His hands kept their positions, but his fingers curled and dug in as he pressed harder into my lips still, made them start to tingle, made the buzzing sensation wash over my skin until it was all I was, an electric current of need.
I whimpered again, louder.
And it was like the sound shocked him out of a stupor instead of drove him crazier as it should have.
His lips stayed on mine for a second, but gentled, lessened, for a long moment before they left mine completely.
My head fell forward onto his chest as I took a shaky breath that made my whole body tremble slightly. His hand moved from my neck to my upper back, closing over it the way it had when he held me through the stitches.
I don't know what I had been expecting.
But I was pretty darn sure it wasn't a kiss that made the world fall away, that made me more present, more attuned to another person than I had ever been before in my life.
My lips felt tingly and swollen still. My eyes felt too heavy to open. And when I breathed, I tried to do it deeply to pull in more of his scent.
"Penny," he said, his voice a little strained, a little less in-control than it seemed it usually was. "Get back in bed."
I took another breath, understanding.
He needed me to get away from him.
I had felt him rein himself back in when he had started to let go.
He was trying to protect me in a way.
And to do that, he needed me to walk away from him and give him the distance he needed.
I wasn't stupid.
Sex was not an option.
My ribs hurt. My back hurt. There was no position that wouldn't hurt even if I could overcome the knowledge that falling into bed with someone after a traumatic experience would only lead to regret.
So, taking another deep breath, I released his neck. I stepped away. I moved around his massive form and I got back into bed.
Duke stood there for a long moment, taking deep breaths, head ducked to look at the floor, trying to pull it together.
Then he turned, went to the door, and left.
And I tried really hard to not hear that door slam sound like a missed opportunity.
SIX
Duke
I gave her what she needed.
At least, that was what I was trying to convince myself as I walked away from her. She had been through some shit and she was scared and alone and confused. Her body craved comfort and a touch of a man who didn't want to hurt her.
That was it.
The fact that since the second I had pulled her into my arms all I could think about was doing exactly what we had just done, yeah, that was in no way part of it.
I walked into the hall, still hard, still fighting the urge inside to go back in that room and continue what we started.
The last thing she needed on top of what she had already been through was regret.
"So, do you think your attraction to her is healthy?" Renny's voice met me as soon as the door closed.
My head snapped up to see him standing a few feet down from my room, leaning against the wall, his leg cocked up, his foot on the wall. "Fuck off, Renny," I said, not able to muster more than a quiet demand as I brushed past him.
But Renny, he was a a wolf following the scent of blood, of ever-weeping wounds. He saw the weakness in me and his own damage made him hunt, made him poke, made him try to bring mine to the forefront.
"Just saying," he said, following behind me as I moved into the main room where a bunch of the other guys were standing about. "Don't you think she fits a certain... type? Maybe it is your old conditioning coming back to..."
"I said fuck off!" I roared, turning and slamming my hands into his chest, making his much more slight frame go back several feet.
His chin tipped up and I knew shit was about to go down yet again.
But right that second, two things happened.
Somewhere outside, someone yelled, "Get down!"
And then there was the unmistakable rapid-fire sound of machine gun fire.
The entire room ducked at the first sound.
My eyes went to Renny who was already reaching behind his back, pulling out two guns, tossing one at me. I grabbed it on the fly, checking the clip as we both moved toward the back door.
You could tell immediately by looking around the men who had grown up around violence from the one who found themselves simply drawn to it as adults. The hardened ones, the guys like me and Repo, Reign, Cash, and Wolf all moved to the exits, bodies tense, every instinct to face it. The other guys, the newer ones, the ones who were softer, they stood around looking at each other, waiting for instructions.
I was actually impressed by the fact that Renny reacted as he did.
His childhood, while violent in some ways, was not street violent.
But something about the way he could close himself down made him calm and calculated as he took my six as we went outside to the unrelenting sounds of bullets slamming into the trees, the side of the compound, Repo's classic cars in the back field.
"Side yard!" Shredder yelled as he saw us start to fan out, crouched down beside Vin's body who had red blooming from his chest like a corsage.
"Shit," I hissed, raising my gun in the direction Shredder instructed and, the darkness complete, squeezing off a round without seeing any kind of target.
Reign, Cash, Wolf, and Repo moved out from the front yard, doing the same as me as I started moving outward, Renny behind me.
"Duke watch..." Shredder stood, raising a gun in our direction. But the rest of his sentence was cut off as three bullets slammed into his chest and stomach, making his body jerk backward with each impact, red spurting out of him.
My guts twisted as I tried to turn.
But I was a second too late.
And it made me think a thought that I thought I would never think.
Thank fuck for Renny.
By the time I turned, Renny had already put a plug between the fucker's eyes, his body flying backward toward the ground, dead before he even hit.
Then, silence fell.
The machine gun fire was gone.
Our own firing followed.
Everyone paused, looking around, trying to tell if the threat was gone or waiting for us to step into the open.
"Shred," I said under my breath and Renny nodded as I ran across the field toward our fallen men.
Vin was gone.
His wide, familiar chest was completely still. His eyes were open and I reached with one hand to close them as my focus went to Shred.
His chest was rising and falling too fast, too labored. The blood soaked through his shirt, red and sticky even in the dark. He gave me a weak smile. "What a fucking way to go, y'know?" he asked , blood coming out of his mouth as he spoke.
"You're not going fuckin' anywhere," I insisted, pressing my hand into the wounds of his chest, trying to stop the flow. "Stay the fuck with me," I demanded.
"Thank fuck I never denied myself the ladies and booze," he rasped, choking slightly on the blood that kept flooding his mouth.
"Stop that shit," I said, a hint of desperation clear in my voice. I liked all the guys. But Shred was the only one I could likely call a friend. He couldn't fuckin' die on me.
"Hey," he said, spitting some of the blood out onto the ground. "Take care of that Penny girl. She's one of the good ones. I know it."
"No, Shred," I begged as his smile went a little slack, as his eyes lost their brightness. "Fucking no!" I roared as his chest stopped moving, as the life left his body.
I felt a hand clamp down on my shoulder and, grief and rage a heady concoction in my system, I flew to my feet and swung around, slamming my bloodstained hands into Renny's chest. He went back a step. His gun was tucked away. His hands were raised in a passive way.
"I get it, man," he said, shaking his head, backing up as I kept advancing him, feeling no way to vent my rage but violence. My hands slammed into him again, leaving perfect palm prints on his white s
hirt with Shredder's blood. "Get it out," he went on, hands still up, still retreating as I advanced, likely knowing that if I let go, he would be my target, and the rage I felt was nothing like I had known before.
I bent, having every intention of taking him down, when I felt my shoulders tagged from behind by hands too strong to be anyone other than Wolf.
"Aiming that anger wrong," he told me, voice low and firm as he started dragging me backward from Renny who stopped retreating and dropped his hands.
"Fucking Shred," I growled, my chest compressing, squeezing out all my air and I dropped down again, hanging my head, trying to suck in air to ease the stinging sensation of my heart in my chest.
"Get some mother fucking flood lights out here," Reign's voice yelled. "And get that body in the back of a truck and get it the fuck out of here five minutes ago. Repo, collect the guns and disappear them. The fucking cops will be here in less than two minutes. We were attacked. We lost two men. None of us returned fire. Every fucking one needs to wash the gunpowder off their hands right now. And anyone who shot a gun, get your clothes in the washing machine now. I said fuckin' now!" he growled.
Wolf's hands dragged me upward and we all shuffled inside and toward the basement. We all threw our evidence-covered clothes in the wash as the other guys threw new clothes down the stairs. Renny grabbed the bleach and poured half the bottle in the washing machine and poured more in a bucket, plunging his hands in and scrubbing it up to his elbows. Everyone else followed suit.
"Snap the fuck out of it," Reign barked at me. "There's a time to grieve. This is not fuckin' it. Get rid of the evidence and get your head on straight or you'll be grieving the death of a brother behind fuckin' bars."
I shook my head to try to clear it and plunged my hands into the bleach as well, scrubbing off the evidence as well as Shred's blood. It almost felt wrong to wash it off, like I was brushing it off like it was nothing but evidence, not his fucking life all over me.
But Reign was right; I needed to get it together.
Renny grabbed the bucket of bleach, pink with blood, and poured it down the sink, pouring the rest of the bottle of bleach to wash it down.
"Upstairs now," Cash barked from the top of the stairs. "The cops are here."
We all filed upstairs, oddly barefoot, all our shoes in the washing machine. Renny turned to me suddenly, shoving a bottle of vodka in my hands. "Chug it," he told me as I took it. At my lowered brows, he shrugged. "You being plastered will explain the fact that you're acting weird as fuck. Bottoms up," he said and, seeing the logic there, I tipped it up and chugged a fourth of the bottle before dropping my arm, spilling a bit on my shirt for good measure.
"NBPD," someone yelled from outside a second before the door burst open. "Hands up!" they demanded, coming in all vested-up, guns drawn, fanning out.
Our arms all went up, mine with a bottle of vodka in one hand, feeling the warmth of it flood my system, numbing some of the pain.
"Don't know why you're holding guns on us," Reign reasoned. "We were the ones attacked. Two of our men were taken out in the yard," he explained and one of the men nodded at him and moved toward the back door and slipped outside, two men behind him.
"Reign," a tall, strong, relatively young detective with dark hair and eyes said as he moved in. "Care to tell us why we got reports of machine gun fire here?"
"That's a good fuckin' question, Lloyd," Reign said with a nod. "We were just hanging out, having a couple of drinks and someone started shooting up the place."
Lloyd nodded, lips tipped up ever so slightly. "And you guys, being completely upstanding businessmen in this community, just sat tight and waited for us to arrive."
Reign nodded. "Something like that."
"So if we ran a gun powder residue..."
"Squeaky clean," Reign cut him off with a shrug.
"Squeaky clean," Lloyd said, lips turning up into a sneer. "Yeah, you know, I've never met such clean bikers before. You guys clean the place with bleach, huh? It reeks of it in here."
"We're good housekeepers," Cash agreed, deadpan, despite the fact that the entire room was full of red Solo cups, discarded beer bottles, and various food wrappers.
"There are two men down," one of the cops said as he came back in.
"Yours," Lloyd said, looking at Reign and, if I wasn't mistaken, there was a hint of sympathy in his expression.
"Vin and Shredder," Reign nodded.
"Government names?" he pressed.
"Vincent Georgio and Scott Leonard."
Lloyd pulled out a notepad and started jotting things down. "Did any of you see anything?"
Reign shook his head. "I tried to head out the front. But it's dark as fuck out. Couldn't see shit."
To that, Lloyd nodded. "Alright. I am going to go check out the bodies. All of you need to stay in the building. We will need to get all your statements."
He said it in a way that implied he knew it would get him nowhere.
With that, he headed out, leaving us with a few uniforms around, guns away, but all seeming tense.
"Penny," Renny said quietly into my ear, a world of things said in the one word.
Fuck. Penny.
There was no way she didn't hear the machine gun fire and shouting. And she was alone in a dark room after having already being kidnapped and beat the fuck up.
Christ. I needed to get to her.
"Can I go to my room?" I asked the nearest cop, swaying on my feet for good measure. "I think I'm gonna be sick."
It worked and he shrank back from me like I might blow chunks all over his shiny shoes. "Yeah, just stay in the building," he said.
I wobbled and slammed into the wall as I walked, sober as a God damn judge, but laying it on thick for anyone watching.
I moved down the hall and opened my bedroom door, surprised when I found it pitch black. I had barely slammed the door, my arm raised to flick the light switch when I felt something sharp slice down my arm, searing into my skin.
I hissed and flicked the light on, finding Penny standing there, the knife I kept in my nightstand raised, a hint of blood on the blade from the slice she made down my arm.
"Fuck," I said, dropping my arm, feeling the blood start to trickle down my forearm and toward my hand.
"Duke? Oh my God. I'm so..."
She lost the rest of that sentence when my hand clamped down over her mouth. "Shh," I demanded, eyes intense, trying to communicate how important it was. "Okay?" I whispered. She nodded and I dropped my hand. "The cops are here," I explained, taking her hand and prying the knife from it, pulling her toward the bathroom and turning the water of the sink and shower on full blast to muffle the sounds of our voices.
"What happened?"
"Looks like whoever went after you meant it when they said we were all next. They got two of our guys tonight."
To that, her entire small body stiffened, her eyes going huge. "You mean... killed them?" she asked, voice trembling a little.
I wanted to sugarcoat it. I wanted to spare her feelings. But there was no room for that right then. "Yeah, baby. They killed two of our guys."
"Oh my God. Who..." she started, despite not knowing many of us.
"Vin, who was like the club grandfather. And... Shred," I said, my stomach turning sour at the sound of his name, making me seriously wonder if I was maybe going to be sick after all.
"Shred? Like... Shredder?" she asked, voice understanding and sad.
"Yeah, Shredder."
Her face fell at that. She didn't even know him, but she was sad that his life was lost.
"Oh, Duke. I'm so sorry," she said, shaking her head.
And then she did the damnedest thing.
She closed the small space between us, her arms going around my back, her head resting on my chest.
She fucking hugged me.
My body reacted immediately. I bent forward, resting the side of my face on the top of her head. One of my arms went low on her hips; the other went over her shoulder,
pulling her to me perhaps too tight, but needing the contact. Her hands moved up and down my back, offering comfort. And I took it, finding how much I needed it right then.
I released her what felt like forever later, but still too soon, when I felt my shirt starting to stick to me because of the heat from the shower steaming up the room.
"I don't want to go back out there," I admitted, surprising myself.
"I can..." she started to offer, but I was shaking my head before she could finish.
"We need you to stay in here and stay quiet until the cops are out of here."
"But..."
"Penny, please..." I said, shaking my head, not able to have the argument.
"Okay," she rushed to say, nodding. "Alright, I can do that. But what if they search..."
"They don't have a warrant. And even if they get one, you just be honest. You didn't see anything. You heard the gunshots and that's it."
"But what about... why I am here and all beat up?" she asked.
"You're with me," I said with a shrug, maybe finding that I liked that idea a little too much. "And you were mugged. Random street violence."
"You want me to lie," she said, and I couldn't tell from her tone if she was upset by that idea or not.
"I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important."
"Because you will get in trouble if I don't."
I nodded. "Me. Renny. Reign... everyone."
She bit into her lip for a second and shrugged. "Alright. I'll do what I have to do I guess. But I hope I don't have to."
"I hope so too," I agreed, tossing the knife into the sink to rinse off the blood.
I turned all the water off, putting my finger to my mouth to remind her to be quiet, then moved into the bedroom where I grabbed the bottle of pills off the nightstand. "Need any more of these right now?" I asked, barely more than a whisper.
She shook her head and I quietly moved to the dresser, pulling it away from the wall, pulling a latch in the wall and exposing a small hole in the wall between the beams where I kept some spare cash and my old IDs. I slipped the pills in and put the dresser back.
Duke (The Henchmen MC Book 5) Page 7
