Prodigal Son (Lean Dogs Legacy Book 3)

by Lauren Gilley

  “No.” One of them should stay aware, she thought. “Thanks.” She twisted around to look over her shoulder and scan the pub. On its face, it was a regular night at Baskerville Hall. A mix of Lean Dogs and civilian customers, come in off the street to unwind scarves and shrug out of jackets and order frosted pints amid the low lights and warm air.

  But a low tension vibrated through the scene. A sense that something wasn’t quite right; the light smeared, the music a notch too loud, the laughter a little forced. It set Axelle’s teeth on edge. She saw a few patrons dart glances between the bar and a small knot of Dogs hunched over a table together, white-edged, nervous glances they tried to cover with lazy grins. Everyone could feel it: that buzz of urgency.

  She turned back, and the shot glass stood empty again; Raven poured another round.

  “Okay,” Axelle said, “I know you’re really upset. And you should be – I would be. But do you really think being drunk is going to help?” Deep down, she worried that someone would tell them they had to go somewhere, do something, and Raven would be drooling into the carpet.

  “Yes,” Raven said, and nodded toward Axelle’s shoulder.

  She turned. “What?” Caught sight of Albie ducking out the front door of the pub. Her eyes followed him for what she knew was a beat too long.

  When she turned back, Raven was pouring again. “My brother might fancy you, but it’s time to face facts, love: you’re done here.”

  “What?” Fancy had sent her thoughts spinning. No, that wasn’t true. Was it? And she certainly didn’t return the sentiment. No, not at all, she… “Wait. What do you mean I’m ‘done’?”

  Raven sighed. “I’m done, too, don’t worry. The boys let us have our fun for a time, but now that shit’s gotten out of hand.” She shrugged elaborately. “It’s back to the kitchen with us, and they’ll handle everything else. The bastards.”

  Axelle frowned.

  “Sucks, doesn’t it?”

  “Honestly? At this point I have no idea how I feel about any of this.”

  Raven snorted and poured another shot.

  ~*~

  Albie sometimes forgot that he lived above his shop, he spent so little time there. It smelled like it, too: like socks that needed washing and rugs that needed the dust beat out of them. He made a face at the mail stacked on the table inside the door, and moved past it. Time to wring his hands over his overdue bills later.

  Despite its stale scent of loneliness, Albie’s flat was still, as it had always been, shabby and homey. Every stick of furniture was of his own making, some of it newer, more expert pieces, but much of it older, from his fledgling days, none of the lines straight. A wingback chair with an overstuffed seat stamped with his ass print. A desk with one leg shimmed up so it wouldn’t wobble. A round ash wood table in his tiny kitchen, beautiful beneath a thin layer of dust.

  Aside from the mail, and a tangled nest of boots and trainers just inside the door, the rest of the flat was tidy. Clothes hung up in the closet and folded neatly in the dresser drawers. Mugs arrayed on hooks above the cooktop. In the golden glow of lamplight, everything looked clean, too, but he knew sunlight would reveal the thin film of dust that lay over everything, a shroud built of neglect.

  Some nights, when he didn’t have the energy to walk down the block to the bright, noisy pub for a beer, and a chat, and a crash in a room upstairs, when he dragged himself up the stairs, hands full of splinters, wood curls clinging to his sleeves, he looked around this place – his own, and no one else’s – and loneliness settled on his shoulders like a yoke. In those moments, alone, fatigue making him vulnerable in a way that shamed him, he wished that it wasn’t his and only his. That there was someone special standing at the stove, looking out the tiny window into the alley, hands around a steaming mug. He concocted elaborate fantasies, shockingly innocent: cooking dinner together, feeding each other bits of raw vegetable as they chopped and diced and put together a big pot of bubbling soup they’d eat out of mugs by the little stove in the lounge, a blanket shared between them, socked feet propped on the coffee table he’d made himself.

  Wild, anonymous sex had held only a little appeal when he was younger, and lately, it didn’t hold any at all. What he wanted was warmth, familiarity, and steadiness.

  Christ, he was maudlin.

  Or, he was when he had the time to be so. Right now, it was all about business.

  He went first to shower, and shave, and comb his fingers through his wet hair. Then he pulled on clean jeans, clean t-shirt and flannel, thick socks and his favorite riding boots. It felt immeasurably good to get out of the suit components, finally, and slide back into his regular clothes.

  He paused a moment, before he left his bedroom, gaze fastening on the single framed photo that adorned his wall – one that he’d had blown up so it filled out a 24 x 26 picture frame. A highly rare family shot: all nine of them. One of those occasions when Raven had Cassandra for the day, and Walsh and Fox had been in town. Arrayed on the pavement in front of Baskerville Hall, arms looped around one another – in some cases grudgingly. Shane’s shy smile, Raven’s coy chin tilt, always a model, and Phillip’s proud grin, holding onto Albie, and Walsh, the second-oldest looking bored, but secretly pleased; an expression Albie could read because King was his brother, and he knew him well.

  He looked at Cassie, her bright, cheeky grin, and panic welled up. He pushed it down, and sought his own face: not smiling, but not frowning; he and King wore neutral like a favorite jumper.

  Devin wasn’t in the photo, obviously, and yet he was the one at the root of their current predicament. Drawing them together, hurting them, making them crazy. That was what a parent did, wasn’t it? Control the fate of his children? Usually it happened much sooner; but he supposed it had been happening all along. They’d deluded themselves into thinking that they’d outgrown Devin’s influence; made their own ways in the world, and it didn’t matter what he did, or who he was. They had each other, and that was worth something.

  Too bad Devin hadn’t been shooting blanks every time he charmed his way into a woman’s bed. Too bad he’d sired any of them at all, if this was where it had all been heading.

  “Maudlin,” he said aloud, and flipped off the lights and stalked out of the room.

  He went downstairs to the shop, intending to head to the back, to his secret weapons stash and load up for what was to come. But he paused by the counter, gaze catching on a lone figure standing out on the pavement, warm glow of the streetlamp gilding a spill of long red-gold hair down a narrow back.

  Axelle.

  She turned to him when she heard the door unlock, arms folded tight across her middle, her denim jacket well-loved, but not sturdy enough to keep out the London chill. Fog had settled low in the streets, thick as clouds, and its effect made her look lost, and younger than she was.

  “Why are you standing out here alone?” he asked, harsher than he’d intended, and waved her in.

  She slipped past him, hair brushing soft against his face, smelling of the pub, and the metallic tang of the fog, and of something that was entirely her. “I was waiting for you.”

  His heart gave an entirely inappropriate bump behind his ribs. “Why?” He locked the door and fastened the chain, rather than look at the way she continued to hug herself, expression troubled.

  “I’m not anybody important,” she said, and it wasn’t bitter or ironic. Like she was stating a plain fact. “They don’t care if I’m standing out in the dark by myself.”

  It disturbed him. “That’s not true.”

  She lifted her brows in challenge.

  “Maybe Pseudonym doesn’t care – and that’s a good thing by the way; it means you’re safer – but people care if you’re in danger.”

  “People.”

  “I care, alright? And you’re on camera from today. Pseudonym probably cares too, which…” It hit him again, that all-at-once crush of danger, and loss, and impossibility. It was Dad, and Cass, and Fox, and the whole club,
and all of them, and it was exhausting.

  He scrubbed both hands through his hair and blew out a breath. “I’m just trying to keep everyone safe, okay?”

  She softened. “Yeah. Sorry. I came down here because Raven’s drinking herself to oblivion.”

  “That’s not your job to look after her. Sorry.” He shook his head. “Why didn’t you get Tommy? Or Miles? Or Phil, even?”

  “Oh. I thought…” She fidgeted with one of the buttons on her jacket.

  Oh. She’d come to him. He didn’t want to think too deeply about the reason why, but it stirred something warm in him anyway. How silly that he should feel warm now, given the circumstances. Any port in a storm, he supposed.

  “I’ll sort Raven when we get back. Make sure she gets to bed. Come on with me.” He headed toward the back.

  She hesitated a moment before following. “Where are we going?” Concerned lift to her voice.

  “To gear up.”

  Albie did something that he knew he shouldn’t; something he would have berated one of his brothers for doing. He followed through with it as if in a trance, vision blurred at the edges, heartbeat frenetic, but hell-bent all the same.

  He led Axelle into his workshop, and then pulled up the trapdoor, flipped on the light, and went down into his cache. She followed.

  He’d never let anyone besides family – blood and club – down there with him.

  “Wow,” Axelle breathed, and she sounded truly impressed. Her hands fell to her sides as she surveyed the backlit walls of mounted guns, dark and deadly behind sliding glass panels. The vast island with its stacks and stacks of drawers. Louder, almost frightened: “Shit, this is…this is like the gun counter at Cabela’s.” She turned to face him, eyes wide, face pale in the wash of blue light. “Only it’s in your basement.”

  God, he’d brought her down here. He could go to prison seven times over for this little nest. But it wasn’t fear that left his pulse throbbing. Not now. Not looking at the reflected blue sheen in her eyes, big, and pale, and somehow lovelier for her surroundings. He wasn’t right in the head he supposed – and not just now, because of the stress. Not ever. He was Devin Green’s son, after all, and there was a reason all seven boys had patched into the most vicious outlaw MC in the world.

  “It’s my basement,” he said, “but they’re the club’s guns. You can’t have them in the UK, you know, not like you Yanks do back in the States.”

  She nodded, and turned away, spun a slow circle, taking it all in. Her voice grew distant. “The club sells guns, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah.” She already knew about the drugs; he didn’t see much sense in lying to her. “But these are ours. The ones we use in times like these.”

  She turned back, expression hard to gauge. “Little sisters get kidnapped a lot?”

  “Shit goes south a lot.”

  “Maybe that’s because being a criminal tends be a south-bound way of life.”

  He felt a grin threaten. “There is that.” He went to the island and started pulling handguns, laying them out on the countertop.

  He half expected her to run; go back up the stairs, light out of the shop. Maybe even call a cab and ask to go straight to the airport, back to the life she’d left behind in Tennessee, because it couldn’t be as wild and frightening as this.

  But instead she stepped up beside him; close, unafraid. “Are you passing these out like party favors? Or are they all for you?”

  “Me,” he said, and began slotting them into the holsters he’d strapped to his body.

  “What’s your plan?”

  “Charlie’s on his way back now with two of the Emerald boys.” Ammo, as many magazines as he could reasonably carry in the inner pockets of his jacket, and more for the duffel he’d carry, along with a broken-down rifle and a sawed-off shotgun. “Phil called Walsh – not that he can do anything from all the way in America. But. I dunno. We’ll decide something here soon. It feels wrong to sit still.”

  “Yeah. I get that. You could always get drunk.” A quiet, forced sort of teasing.

  He snorted as he dug out a suppressor. He’d expected better of Raven…but he didn’t blame her. And that wasn’t even the truth – he tended to expect people to do things the way he did, and people kept reminding him, over and over, that his approach wasn’t necessarily normal.

  “Albie,” she said, soft, and he paused, hands splayed over the magazines that cluttered the countertop. “I’m sorry.”

  He turned to her, and found her face full of sympathy.

  “What are you sorry for?” It came out much more softly than he’d intended; they stood closer than he’d thought, shoulders almost touching. Close enough to see the faint tremble at the corner of her mouth.

  “Not for anything I’ve done,” she said. “Just to clarify. I haven’t done anything.” Quick, wry grin. Then a sobering. “Just. I’m sorry about your sister. About what’s happening to your family. I might not have any love for the Dogs in general, but…you guys are alright. And this is shitty. So.” She shrugged.

  “Thank you,” he said, and meant it.

  A tentative smile from her; tiny, but it touched her eyes, warmed them.

  He wanted…

  In that moment, trying to suppress his exhaustion, wired, and worried, and holding panic at bay by the skin of his teeth, he allowed himself to just…want. Allowed himself to put a face to that warm, fuzzy-edged fantasy of his flat, made bright and welcoming with the affection, the laughter, the presence of someone who cared about him. He shaped that ephemeral dream around here, for that moment; golden hair tied up in a loose bun, soft curve of the back of her neck as she bent over the counter, giggling, wine threatening to spill out of her glass; eyes crinkled up, smile wide, beaming, aimed straight at him. Softness of a sweater beneath his hands, inward dip of a waist, warmth of a body pressed to his. Sweet kiss, wine-flavored. Welcome home. I love you.

  I love you was the most illicit fantasy of all, a whisper in the back of his head; taunting, impossible.

  Right now, it was her he envisioned. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t known her long – he thought he knew her. Angry girl, tough girl, beautiful girl. Capable, and dangerous, and just the right height for him to hook his chin on her shoulder and kiss her neck, and…

  Shit.

  But he wanted.

  He gave himself that moment, to let everything melt away, and to fantasize, and to yearn, and to mourn the fact that he probably wouldn’t ever have the chance to know someone like her in an intimate way.

  Her lashes flickered, and she wet her lips – nervous – but she didn’t move away. If anything, she leaned in. A fraction…and then another. “What?” she asked, and her gaze dropped to his mouth, and stayed there.

  He felt cracked open. It was stress – stress and too many years shoving down what he really wanted. Looking after his family, his club, not looking after himself, not…

  “Albie,” she said again, and it wasn’t a question. A flush rose in her cheeks; she was testing out his name – tasting it.

  “I thought you hated all Lean Dogs,” he said. He felt breathless, but his voice sounded flat.

  “I…might be willing to say that I rushed to judgement.”

  “No, you didn’t. We’re awful.”

  “You’re illegal. That doesn’t mean awful.”

  “Ax–”

  She pressed a finger to his lips, fast and sudden. If he hadn’t just been thinking of her softly, he would have reacted, startled and violent.

  She said, “Let me just…try something…” And she leaned in that last bit and kissed him.

  It was quick, and then slow. Lingering. Just a press, lips to lips, nothing daring, or wet. But it struck a match to his nerves, and, suddenly, he was shaking.

  Soft mouth, sweeter than expected – a secret sweetness, one she hid behind her expert skill behind the wheel, and a huge grudge, and a sizable attitude. But none of that mattered now. It was just them, and this strange tension that had been
fizzling since that first moment he’d opened the back door of his shop and Charlie had come charging in, a band of unlikely misfits in tow.

  He let her lead. All she did was hold there, and he felt her shaking, too.

  Slowly, slowly, carefully, he reached up and put his hands on her waist. Right in the curve, right where it was socially acceptable. An easy touch; she could have broken away if she’d wanted.

  Instead, she sighed, and melted, and gripped his shoulders tight.

  And then they were kissing in earnest.

  He slid one hand to the small of her back, tucked her hips in flush with his, and with his other he finally touched her face. Cupped her soft cheek, and the lean angle of her jaw, and felt the tension bleed out of her as she opened her mouth to the gentle probing of his tongue, and gave, and gave.

  Time spun out slow; a pulled-taffy moment, sweet enough to make his teeth ache in a good way, for that long, hot handful of seconds before it snapped, and reality came crashing back.

  Axelle pulled away first, and he was proud that he didn’t chase her, that he had that much self-control, at least. His gaze tracked over her face, though.

  She was beautiful. Lips pink and damp from kissing, eyes heavy-lidded, pulse pounding in her throat.

  “Okay,” she said after a moment. “That happened.”

  “Sorry.”

  A small smile. “Don’t be.”

  ~*~

  When he was sufficiently armed – “Holy shit, how are you even going to carry all that?” Axelle wondered – they walked back to the pub to see what sort of state Raven was in.

  A bad one.

  She’d made an alarming dent in the Smirnoff and had slumped down into a human puddle on top of her table, head resting on her folded arms, hair in a kind of wild disarray she would have never allowed while sober. The tables around her had cleared out; the patrons at the nearest, a good two yards away, shot her concerned glances.

  “Shit,” Albie said. He put a hand on the table, near her elbow, and leaned down. “Raven? Raven, you awake?”

  Her eyes blinked open slowly, gaze unfocused. “Fuck…you,” she murmured.