by Leah Wilde
Violet put her gentle arms around my neck, and I could feel her relaxing as she hugged me. Her body told me everything I needed to know about the last several hours and how it had affected her.
“You don’t have be strong now,” I assured her. “I’m here for that. You just let yourself go for a while, okay? I’m here. I’m okay. Mason and the rest of the MC will take care of us.”
We kissed. Our lips met tenderly.
I had heard a lot of people say that the first kiss between a couple was really the best kiss, probably the best kiss those two people would ever share. I had to disagree after that tender kiss we shared on Brodie’s couch. That was the best kiss between us. That kiss was easily the best kiss I had ever had.
I winced as I put my hand behind her head and kissed her again. This time our mouths parted and our tongues met like long lost lovers who had been convinced they would never see each other again. That was how we kissed, and it lasted until we were breathing in each other’s breath.
That kiss became our language. We spoke it fluently as of that moment, and we used that language to tell each other so many things we wouldn’t have said otherwise. She told me she wasn’t just there because she didn’t have anywhere else to go. No, she was there because the fear of losing me was more than she could bear, and she had to make sure I was okay. She told me she wasn’t going to leave my side from that moment on, no matter what happened.
And I told her that I loved her with that kiss. I told her that she was the reason I didn’t kill her brother, and she was the reason I had even gone after him in the first place. My rivalry with him ended the moment he took her from me, because he took a backseat to her. He faded from my radar, and I gladly gave up the opportunity to end his life so that we could have our own.
When we parted, I could feel all of the eyes in the room on us. It had to been one hell of a kiss to get everyone’s attention.
We didn’t say anything. I just pulled her close to me as we sat and watched the news. I couldn’t have imagined a way to feel safer or more removed from the situation that had unfolded at that warehouse.
According to the news, it was suspected that one of the organizations with drug ties to Titus Darren’s operation was responsible for the attack on his men. The FBI—yes, the FBI!—had been brought in on the case because of the nature and scope of Titus’s operation. Apparently, he had been operating across state lines with possible national ties, not just regional. Titus Darren had been a big deal.
Now he was just a has-been.
They reported that the FBI was investigating all of Titus’s ties to other organizations, so by bringing him down, we were possibly bringing down a lot of other groups, and more than likely, nothing would ever get back to us.
They showed video of the rooms where they found Titus’s stashes. They found heroin, cocaine, meth, and marijuana.
“Who the hell sells Mary Jane in this business anymore?” I asked Mason, cracking up. “With meth and heroin so big right now, I thought only small timers sold pot.”
“Well, they have to get it from somewhere,” Brodie said sourly.
“You know what, man? If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were on Titus’s payroll. That must suck right about now,” I joked, sort of. I wasn’t kidding completely. There was some truth to the accusation. And I was fairly certain I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.
“Whatever, man,” he said before disappearing again.
“Mason, get someone to keep an eye on him. We’re going to have to have a meeting soon, once we get a new clubhouse, and he’s out. Got it?”
“Don’t make any decisions right now,” Violet urged. “He’s been pretty worried.”
I looked at her and gave a little laugh.
“I know he has. I’m sure everyone has, but I did a lot of thinking while I was out.”
“You’re kidding, right?” she said flatly.
“No, I’m not. I thought a lot about the MC, about Titus, and about you. I thought a lot about my future, our future, and the future of The Hellions. We’re going to have to do some restructuring once we get situated here. I’ve got a lot of work I want to get done, and there is a particular direction I have in mind for the club. I’m going to need your help with that.” I coughed, and it hurt like hell.
“Okay, just take it easy for now,” Violet said. “Let us take care of you so you can take care of business later.”
“Yeah, I guess.” I leaned my head back and closed my eyes.
I had always been attracted to fast women, like those dark-haired beauties from Andy’s down the street from the old HQ. It was easy to get those women into bed, and they were usually pretty willing to do anything I wanted them to do. And, man, I had some good times with women like that.
The ones I usually ended up taking home were the ones with tattoos and a kind of hardness in their eyes. They had seen some tough times in their lives, and they were all looking for a little fun to help them forget it when they ran into guys like me. They usually had dark hair, or red hair, or dyed hair, but even the blondes had a darkness to them.
They moved pretty quickly, too. They were quick to get in bed with me, but they were also quick to leave when it was time, and I didn’t mind that one bit. Every once in a while, there would be one who wanted to hang about a little bit, but it usually wasn’t that hard to get rid of one of them.
I usually didn’t go for the good girls, the college graduates, the virgins, or anything like that. Those girls were usually the ones looking for something serious, something real. They had a much longer outlook on life. They weren’t looking for the end of the night. They were looking for a goal line somewhere in the distance.
Violet had been one of those girls, which was what made her a target at first. Those girls usually put their hearts into whatever they were doing, and I had been counting on that with her. I had been counting on using the fact that she put her heart into it too easily to hurt her even more.
Then, things changed. By putting her heart into it so heavily, so readily, she had been able to break down my walls and break through the hardened exterior almost right from the start. I couldn’t help but laugh at how easy she made it look. Instead of being laughably silly and trivial, her emotions pulled the same emotions out of me. She was endearing. She was loveable.
I chuckled as I thought about how quickly she had won me over. Hell, even on the first night, at the store, when I was trying to win her over, she made my desire for her grow just by making me work for it.
It was the first time I had ever pursued someone I couldn’t just have. It was the first time I had to work for a woman beyond buying her a few drinks and telling her a few jokes. Violet had tried to resist me, and that made her all the more desirable.
Then, I was the one having to resist her. Part of me did it so that she would want me more, but part of me did it because I didn’t want to rush into things with her. I had been starting to like her—to really like her and even fall from her—pretty early in all of this. I chuckled again. I was supposed to be winning her over, and she had done it to me.
“What’s so funny?” she asked, tugging on my arm.
“Just laughing at us,” I said. “At the hardened criminal, the one percenter, and at the innocent little virgin he fell in love with.” I looked at her as I said the last part, knowing that I was revealing more than I normally would have wanted to, but I didn’t care anymore. I wanted her to know.
“Do you mean it?” she asked, running a hand along my cheek.
“I do.” I looked deep into her blue eyes, and I didn’t have to wait for her to say it back. I knew she felt the same way.
She leaned in and kissed me again. Someone said something about getting a room, but we had one, the living room. They could have left if they really didn’t want to see it, but her lips took my pain away.
My side no longer hurt as long as her lips were pressed against mine. I closed my eyes against the kiss and let myself go.
Sh
e pulled away from me slowly, just far enough that she could finally say what I knew had been on her mind for a long time.
“I love you,” she said to me.
“I love you, too, Violet.” It felt good to say it outright instead of hinting around at it. It felt right.
When I left prison, I had seen her as my revenge. I had been wrong. She wasn’t my revenge. She was my prize.
Epilogue
Violet
The soft, white hotel sheets were tangled around me. Rogue had been keeping the room so cold I didn’t know if I could handle it anymore. The suite had two king-size beds, and I had all the covers from both on my side of the bed. No lie.
He walked out of the bathroom after showering, still toweling off his wavy hair. All of the muscles in his body seemed to be flexing at that moment. It was a glorious sight to see, from his beautiful eyes and strong chin to the toned, defined muscles in his arms. My eyes followed the lines across his large, firm chest, down across his stomach to the prize between his legs, the manhood hanging there, begging me to take it and make it hard in my hands again.
“You’re not cold?” I asked him.
“No. I’m hot, baby,” he teased.
I could see the scar in his side where my brother had stabbed him. I had run my fingers and lips over it countless times since the wound had healed, but I still felt like I needed to apologize to his otherwise flawless body every time I saw it.
“Now, come on, get up. We’re going to be late,” he said as he turned away from me to shave in the mirror. His as was rock hard and beautiful. I wanted to take it in my hands and pull him into me.
I wanted him to forget going to court today, just for one day, but I knew today was important. Today, they would read the verdict in my brother’s federal case.
We had a hotel suite for the trial because the prosecution had requested moving the trial away from Titus’s turf—the lawyer’s word. They had been concerned that by having the trial in his hometown, they were asking for trouble from any sympathizers or criminal partners. There was also the question of any rivals who might have been looking for an opportunity to sneak into the trial to start problems for him.
That last part humored me every day as I walked into the courtroom to sit with Rogue, one of Titus’s biggest rivals and the uncredited reason they had been able to bust him in the first place.
I knew that getting him to skip the last day of the trial was virtually impossible, so I huffed and puffed and got out of bed to start getting ready.
“You know, today’s the day,” I said as I started the shower.
“I know, but just because it’s the last day of closing statements and all doesn’t mean they will be reading the verdict today. And even if they get that far, it doesn’t mean the judge will sentence him today. I’ve seen trials where the sentencing date was moved months back to give the judge some time to weigh everything before announcing the sentence. Then, again, I’ve been to trials where the judge had the sentence ready as soon as the verdict was read,” Rogue told me while he started getting dressed.
“Is it bad I don’t want today to be the last day?” I asked him. “I mean, I’ve enjoyed this room. It would be a shame to give it up so soon.”
“True, but you know, we don’t have to leave as soon as the trial is over,” he suggested.
“No, I guess not.”
We weren’t part of the trial. We weren’t witnesses. We just showed up and attended the trial basically as part of the audience and media circus that surrounded it. We knew we could have watched it on the news at Rogue’s new garage or at my print shop, but we decided to be there for the real thing when it went down.
Mason had no trouble running Hell on Wheels, the motorcycle garage they had opened when it was time to get a new headquarters. The MC was no longer just The Hellions MC. Rogue tapped into my business degree a little bit and got me to help him establish The Hellions, LLC. They were a legitimate business entity now, no longer just a criminal organization on the street.
They ran the garage and a security firm. They provided event security, basically bouncers for clubs, concerts, charities, and anything else where muscle was needed to provide protection.
As for me, Rogue fronted me the money for the space and equipment I needed to get started at my print shop. He had helped me hire a crew and everything. Reese, from The Hellions, was my manager. He made sure operations ran smoothly whenever I couldn’t be there.
I wasn’t a hundred percent sure that all of The Hellions had given up their lives as one percenters, but it wasn’t the focus of the MC anymore, and that was all I had asked. I wanted him out of the life. I wanted out of the life. And I wanted us as far away from the likes of my brother as we could get.
Then, of course, we found ourselves in a sweet hotel suite for the trial. We hadn’t missed a single day.
I came out of the shower to find Rogue standing in a suit and tie. He looked like a businessman. He had even ditched the vest every single day, but I could tell he was wearing it underneath his jacket.
“Why do you have on your vest?” I asked him as I dried off.
“I’m wearing it today because it’s the last day. It’s just symbolic, I think, of everything we went through to get here,” he explained.
“You’re not thinking about ditching the jacket and showing everyone who you really are today, are you?” I asked.
“No,” he assured me, shaking his head. “No, this is for me. This is for the guys. And it’s for everyone he lost because he was being stupid.”
I kissed him lightly on the cheek before grabbing my skirt suit from the closet.
“You’re a good man, Rogue. But you’d better not drop that jacket to show everyone you’re a Hellion in there today,” I warned him.
I could feel the warmth of his smile behind me. He didn’t have to say anything. I knew what he was thinking, and I also know there was nothing I could do about it if he decided to stand up and show his true colors.
In the courtroom, we sat near the front. Rogue was like an excited child going to see a movie that he’d been waiting on for months. This excited, jittery energy just radiated from him while we sat on the benches behind the defense box.
Titus’s defense, realizing there was little chance to beat the federal prosecutors, had focused on making the crimes seem less severe than they were. His operation had reached all across the board. They were going after him on conspiracy charges, money laundering, possession and distribution of large quantities of drugs, murder, and even human trafficking.
Human trafficking? Really?
The defense pretty much admitted in their closing statements that there wasn’t much that could be done to defend Titus Darren. He had been supporting his family since he was young, and he had been forced into this life. Blah, blah, blah. I wasn’t sure what had happened to my brother’s money, but the same man who had paid off the prosecution to ignore evidence that could have saved Rogue’s ass in court was now stuck being defended by someone who had thrown in the towel.
It only took the jury about forty-five minutes to come back with a verdict. Even then, it had probably just taken forty-five minutes to assign a verdict to each charge since there were so many.
They declared him guilty on every charge, and the judge had the sentence ready to go. He told the court that the murder charge alone carried a life sentence. If Titus wanted to serve time for every charge he’d been found guilty of, he would have been in jail for several lifetimes. He declared that his sentences would run concurrently, leaving him essentially no room for appeals, because he would have to overturn every one of those verdicts to get out of jail in his lifetime. It was ridiculous.
And to make it even more ridiculous, I looked beside me to see that Rogue was standing in his vest as they took Titus out of the courtroom. Titus saw him, too, and his eyes widened until it looked like they were going to pop out of his head. He was drug away with his jaw dragging on the floor. He was shocked.
I lean
ed in and hugged Rogue, and I heard Titus start shouting as they pulled him into the other room, outraged that we were still together.
We laughed about it all the way back to the hotel, where Rogue popped open a bottle of champagne to celebrate, but instead of drinking from glasses, we took turns pouring the Champagne into each other’s mouths.
We forced each other out of our court clothes until he pushed me down onto the bed in just my panties and bra. His naked body straddled me as he poured champagne between my breasts and licked it off of me, slowly dragging his tongue across my skin.