“We’ll grab some coffee later. For now, we’ll eat and rest up for a few hours.”
The keycard took four swipes before it let us into the simple room. Not a promising start, but the reassuring hum of an air conditioning unit greeted me as I stepped through the door. The twin beds were clean and comfortable when I perched on the end of the first, and the scent of soap and cleaning fluid filled the air.
Bono confirmed my order, refusing my money, before leaving me alone in the room. I switched on the TV and waited with bated breath for him to return. Despite living alone for the last decade, the room felt eerily empty without Bono in it.
I jumped to my feet as soon as he got back and moved to the small table, placing our paper-wrapped food on top of it.
“Do you still ride a motorcycle?” I asked when I took the seat opposite him, despite his leather jacket implying he did so.
He grinned and shrugged off the jacket before placing it on the back of his chair. “I still ride,” he said.
“What’s the logo on the back all about? The moon and the skull?”
“It represents the motorcycle club I belong to. Forever Midnight. And that perfect moment of peace and stillness that comes over the world only when the moon is full. That moment where nothing else matters and you wish the feeling would last forever.”
“It sounds like this club means a lot to you,” I said between bitefuls. I closed my eyes and savored the delicious maple-infused pancakes, wrapped around bacon, egg, and cheese as though it was the best food in the world.
“You always did have lousy taste in food,” Bono said, smiling at me over the top of his own food.
I shook my head. “If this is about the pineapple on pizza thing again, I might have to give you a slap,” I said without thinking.
Bono leaned back in his chair and grinned. “Then maybe it is.”
I held his gaze for a moment. He looked at me and the years were wiped away. We could be sitting in our old apartment, flirting, and having fun. The realization that we weren’t had me drawing in a deep breath. I shifted my gaze back to my food and took another bite. It didn’t taste as good as the first.
“Tell me about this Forever Midnight,” I said to take the conversation back to safer ground. “And your move to Colorado. When did that happen?”
“After you... left, I joined the military. Did a four-year tour as a medic in Afghanistan—”
“You were in Afghanistan. You loved your job. Why would you leave it?” The question was out of my mouth before I had the chance to stop it, but Bono joining the military had surprised me. He was never one for following rules or letting himself be bossed around when I knew him.
“I needed to get as far away from L.A. as soon as possible. Enlisting seemed the quickest way to do that. A buddy of mine in the service came from Colorado. I moved there when my tour was over.”
“With your buddy?” I asked.
Bono shook his head and put the last two bites of his McGriddle down on its paper. “No. His body was repatriated nineteen months earlier. I went to visit his family and grave and ended up staying.”
His voice was flat and emotionless as he said the last words, and a hollowness opened up in my chest. “I’m sorry,” I said, discarding the last of my own food.
Bono shrugged. “It happens.” He grabbed his griddle and swallowed it in two bites before standing. “We’d better rest,” he said, signally our conversation as over.
He flicked off the TV; closed the curtains, blocking out the light; and checked the door was locked before stripping naked and climbing into one of the single beds. I tried to keep my gaze averted but couldn’t resist taking a glance at his tight ass and sculpted body. He’d gained more tattoos over the years, making me remember that I’d never seen the fully completed first one.
I gathered the food wrappings from the table and tossed them into the bin before moving to the bathroom. Inside, I stripped to my panties and wrapped a towel around me. Back in the main room, I placed my folded clothes on the chair by the table and climbed into the bed. Only when I was beneath the covers did I pull the towel free and discard it to the side of the bed.
Bono rolled and faced the other side of the room with his back to me. “The Hope I knew wouldn’t have acted that shy,” he said into the darkness.
“The Bono I knew wouldn’t have got a room with separate beds,” I countered.
I stared at the ceiling until Bono’s breathing told me he was asleep, and then turned on my side and tried to copy him. I couldn’t say how much later it was when he cried out and woke me. After a few disorienting moments where my heart raced and I sat up in bed, searching the room for our attacker, I realized that Bono was still asleep.
“Tony, no,” he said before making a strangled noise that made me think he might be crying.
His body thrashed on the bed and he threw off the covers. I did the same and made my way tentatively towards him.
“Bono,” I whispered when he murmured something unintelligible. “It’s Hope. You’re having a bad dream. There’s no Tony here. Everything’s fine.”
“Tony’s dead. Hope’s dead. They’re all gone,” he muttered, making my chest tighten.
I sat on the bed next to him and touched his shoulder. “It is Hope,” I said. “I’m not gone. I’m not gone.”
Bono rolled and slipped his arms around my waist. For a second, I wondered if he’d woken up, but soon realized that wasn’t the case. I debated pulling away and going back to my own bed, but Bono’s arms around me felt too good. Instead, I slipped down the bed and drew my feet up to lay next to him, gathering the blanket to cover us again. His body pressed against mine, and I cherished the weighted feeling, the closeness of his heat, and the touch of his skin. I ran my hand over the corded muscles in his chest, noting the outline of his tattoos in the darkness. He shifted, somehow driving his leg between mine, and I couldn’t stop the wetness that flooded to my core when I felt his erection, thick and rigid.
I buried my head beneath his chin and savored the musky scent of him, wishing I was the woman I’d once been. The woman who was brave enough to take him whenever I wanted him. But that woman was long gone.
Chapter Five
Bono
I woke to find Hope sleeping in the crook of my arm. Her naked body pressed against mine. I stared at the perfect roundness of her breasts. My cock instantly hardened. I tried not to move.
Even though the curtains were closed, I noted that it was dark outside. We must have slept all day. When we’d gone to bed, I hadn’t set an alarm as I wasn’t used to sleeping more than an hour or two at a time before waking up. I could honestly say, I’d had the best night’s or rather day’s sleep in ten years, and it was difficult not to associate Hope’s presence with that fact.
I lay still, staring at her sleeping face and enjoying the scent of her skin, her hair. Fuck. She really was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.
I’d been all set to run away from my twelfth foster home in half the number of years when Caroline, my foster mother, had opened the door and brought Hope into my life. Even though she was only fifteen, she had more guts than anyone I’d ever met. She looked at me and winked. I decided then and there that I wasn’t going anywhere.
Kate’s murder must have shaken her to the core for her to allow herself to be bullied into the witness protection program.
She shifted in my arms and her eyes fluttered open. She looked at me and smiled sleepily. But then she came fully awake and jumped up, out of the bed, dragging the bedcovers with her.
Her eyes drifted to my cock, standing at full mast. I just caught a glimpse of her eyes widening before she turned her back to me. “Sorry,” she said. “I... I... You were having a bad dream. I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s fine,” I said, sitting up. “Thank you. I slept better than I have in a long time.”
“Me too,” was all she said before her shoulders hunched and sagged as though she was taking a deep breath. Without saying another word, she g
rabbed her clothes and moved to the bathroom.
I sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, listening as the shower turned on and the sound of cascading water filled the air. Trying not to think of Hope wet and naked in the room next to mine, and hating that was where my mind went, I threw on my clothes, grabbed my phone and went outside where I hoped to find a better signal.
It was ten-past-ten at night when I hit the screen to dial Cane’s number.
“It’s late,” he said, and I realized that Thea might now be home with the baby.
“Damn it, sorry,” I said. “I haven’t woken the baby, have I?”
Cane huffed down the phone. “That’s not what I meant. They’re not coming out of the hospital until tomorrow. We’ve been trying to reach you all day. I was about ready to send out a fucking search party.”
I glanced at my phone and noted the missed messages. “Reception was bad in the room,” I said. “We stopped at a motel to get some rest and slept all day.”
“Yeah, you slept all day.”
I shook my head but decided to ignore the mockery in his tone. “I hardly fucking believe it myself, but that’s what happened.”
“You need to get on the road as soon as possible. Whatever fucking connection Jameson has in New York has told him that this Dolmilo guy is sending people out to try and locate Hope. You’re included as a possible contact to check out. Where are you?”
“A little outside of Santa Fe.
“That’s what, a five, six-hour drive?”
The night was quiet and the road clear. We could grab a drive-through to speed things up. I leaned my back against the balcony railing and looked at the door to our room. Hopefully, Hope would be out of the shower now. I could take five minutes to clean up, and then we could be out of here. “About that,” I said, agreeing with Bono’s estimate relating to our travel time.
“Okay. I’m gonna get some brothers to meet you on the I-25 as you drive by Pueblo. Until then, you’re on your own. Move as fast as you can, and go to the clubhouse, not your cabin.”
I sighed and shook my head. “You really think this is necessary,” I asked, hoping he was being overly cautious.
“Jameson seems to think it is, and I’ve never been inclined to ignore his judgment. Now shift your ass into fucking gear and move.”
Despite the situation, I smiled when I ended the call. Cane had only cussed twice during the entire conversation. Thea was rubbing off on him and making him a changed man in more ways than one.
I turned back to the door and took a deep breath, trying to ease the tension building in my shoulders, before reentering the motel room. Hope was still in the bathroom, so I knocked on the door.
“We gotta move,” I said, deciding it best not to share anything Cane had said with her. She was worried enough as it was, and if she knew Dolmilo was likely waiting to see if she turned up at my place, she might consider running as her only option. But I’d be damned if I was going to let that happen. As far as I was concerned Dolmilo was the walking fucking corpse, not Hope.
She was fully dressed and dabbing her wet hair to dry it when she opened the bathroom door. She looked at me with wary eyes, and once again, confusion rolled through me. We’d been engaged, and as close as two people could be. But what was there for us now? I’d wished for Hope’s return, that the events of that night had turned out differently, every day that followed them. Now that I’d been granted my wish, things were no clearer than they were before. Not for the first time, I wondered how much she’d changed. There was the obvious knock to her self-confidence, but what else lay beneath the surface. I would always love Hope, but had that love changed from what it once was? The stirring in my cock every time I looked at her showed that my body wanted her as much as it always had.
“We need to move,” I said, shaking the thoughts from my head. “I’m gonna take two minutes to shower up and then we’re out of here. Don’t leave the room.” I pushed my way into the bathroom when she nodded.
Within ten minutes we were going through the drive-through and grabbing coffee and burgers before heading out on the road.
Chapter Six
Hope
I sipped at my coffee and looked out the window. Not a night had gone by in the last three days where I hadn’t been chugging down a road, whether on a bus or in a car, staring into the darkness outside but not really seeing anything.
The events had all been a blur from the second I walked into The Chandlery and saw Mickey Dolmilo at the bar until now. Even sitting in the car, watching the world go by, I wasn’t entirely convinced events were real. Only Bono’s rock-solid presence next to me said that they were. Hell, for all I knew, the guy at the bar was just a Dolmilo look alike and I’d run away for no reason. I had been thinking about moving on and also about my past a lot lately, maybe I conjured him as an excuse to get back in touch with Bono.
I scoffed and shook my head.
Bono glanced at me and raised an eyebrow. I wanted nothing more than to reach out and touch his perfect face.
“What are you thinking?” he asked me.
I leaned my head back against the rest and took another sip of coffee. “I was just thinking how great it was to see you and wondering if Dolmilo was still safely locked away in prison, and I’d conjured his image as an excuse to see you.”
The corner of Bono’s lips lifted in a smile and he looked at me with eyes that saw way too much under his lashes. It faltered, making my heart drop into my stomach, and he turned his gaze back to the road ahead. “As much as I wish that was true,” he said. “One of my brothers confirmed he was out on appeal.” He cleared his throat and stared dead ahead as though there was more to what he knew but wasn’t ready to share it with me.
“Brothers?” I questioned to keep him talking.
“From Forever Midnight.”
“Your motorcycle club. You never did tell me about them.”
“Not much to tell that you won’t learn as soon as you meet them. Much like the soldiers in my platoon, they would lay down their lives to protect mine and any brothers. We stand and fight as one unit.”
“So, you went from me to the military to Forever Midnight.” I huffed out a breath and took another sip of coffee, feeling somewhat wistful. “Always searching for the family you never had as a child.”
Bono almost growled and his hands tightened on the steering wheel. “I had all the family I ever wanted with you, and I didn’t go from you to the military. You went from me.”
I hated hearing the condemnation in his words, but he was right. I left, and Bono had lost even more people after that. There was no wonder he hated me for it, even while I still loved him.
The silence stretched between us. The weather shifted and the skies covered the rain in a fine mist, distorting the view of the road. Soon, the deluge increased, and Bono had to turn the wipers on. I sat listening to their incessant swish until Bono suddenly shifted in his seat. “What about you?” he asked. “How have the past ten years been for you in witness protection?”
“Lonely,” I answered. Bono only nodded his head in response, and I wasn’t sure if he was agreeing I’d been lonely or that he had too. “I was on a flight from L.A. to Washington within three hours of Kate’s murder. They kept me there for a little over two weeks. For the next year, while the trial was running, I never spent more than a couple of weeks in one place.”
“Were you at the trial?” Bono asked.
“No. I testified remotely.” I tipped my cup up to get the last drip of coffee and placed it in the cupholder. “After the conviction, I was settled in Nebraska. But there were rumors Dolmilo had located me. After that, there was Georgia, Michigan. Texas and Utah. I never really got to stay in one place for more than a few years.”
“Sounds hard,” he said.
“It wasn’t easy. More than anything, like I said, it was lonely.”
Bono’s brow furrowed and he stared ahead at the road again. “Why were you moved so much?” he asked after a moment.
“Was your position compromised each time?” I nodded. “Doesn’t that seem strange to you? Did you ever contact someone out of your old life, someone who could point their finger in your direction?”
I huffed and closed my eyes, leaning my head against the rest. The steady swoosh of the wipers and the drumming of the rain on the window made my head hurt and made it feel as though there was nothing outside the bubble of our car. “Who else did I have but you?” I asked, unable to keep the pain from my voice.
Bono was silent for a long time, thinking things through and choosing his words carefully, the way he always liked to. We were both so different, and yet completely the same. When he did finally speak, his voice was soft and full of concern. “All the evidence against Dolmilo was either lost or destroyed. I don’t know what evidence they held against him, but I’m damn certain they would have needed to keep it while he ran through his appeals process.”
“I made a video recording of Kate’s murder on my phone,” I said and shifted uncomfortably when Bono’s eyes darted toward me.
“You could have been killed,” he said. “Why would you risk such a thing?”
I shrugged. “I couldn’t help Kate. I guess, I just did what I could.”
“The video would have been kept,” Bono said.
I nodded. “Where are you going with this?” I asked.
“Just trying to make sense of things.”
“Good luck with that.”
A small smile crept onto his lips at my tone, and he reached into his jackets and pulled his phone out.
He handed it to me and asked me to call someone named Rex, and to put the call on speaker.
“Bono,” Rex said as soon as he answered. “You just caught me. I’m here with Caleb, Cane, and Lucky. We were about to leave with some others to meet you by Pueblo.”
“I need you to stay at home and work on something else for me.” Bono raised his voice to be heard over the curtain of rain that pounded the car.
“Not a problem,” he said. “I’m putting you on speaker.”
Forever Midnight MC Collection: Books 1-3 Page 30
