by Evelyn Glass
“Hey,” he said, his voice a delicate rasp in her ear. “What are you thinking right now?”
“Nothing much,” she replied. It wouldn’t do to let him know she wanted him.
“Because I want you to know, I wish to hell I’d met you in different circumstances. But I’m sure as shit glad that I did.”
You say that now. But what’s going to happen when this situation is resolved. Especially if, God forbid, we don’t get them back? Are you still going to be glad? Will you even pretend? But none of that was worth saying, so she just smiled.
“Me too,” she said. It was the truest thing she could manage.
His lips pressed down, just at the corner of her jaw, and she couldn’t contain the shiver that flitted through her. She was still hot and aching. That quick tumble had taken the edges off her need for him, but if he crawled back into bed, it wouldn’t take any real time at all to stoke her fires for another round. She was hungry for him, so hungry that it hurt. A function of emotional overload, she tried to tell herself, but it didn’t make a damn bit of difference.
“I’m not just running my mouth, Emma,” he said. “I don’t do that. I’m not that guy.”
“I’m glad,” she said because what else was there to say? No one thought they were that guy — or that person — up until their actions proved them wrong. And even then, they’d have some excuse as to why this time didn’t count, whatever it happened to be.
“Hungry? There are some cold cuts and stuff in the fridge. I need to make this call.”
She nodded because she was hungry. It had been hours since she’d had anything to eat. It felt like days since she’d offered Mia those crackers in the classroom. With the edge taken off one hunger, there was plenty more room for the other kinds. And for the growing fear in her heart. Both Connell and Dean seemed entirely convinced that Mia and Abbey were both alive, somewhere. She found herself more and more worried. What if it wasn’t about gathering favors or getting out of a tight situation? What if it was just about punishment? What if Dean had overstepped some line in the sand, and the woman and child were paying the price? It was painfully common, she knew that much. The men didn’t seem to think it was even possible, but what if Mia’s asthma had been triggered? What if they didn’t know enough to give her an inhaler? There were just so many ways for this to go horribly, horribly wrong. And she didn’t much of anything about Abbey, and what could be going wrong for her.
She forced her mind onto the mundane concerns of constructing a sandwich. Bread, turkey, mustard, some sliced cucumber, and radish. Spicy and warm and full of bite. Exactly what she needed to fortify herself.
There wasn’t really any way for Dean to leave the room without walking out onto the porch, but he didn’t seem to mind. He tapped his phone on and dialed a number, his gaze focused on the distance as he raised it to his ear and waited for it to ring.
“Fred,” he said, after a long moment. “This is Dean. We need to talk.”
Chapter Eleven
Dean
This time, as Dean headed out to the gravel pits, he put Emma on the back of his bike. He’d suggested that he drop her off at home, but she’d just raised her eyebrow until he shrugged and agreed that she could come along. It was obvious that she wasn’t going to be swayed, and truth be told, he liked having her nearby. He liked the way she stayed focused and cared about what he was feeling and thinking. He’d liked the way she writhed under him, reaching down to stroke her body between where they were joined until she was squeezing him tight and firm. He wanted that again.
He understood intuitively that she wasn’t going to trust him. He didn’t know why not, and ultimately, it didn’t matter. A parent who hadn’t been there for her, a relationship that had gone sideways and been hurtful, or just a trusted mentor who hadn’t followed through despite promises. He could waste his breath insisting that he was going to be a good guy, or he could just show her. She’d believe it, or she wouldn’t, but one way or the other, he would know he’d done what he could.
Maybe after this whole nightmare was resolved, he’d reconsider and realize that whatever was sparking between them was never going to be real. But that wasn’t how it felt at the moment.
He had to pull his mind away from the warm, soft form of the woman behind him, and focus on navigating the bike along the narrow roads that led back to the gravel pit. Emma had insisted that she had never ridden a bike before, but she’d slipped on behind him like a pro, and now, she clung to his waist without squeezing, moving with him without pushing the bike towards overbalancing. Maybe she was a dancer, that would make sense. It would give her the right kind of training. A martial artist was another option.
If he hadn’t been navigating a pile of metal and internal combustion at sixty-five mph, he would have smacked his forehead to get himself back on track. Thoughts of Emma’s generous ass swaying to an intense beat would not get his daughter out of this mess alive. He needed to focus.
Fred had seemed all right on the phone, nervous but nothing more. He’d agreed to meet Dean quickly, almost too quickly. It smelled like some kind of operation. Fred had suggested the gravel pit again. Normally, Dean would have immediately disagreed, suggesting a different, more neutral location. This time, he let it go. More than a dozen of his siblings from the club were riding about half a mile behind him, just in case Fred had some kind of shenanigans planned.
He spun into the pit and slowed down, scanning the area. It was dark, and the pit wasn’t lit. There was only the light of the moon to navigate from. Across the distance, he saw a camping lantern, probably electric, set on a pile of stones. He turned the bike toward it and drove slowly, moving across the packed dirt trails that had naturally been worn between one pit and another. He saw a form, leaning against the pile of rocks that was topped with the lantern, but he didn’t realize exactly what he was seeing until he was too close to really turn away.
Behind him, he felt Emma shift, looking around. He wanted to tell her not to look, but his throat was dry and tight. He knew the moment she realized what he’d seen. She gasped, then choked, and he prayed she wasn’t about to vomit down the back of his jacket. He would have understood if she had, but he didn’t want to deal with it. He wasn’t sure he’d keep his own stomach in place if that sensation were added to the mix.
He stopped the bike, planting his feet in the gravel. Emma didn’t wait. She launched herself off the bike, then stumbled, falling to her hands and knees as she vomited. There was a light breeze blowing, carrying the smell of blood and guts, and he fought to keep himself steady. He pushed off the bike, catching her long hair and pulling it out of her way as she heaved again.
The other bikes caught up to them soon enough, Connell in the lead. He cursed as soon as he realized what was going on, and then his big hand closed over Dean’s arm. He pulled Dean away from Emma. He wasn’t gentle, but he wasn’t cruel, either.
“Okay,” Connell said, his eyes gazing so intensely into Dean’s that his belly twisted with the need to look away and break the intrusive connection. “We tried this your way. Now we’re doing it mine. This is war, Dean. You feel me?”
“Yeah,” Dean replied. He’d known this would be coming from the very moment that he’d seen Fred’s body on the rocks, separated from Fred’s head by a good six inches. Whatever was going on — and he still didn’t have a clear read on what the hell was happening — they weren’t playing around. He needed to take this all very seriously. This wasn’t a game. His daughter’s life was in danger.
“What do we do?”
Connell shook his head. “What do I do. You and the Teach head into hiding at the safe house. Out of town. You know the one. You get her there, and you keep her safe, and you let me handle this fucking mess.” Dean started to protest, but before he even got a word out, Connell’s broad hand was resting on his sternum. “I got this, Dean. I promise. I know how much you love them. I’ll take care of it.”
What else was there to do? He helped Emma to her fe
et. One of the other members had been cleaning her up, giving her some water to rinse out her mouth, things like that.
“Come on,” he said. Tears had run through her makeup, but somehow her mascara was still holding strong. Her lipstick was gone, though, and her cheeks were badly flushed under the foundation she wore. “We’re going somewhere safe.”
Her eyes were glued to what was left of Fred Killian, and for a moment, he thought she was going to throw up again. Instead, she turned her head away, closing her eyes.
“I can’t look anymore,” she said, to him or to herself. He wasn’t entirely sure.
“That’s okay, baby,” he said. “That’s okay. I’m going to keep you safe, okay? We’re going to get out of here, and my friends are going to take care of us.”
“Yeah,” she replied. “Yeah, okay.” Her words were stumbling, and he wished more than anything they’d taken the Buick instead of the bike. But that wouldn’t have sent the right image. He hated it, all the same. Image hadn’t mattered, after all.
He got on his bike, let Emma slip back on behind him, and then put his bike back into gear. He steadfastly refused to think about what was going to happen if whoever was after them — it had to be the Scorpions because who the hell else would bother targeting a small time crook like him? — also knew where the club had their safe houses located.
He drove, and pushed it all out of his mind, focusing instead on the road ahead of him.
Chapter Twelve
Emma
By the time the world stopped in odd, disjointed little chunks, Emma was in the shower. It was nice in the shower. There weren’t any dead bodies there. The shower was vastly superior to everywhere else she’d ever been in her life, as long as there were no bodies.
The floor of the shower was under her butt. It took a minute to connect that thought with the one that was asking why her butt was cold. Her butt was cold because she was sitting on the tile floor of a shower. She looked around, blinking water out of her eyes. Not her shower. Someone else’s shower. This shower was substantially nicer than hers. But the water was cold. That was horrible.
She reached out behind her until she found the wall, and then felt around until she found the shower knobs. She fiddled with them for a few moments, and the cold stream of water coming down from the rainfall shower head changed to be much warmer. That was good. Being warm was better than being cold.
Being warm made her thoughts liquefy and she started remembering things. Like what it looked like when a head was disconnected from a body. Nothing but gore where the neck should be.
She felt the loose, hot urp crawling up from her belly, and bent forward, spattering stomach acid on the tile. There was nothing solid left to throw up. She’d tossed all of that on the gravel after she’d seen it for the first time.
She’d never known that person when they were alive. That ought to have made it easier. Somehow, it got harder. She didn’t like that, things being harder. She stuck her face back under the spray and tried to let it wash away the thoughts that were accumulating in her brain.
A quiet, polite tap on the bathroom door made her heart skip up into double time. Logically she knew the only person knocking on that door was Dean, but on this fucking day, she wasn’t sure she’d have been surprised if Elvis turned up. The door cracked open just enough to let his voice in, not his eyes or his body, and bless him for that — and she heard Dean’s voice. “Emma? It’s me. Do you need help with anything?”
“No,” she replied, then heard the quaver in her voice. “Wait, yes.”
He stepped into the room quickly, closing the door behind him. “What do you need?” His gaze was focused tightly on her face, even though she could feel the water dripping down her nipples and making trails down her belly.
“I don’t want to be alone.”
He nodded as if this were a perfectly logical request. “Do you want to be not alone with me out here, or not alone with me in there?”
She barely had to think about it. She needed him to fuck her senseless, fuck her until she could sleep without seeing that poor person’s bloated face. She chased the image away before she made herself sick. She let her fingers wander until she was tweaking her nipple, her gaze focused on him. He licked his lips, but he didn’t look down. “I want you to come in here with me.”
He had to clear his throat twice before he could speak. “And what do you want me to do, once I’m in there with you?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“I think so. But I want to hear you say it.”
She smiled, the water finally spreading some warmth past the surface layer of her skin. “I want you to fuck me. As hard as you want to.”
“Okay,” he said. He was out of his clothes and into the shower before she had time to reconsider. Which was, all things told, a beautiful choice on his part. He pressed her against the wall, catching her between the heat of his skin and the cold tiles behind her, and it felt amazing.
“How are you holding up?” he asked as he leaned over and ghosted his lips over her neck.
She curled her arms around his neck and let him take some of her weight. “Distracted,” she said. “Unfocused. It’s hard to think straight. I keep zigzagging.”
“I see,” he said. He leaned back just a little, his hand slipping between them. He didn’t hesitate, just pressed his fingers down through her curls and found her clit, trapping it almost delicately between his forefinger and middle finger. She sighed against him, spreading her thighs to give him better access. “Does this help you focus?”
“Yes,” she murmured, and he tugged at her clit with a gentleness that made her gasp again, rocking against him. Letting her hang on his neck, his other hand found her breast, teasing at her nipple and flicking it with his thumb. The rhythm was different, nothing she could focus on in either spot. It was perfect. No pressure, no urgency, just quiet, delicate teasing. His lips traced feather-light patterns on her neck, down her shoulders.
She could feel him hardening against her, but he didn’t seem to be concerned or worried at all. Merely taking his time, enjoying her soft, shifting movements.
It was a good feeling, light, freeing. No demands, no declarations. Calm, reassuring need.
Until it wasn’t anymore. Until it flipped over some odd boundary in her mind, and she was desperate, keening and shifting against his hand as she tried to get more contact, more pressure, something to intensify the delicate arousal that was twisting her belly up in knots. He groaned into her mouth, his fingers turning harsh and brutal on her nipple before he left her breast behind, taking his fingers down between her thighs and slipping first one, and then two fingers inside of her. She knew how slick and wet she was, how desperately she wanted him to drive her up into that tiled wall, her body aching and stretching around him at this angle. Her fingers, or his, finding her clit and taking her over the edge.
But there was absolutely no way he had a condom with him. Shit.
“You don’t—” He curled his fingers forward, hitting a sweet spot that made her body sing, and she cried out, her nails digging into the back of his neck. He let out a little hiss of air, but he didn’t stop. “Condom—” she managed to sputter out, before cursing as he found the rhythm he seemed to enjoy, pressing down on her clit and up on that spot in a firm but unhurried pattern that left her surging.
“Hush,” he said, kissing her neck again. “Let me take care of you.”
She let him take care of her as he filled her, his hands refusing to go fast, refusing to take her as far as she wanted to go. He surged and retreated, and she hooked a leg up and over his waist to give him better access.
“Good girl,” he murmured into her mouth again, and he shifted so that the length of his shaft was pressed up against her slit. She gasped, her eyes closing, her mouth wide open, as she felt the orgasm boiling up inside of her, rippling through her as she ground down onto the length of his cock, wishing he was inside of her, and grateful that he was “taking care of her” howev
er he could. As her body pulsed, she sagged, her arms around his neck the only thing holding her up. He caught her around the waist and braced her weight, letting her sway in his arms.
After a moment, he turned off the water, wrapped her in a towel, and then lifted her into his arms. She was distantly surprised at how easily he picked her up. They were of similar heights, but she didn’t seem to weigh anything noticeable to him. That was delicious. He carried her into the bedroom and placed her down gently on sheets that felt fresh and clean. He started to step back, but his erection was still deliciously hard, and Emma reached out to him, grabbing his hip.
“Don’t go,” she said.
“You need some rest.”
“I need this,” she replied and propped herself up on her elbow so that she could guide his cock into her mouth.
