by Ivy Black
I chuckle softly. “And I’ve been enjoying spending time with you too,” I say. “But you know we always go through ups and downs. We’re on an up right now. It’s almost like that new relationship vibe. But inevitably, we always fall into a low. And those lows can be brutal.”
He nods. “Yeah, I know. But I’ve been working on that. I’ve been seeing a shrink and have been involved with my groups for a while now,” he says. “They’re making a difference. I feel different. I mean, I know I’ve got a ways to go still and I’ll probably never be considered normal by normal people’s standards, but I’m better today than I was back then.”
“Better?”
He nods. “My lows aren’t as frequent or horrible. Plus, I’ve got some tools now to use that help me cope with it when I feel myself slipping. It’s a process but I’m definitely not the same man you left.”
I look him in the eyes, listening to his words, and am struck by the fact that he really doesn’t seem the same as he did back then. I have to admit, there’s a peace and calm about him that he didn’t have before. He seems a little lighter and freer than he used to, although I can see he still has that edge of intensity about him. It’s truly good to see but I don’t know that falling back into our relationship is the best thing. For either of us.
“Milo, I—”
He holds his hand up to stop me as a gentle smile touches his lips. “I know. It’s probably not something we should even be discussing right now. I get it,” he says. “But I don’t think I realized just how much I missed you until you showed up on my doorstep. I mean, I knew I missed you. I have since you left. But I didn’t realize just how deep it ran until you turned up here.”
My heart flutters and my throat is dry. I look away, unable to maintain eye contact with him for fear of my resolve crumbling. It would be so easy to give myself over to my emotions and fall back into a relationship with him. The truth is, I’ve missed him every bit as much as he says he’s missed me. I still love him, and it’s more than clear that he still loves me.
But I’m not in a place right now where I’m thinking about a relationship, let alone rekindling my relationship with Milo. And it’s not that we ended badly. It’s just that it was clear we shouldn’t be together. Besides, I have so much going on right now between work and classes, as well as getting myself prepared for law school in the not too distant future that I shouldn’t be thinking about getting together with anybody right now.
And yet, even knowing all of this, I’d be lying if I said there isn’t some small piece of me that craves being with him again. It’s not that I’m lonely—I’ve been alone most of my life and learned to be all right with it. It’s him. It’s Milo. He touched some piece of me that nobody else has before. He claimed a piece of my heart that he’ll always have. But there are still a thousand reasons why I shouldn’t even be entertaining the notion.
“I’m not tellin’ you all of this for any reason other than I want you to know where I’m at,” he goes on. “I’m not askin’ or expectin’ anything from you, Had. I just want you to know that I’m better than I was and how I feel about you.”
“With the intention of wooing me back, huh?” I reply with a mischievous grin.
He shrugs. “Do with that information what you will,” he says. “But if you haven’t completely shut the door on the idea, maybe it’s somethin’ we can talk about down the road a piece.”
I purse my lips and look away for a moment as I gather my wits about me again. I’m doing my best to control that piece of me that so wants to throw caution to the wind and tell him I want to be with him again. But I somehow manage to muzzle that voice in my mind.
“Anyway, we’ll just leave that where it is,” Milo says, as if he’s picking up on my hesitance. “In the meantime, you staying here is practical. We have no idea who broke into your place. And we haven’t even tried to figure it out yet. Personally, I’d feel a lot better if you stayed here, where you were protected a bit better. We’ll start tryin’ to find out who broke into your place and handle him when we figure it out.”
“But that could take a while.”
“I’ve got the room. And honestly, I would feel better if you didn’t go home until we figure out who broke into your place, Had,” he tells me. “I don’t like the idea of you sittin’ there alone with this creep out there. He broke into your place already. What happens if he does it again while you’re home?”
I frown as I think about it. He’s not wrong. The fact that we don’t know who broke into my place and that the situation hasn’t been resolved yet is definitely cause for concern. The mere thought of it sends a chill rushing straight down my spine. Staying at Milo’s place makes a lot of sense from a practical and safety standpoint. It’s everything else that comes with staying here that’s making me hesitate. But Milo has always been sensitive to my feelings. Or at least, he tried to be. I’ll never say he was ever dismissive or didn’t take my feelings into account.
It’s the practicality that wins the argument in my mind though. I don’t like the idea of this mystery man breaking into my apartment while I’m there any more than Milo does. I have some good things going on in my life, and I’d really like to see them through. I like being alive and would much prefer not being murdered in my apartment if I can prevent it.
“Thank you, Milo,” I say. “I appreciate you looking after me like this.”
He waves me off. “It’s not a big deal. Like I said, I’ve got the room,” he said. “And it’s kind of nice to have you here.”
I give him a smile. “So tell me what it is you’re working on there.”
He blows out a long breath, an exasperated expression crossing his face. He sat back in his chair as he grabbed the bottle of beer from the table and drained it in one swig. He set it down and started to tell me about everything that’s been going on with the MC. He tells me about everything from the fight with the cartel, to the hits on their supply runs, to that freak ATF agent raiding the clubhouse, to Prophet asking him to find the mole.
Halfway during his story, I get up and walk into the kitchen. I grab a couple of bottles of beer out of the refrigerator and come back. He nods at me as he takes the bottle and opens it. I listen to the whole story and am halfway done with my beer by the time he’s finished.
I can hear the frustration in his voice and feel for him. The MC is his heart. The guys in the club are his family, and I know what they mean to him. The fact that there is somebody in the club putting everybody’s lives at risk and doing harm to the MC overall is eating away at him. What strikes me the most though, is how much differently he’s handling it together now as opposed to how he would have dealt with it back when we were together.
Back in the day, he would have been teetering on the edge of a violent explosion. He never would have taken it out on me. That’s just not him. But he would have been moody and sullen, and it definitely would have made him shut down on me.
“Before I go on, I have to commend you on how you’re dealing with all of this,” I say. “I know it can’t be easy for you.”
He smirks. “I told you the shrink was helping me.”
“I’m proud of you.”
“Thanks,” he says, his smile growing. “That means a lot.”
We stare into each other’s eyes for a long moment, then we both laugh awkwardly. I take a drink of my beer as Milo looks at his watch.
“How about some dinner?” he asks. “It’s too late for me to cook, so what should we order?”
“How about sushi? I’m pretty sure Kumiko’s delivers,” I offer. “We can work as we eat. My treat.”
“Work?”
“I plan on helping you figure this out.”
“I appreciate that,” he says. “And yeah, go ahead and order if you would. I want to go clean up a bit.”
“You got it.”
He gets up and heads back to his room as I put in the order. That done, I pull his laptop over to me and look at wh
at he’s been working on. He comes back out a short time later, having showered and put on some shorts and a T-shirt. Milo drops back down at the table and takes a swallow of his beer.
“I assume the red dots are suspects and the blue dots are guys you’ve cleared?” I ask as I peruse the grid he put together that’s got the entire Pharaohs’ roster on it.
He nods. “You’re good. That’s exactly what it is.”
“See?” I say, tapping my forehead. “Not just a hat rack, my friend.”
We share a laugh, and the camaraderie between us flows easily. Milo really is a lot different and a lot more lighthearted than he used to be. He laughs and smiles a lot more easily than before, and I can’t lie—it’s having an effect on me. I clear my throat and try to push it away though. These aren’t thoughts I want to be having right now.
“Okay, so you’ve got thirty-seven active members right now,” I say. “And you’ve cleared six of them—sorry, seven. You cleared yourself.”
“Well, I know I’m not the mole.”
I flash him a grin. “Fair enough. But why’d you clear these six?”
“It’s Leadership. Prophet and the rest of Leadership wouldn’t be the mole.”
“Why not?”
“Because they’re the ones who run the club.”
I shrug. “Doesn’t mean they couldn’t have a motive for wanting to shake things up. Maybe one of these guys wants Prophet’s spot.”
He sits back and scratches his chin. “Yeah, I suppose that’s true.”
“Of course, it is,” I reply. “First rule of running an investigation is that everybody’s a suspect.”
“Even me?”
“Don’t be an ass,” I reply and laugh. “So everybody’s a suspect, but if you had to give me half a dozen names of guys you’d think are more likely to turn on the club, who would you name? Just off the top of your head. Don’t stop and think about it. Give me your gut instinct. Go.”
“Well, I honestly can’t name six,” he says. “But if I had to name some, I’d have to go with Grease, Boomer, Duck, and Whistler.”
“Good. Why?”
He shrugs. “Most of them seem pretty disconnected from what we do. They don’t really join in with club activities and whatnot,” he tells me. “And I’ve heard them all bitching about Leadership or the club. I know a couple of them have talked about leaving the MC altogether.”
“Okay. We’ll start with those four then,” I tell him. “Just keep in mind that these guys may be completely innocent. This is just a good place to start. It’ll help to narrow your focus.”
“Fair enough,” he says. “So where do we start?”
“Allow me,” I tell him, gesturing to the laptop.
He pushes it across the table to me. “By all means.”
One of the cool things about working for a guy like Brent is that he’s been in the game so long, he knows all the cool workarounds and shortcuts to get what I want. It’s not usually admissible in court and might slightly cross that line of legality, but it at least can help point you in the right direction. It can help narrow your focus.
Right now, I need to do a deep dive on these four names, and the best place to start is by looking at their phone records. It will help to see who they’ve been talking to and see if anything pops.
“Got a printer?” I ask.
He nods. “It’s wireless. Just hit the icon to print.”
“Gotcha.”
My fingers fly over the keys as I log into the different websites Brent uses for these searches. He told me a while back that he hired a hacker to build back doors into various companies that allow him to go in and out as he pleased. Legally, we need a warrant to be doing what I’m doing right now. And I’d be lying if I said breaking the law didn’t freak me out a little bit every time I do it. But since this isn’t for a court case or anything like it, I don’t feel quite as bad about doing it.
I pull up the accounts for the four men Milo had listed off—thankfully, they all use the same mobile carrier. Not that Blue Rock has a lot of options in that regard but there are a couple so this is convenient. I hit the button, and the printer starts warming up and a moment later, it starts spitting out the pages.
“Okay, I printed their calls for the last thirty days,” I tell him. “We’ll go back further if we need to, but since these hijackings have all come within the last month, I have a feeling we’ll see something unusual.”
Milo grabs the papers from the printer tray then the doorbell rings. He sets them down on the table and goes to answer the door, so I pick up the pages and get a couple of black pens and highlighters from the drawer in the credenza below the printer. I sit down again and start looking at the first sheet of paper which are the phone records for Michael “Duck” Green.
I compare it against the roster and immediately start crossing off numbers that belong to the other MC members. After that, I do a quick Google search on the remaining numbers and nothing pops. Milo comes back into the dining room, sets the bag down, and lays everything out for us. After that, I hear him rattling around in the kitchen and he comes back with napkins, chopsticks, and a fresh round of beers.
“Duck doesn’t seem to talk to anybody who’s not in the MC,” I note.
“Yeah, he’s not a real social guy. Has a pretty surly disposition overall,” Milo responds.
“Well, I can pretty safely say he’s not your mole,” she replies. “No suspicious numbers at all.”
“Unless he has a burner phone.”
I give Milo a smile. “See? Now you’re thinking like an investigator.”
I tip him a wink and then we tuck into our meals. We keep working as we eat, the banter and laughter flying between us. The bond and connection we shared seem to be growing and reforming. Despite my best efforts to keep them at bay, the emotions Milo stirs up inside of me are only growing thicker, and I feel like I’m working twice as hard to keep them in check.
By the time we’re finished eating, we’ve pretty much eliminated Duck, Boomer, and Whistler. Their calls all seem to be mundane and barring them having a burner we can’t account for, nothing stands out. But Grease is the one I’m keying in on. The vast majority of his calls are mundane and nothing stands out with them. But what caught my attention is that he’s gotten calls a day before—and also on the day each of the hijackings took place—from a number I can’t account for. The calls are to a burner phone that I can’t trace from here.
“It’s suspicious but it’s totally not definitive, so don’t go running off all half-cocked or something,” I tell him.
“C’mon now. I don’t do that anymore,” he replies. “Give a guy a little credit for some personal growth.”
I drain the last of my bottle and set it down, my eyes fixed to his. “You are very different, Milo. And it’s refreshing. It’s a good thing. I’m happy to see the changes in you.”
There’s a pause in the conversation, and I can feel the familiar tension growing between us and my body starts to respond. I already know what happens when we go down this road, so I get to my feet, determined to take a different path.
“I should probably take a shower and get to bed,” I tell him.
He nods. “Thank you for your help tonight.”
“Well, your mole hunt may not be over yet,” she said. “Remember to keep an open mind.”
He gives me a salute. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Goodnight, Milo.”
“Goodnight.”
Chapter Fifteen
Nitro
I walk into the bathroom and strip out of my clothing, feeling a nervous flutter in my gut. I don’t know how she’ll react to me walking into her shower uninvited, but I want her. And I’m pretty sure she wants me too. Things between us have been going well, and I feel like we’ve grown even closer than we were before. And to be honest, although we always had a pretty great sex life, ever since she came back into my world, my desire for her has been off the charts
.
The door opens silently, and a cloud of steam rolls out as I step in. Hadley nearly jumps out of her skin when I slide my hands around her waist from behind. But she turns around and slides her hands up to my shoulders. She looks me in the eye, and I can see her mind working. I can tell she’s trying to find the words, trying to find the reason we shouldn’t be doing this.
“But you already took a shower,” she says, her tone flirtatious.
I shrug. “I worked up a sweat at dinner. Thought I might need another one.”
She bites her bottom lip as she trails the tips of her fingers down my chest. I can see her weighing out the pros and cons of having sex with me right now. She’s caught up in a debate between her mind and her body and at the moment, I can’t tell which side is winning the fight.
“This is a really bad idea,” she says.
“Tell me to go. If you tell me you don’t want this and you want me to go, I will,” I reply. “You just need to say the words.”
We cling together as the water falls over us, and I can see her still debating as I slide my hand behind her neck and pull her down into a kiss. I slide my tongue into her mouth, twirling it around Hadley’s, and I feel her melt into me. As our kiss grows more intense, I slip my hands around her waist, pulling her closer to me. My rigid length pressed against her belly makes her gasp.
Hadley reaches down and takes hold of my thick staff, gripping it tightly and she strokes me. I lean my forehead against hers, reveling the feeling of her hand wrapped around my cock, pumping her fist up and down the shaft. I step forward and press her against the wall, our mouths crashing together. Our kiss is as hot and wet as the water raining down on us, and I feel myself trembling as she continues jerking me off.
As good as her hand on my cock feels, I’m overcome by the need to taste her so I fall to my knees before her. I put her leg up on my shoulder and lean forward, burying my face between her thighs. A small cry escapes her mouth when I plunge my tongue into her without preamble. Hadley’s body is taut, and she presses her head against the wall behind her, crying out as I lap at her with zeal. I give her clit a nip and she squeals then reaches down, grabbing my hair in her fists, and pulls my face even closer. She grinds herself against my mouth, urging me on, her breath coming quick and shallow, a high-pitched keening passing her lips.
