by Evie Monroe
“I promise you. It was just a mistake. This isn’t some crazy plot to undermine your club and kill you. I promise. I was stressed out and just wanted a night of fun, away from the Fury. That’s it. And you . . . you were cute, and nice to me and . . . I’m sorry. I really didn’t know you guys were Cobras.”
I was babbling by now. I was tired and feeling gross. I just wanted to go home and wrap my arms around my mother and make sure that she was okay. Martie’d thought she’d made a mistake? This was turning out to be the most colossal mistake of the night, hands down. I’d take Mullet Man any day, over this.
He pressed his lips together. His eyes scanned down me, to my bare legs. He pointed. “Did I do that to you last night?” His voice almost gentle.
I looked down, at some bruises on my calves. I knew exactly when I’d gotten those, a few days ago. “No.”
He crouched to get a better look. “Where did you get them?”
I sucked in a breath. “I really do need to get home, Drake. Please.”
He stared at me for a long time. There was remorse in his eyes when he said, “I can’t let you go yet. There’s someone I need to talk to first.”
Chapter Eleven
Drake
“You know it’s six thirty on a fucking Sunday morning, don’t you, asshole?” Cullen rasped out when he answered the phone.
Cait was sitting on the very edge of the couch, looking like she was going to bolt again. She was biting on a thumbnail, tapping the toe of her boot against the coffee table and fidgeting from side to side. “Yeah. Did I wake you?”
“You’re lucky you didn’t, man. I’m on kid duty. Ella wakes up with the sun. I’ve been watching Paw Patrol for an hour and I’m about to go nuts. What’s up?”
“I got a problem,” I said, walking into the kitchen and starting a pot of coffee. “A big one.”
“Shit. What now?”
“Fury.” I sighed. “Jet and I went to The Wall last night. We didn’t wear any colors and kept that we were Cobras on the down low because we didn’t want any trouble.”
“So, what’s the problem with the Fury?”
I pulled down a box of cereal from the pantry and shook it at Cait. She wrinkled her nose, the crease over her eyes growing. I made myself a bowl. “Well, apparently they don’t seem to have any problems sending their girls over there.”
A pause. “Are you shitting me?”
“Nope.”
I got two mugs down and poured us each a cup of coffee. I shoved one over to her and banged on the counter to get her attention. She looked up, dazed, and shook her head.
“How’d you find out?”
“She has a tattoo.”
“What’s her name? What does she look like? Did she . . . fuck, man. What the fuck were you thinking?”
I lowered my voice. “Cullen. I don’t think she’s a spy or anything. I think she just didn’t know better. She hasn’t been fishing for information or . . .”
“Yeah, but you took her to your place, right? You fucked her, right? You don’t know what she’s after.”
Shit. He sounded like Jet. I was tired as hell. The fight with Jet hadn’t done me any favors; I hadn’t gotten any sleep. And maybe I was thinking with my dick and needed a reality check. I polished off my coffee and poured myself another cup. “Right. Which is why I wanted to call you first thing. Better to be safe.”
“Okay. Good. Where is she now?”
“Sitting here looking at me. I didn’t want to let her go until after I talked to you.”
He let out a big breath. “Eight o’clock at the clubhouse. Bring the girl.”
I hung up and looked at Cait. “I need to take you to the clubhouse.”
Her eyes widened. “The Cobras clubhouse?” She jumped up. “No fucking way.”
I glared at her. Hell, even in the morning with her hair all loose and out of control, she was still gorgeous. Why the fuck did she have to mess around with those assholes? If it hadn’t been for that, I’d have just been waking up from the most fan-fucking-tastic one night stand I’d ever had.
“You don’t have a choice in the matter. Our president wants you there.”
She let out a shaky breath. “He’s not going to let me leave, is he?”
I laughed bitterly. “If the tables were turned, you’d be in a lot more trouble than you are now. But we’re not assholes. I’ll get you home, but first you need to answer to Cullen.”
“Cullen?” She flopped back onto the sofa and started to chew on her thumbnail. “You don’t understand. This isn’t good. I have to be somewhere. I need to get my car at that bar, pick up my friend, and . . .”
“You have a phone, don’t you? Call her and tell her something came up.”
She buried her head in her hands and moaned miserably. “You don’t understand.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Okay. Tell me. Make me understand.”
I wanted to understand. I wanted to know for sure that I hadn’t just worsened an already fucked-up situation between the Fury and the Cobras. But she didn’t look up, didn’t answer me.
Fucking hell. “What? If your man finds out we know who you are, will he hurt you? Is that what those bruises are?”
She looked away.
“Dammit, Cait! Answer me,” I said, grabbing her shoulder and wrenching her toward me. “Do you have a Fury asshole for a boyfriend who’s been hitting you? Is that why you did this? Did he make you go to The Wall to spy on us?”
She crossed her arms. “For the last time. No. I didn’t know you were Cobras.”
Fuck. Any more of this and I was going to be as bad as Jet. We were just running over the same tracks, again and again. I needed to cool it.
That lasted about as long as it took for me to go to my room and put on a t-shirt and boots. I came back to find her texting away to someone, and I lost it.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I swiped the phone from her hand. She was writing a text out to someone named Martie. “Who is this?”
She scowled. “My friend. From last night. Remember?”
I scanned the message. “Is she Fury, too?”
She shook her head slowly. I handed the phone back to her, and she snatched it away, seething at me. “Stop being so fucking paranoid about your precious club secrets. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Right. She could think that. And even if she was innocently out for fun last night, even if she’d associated with the Fury for just one day, it was one day too much. We couldn’t let her slide for that. Jet may have been an asshole with her, but he was right. This meant everything to us a club.
And I was the asshole who’d introduced this poison. I felt like a fucking traitor.
“Come on,” I muttered to her, going for the door.
I handed her my spare helmet and she strapped it on. We got on my bike. This time, she kept her distance as much as she could. She didn’t press her chest against my back or wrap her body tight around mine. I wished I didn’t miss it, but I did. I wanted to feel her against me. I thought of last night and my cock pulsed, wanting more of that. Then I cursed myself again, as we pulled up to the warehouse.
I wasn’t late, but when we walked inside, almost everyone had assembled in the general meeting room. Even Zain, which was a miracle considering it was eight in the morning on a Sunday. The room fell into silence as the second the door slammed behind us, and the officers filed out of our private office. The brothers all looked at me, and then at Cait. Jet scowled at her like he wanted to rip her head off.
Cait looked at me unsurely. I pulled out a chair around the table that most of the guys were sitting at, but she shook her head. She crossed her arms. “I’ll stand, thanks.”
Cullen took a drag of his cigarette as he looked at me. “Jet filled us in a little but tell us what happened.”
“There’s not much to tell,” I explained. “Jet and I were at The Wall. I met Cait. I took her home. I saw the Hell’s Fury tattoo. I called Cullen.”
Nix said, “Did anyone bo
ther to ask her what she was doing there?”
“Of course we d—”
Cait interrupted. “I was with a friend. I just wanted to have some fun. That’s all. I didn’t know he was a Cobra. If I’d known, I would’ve stayed away,” she said, her voice raised and confident. They all swung their heads to look at her.
“We weren’t wearing our kuttes,” I explained.
“So you’re Fury?” Jet asked, his tone hard. “Whose girl are you?”
She didn’t answer. Whoever the asshole was, he’d done a number on her. She was afraid of him. And she’d probably be a hell of a lot more afraid if he ever found out what she and I did the night before.
Cullen pushed off the side of the table and came up close to her. He had this way of staring that made most people crack, but Cait met his gaze, unblinking. “You gonna tell everyone whose girl you are, or should I?”
We all swung our heads to him. “You know?” Jet asked.
Cullen nodded. “I figured it out.”
She shrugged. “You might as well.”
He moved aside. “She’s Caitlyn. Slade’s girl.”
The place exploded. Everyone burst into movement and roars, but I stared at her, frozen, silent. Slade was a mysterious dude but from what I’d heard, he was older. What was a young girl like Cait doing with him? Did she get off on the power?
Fuck. Slade. The president of the Fury. I’d just been fucking his girlfriend.
That made me public enemy number one.
And I had a really hard time believing that Slade’s girl didn’t know The Wall was our hangout. Was she really fucking with me?
Jet nudged my shoulder and shouted, “I knew it. She’s playing all innocent and meanwhile she’s fucking the president of the Fury himself!”
Cait just rolled her eyes at him like he was a total ass.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Cullen said, settling us all down. “Calm down. Let me back up. She’s not Slade’s girlfriend. She’s Slade’s daughter.”
His daughter? I nearly choked. She’d said something like that, last night. That she had a controlling father that she lived with. And her controlling father was, of all people . . . Slade. Slade had a daughter. And last night, I fucked her.
Holy fuck.
That didn’t just make me their number one enemy. If word got back to Slade that I’d touched his flesh and blood, I was as good as dead.
Cullen looked at Jet and then me. “Jet. Drake. That was so fucking stupid of you guys. It’d be nice if for once you’d start thinking with your heads, instead of your cocks. You know what’s going to happen when Slade learns about this?”
I looked away. “He doesn’t know.”
“He won’t know,” Cait added. I looked at Cait. She’d been in such a rush to get home. She had bruises on her legs. Something told me this was just as big a secret for her to keep as it was for the Cobras. But could she manage that, living under the same roof as Slade? “I promise. I need to go. I promise if you let me go, I won’t tell him anything.”
Great. A promise from the Fury. To the Cobras. That was as useful as a three-dollar bill.
“So what the fuck do we do now?” Nix asked, ignoring her.
Cullen stubbed out his cigarette and nodded. He motioned to me. “Take her home. Straight home.”
So that was it? Jet opened his mouth to argue but Cullen silenced him with a look.
He nodded at Cait as he went back to the table. “Sorry about what happened to you. If my boys roughed you up at all. We don’t condone that shit. Let’s get you home.”
Head down, I went to the door, fishing my keys from my jeans, but she stopped. “Thank you,” she said to Cullen. “I’m sorry, too. I promise, I won’t say anything.”
Jet scoffed, but the rest of the Cobras just looked at each other, faces etched with doubt. Cullen looked away and waved at her, accepting the promise, but I could tell even he wasn’t sure it was worth anything.
Of course she’d tell, wouldn’t she? She was branded Fury. She—and her loyalty— belonged to them.
Chapter Twelve
Caitlyn
“Just drop me off at The Wall,” I said, stiffly and formally to Drake as I climbed on the back of his bike. “I have to pick up my car.”
“Hell no. Cullen said your house. Where do you live?”
Oh, that would be just lovely. Daddy seeing me riding up on the back of a Cobra’s bike. That’d be one way for me to never survive my twenties. And I was done with Drake and all the Cobras for the rest of my life. Yes, Drake had been dreamy in bed, but this, whatever we had, was going just about nowhere. There was no way it could go anywhere, after what had just happened. “What are you, suicidal?”
He looked over his shoulder at me. “I want to know where you live with that prick.”
“What? So you can kill him in the night and get another win for your precious club?” I challenged.
He shrugged. “You said it.” He started to slip on his helmet and stopped. “I mean, Jesus. He’s your father? You couldn’t have told me that before?”
“Oh. Yeah. I always talk about my father to the men I fuck. It’s a real turn-on.”
He frowned at me. “Where do you live?”
“The Wall,” I countered.
He planted both feet on the sides of his bike and crossed his arms. “You want this bike to move, or not?”
Stubborn son-of-a-bitch. I sighed. “Fine. Twenty-two West Haven.”
He nodded, tightened his gloves on his wrists, and gripped the handlebars. “All right. Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“Drake,” I started. I knew that with the roar of the bike’s engine, we wouldn’t be able to carry on a conversation. And when he dropped me off, it would be the end of the line. I wanted to tell him something. Sorry. I regret the way this has to end. Thank you for the best sex of my life. I wish things could’ve been different.
But he just turned his back to me and gunned the engine. I wrapped my arms around him and he pulled out of the warehouse parking lot.
I wished I wasn’t so attracted to him. That he hadn’t just made my body sing in the best of ways last night. The Cobras had tried to intimidate me, but the sea of testosterone of a whole bunch of big, brawny men holding church had always just bored me. With Drake there, my body was on high alert, and I felt something I’d never felt before during one of those meetings.
Turned on.
Who could blame me? He was hot, perfect, smart and a sex God. And I had him. Again, and again last night. We fucked like rabbits in heat. As scared as I was about going home, a part of me was still giddy from the way he’d made me feel.
As I wrapped my arms tighter around his broad chest, I couldn’t deny the fact that I wanted to do it all over again.
If only. But it was impossible. He was a Cobra. I was a Fury. He needed to drop me off, preferably far away from where my father might see, say goodbye, have a nice life, the end.
He didn’t need directions to my place. He pulled down the street I grew up on, which was full of fifties’ style ranch-houses with lawns of scrub brush.
I crossed my fingers and held my breath as we drew closer.
My house, a mint-green piece of shit that was nearly overgrown with vegetation, looked quiet. I peeked under the carport, near the magnolia tree and in front of my mother’s old Pontiac Firebird, where my daddy usually kept his bike. It wasn’t there.
I let out a sigh of relief. Thank God. If he had been home, things could’ve been real bad.
Drake slowed across the street. “Looks like he’s not there,” I said.
“Let me turn around,” he said.
He drove off into the cul-de-sac and turned around. As he did, I caught a glimpse of my father’s bike, riding toward us.
My heart leapt into my throat.
I pounded on Drake’s back to get him to pull over. I thanked the lucky stars above that our street was always choked with cars. Drake pulled behind a truck and cut his engine as my daddy sailed up into t
he driveway, put his boots on the ground, and turned off the engine. He slipped off his Harley, looking around as he unstrapped and slipped off his helmet. I could almost see the question in a thought-bubble over his head: “Where’d that little slut go off to now?”
I shivered as I heard the screen door creak open and slam shut.
“Fuck,” I murmured, wondering whether my mom would be caught in the crossfire.
Stupid question. She was always caught in the crossfire.
Drake’s jaw tightened. He said, “I should make myself scarce before he sees me.”
I fought back the urge to say what was on the tip of my tongue. What I desperately wished I could say, but knew I wouldn’t, because I couldn’t leave my mother. Take me with you. “Okay.”
I slipped off the back of the bike and walked to the sidewalk, not looking at Drake. Looking back would be too hard. Like looking at a normal life and all the things I couldn’t have.
As I walked toward the house, Drake followed behind me on the street. I expected him to take off, but maybe he didn’t want to let Slade hear him start the engine. So he walked his bike at a safe distance behind me. Since I’d have to forget him, I willed myself not to think of it as sweet, but it felt that way. Like Drake was looking out for me. Like maybe I was more than a one-night-stand.
Suddenly I heard something crash through the open windows of my house. My body jolted upright and I stood stick straight, shuddering.
It was starting again…
I jumped and heard the most frightening sound on earth . . . my father’s voice, raised in anger. “You fucking bitch!” he thundered, and I shook with every syllable. “You just let her go?”
I ran a few steps, cutting across the lawn, stopping in my tracks and my father was standing there, framed by the living room window, holding his fist in the air. He brought it down, and the slap of skin against skin sounded out. My mother let out a heart-wrenching, strangled cry.
My father leaned over my mother and barked out, “I’m going to kill that bitch when I get my hands on her!”
I let out a whimper and covered my face in my hands.
Before I knew it, there were hands around my waist, and I was being pulled away. I stumbled back a few steps before I realized Drake was behind me, tugging me toward his motorcycle.
