tracing wires. As soon as she found the main computer bank, she pulled something out of a small knapsack, and he could hear the clicking of keyboard keys.

  “We’re going to track down whatever you have going on here,” Dean said, still striving to make his voice conversational. “I just want you to answer now. I don’t give a shit about what you think, what you want, what you think is most important. Who you think you might be protecting. Did you try and trace the signal yourself already?”

  Roth was clearly gritting his teeth, expecting the pain. It seemed only right to give it to him.

  It was a while before he screamed, but by then, Dean had found out everything he needed to know.

  Chapter Thirty

  Emma

  Emma had to turn away when Dean started doing whatever he was doing that made Roth, the man who’d introduced himself to her as Black, scream. She knew why it was happening, and she couldn’t bring herself to disagree that it was necessary. But at the same time, this was the life she had sworn she would never be a part of.

  The way he’d rushed in and saved her, hugged her and held her tightly — and then he’d done something so incredibly cruel she’d had to close her eyes and refuse to see it. Without a second thought. A man who would fight so hard for his daughter, who would fight so hard for her — that had to be a good thing. An honorable thing. Didn’t it?

  The man didn’t scream for long. He gasped out whatever it was that Dean wanted to know, and Dean stopped the pain. He stepped back and away, and Emma could breathe again. He came to her quickly, but he didn’t try to turn her around or push her to look at him. She watched the bikers around her start to take the various suits out of the room, and she wondered for just a moment what would happen to them next. After a moment’s thought, however, she found that she did not care at all. They’d kidnapped a child, kidnapped her, kidnapped Abbey, and had so casually spoken about killing all of them. As if it would never take more than a second thought.

  Dean’s hands ran up and down her arms, and she was suddenly filled with such intense need, such an insatiable and desperate drive to prove that she was alive, safe. She turned against him and kissed him, hard and tight, molding her body to his again.

  “Take me somewhere,” she murmured against his mouth. “I don’t care where.”

  “Fuck, Emma,” he murmured back, his hands tight on the flesh of her hips. “I don’t know where the hell we even are.”

  She could feel him, full and hard against her belly, and she didn’t care that she wasn’t sure either. “I’m sure there’s a wall. A cot. A room with a door that closes. A room. I need you, Dean.” She put as much stress into the word need as she could. He got the message. He tightened his grip on her hand and pulled her out of the room.

  They threaded through a maze of old, dusty cubicles, past filing cabinets and broken down bookcases, until he opened a door to reveal a small room, without too much dust or rubble. He pushed her inside and shut the door behind him. The room was instantly pitch black, no light coming from anywhere. She hit the opposite wall lightly, her hands on concrete, and she stayed there, listening for him. It was impossible to hear anything over the throb of her heart in her ears. Until his breath was on the back of her neck, hissing his pleasure with her, and she was entirely lost to everything but the sensation of his body against hers.

  “Tell me what you want,” he murmured. One hand was lightly circling the base of her throat, the other wrapped around her waist. She could feel the hard length of his erection pressed against her, thick and rigid. She bucked against him, just a little, just enough to make her gasp, hear him growl into her ear.

  There were so many options, so many things she could ask for. Given the sound of his voice in her ear, she could ask for anything, and he would give it to her. And yet she struggled to find words to articulate exactly what it was she wanted. There was a deep ache between her thighs, and she wanted him there to ease out the deep feeling of want, but there was more to it than that.

  “I don’t know how to ask you to love me and use me at the same time,” she said, wondering at her tone before she realized she’d spoken the words aloud. Her cheeks heated so much that she wondered if he could see her blush, even in such total darkness.

  “You just did,” he said, and his hands began to move, slow and sinuous, over her body. He wasn’t asking permission or pushing her boundaries. He was just doing exactly what she’d asked. Experiencing her body in slow, solid strokes of his fingers. He knew her now. How hard he could twist her nipples through her shirt. How she loved it when he cupped her cunt with the palm of his hand, and then pressed with his pointer finger just so. He stepped forward, pushing her against the wall. She let him guide her until her chest and hands were close to the concrete surface, and she bent at the hips, pushing her ass out towards him. He shoved her leggings down, exposing her ass, and cupped the round flesh in his hands, massaging her, separating her cheeks and digging his thumbs into the vulnerable flesh.

  The first smack came as a surprise, and she whimpered, rising up onto her toes. But as the shock of it faded from the fleshy part of her buttocks, it left behind a surprisingly delicious frisson, a sparkling sensation that was somewhere between pain and pleasure.

  “Tell me how that felt,” he said, his voice level, but with a note of…not quite concern, not quite worry. Something very different. Heat, she thought. Heat and need.

  “Again,” she said because it was the only word she knew.

  He smacked her again, on the other side this time, and her fingers tried to dig into the concrete as she hissed in surprised pleasure. Knowing the strike had been coming, it felt even better. Even brighter.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  “Good,” she murmured. “Delicious. Again.”

  Another smack, where the first one hand landed, and the sensitive flesh was even more bright now. “Tell me.” It was a ritual at that moment. The strike of his hand, the words falling from his lips, the gasping reply from her.

  “Bright,” she said, hearing the whine in her voice as she fought to understand why this was making her pussy gush so wet and found that she didn’t care anywhere near as much as she had assumed she would. “Bright red. More. Again.”

  Instead of her ass, his hand came down on her cunt. Nothing like as hard as he’d hit the flesh of her cheeks, but still a strong, stinging strike. Up towards her mound, her pubic hair cushioned the sensation, but lower down, where her lips spread and her hole was exposed, God, the stinging was incredible. She gasped and surged against him, her hips outside of her control, hungry and wanting and so exposed.

  She heard the quick metallic hiss of his zipper, and then his smooth, wet cockhead was pressing at her flesh. She didn’t feel bruised or pained, but she could feel every nerve on high alert.

  “Are you my good girl?” he asked, his voice low and intense.

  “I’m whatever you want me to be,” she said, shocked at how deeply she meant the words. And then he was pressing forward, and she didn’t mean much of anything now, other than the curses spilling from her throat as he fucked her. She used the wall to press back against him, gaining the leverage she needed to push him towards just the right angle. The press of his hips against her reddened flesh brightened her further. There was a tiny amount of light that spilled under the closet door, and she could see some rough shapes now, but she still found herself squeezing her eyes shut and just embracing the sensation of him fucking her, sure and steady, each thrust pushing her a little higher towards a peak that she’d only dreamed of.

  His hands gripped her ass, his thumbs digging into the spots he’d spanked, his cock abusing her cunt with such incredible regularity, and it felt sensational. It felt beyond pleasurable. And then, when he reached down further, stroking her clit with the rough side of his thumb, everything condensed down into a
supernova of pleasure, radiating from her clit in waves that dragged low, open-throated moans from her. She felt her knees go weak, and his hands catch her hips, holding her carefully as he held himself deep inside, letting her pulse on him.

  When the orgasm released her from its clutches, he pulled free from her and turned her, pressing her back up against the wall. She was almost limp, moving with him, not yet back in full control of her body. He pulled her knee up, hooking it around his waist, giving him room to enter her.

  “Yes?” he asked, and she nodded, then realized he probably couldn’t see her.

  “More,” she said, the only word she could conjure up. She felt his breath exhale slowly as he leaned into her, his forehead to hers. She thought he’d plunge forward again, rail her against the wall. But what happened was so much more sensual. So much softer. He slid into her easily, her body wet and wide open, and she accepted him with a happy little sigh. He found a rhythm quickly, but it was slower than she’d come to expect from him. Steady, powerful, insistent, but something different from their almost vicious fucking of the last few days. His forehead was pressed against hers like he’d been welded there, and she was quite sure that if she could see well enough in the dark, she would see his eyes, wide open, staring right into hers. It was an intimidating thought, and a delicious one, and she clung to it just like she clung to his shoulders as he rocked into her.