by Kati Wilde
And then I have to make my family believe I’m not crazy about her.
My voice is rough. “I shouldn’t.”
“I think you should.”
“This wasn’t a good idea.” I draw back and scrub a shaking hand through my hair. “Fucking hell. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” She pulls her knees up against her chest, suddenly looking small in that corner.
I reach down, offering my hand. After a brief hesitation she takes it. I pull her up to her feet. “I shouldn’t have— This is the worst fucking thing to do right now. I shouldn’t have lost my head.”
“Oh.” It’s a small sound. “So it’s another mistake.”
“No.” Jesus, it could never be. And I’ve hurt her, goddammit. Hurt her after she just gave me the sweetest possible gift. “Did I say worst thing? Because it was the best fucking thing ever. Just, with all this shit going on, I shouldn’t have—”
“It’s fine. Don’t beat yourself up for losing your head.” Her voice high and tight, Anna turns away to gather her things, then opens the dresser drawer and starts picking out more clothes. “What’s a guy to do? I threw myself at you again, offered to suck your cock. I’m kind of shocked you didn’t immediately push me away, but maybe fourth time is the charm.”
“Fourth time?”
“You know. The fourth time I’ve given you a pretty blatant invitation. But, hey. At least I got an orgasm out of it before you shut us down. So it’s okay. We’re still friends.”
She doesn’t sound okay. She sounds hollow. Chest aching, I tell her, “Anna, look at me.”
Turning toward me, she offers a bright smile and a shrug. “Anyway, no complaints here. In fact, I’d say I got the better end of it, considering I came all over your face. So now I’m taking a shower. You still getting that coffee?”
So she’ll be my slave for life. But it’s already the other way around. “Yeah.”
“Great.” With that chirpy reply, she sweeps past me into the bathroom. The door snaps shut.
Groaning, I sag back against the wall, drag my hands through my hair. I won’t follow her in. No matter how much I want to. I won’t slam through that door and demand more. I won’t demand that she stop shrugging and start caring.
Jesus, but I fucked that up good. I shouldn’t have kissed her. I shouldn’t have lost my head. I’m on a mission to find Stone—and to protect Anna. This was supposed to come later. After we found her brother. After she knew me better and she could look to a future with me.
But I did kiss her and I did lose my head.
And completely fucked it up.
21
Anna
Gunner’s right. I know he’s right. The second he kissed me, it was the best fucking thing. Crazy, explosive need.
But it’s just the wrong damn time. Stone needs to come first. If Gunner looks at me like he did out there—if he looks at me like that in front of his family—maybe this won’t go as it should.
That’s why, even as I’m aching so deep, his pushing me away doesn’t hurt like it has before. Because then, I didn’t understand his reasons. Keep it simple, sure—I’m only Stone’s sister, sure. But I knew we were explosive together and it always hurt that I wasn’t enough to make him cross whatever line he’d drawn between us.
But now I know why that line is there. Stone’s life is on that line. My life is on that line. And everything about this sucks so bad. But it doesn’t mean Gunner’s not interested. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t want me. It doesn’t mean I’m nothing more than Stone’s sister. It doesn’t mean I’m not good enough, or that I’m lacking something.
It just means Gunner has a job he needs to do. A job that I need him to do.
I glance at my phone as soon as I get out of the shower. I left it plugged in last night and the battery’s almost full. But I need to buy one of those emergency chargers that you can use even if you’re not around an electrical outlet. It would be so stupid if I missed Stone’s call because I let the battery die.
And I need to let my mom and dad know I’m okay. Jenny, too. I don’t know what Saxon has told her about me leaving, but I’m sure he didn’t want to lay too heavy a burden on her the day after her dad’s funeral.
But I think I can make her smile, even this far away. With my finger, I write Anna was here on the fogged mirror. Turning around, I aim a cheesy grin at my camera, making sure the bruised side of my face is out of the shot. Then another pose, with exaggerated duck lips to hide the swelling.
I send the photo of me smiling to my parents, with a message that Everything’s good! Then the duck lips to Jenny, adding Send me $50 and I’ll take off the towel.
And I’ve got no excuse to linger in here any longer. The hair dryer and a second sink are in the vestibule outside the bathroom, separate from the tub and toilet—and it’ll save time if I finish getting ready while Gunner showers. Gathering my courage, I open the bathroom door…and Gunner’s not in the hotel room. The coffee maker hasn’t been used. He must have gone out to buy some.
Works for me. Especially since I didn’t pay attention to what I was pulling out of the dresser earlier, and ended up taking three shirts and no pants into the bathroom with me.
When we leave, I assume we’ll be riding his motorcycle again. Quickly I pull on a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved shirt before returning to the vestibule.
Gunner comes back into the room as I’m applying sunscreen and moisturizer to my face, my wet hair in a turban atop my head. He slides a coffee in front of me, along with a cup of yogurt and fruit. A furrow forms between his eyebrows as he searches my features in the mirror. “Did I fuck up unforgivably?”
“No.” I rinse my fingers and grab the coffee. “Did I?”
His frown deepens. “How would you?”
“Oh, only because on the day after we establish that we’re friends, I tell you I want to go down on you. It kind of crosses a boundary.”
Heat and humor light the pale blue of his eyes. “I don’t know—I consider any offer to suck my dick pretty friendly.”
I grin and turn to face him, head tilting back. God, he’s tall. Practically taking up this entire space. “We’re okay,” I tell him and am so damn glad it’s true. “But you’re right. Our focus should be on Stone.”
Gaze locked on mine, he slowly shakes his head. “No. My focus is on you, too. Getting him back is only part of it. But I’m also watching over you, keeping you safe.”
“I know you’ll do both,” I say, and my breath catches when he gently takes my hand, presses his lips to my palm.
Heart thundering, I can only stare when he lets me go and heads into the bathroom. He pauses with the door open, looking at the mirror.
“Did you take a selfie in here?”
Still recovering from that kiss to my hand, I simply nod.
“You usually send them to your brother’s phone.”
“He wouldn’t get it.”
“I would.” He slides a wolfish glance my way. “Were you wearing a towel or nothing?”
“A towel,” I tell him with a grin. “And I told Jenny that if she sent me fifty dollars I’d take it off.”
“I’ll give you fifty.”
“The offer’s only for her.” For him, I’d do it for free.
His beautiful eyes narrow. “But I’m your friend, too.”
“She’s my best friend.”
“We’ll have to rectify that.” His voice deepens and the intensity of his gaze feels like a powerful magnet, preventing me from looking away. “I like being on top.”
He closes the door then, and I’m left with a racing pulse—and, when I look into the mirror, I see a huge, silly smile on my lips. I’m such a dork. I don’t have anything to smile about.
God only knows what’s in store for us today. Strawman was nothing like Six-Point, even though they had the same grin, the same easy way of talking. But Strawman was scary. Not just dangerous, like Gunner is. And not scary like Blowback, though he looks dead inside and he makes even the hardened Ride
rs uneasy.
With Strawman, it was something more than that. When he was here, I couldn’t take my eyes off him—and not for the same reason I can’t stop looking at Gunner, though their faces are so similar. With Strawman, I kept watching him not because he’s beautiful, but because he was terrifying. It was like sharing a tiny space with a coiled, poisonous snake, waiting for him to strike.
From inside the bathroom, I hear the rasp of the shower curtain sliding across the rod. Oh god. Gunner’s naked in there. Turning on the spray. Soon water will be dripping over his skin, sluicing across hardened muscles. Soon he’ll be soaping up his lean, strong body, maybe lathering up his hands and stroking his thick cock—
Quickly I crank up the blow dryer and try to drown out every tempting sound.
Last night, it was too dark to see much while we were riding. Today the sun is bright, with only a few puffy white clouds floating in the blue sky, and the hills we’re speeding through are simply beautiful, a patchwork of vineyards and olive groves, huge estates and cozy-looking farms. It almost reminds me of my time in Tuscany, though I was traveling alone then, trying to see as much of the world as I could before my inevitable early end.
This is so much better—pressed up against Gunner’s strong back, clinging to his lean waist. And that inevitable end hasn’t come for me yet.
I’m not so afraid it will. No matter what his family throws at us.
But that worry must be getting to Gunner. As we turn off the highway onto a long, two-lane road that winds deeper into the hills, the tension in his muscles hardens to steel. I hold him tighter, and for a brief moment he lets go of one of the handlebars to squeeze my hands, clasped together over his stomach.
Maybe thinking I’m the one who needs reassuring.
He slows at a stop sign, preparing to turn right onto another rural road. In the brief lull, when the engine is growling instead of roaring, I call out,
“We can say I have herpes!”
He turns his head as if to look at me over his shoulder, but given how close I am and the difference between my height and his, he probably only sees the top of my helmet.
“We can say what?”
“To your family!” I yell. “If they try the ‘If girlie wants something from us, she needs to get on her knees’ thing, I can bite the inside of my lips and fake some open sores!”
I can’t hear his laugh over the rumble of the engine, but I feel it shaking through his back. He doesn’t respond, just grips my clasped hands again before taking off, but the tension in his back isn’t so rigid now.
The family farm isn’t what I expected. Though I don’t know what I expected. Maybe a cross between the old farmhouse from Children of the Corn and the creepy village from The Wicker Man, tended by empty-eyed women in long dresses. But the entrance to the property is a huge open gate, with “New Eden Organic Farm” spelled out on an elegant sign overhead. A smaller notice beside the gate reads:
New Eden Organic Farms welcomes visitors from March 1st–Thanksgiving Day. The Farmer’s Market and New Eden’s Farm Store are open daily, 6am–8pm. Food Pavilion open Saturdays and Sundays.
It’s the Monday morning before Thanksgiving, but it doesn’t look like they’re winding down soon. A few dozen vehicles sit in a huge gravel parking lot facing a red barn. Customers mill between stalls of colorful fruits and vegetables. A picnic area, a small playground, and concession stand lie near the barn’s entrance, which is topped by a sign announcing “Farm Store.”
Gunner slowly rides through the lot, and when I realize he’s not stopping here, I tap his left side—our signal to pull over.
He pulls into a parking space and kills the engine. “You okay?”
“Yeah. I just want to wrap my head around this first. This is the Cooper family farm?”
Nodding, he slides his gaze over to the barn. “There wasn’t quite all of this before I left, but it was what Mama was working toward. Inviting other local farmers to set up those produce stalls, and it’s where she gets all the ingredients to use in the pavilion on the weekends. What produce doesn’t sell, Mama buys up and either cans it fresh or makes jellies out of it to put in the store.”
Smart. “I bet that creates a lot of local goodwill.”
Something that must be incredibly valuable if a motorcycle club is also running out of this farm.
“It does,” he says and the wry note in his voice acknowledges the same thing. “But they get people in from the city, too. In the summer, they’ve got a petting zoo and things like hayrides to bring in the families with little kids. There’s a small vineyard up on the east side of the property, so they get the tourists who come through the area visiting wineries. And come October, they set up a haunted corn maze and pumpkin patch, put up a beer garden and stay open until midnight. That’s when you can’t even find parking here.”
“They must rake in the big bucks then.”
“I think they do.”
“That’s seriously impressive. Most of the farmers who come in to the Den are struggling.” And I’m never sure if the drinks I serve make it worse or better.
“Mama probably had a leg up, because this land came from her family and they had some money. But this”—he tips his chin toward the barn—“that’s all her. My father just wanted a self-sustaining farm, something like what he planned to live on after the world was rebuilt, but she’s the one who turned it into this.”
“And you grew up working the farm?”
He chuckles softly, like that’s an understatement. “Yeah, I did.”
“On a farm called New Eden…and you and your brothers all have Biblical names? Are you sure it’s not a religious cult? Was your dad’s name Joseph or Solomon or something?”
His laugh deepens. “I’m sure. And my father’s name was Leonard.”
“Really? That’s kind of a let down.”
“His road name was Prophet.”
I snort hard. Gunner is wearing a grin as he fires up the engine again. Although he said there was a vineyard on the east side of the property, I didn’t realize how big the place was. After we ride past the public area and the barn, we pass a pasture full of grazing cows, an orchard and an olive grove, and a few more barns—each one more modern-looking than the quaint old barn housing the farm store. And even though Gunner had told me the clubhouse was at the back end of the property, it’s not until we come across a tall, imposing gate that I understand how separate the club is from the farm. A big NO TRESPASSING sign and security cameras posted above a chain link fence topped with razor wire are as far away from the farm’s warm welcome as it gets.
Gunner pulls up to the gate, and we sit idling. Waiting for someone to see us through those cameras, I realize.
“The club members all come in on a different route off the main road,” he tells me. “Only family comes through this way.”
So he’s claiming that privilege. “Is this where everyone lives?”
He shakes his head. “Mama’s house and all the brides’ houses are up on the east hill.”
The brides’ houses? That doesn’t sound creepy at all.
An electric hum sounds, then a loud rattle as the gate rolls open. Nothing’s as neat or as nice here. The ground is bare dirt with a few patches of dried grass struggling through. The clubhouse is a long, low building shaped in an ‘L’, like an old-timey ranch house. The stucco had once been painted a warm brown, but the paint is cracked and peeling away, revealing the gray plaster beneath.
About two dozen motorcycles form a double line in front of the long porch that wraps around the clubhouse. Gunner rolls up beside them as the clubhouse door opens. Strawman, I recognize, and I assume the other is Muncher, because he looks slightly younger than the man at his side—though on a dark night, I’m not sure I’d be able to tell the difference.
Except there is a difference, and it’s not just the tiny variations in jaws and lips and eyes. It’s in the way they look at us. Strawman’s wearing his broad grin that seems like it’s all te
eth. Muncher watches us with unsmiling mouth and unreadable eyes, as if he’s not too pleased to see his younger brother.
Not as friendly as Six-Point, then. But also not as scary as Strawman—though Gunner said he was hot headed, so maybe that’s coming.
I’m not really sure I want to meet Adam.
And I’m nervous. I wasn’t before, but now I am. I can’t reach for Gunner’s hand, though, or go looking to him for support.
I’m just Stone’s sister. Gunner wasn’t supposed to kiss me as if he was starving for my taste, or eat my pussy with such devastating hunger. He wasn’t supposed to make me laugh, or tease me about my selfies, or sweetly press his lips to my palm.
But, oh my god, I’m glad he did—because it makes this a lot easier, makes me feel a hell of a lot safer, even if he can’t touch me now.
Except he does. He takes my sweaty hand in a firm grip, and I remember what he told me last night—that they expect him to be possessive, because I’m his to take care of. But he doesn’t look at me; for all the attention he gives me as we start toward the clubhouse entrance, I could be a sack of dirty laundry that he’s carrying at his side. His profile is hard, his eyes like ice. Heart pounding, I follow right behind him as he approaches his brothers, half-running to keep up with his long stride.
On the porch, Strawman leans his shoulder against a post, the wooden surface pocked and splintered, as if it’s not just used as a leaning post but has taken on its share of knives and fists. “You stop at the house first?”
“I didn’t.” It’s not just Gunner’s face that’s hard and cold now—his voice is, too.
“Mama’s not going to be happy about that.”
“Mama’ll live with it.”
Big arms crossed, Muncher fixes his pale eyes on me. “That one’s supposed to be up at the house. She can’t stay with you if we’re talking business.”
“What I have to tell you isn’t anything she doesn’t know.” Gunner stops at the bottom of the porch stairs, his gaze zeroing in on Strawman. “You made an issue of her coming. I told you she’s mine to protect. So she’s with me until I feel she doesn’t need to be.”
