With enough stretching, Axel managed to grab the phone. He settled back onto the pillow and ran one hand up and down my back, holding me to him while he slid his thumb across the screen with the other and pressed the phone to his ear. “Yeah?” Five seconds later, he went tense beneath me. “What? Fucking hell. We’ll be there in twenty.”
I pursed my lips. I didn’t want him to leave.
“Leith, baby, I need you to wake up. We need to get over to Spritz Villa.”
That had my eyes popping open. “What? Why?”
“Someone broke into your apartment.”
Warm air rushed over me as Axel’s bike sped along the mostly deserted city streets. With my arms wrapped tight around his middle and his broad back to lean against, I’d discovered that being on the bike with him was one of my favorite places. I wasn’t as upset about my apartment as I should have been. It’s not like I didn’t know who had done it.
Malcolm, my former Daddy. Not that I thought he deserved the title, not knowing what I knew now. I sighed, letting the wind whip the sound away and closed my eyes. I should be freaking out. Panic and fear should have been spreading through every cell of my body. Seeing the text had scared me. Knowing that I had to get away again had depressed me. And now this? The fact that the text wasn’t a bluff? He’d been in my apartment. If I hadn’t stayed with Axel, Malcolm would already have me in his clutches again. Maybe it was everything that had happened with Dustin, and I was just desensitized to terror at this point.
The bike slowed, and Axel dropped his feet to the pavement. I lifted my head and looked over his shoulder. The glow of the red light in front of us glinted off of his helmet. He met my eyes in the side mirror and took one of his hands off of the handlebars to squeeze mine where they were clasped against his stomach. My heart jumped in my chest, and I managed to give him a weak smile.
It was him, I realized as the light turned green, and we continued on our way. He was the reason for my muted fear, like a shield holding the terror at bay. A line of defense I’d never had before. For one fire-bright moment, hope flared in my chest. What if I told him? Would he defend me against this next threat? Sweep in and rescue me like he’d done when I’d been at Dustin’s mercy? Would he still care about me if he knew what a broken boy I really was?
The bike stopped again, and I realized we’d made it to the Villa. A man in a Heretics’ vest was standing on the steps waiting for us. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him. I must have seen him at Spritz before.
Axel dropped the bike’s kickstand and held it steady while I climbed off.
“Hey, Zach,” he said as soon as he’d gotten off the bike too and stowed our helmets in one of the saddlebags.
“Hey,” Zach said, eyes darting from Axel to me. He was a good-looking guy—clean cut with dark hair and eyes and an obvious love of the gym, if the biceps stretching the sleeves of his t-shirt were any indication. He wasn’t Axel-sized or anything, but impressive, nonetheless. “It’s good to see you on your feet, Leith.”
The driver—that’s where I knew him from. He’d been behind the wheel of the truck the night Axel had carried me out of Dustin’s apartment.
“Thanks, Zach,” I said, giving him a small smile. He smiled back, looking surprisingly awake for three o’clock in the morning.
Axel grunted and wrapped an arm around my shoulders, moving us toward the entrance. “Who’s upstairs?”
Zach fell into step beside us. “Riot and Mace. They were on at the club tonight. One of the dancers noticed Leith’s door standing open when he got off shift and called them.”
“Any footage?”
Zach pulled a set of keys out of his pocket, unlocking and holding the door open for us. “We caught his face coming in, but none of us recognize him.”
With another grunt, Axel hit the up button for the elevator and stood so that his chest was pressed against my back. I could tell he was agitated, but I wasn’t sure if he was upset with Zach for some reason or just at the situation in general. I let myself lean back against him. He blew out a slow breath and dropped one hand to rest on my hip, giving it a little squeeze.
“You okay?” he asked quietly, as we shuffled forward to get on the elevator.
Once we'd stepped inside, I pressed my side to Axel’s and slipped my hand into his. “I'm okay,” I answered, looking up and catching his dark eyes. As the door slid shut, he adjusted our joined hands, so that his fingers threaded through mine and gave me a little smile.
The elevator ride was short, and as we approached my open apartment door, I took a deep fortifying breath. As soon as I stepped over the threshold, I was glad that I had. My apartment was a studio; one large room with a kitchenette in the corner and the only other door in the space leading to the bathroom. The whole room was all in an utter state of disarray. My small dinette set was on its side, the cushions of my loveseat had been pulled off and slashed, the TV screen was busted, and all my dresser drawers had been pulled out and dumped. Even the mattress on my bed had been pulled off and tossed against the wall so it covered the window, and there were large slash marks running the length of it.
Mace and Riot were both standing near the kitchenette counter, but I didn't pay them any mind as my heart started to pound and my head went fuzzy. I'd never let myself become super attached to material objects because things could always be taken away, and I'd never had much to call my own to begin with. So I hadn't expected the deep well of sadness that threatened to rise up out of my belly and choke me, or the way it shifted and morphed into a type of rage I had never felt before.
That motherfucker.
I had worked so hard to build a life of my own, and even though that meant slinging drinks or letting the gentleman in the downstairs club buy an evening with me, only to come home to a one-room apartment…
Maybe it didn't seem like much to some, but it was mine. No one had given it to me. No one had made the decision that led me here. This job and this place were the first things I'd ever had that were wholly mine, and Malcolm had ruined it.
I knew without looking that nothing would be missing. Theft hadn’t been his goal. He wanted to scare me. Wanted to show me he could reach out and crush me if he wanted to—cut me in ways he knew would make me bleed the most.
Taking a deep breath, I let the anger build and spread until it was permeating every part of me. As much as I wanted to crumble and let Axel take me up into his arms, I needed to confront this on my own two feet.
This was why I didn't trust anyone. Why I'd chosen to never give myself fully to someone again. Even if the man at my side was proving he could be the exception. Axel was a good man, and the way he was looking at me right now—dark eyes full of concern and rage equal to my own—in that moment, I knew that if I told him about Malcolm, he would protect me. But at what cost? He'd already done so much. This was my mess, and somehow, I was going to have to find a way to clean it up.
Chapter Seven
Axel
Leith stood inside the doorway, his entire body trembling. At first, I thought he was on the verge of a breakdown, but then I stepped around him and met his eyes. His gorgeous blue orbs were filled with the kind of anger I wanted to make it my mission for him to never have to feel. He held my gaze for a moment, but as I watched, his face hardened, features going dark and snapping the connection I felt to the sweet boy on the inside.
Seeing that look on his face made my chest ache. My protective instincts were screaming at me to scoop him up and get him the hell out of there. He'd seen enough. He didn't need to wade into this mess. I could do it for him—set everything to rights, and clean away everything that was broken. It wouldn't be perfect, nor exactly how it was before, but it wouldn't be this disheveled wreck of the place he called home.
Stepping further away from me, he went toward the bed, kneeling down in the small space between it and the wall where the drawers of his bedside table had been yanked out and dumped on the floor. I tried not to look too closely, but felt my che
eks heat anyway at the sight of several dildos and plugs. I couldn’t fucking think about that right now—Leith spread out, all his gorgeous, naked, freckled skin on display. I’d rather it be me buried inside him than some toy, but honestly, the visual of either was going to have me hard in a matter of seconds. Tearing my eyes away, I moved to the other side of the room where Mace and Riot were still standing in the kitchenette.
"What do we know?" I asked in lieu of a greeting.
"Not much. Guy came in just after one a.m., was up here for fifteen minutes flat, and then back out the door. As far as we can tell from the video, he had some sort of lock picking tool, and it didn't look like he left with anything unless it was small enough to fit in his pockets," Mace answered. The Sergeant-at-Arms, standing with his feet firmly planted and arms crossed over his chest, looked as angry as I felt.
Riot shifted his bulk beside him and glanced in Leith's direction before whispering, "He okay?"
I lifted a hand to scrub over my face because I didn't know the answer to that question. For all that I'd felt like Leith and I had gotten close over the last couple of weeks, it was painfully obvious that there were things he was hiding from me. Hell, he was probably hiding from everyone. "I don't know." I lowered my voice. "First, that asshole Dustin fucking kidnapped and tortured him, and now this bullshit? Anyone would be a mess."
"He doesn't exactly look like a mess," Mace said, with the lift of one brow and his eyes trained across the room where Leith had already begun cleaning up the disaster that was his apartment. "Here." Mace pulled out his phone and brought something up on the screen before turning it to me. It was a picture of a man, bulky but not defined, wearing jeans, a dark t-shirt, and a ball cap. He was walking up the steps toward the front door at Spritz Villa. I'd never seen him before in my life.
I took the phone from Mace's hand and crossed the room. Leith was still on his knees beside the bed folding some of his clothes that had been thrown over there. I held out the phone. "Do you recognize this man?"
Leith looked up at me with an indiscernible expression on his face before he dropped his eyes to the phone. His expression didn't change, not even a tick, but the top of his ears went red, and the slightest tremble went through him.
"No," he said before dropping his eyes back to the pile of clothes in front of him.
Maybe we didn't have as strong a bond as I thought, or maybe the feelings for him growing in my chest weren't mutual like I believed, but I knew him well enough to know that he’d just lied to me, and I was determined to find out why.
I left Leith at the little corner table that I'd chosen for us. It was just after five a.m., and Mac’s Café technically wasn't open to the public yet and wouldn't for another hour. When we’d left Leith’s apartment, I knew Mac would already be there and have coffee on. I was thankful he'd answered the phone. I'd wanted to take Leith someplace quiet where we could talk, and I could get some food into him; that wasn't the clubhouse. Plus, I felt like we needed to be on neutral ground.
It had taken us almost a full two hours to clean up the mess that had been made of his apartment. He'd barely spoken a word to me, or anyone, since I'd asked him about the man in the picture. I knew that he knew who it was, and it hurt more than I'd like to admit that he didn't trust me enough to tell me. I wanted that trust, badly, but I wouldn't bully it out of him or try to push him into something he wasn't ready for. What I would do was exactly what I’d promised him, I would be there for him.
I couldn't say what was in his mind right now, but there was only one thing on mine—to take care of him and to show him that I would never betray it if he chose to put his trust in me.
I approached the cafés counter as Mac stepped out of the back. He'd been a friend of the club for as long as I'd been a Heretic, and despite his grumpy exterior, he was a good man.
"Here you go, brother. Some caffeine and sugar for your boy over there," Mac said, setting a tray with two steaming coffees, two breakfast sandwiches, and a plate with four iced doughnuts. It smelled heavenly.
"Thanks, Mac. I appreciate you letting us crash your morning."
"No problem. Yell if you need anything." With that, he turned and headed back into the kitchen, and I picked up the tray and went to sit across from the boy I wanted to be mine.
The look of resignation and the dejected slump of his shoulders was so different from the vibrant boy I knew. I didn't think he'd looked this bad even injured in a hospital bed. Something was eating at him, and it was taking all of my self-control not to immediately demand that he tell me what.
"Mac makes an awesome breakfast. Not sure if it's as good as yours, but definitely a close second." That earned me a little smile as I divvied out the food from the tray and set his coffee in front of him.
"Thank you," Leith said as he picked up the cup, inhaling its aroma before taking a slow sip.
Deciding to give it a moment before I posed the question I wanted to ask, I tucked into my food, nearly groaning at the crisp snap of bacon and the welcome warmth of fresh coffee. When we both made it through our breakfast sandwiches, I offered Leith his choice of the doughnuts before picking up an iced maple bar for myself. I watched him take a big bite of the powdered confection and smiled when a drip of raspberry jam ended up on his chin. Before I thought about it, I reached across and swiped it up with my thumb, touch lingering on his skin a moment longer than necessary before I pulled away and stuck my thumb in my mouth, sucking away the sweet and tart flavor of the jam.
Leith swallowed hard, eyes glued to my mouth. I shot him a wink and smiled when pink highlighted his cheeks. Now that his sole focus was on me, I set down my doughnut and folded my arms on the table as I held his gaze.
"I need to head out on a little trip this afternoon."
His shoulders tensed immediately. "What? To where?"
"To Sand Lake. Calix wants me to check out a new fighter at the Heretics’ gym there. I'll probably be gone for about a week." He tried to hide it, but I didn't miss the way his shoulders slumped, or the way he didn't want to meet my eyes. "I was hoping that you might want to come with me."
His eyes snapped up to mine. "Really?"
"Really. What do you think?"
He sat for a minute, thinking and licking at some sugar clinging to the corner of his mouth. "Yes. I'd love to go."
Chapter Eight
Leith
After four hours on the bike, we reached Sand Lake. Axel turned the bike into a gym’s parking lot. The low, brick building stretched a long way back from the road, proving it was larger than I’d thought. It was good to stretch my legs when Axel parked the bike around the back near a black metal door. Zach, who'd made the trip with us, parked his bike next to Axel’s and climbed off as well. I kept my eyes trained on the building and tried not to dwell on how that was possibly the last time I’d ever be on the back of his bike. I’d clung to him as tight as I could the whole way here.
Axel didn't say anything as he took our helmets and stowed them in one saddlebag before pulling the duffel bag with both of our clothes and toiletries in it from the other. That was an issue. I didn't want to take anything of Axel's—even a bag—so when I found my opportunity to slip away, I’d need to find something else to put my clothes in. There'd only been room for the bare necessities, but I had the money I’d kept stashed in the battery compartments of a couple of my dildos in my wallet. I didn't know this place at all, but Axel had said we were only an hour or so away from Kansas City. Hopefully, that meant there was a bus station somewhere close. Since I'd left my phone behind in case Malcolm was somehow using it to track me, I’d have to make my way to a gas station and ask for directions when the time came.
I sighed. The phone was another thing on the long list of stuff I’d need to replace. Exhaustion—the bone-deep kind—was already pulling at me, and I hadn’t even gotten started yet.
Axel turned toward the building, settling a sure hand on the small of my back and guided me in the direction of the door. I let his t
ouch settle me, even as the thought that I’d soon be purposefully leaving it behind made my eyes burn.
Before we reached the door, someone pushed it open. A man as tall as Axel and just as wide with silver streaks all through his dark hair and beard stepped out to greet us. I'd seen him before at the charity ride and thought his name was Jeb. I knew he was Lex's dad and the president of the club here.
"Axel, Zach, good to see you boys." Jeb's eyes dropped to me. He smiled and held out his hand. "I'm Jeb. I remember seeing you with this lug”—he nodded toward Axel—“at the ride a few weeks ago, but I didn't catch your name."
"Leith," I said, accepting his hand and giving it a firm shake. "It's nice to meet you."
"You too. Now come on in. The rooms are all ready for you, and if you're up for it, Ward is in the cage right now sparring with Kade."
"Perfect," Axel said, taking my hand and leading me along as we followed Jeb inside.
“You know where to go,” Jeb said over his shoulder. “Make yourselves at home, and I’ll see you out there.”
“Thanks,” Axel said, turning down a long hallway while Jeb continued forward through a glass door with the gym’s name on it.
After we left our bag in the room, Axel led us out into the gym. The entire front of the building was covered in large windows, and there was a short counter off to one side. The rest of the space was dominated by free weights, workout equipment, two full-size boxing rings, and a large metal cage. The whole thing smelled like the dressing room at Spritz—sweat-soaked with a hint of disinfectant.
Inside the cage, two men with small black, fingerless gloves on their hands were trading punches and kicks, but it didn't look like they were using their full strength. Zach was standing beside Jeb with his arms crossed and his eyes on the fighters. Axel moved us in that direction, but my eyes lingered for a moment on the counter and the shelves behind it. There were tote bags, water bottles, and some other things with the gym's logo.
Disarm (Iron Heretics MC Book 2) Page 5
