“It’s just as well I love that little shit,” I muttered as the white monster hissed at me from inside its prison.
Fuck me.
———
“I want answers. I got plenty of questions, a fuck load of them, but I want answers,” Booth demanded from his position at the head of the long wooden table. To say my president was stressed was an understatement. The Wounded Souls was under attack, and our women were the targets, something that more than angered the male members of the club.
Charlotte, Stella, and Mia had already been in the sights of the mentally unstable fucker Rogue. Even Shiloh, which to all of us was fucking unforgivable. But now, with all three women in various stages of pregnancy, Booth’s desperation to keep them all safe was increasing more and more each day. There wasn’t a minute of the day he didn’t know where his wife, Stella, was. Deck and Steel were equally protective.
I had no fucking clue where my lady was, and I fucking hated it. The helplessness of not knowing was the hardest part, of not knowing if she was okay. She took Darth’s truck and left in a hurry, leaving everything behind as I discovered when I went to check her house and found nothing missing.
Where the fuck was she?
“Pres? We have the recording from the surveillance tapes from that night. Been through them more than a hundred times,” Ford piped up, getting all of our attention. The club’s computer geek was definitely a ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ kind of a guy. The man could do anything with a computer, and if he allowed himself to work on the outer limits of the law, God only knew how good he could be, but that wasn’t going to happen. He was a good man, the best. A crazy fucking mess but a fucking genius, and we thanked God he was on our side.
“Find anything more than what we already know?” Steel asked. The tick in his jaw showed the extent to which he was holding in his anger. Mia had come very fucking close to having one of those bullets in the back of her head. Whoever took those shots knew how to use a rifle. There were only two other men I knew who would have been able to make those shots without hitting Mia, and they were sitting around the table with me.
My gaze travelled from Steel to Creed, two of the best snipers in the history of the commandoes. They had been racking their brains since the shooting, trying to figure out who else could have done it. The only names they could come up with were guys who were still active and not really in the league of the person who did this.
“Yeah, actually, I did. I decided to go through the tapes we placed in the hall and the side entrance that Tori and Shifty came in.” Ford paused to look over at Deck. He had been on his honeymoon with Teach when it all went down—thankfully. I wasn’t sure if the sergeant-at-arms would have been able to stop himself from shooting Shifty himself after what went down a while ago at the prick’s strip club. Finding his woman dancing close to naked on the stage around a pole had sent Deck into a rage I hadn’t seen from him in a while. Not since… Well, never.
“And?”
Ford looked over at Booth, and instead of telling him what he found, he turned his laptop around, hit a few keys, and played a grainy image of Tori and Shifty entering the back door of the Bar and Grill.
“We can’t mention your contact, Tori. Not yet. That information is worth more to us than it is to him,” Shifty said in a slimy voice.
I could feel the anger radiating around the room from my brothers.
“Yeah, well, I can’t wait to let that little bitch and those too good for themselves soldiers know. I want to see their faces when they find out.”
The venom that came from Tori astounded me.
The club had been nothing but kind to her. Sure, she hadn’t been on the favourite list of anyone around here, but that was her own doing. I gave her a job at the strip club, both on the stage and behind the bar. She worked behind the bar here at the club, too, and in return, we gave her a room to sleep in and food on the table. There were a few occasions when Booth even gave her money for her son.
“Find out what?” I bellowed when the tape showed Tori and Shifty walking down the hall and into the main part of the bar where the meeting with Mia and Rainn had taken place.
“There was no more. The cameras stop at the back door and start again in the other room,” Ford explained reluctantly. I could see he was pissed off at himself for the lack of cameras, but it wasn’t his fault, and blame would never land on his shoulders. We were all just frustrated that the answer had been nearly in our grasp. Nearly. Fuck.
Booth stood up, grabbed the first thing in front of him—Ford’s police scanner—and hurled it against the closet wall. Being married to Stella had calmed much of his anger, but it looked like his need to throw electronics was still a go-to stress release for the pres.
With raised eyebrows, I took in the now stuffed scanner and waited for the inevitable from two people in particular.
“Fuck me, Pres. That had a four-gigabyte memory. The bloody thing cost over seven hundred bucks,” Ford complained as he jumped up from his seat to collect the pieces of his toy.
Darth smacked his hands on the table, pissed off. As the club’s money man, he was all too familiar with the cost of Booth’s little temper issue.
“What happened to you flicking the rubber band on your wrist instead of throwing expensive shit, for fuck’s sake?” Darth asked as he pointed to Booth’s wrist, which didn’t have a rubber band on the end of it.
I chuckled along with Deck and Steel. Charlotte had helped come up with the idea of the band on his wrist. Being the sensible, non-swearing, non-angry person that she was, she thought the anger management replacement therapy would help not only Booth but also the club’s budget.
Booth had the decency to look somewhat ashamed of himself as he shrugged his shoulders once.
“The fucking thing looks like I’m wearing a bracelet,” he mumbled, looking sheepish.
“Seriously, Pres? A bracelet?” Steel snickered.
“All right, all right. Laugh it up, idiots.” Booth tried to look annoyed, but a smile graced his face nonetheless before leaving just as quickly as it had appeared. His mouth thinned, and the scowl he had been wearing for the last few weeks appeared again.
“What happened that night in the strip club can never, ever happen again.”
Everyone around the table nodded. Steel looked especially pissed. His love and devotion for Mia knew no bounds. I would have hated to be in his place when he heard that first shot, wondering if it were Mia who was hit. I imagine my brother’s heart had stopped beating for a few fleeting seconds.
But she wasn’t hit, thank God, and was alive and well and carrying my niece or nephew. Instead, she was in Steel’s bed, in his arms, and protected—safe.
Rainn? Who the fuck knew where she was, but I was going to find out. You’d better believe I was going to find her and bring her back here to the compound. For good. She belonged here with us, with me.
In what capacity? I wasn’t sure yet. I enjoyed my freedom and not being henpecked, and I certainly didn’t miss the arguing that went on between a husband and wife. I had spent way too much time doing exactly that with Alannah.
Damn, I hated going there. That was why I needed Rainn. She took that away, even for just a night. She understood my shit. I liked that she didn’t just pat me on the head and agree that everything had been Alannah’s fault. She listened, then passed her judgement and told me off if I needed it. Even though she explained things to me from a woman’s perspective, she hadn’t been on Alannah’s side.
Oh, no, if anything, Rainn hated my ex-wife with a passion, but she helped me see that I had been just as emotionally unattached as my ex had been. Neither of us fought for what was important, just taking it for granted that the other was there.
Rainn told me marriage didn’t mean you could stop trying. It was doing the little things like holding hands, cuddling on the couch watching TV when the kids went to bed and saying I love you more often than just on special occasions or in bed.
Fu
ck, I missed Rainn.
“Any word on Rainn?” I asked Ford. He had been trying to get some kind of lead on her since Darth’s SUV was delivered to the compound on the back of a flatbed.
“I found the transport company. The guy who did the haul did it as a cash-in-hand job. Got himself into a fair bit of trouble, too. Anyway, he got the sack, and the boss there is going to get back to me with his new employer. Hopefully, that won’t take too long. Sorry, Mannix, but that’s the best I have for now.” Ford gave me a regretful smile.
I blew out a frustrated breath. Fuck it. I knew it wasn’t Ford’s fault. He had been working day and night on all the fucked-up shit plaguing the club. I just needed my eyes on my lady.
“I understand, brother. Thanks, I do appreciate it and all. I just—” I stopped mid-sentence, not prepared to say too much, to show my weakness. My role at the club was the enforcer, the muscle, the guy who went in first and took care of shit. Deck and I had that responsibility. I didn’t know how he could hold shit together and be a father and a husband.
He endured Shiloh and Teach being a target of Rogue more than once. I didn’t know if I could do that. Rainn being missing had me so twisted in knots that I wanted to destroy something or someone.
“We will find her, Mannix, and we will bring her home,” Booth vowed.
I believed him because Booth had always been my hero—his leadership, his absolute trust and faith in all of us was humbling and something to be proud of—but I just hoped we found Rainn before Rogue did.
Chapter 2
RAINN
Only three more hours and I could take these boots off.
I mourned the loss of my devotion to my preferred footwear. I was known for my style, which included high heels and killer heeled boots. I used to be able to wear them all day and all night and not feel any soreness. Not anymore.
Now my feet felt better in flats, slippers, and—in the privacy of my house—UGG boots. I could only imagine how hard the flock would laugh if they could see me now. My tight-arse sexy skirts and barely-there halter tops replaced by leggings, T-shirts, and hoodies.
Damn, but I missed Body and Souls and the Wounded Souls’ compound. I missed my girls and our pole dancing sessions in the dance room. The long afternoons and late-night talks, laughing as we filled ourselves with Stella’s amazing baking. I would cut off my long ruby-red hair for just one piece of Stella’s caramel slice. Or a slab of it. Damn, that woman was a genius in the kitchen.
But most of all I missed Mannix.
His sexy grin pulled at my heart every time he bestowed me with one. His face was ruggedly handsome and always unshaved with a five o’clock shadow that I used to love between my thighs. I would hold onto his short but scruffy hair as he drove me insane with orgasm after orgasm. He always made sure I came at least three times from his tongue
The enforcer and boss of the strip club had quickly become my best friend. Most people misunderstood him, but not me. I saw through his humour that he hid behind and saw the pain that lurked behind his eye. Yes, I did mean eye. Mannix was injured in a firefight in Afghanistan, the same firefight that took Steel’s leg and killed Booth’s younger brother.
Mannix lost his eye from stray shrapnel. His ex-wife hated his patch, but I thought it was sexy. Everything about him was sexy as far as I was concerned. His body was lean and muscled, but not in the over-the-top-huge way that Deck, Creed, or Darth were, nor was he as tall as Steel or Booth—he wasn’t short by any stretch of the imagination, either. In fact, he was the perfect height for me. I was fairly tall and Mannix being just on six foot meant I didn’t have to get on tippy-toes to kiss him, and he didn’t have to bend down like a pretzel to kiss me. We were perfect, except for Mannix’s refusal to be exclusive with me, not that I complained about it—ever. Unlike Vegas, it had never been a real bone of contention between us like it was for Darth and Julie.
Sure, it would have been nice, but he and I made the rules from the first day we had sex together. No strings, no commitments, no drama. We always used condoms, without question. We respected each other’s feelings, and if we went off with someone else, we gave the other a heads up. The best part was if I had an issue with a particular woman Mannix was thinking of going with, and I voiced it to him, and he just wouldn’t go there. I liked that about Mannix Steel. He valued our friendship first and foremost and cared what I thought. My heart mattered to him.
Most people at the club couldn’t understand our relationship, especially the women of the patched members. Sometimes, I used to feel a bit like a ‘show and tell’ experiment. During a girls’ night in, they would grill me about how I could do it. How could I watch him go off with other women? How could I join in with the other women? Which I had a few times. No girl-on-girl action. That was okay for some, but I wasn’t into it. I preferred to focus on Mannix, and he never pushed for anything more. He wasn’t the kind of guy to get off on watching two women—at least, not that I knew of firsthand.
I tried to explain to Mia once that I was happy to get whatever Mannix was prepared to give me, which wouldn’t go down too well with the women’s movement, but Mannix was complicated. He didn’t trust easily. Actually, Mannix didn’t trust at all, especially women. Alannah, his ex-wife, had done a real job on him, and what she did to him was appalling. Cheating was one thing, a bad, bad thing, but she let him believe he was the father of his two children until he came home from the worst deployment ever to find not only divorce papers but DNA proof that his cousin was the father of his kids.
Yeah, there was no coming back from that kind of betrayal.
I was the only one, outside of his brothers, who knew. Our friendship had that level of trust, and he was my true best friend. Sure, he pissed me off more times in a day than I was comfortable with, more so of late, but I really did love the beast.
“Rainn, are you still here? Shouldn’t you be knocked off and heading home?”
I looked over to the end of the bar and grinned when I saw Jimmy, a big, cheesy smile gracing the bar owner’s face. James Hogg, a.k.a. Big Jimmy, gave me this job when I first arrived in town three weeks ago, the night I fled the Bar and Grill, and Rogue came very close to killing Mia. I shivered at the thought of that night. To be honest, I tried like hell not to think about it at all.
That night, I snuck out to save the club. I had heard Rogue on the phone telling Mannix that I was next on his hit list. My bright idea was to leave in the hope he would stop. If Rogue couldn’t find me, then maybe he would just stop and leave the other women alone.
The guys were convinced Vegas was safe from him, mainly because Darth hadn’t claimed her officially to his brothers, but Mannix hadn’t claimed me, either, so I was confused as to why he was coming after me.
Swinging my bag over my shoulder, I eased myself from behind the bar. “On my way now, Jimmy. I just needed to get the last of the stock ordered for tomorrow’s bachelor party. We can’t have the groom going home too sober. No fun in that,” I joked, then looked longingly over at the far end of the room where three gold dancing poles sat. They were at the same level as the patrons, unlike the poles at Body and Souls. There, Mannix had made sure they were high on a stage away from the drunken hands of the men watching. His most important rule there had been ‘do not touch the dancers, ever.’
“Miss the dancing, don’t you, sweetie?” Although it sounded like a question, I knew Jimmy was really just making an observation. He knew I danced and danced well. When I came here, he begged me to be part of his main line-up. I couldn’t, though, not anymore—if ever again. So instead, I got the position of temporary bar manager. A job I had filled in for Mia many times at the Bar and Grill and at Body and Souls also.
“Yeah, I do, Jimmy. But that’s over now, so no use in dreaming,” I told him, annoyed at myself for feeling wistful.
“He needs to know, Rainn. It’s only fair,” Jimmy said, not for the first time in three weeks.
“I can’t, Jimmy. It’s safer this way for him and the c
lub. Just let it be, okay?” I responded exactly the same way I had each time over the past three weeks.
Chapter 3
MANNIX
I had been nursing the same drink for the last hour. I just wasn’t feeling it tonight. The line-up for this evening’s show was okay. I had hired a new girl to fill the place of Tori, who had been a great dancer even though she was a bitch The patrons had liked her style, and she had done well for the club and for herself. Actually, she had done really well for herself unbeknownst to Booth or the others. She’d led a double life as a dancer for my club while having a relationship with Shifty, the arsehole who ran a seedy club on the other side of town and had put Charlotte in a bad situation, which was made worse when Deck found her on stage dancing in next to nothing. It was then that all hell broke loose.
My SAA showed his dick side that night, lashing out at Charlotte and making her cry. Deck lost it so severely that Booth punched him in the jaw, and then Booth had taken Teach home in Deck’s ute and made Deck ride back to the compound on Booth’s bike.
Steel eliminated that problem for Deck, but Rogue taking out Tori caused problems for me. Losing her and Rainn caused chaos with my dancers’ schedule.
Rainn’s spot wasn’t going to be easy to fill, impossible even because there was no one like Rainn. Her hair was like a waterfall of cranberry that fell down to the top of her perfect arse, and what an arse it was. Toned, round, firm, and smackable. I groaned as memories of slapping Rainn’s tight arse as she rode me flooded my mind. The woman made sex look and feel like a sensual dance. Images of her naked body as it moved above mine, her long hair wild and flowing around her ample naked tits. I reached down to the zip of my jeans, the large bulge of my cock pressing painfully against it.
Maybe I needed to get laid. I’d kind of lost interest in other women and had only been with Rainn since the night the guys, and I found Teach, Mia, and Stella half-naked and drunk as skunks at the compound. I would admit I took off to find Tori and Rainn that night for a threesome. It didn’t happen, though, because on my way out, my phone rang and my daughter, Ebony, called. Yeah, she was still my daughter no matter what a damn test said.
His Lady: The Wounded Souls Page 2
