by Violet Blaze
“Bloody hell,” Royal snarls when Mug unlocks the door and lets his President shove his way in. “The fuck are you doing in here? Didn't I tell you to stay outside?”
“Not specifically,” Mug says, and Royal raises his dark brows. I don't think the guy's being sarcastic. Honestly—and I feel terrible for saying this—but I think Mug is kind of … dumb? Royal stares at him for a long second before looking up at me. I can feel my throat catch and my heart start to flutter. The second our eyes meet, my brain starts to fog up and my body goes into overdrive mode. I wonder if it's the same for him? “I couldn't very well ignore a dinner invitation, now could I?”
“Get the fuck out of here,” Royal says with a slight tilt of his head towards the door. Mug rushes to obey, heading outside and slamming the door behind him. Royal locks it and then turns back to me as I set aside the salad bowl I was drying and turn off the TV with the remote. “You invited Mug in for dinner? Should I be jealous? What else did you two do in here?” he adds with a glance at the rumpled couch.
I smile, the expression taking over my lips before I can compose myself and start asking hard questions. See, that's the way with this guy. He gets me every time. I can't figure out if it's his eyes, those two deep, dark pools, like the eyes of his wolves, wild and feral. Or maybe it's the dark hair that's always just this side of mussed. No, I think it might be the muscles I can see through his t-shirt, the way his boots sound as he moves across the floor towards me.
“Wouldn't you like to know,” I say as I pick the salad bowl back up and tuck it into a cabinet, glancing at Royal over my shoulder. It makes me nervous to put my back to him, but not because I'm scared. Because I want him to push me over the counter, take me from behind, his belt buckle clinking as he thrusts hard and deep.
I shiver, glad that the kitchen island's between us.
“He seems like a nice guy,” I add as I drop down off my tiptoes and close the cabinet. My house is nothing like Royal's, no old world charm, just white custom cabinets that I had put in when I bought the house. I stare at the glossy surface of one of the doors before looking back at Royal.
His presence takes over the entire living room/kitchen area, making the place feel a lot smaller than it really is. When he puts his tattooed hands palm down on the countertop next to the box of condoms, I try to scoot forward and surreptitiously grab them.
“Well now,” Royal says, grabbing my wrist in his fingertips when I snatch the box away from him. “What's this for, Pint-Size? You and Mug fooling around on me?”
“Hah,” I start, but Royal jerks me into his chest and I end up dropping the black box on the wood floor. “I read online that some clubs share their girls around,” I say, and it's only partially a joke. I read that and it scared the crap out of me. Women aren't sex dolls for men to pass around like chattel.
Apparently, Royal must think something like that, too, because he grits his teeth as he wraps an arm around my waist.
“Every club is different,” he says, but his voice is low and it's not a complete denial. “Stop reading shit on the internet and just ask me about it.” Royal's hand grips my waist tight as he looks down at me, trying to drown me in the two dark pools of his eyes. His face is covered in stubble and his muscles are tight with stress. Still, he smells like wet earth and wild things, and his chest is warm, the comforting rhythm of his heartbeat pulsing beneath my left palm.
“Does that mean you don't want to share me?”
Royal smirks and lifts his left hand up to cup the side of my face.
“What a bloody stupid question,” he says before releasing me and taking a step back. I try not to let him see how disappointed I am. I don't want him to let me go; I want him to hold me, kiss me, fuck me. Those are the only things I've wanted since I first laid eyes on him. Damn it, Toni Gladstone, I think as I run a hand through my hair. I couldn't stand the tight pull of the bun anymore. Besides, I think it helped Mug to trust me more, made me seem less mayoral. “You'd allow a man to do that? Share you around?”
“Of course not,” I say, picking up the condoms and opening a random cabinet. I shove them in next to a stack of silver platters, just to get them out of the way.
Royal shrugs his broad shoulders as he looks over at me, a slight smirk working its way onto his lips.
“Then why ask? You set your own terms, love. Make your own rules. I'm not interested in telling you what to do.”
“Good, because I never asked you to,” I snap as I put my hands on my hips and we stare each other down. I feel a cultural divide opening up between us, and it bothers me. Really, really bothers me. “I just … that's not something your club buddies do with their old ladies?”
Royal snorts and moves around the counter. I move away from him on the pretense of putting away the rest of the dinner dishes, but he notices, penning me in against the fridge with a hand on either side of my body.
“You think I'd share you with any of those assholes? Are you taking the piss with me, Pint-Size?”
“But you do … share those … are they groupies? Club whores? Leather lovers? There's a million different terms floating around online.”
Royal laughs and stands up, shaking his head at me.
“You must've spent a whole lot of time researching there, love. What are you so afraid of? That I'm going to cage you?”
“Club life doesn't seem all that … it doesn't seem like it has a lot of room for experimentation.”
“Those girls, the leather lovers, like Mia,” he says with a raised brow. “They're there of their own accord. Nobody makes 'em come, and nobody makes 'em stay. If they don't want to shag somebody, all they have to do is say no. I don't let women beaters or rapists in my club.” There's a sharp note to that statement, like Royal means serious business. I can only imagine what he'd do to someone like that. “So, sure, the girls sleep around with a lot of the guys. Some of the boys are married and their old ladies are okay with it, but most are single.”
Royal takes a step towards me.
“Nobody's sharing a shag unless it's something they really want to do. So no. I don't want or need you to cook, clean, or otherwise be my whore.”
I gape at him, but he's not done.
“I didn't ask you to date me so I could have you share your bed with my brothers, and I sure as shit don't expect you to roll over and be some club bitch. If I was interested in that, I could've found someone who'd do all that and more.” I pinch my lips, but Royal doesn't stop, moving back towards me again, looming over but not touching me. “I like you, Pint-Size, because you're wild but you try to stay contained. I like you because the only person who has a cage over you is yourself.” Royal smiles slightly. “It's bloody fascinating.”
I blink back at him, unsure of what exactly I'm supposed to say.
Because he's right. He's exactly right.
I tuck some hair behind my ear and reach out to lift a lid off a pot.
“You want some leftover soup?” I ask, but Royal just slides his hands along my face and drops his mouth to mine for another one of those brutal kisses of his, the ones that taste like violence and passion and need.
The metal lid clatters back into place as I move my hands to his wrists, fingers sliding across the tattoos, nails digging into Royal's skin as I try to match the power in his kiss. His tongue takes me over completely, obliterates the thoughts from my mind and kills the protests in my throat.
I almost choke on them when he pulls back with a grin and puts a cigarette to his lips.
“You got your things packed, you lucky little bird, you?”
I raise my eyebrows at that and smooth my hands down the front of my white button-down. I thought about changing for Royal, but then I knew that he'd know I'd done it for him. And Mug was here and all that. It just seemed safer to stay in my work clothes.
Now I wish I had changed.
“And I'm lucky, why?” I ask as Royal leaves his unlit smoke hanging from his lips and peeks inside the pot. I guess he likes what he
sees because he starts searching for a bowl. I don't bother to tell him where they are, observing him as he raises his dark brows at my perfectly organized and labeled cabinets (sad, I know).
“Because you get to have an indefinite sleepover at chez moi, Pint-Size. You know how many women would kill for that?”
“Oh, I'll make sure to call them and let them know I've been so generously offered the position.” I keep watching as he spoons out some of my kale and sausage soup. I've been trying to imitate that zuppa toscana stuff from Olive Garden, but I'm not sure I'm there yet. I'm not exactly the world's best cook. “Then I can have two rival groups trying to kill me: Mile Wide MC and Royal's exes.”
“Don't got any,” he says, pausing as he slides the spoon between his lips and smiles across the kitchen at me. He's a thick wall of muscle with perfectly sculpted biceps, a strong stubbled jaw, and a tattoo that says Raw and Dirty yet … Royal has a great smile. And he's … kind of actually a nice guy? An outlaw motorcycle club president maybe, and a guy who shoots people on the weekends and has them buried by his brothers, but hey, he has a good sense of humor and he grins at me a lot.
I am in deep shit.
“No exes then. But a whole sea of random, faceless … fucks.” Royal raises his eyebrows at me again.
“You jealous, Pint-Size? And after I found out you slept with that FBI Douche. If anyone should be hurting here, it should be me.” I roll my eyes, but the mention of Brent reminds me that we have a whole lot to talk about besides past bedroom partners.
“Mile Wide, they drove an awful long way just to kill you, don't you think?” A shrug of those powerful shoulders. “Is my brother working with them? Or was it just Brent and your old VP, Landon?”
“Aw, fuck,” Royal says and lets his spoon clatter in his empty bowl. When he scowls, it's only half-serious. “Mug, that loudmouthed motherfucker. What the hell else did he tell you?”
I feel myself smile as I cross my arms over my chest and lean back against the plain gray granite of my countertop.
“Enough,” I say, trying to be cryptic. Honestly, I don't have a lot. Mug himself didn't seem to have the whole story, but I got what I could out of him. A bowl of warm soup and half of a buttered French baguette, and he was mine. “Enough for me to keep questioning this whole moving in together thing.” I cross my arms over my chest and try to look smug, just so Royal can have some idea of how he looks on a regular basis. “Why am I in danger if this is all about a,” I pause, trying to think about how Mug phrased it, “a turf war? In fact, the farther I am from you, the better off I'll be, right?”
Royal rakes his fingers through his hair and drops his bowl in the kitchen sink with a clank.
“That fucking pillock,” he curses as he takes a deep breath and reigns in some of that violent anger I can see bubbling beneath the surface. So far, Royal's been pretty goddamn good to me, but there has to be a reason he's the president of his club, and I'm fairly certain it has nothing to do with nice. I have a feeling Mug's going to get a talking to later. Hopefully, Royal will have cooled down by then and there won't be any violence involved. “What did you do? Suck him off or something?”
“Hate to be the one to tell you this, but your boy is a sucker for pretty girls.” I keep my smug smile in place, even though I'd hardly call myself pretty. Plain, unassuming, regular. My defense against the world. Somehow though, I feel like Royal can see right through it. “I didn't have to go nearly that far to get him talking. A few cups of coffee, some soup, bread. My information was bought and paid for with food.”
Royal stares back at me, his face going quietly blank before he puts on a smile again. Wow. He might have a lot of rage in him, but he sure as hell knows how to control it. The expression on his face though, it's a little bitter, laced with something that I can't quite place. Guilt, maybe?
“You see anyone following you before all this, Pint-Size?” he asks me, tilting his head slightly to the side as he studies me. There's that gleam in his eyes that tells me we're talking business again. “See anyone strange walking by here or at the office?”
I think for a moment, letting my arms drop by my sides as the smug smile slides off my face. Whatever this is, it's serious. I'll have to find another moment to rile Royal up later.
“I haven't actually seen anything, but there have been a few times this past week when I felt like someone was watching me.” I think about that broken porch light outside and get a chill down my spine. “Why?”
“Brent and your asshole brother brought you into this thing,” he says and then raises a hand before I can protest, gritting his teeth at me. “Don't,” he snarls, but I wasn't going to mention it again, the whole me calling Brent thing. I might be carrying around some guilt about that, but I'm not an idiot. This game that Royal's playing, it's all politics and I understand that better than anyone. Unfortunately, this particular game of politics has more at stake than sullied reputations or failed elections. People get hurt; they die. I swallow hard and refuse to think about what Royal's club would do to me if they found out. Would he let them hurt me? I can't decide on an answer to that question, and that's proof right there that we need to slow this thing down and get to know each other properly.
“Brent was working with the president of Mile Wide long before he decided to take a little holiday to come see you,” Royal says, lifting a brow at me. My heart starts to pound and my mouth pops open. “By the time he got your brother involved, it was already too late. Nothing you could've done would've changed things.”
“So it's …” The rest of my words hang unspoken in the air between us. It's not my fault? This isn't my fault? I feel so relieved, I could puke. But that doesn't change everything, my brain reminds me as Royal glances away for a moment to compose himself. I still made that call, so the intention was still there. Whether or not it changed the course of Brent's or Sully's or the VP's fate doesn't erase my own actions. “I see.”
Royal looks back up at me and takes a deep breath.
“They've been looking at you as a target for some time now. You are still the mayor's daughter,” Royal says with a smile, coming back over to me and putting his hands on my hips, making me bite my lower lip. “Even when you're shagging me.”
“Sure,” I say, but even as I'm pressing myself close to Royal, absorbing the hot heat of his body, my mind is putting things together. If someone wanted to screw with my dad, all they'd have to do was get his daughter and he'd be in the palm of their hand.
I lean up on my tiptoes, putting my mouth in range of Royal's when it hits me.
“Kailey,” I say as I pull back against the strength of Royal's arms. “I'm not the mayor's only daughter.”
“She's not answering,” Lyric says as she taps my mobile against her palm and paces in front of me, her hair waving softly around her shoulders, her body enticing even through the ugly skirt suit she's wearing. I think she might be a tad ticked off with me, but there's not a whole lot I can do. It's going to be hard enough to keep the club interested in protecting Lyric, so there's not much I'll be able to get them to do for her older sister.
“Let's go and find her then,” I say, knowing that there's no such thing as overreacting in this case. Taking out that many of Clayton's guys is going to come at a price. The only questions are when and where. I didn't completely drop a bollock on this one though; I had Glacier drive by that girl's place on his way home. He said she was inside with the lights on, that he didn't see anything amiss. Still, never hurts to be cautious.
Lyric turns to look at me, her face chiseled with anxiety.
“Should we take my car?” she asks, and I raise a brow at her. “I really don't want to get hijacked again tonight.”
“You'll be safe with me, love,” I tell her, lifting the keys from my pocket with a single finger and sweeping my cut back so she can see the gun in the shoulder holster beneath it. I don't like to carry unless I have to, but after my conversation with the mayor yesterday, I figure the cops should be a lot less lik
ely to pull over a Wolf. “Grab your Glock and let's go.”
The driver's side window on my truck is fixed, but the front end is still a bit of a mess. Since it's mostly cosmetic, I figure I'll worry about it later. I only brought the damn thing to pack up Lyric's stuff, but now I'm really missing my bike.
“You alright over there, love?” I ask as I pull out of Lyric's driveway and follow her directions towards her sister's place. When I glance over, I can see her hand curled around the grip of the gun, her fingers sure and still, expression neutral.
“Fine,” she says, her eyes straying to the glove box for a moment before flicking back to me. “I won't hold what happened against your poor truck.” She smiles, but it doesn't quite reach her eyes. Fuck. I almost lost her that day. She could've died … or worse. If I hadn't picked up that phone call, today would be a lot different. I wouldn't be sitting here next to Lyric; I'd be wondering where Mile Wide stashed her body, if they raped her first.
I clench the steering wheel hard, my knuckles white, the tattoos on my fingers stark in the random flickers of orange from the streetlights. There aren't many, especially in this part of town. The city doesn't like them, doesn't like anything that obscures the view of the sea. Two blocks later and everything is dark, most of the residents already asleep in the heart of small town suburbia.
“Thanks for taking me to see her,” Lyric says as she pulls in a deep breath. “I have no idea what I'm going to say when I see her, but …” A shrug of those small shoulders. “I'll figure it out. She has an on-again, off-again boyfriend. I might see if I can get her to stay over there.” Lyric's face flickers with familial annoyance. “Not that it's that difficult. I think she's in love with the guy, but my parents hate him so he's basically out.”
