by Megan Crane
“Push back and drop,” he told her, like they did shit like this all the time.
For all she knew, he did.
She wiggled farther back. Then a little bit farther, and he had her.
He didn’t wait for her to climb down any farther. She felt his strong arm around her hips. He plucked her off the roof, shifted her around mid-air, and then brought her down and into his arms, his face close to hers.
“You’re bleeding.” His voice was hoarse. Harsh.
But Merritt was in his arms. She felt safe. She reached up and touched the part of her face that felt a little too big now. Swollen and painful.
“I dove out the window,” she told him. “I think I landed on my face.”
His gaze turned to stone. He held her tighter against him. He pressed a kiss to her mouth, but it wasn’t about passion. It was a seeking thing. Hard and intent.
“Tell me you’re okay.” Urgent. Low. His mouth against hers.
“I’m okay.”
“I need you to mean that, baby.”
She wanted to mean it herself, but all she could seem to do was burrow into him, pressing the part of her face that wasn’t hurt into the crook of his neck and breathing that way. And she let herself shake there.
Or it was maybe more accurate to say she couldn’t keep herself from shaking there.
“Okay,” Greeley said after a moment, his mouth against the side of her head. “Okay. I got you now.”
“I have to get my bag,” she told him, her head filling with list after list of practical nonsense as if that could keep her from shaking apart. “And the screen from the roof before every mosquito in the bayou decides to move into my daddy’s—”
“All you need to do is relax,” Greeley told her in that bossy way of his that didn’t make her shake any less, but managed to make her care about it a lot less. “I told you, I’m handling this. You gonna let me do that?”
She remembered that moment upstairs when she’d known Antony was about to kill her. When all she’d wanted was this. Greeley. Alive and warm and right here. She hadn’t really believed this would happen. That she’d get to have this. She’d been so sure Antony would catch her and do every one of the things he’d promised. She’d been positive. If anything else mattered but how gloriously wrong she’d been, she didn’t care about it just then. There was only this. Only Greeley. And the tremors that kept snaking through her, one after the next, as all the places she’d scraped herself started to bite at her.
He started to move then, carrying her across the grass, and as he did Merritt became gradually aware that there were a lot more people there than just him. She opened her eyes and saw a mess of headlights. There were bikes parked haphazardly in the backyard and a couple of pickup trucks besides. And bikers everywhere. A sea of Devil’s Keepers cuts and all those hard, hot-eyed men wearing them. Every single brother or prospect they passed looked at her, then jerked his head up to meet Greeley’s gaze, fury and a dark outrage stamped all over him.
She let out a long, low breath.
“When did everybody get here? I didn’t hear anything.”
Greeley’s beard brushed against her temple and she felt herself soften, which was how she realized she’d been holding herself rigid and tight.
“You had some shit to concentrate on up there,” he said. “Like living through the five endless fucking minutes it took me to get to you after Pony found you.”
Five minutes, she thought then. Only five little minutes out there on the roof.
It had felt like a lifetime.
She felt Greeley’s chest rumble beneath her as he gave short, terse directions to the men he passed. He shifted her against him to open the door of the truck she’d driven here, what seemed like years ago, and then he settled her on the bench seat.
“Can you sit here a minute?” he asked, his hand on her unhurt cheek, his face close to hers again.
Merritt nodded. And then watched, fascinated, as Greeley straightened—and became that other man. The outlaw. She saw the shift as it happened. The way his face closed down and went hard and grim as he walked away from the truck and stopped at the bottom of the porch steps. He stood with a couple of men she vaguely knew. Ryan Frey, known to the club as Chaser, who had been around that summer five years ago. He looked like every bit of danger in the world had been steel-plated onto him like armor, he was that fierce. And T’Roscoe, always so charming and funny and the kind of hot that simmered from his shaggy brown hair to his too-blue eyes, who was now the club’s vice president, something Merritt had heard as gossip at the diner long before she saw the patch on his cut. Tough, hard, pissed-off bikers with too many muscles and epically dark expressions on their faces—and they were all here for her.
For Greeley, she amended in her head, but still. For her by proxy.
Deep inside of her, something twisted into a small, hard knot. Because she liked this too much, this feeling of safety. She thought she could get used to it.
But it would mean coming home and staying here. It would mean giving up that bright, shiny idea of herself, once and for all.
She shoved it aside and let herself drift instead. Not thinking about anything. Not her cuts and scrapes. Not what she’d thought would happen to her up in that room. Not what Pony must have done to Antony—or why he’d been there to take care of Antony in the first place. Certainly not what might happen next.
“It’s contained,” Chaser was saying, curt and low. “Waco’s up there.” He shifted, jerking his chin toward Merritt and the open window of the truck before he looked back to Greeley. “There are some factors you’re gonna want to process in private, brother.”
Merritt didn’t hear what Greeley said to that, but from the hard, dark smiles the other men sported seconds later, she imagined it was vicious. Violent.
She knew she should care about that, probably. She should do something about it—but she couldn’t seem to summon the will to move. Or speak. Or do anything but sit there and watch these infinitely dangerous men make decisions she knew—she knew—couldn’t be taken back.
Maybe she hadn’t made this mess. But she wasn’t doing anything to stop it, either.
“Hey.”
Merritt blinked at the man standing at the truck’s open window. She knew him. Killian Chenier had been a year or so ahead of her in school, so astonishingly good-looking at the age of sixteen that full-grown women had made fools of themselves over him when he’d walked by. Everyone knew that boys like that were supposed to soften as they grew older. Tip on over into ruddy, alcoholic cheeks and protruding beer bellies. But not Killian. He’d only gotten better. Harder. Leaner. Now he was a full brother, covered in tattoos, and called himself Uptown.
“Hi,” she said. She opted not to comment on all his deceptive male prettiness. She could see the rip-cord strength he wore so easily, despite that face. And the way he was smiling at her, as if he thought she might shatter while he watched.
“Greeley thought you might want to do something about that blood,” he said, his voice low and that smile, she could see, a gentle lie stretched over something far more predatory.
He didn’t wait for her to respond. He handed her a damp hand towel that she recognized as having come from the upstairs bathroom and the small, square first-aid kit that her father had kept stowed beneath the sink.
Uptown didn’t wait for her to thank him. He flashed that smile of his that should have unnerved her, but didn’t. Then he melted back into the knot of bikers at the foot of the stairs before she could make herself say a single word.
Merritt switched on the truck’s interior light and pulled the visor down, flipping open the mirror on the back.
And lost her breath again.
She’d scraped her face when she’d landed, just as she’d thought. Her chin and her left cheekbone had taken the worst of it, and she’d bled enough that there was a grisly trail down her face and her neck. Her hands were torn. Her knees ached and were likely bloody as well.
&n
bsp; And she was getting off easy. This was the best-case scenario. If she’d stayed in that room another minute, a few minor scrapes would have been the least of her problems.
I might let you breathe while I fuck the shit out of you.
She shuddered at Antony’s voice in her head. And she ignored that little knot that pulsed deep inside of her, made of alarm and conscience, warning her that she was catapulting way past the point of no return as she sat there and did absolutely nothing about the mess of bikers handling things outside the cab of this truck.
She thought of that look in all the brothers’ eyes. She knew what it was. Blood and vengeance. And she should do something to keep the club from handling Antony the way she knew the club handled its business.
“You should be the bigger person,” she told herself out loud.
But she still sounded like a robot and it hurt to talk.
Merritt lifted the damp towel to her cheek and hissed out a breath as she started to blot up her own blood instead.
—
“Are you fucking high?” Greeley growled at Digger.
Not the way to speak to his president, he was aware, especially given all the crap that had been going down lately. But he didn’t give a shit. Not tonight.
Digger was a big man. He wore his many years as an outlaw king on his weathered face and in his gray beard. He was barrel chested, with arms like tree trunks. He stood in front of his desk in his office at the clubhouse with those massive arms crossed and scowled at Greeley. Another thing that should have worried Greeley, yet didn’t.
Greeley cared about exactly one thing tonight and she was currently sitting out in the main room of the clubhouse with a busted up face. The order to keep his hands off the asshole responsible—which he could not believe had just come out of his president’s mouth—was not exactly working for him.
“I know you’re pissed.” Digger’s voice was low and unhappy, though it was hard to say if that was because he didn’t like the no-kill order he’d just given on behalf of the cartel or if he was more concerned with the disrespect his sergeant at arms had just laid on him, with witnesses present. “I’m fucking pissed. Everyone’s pissed. But this is the situation. It is what it is.”
The situation was bullshit. That was what it was. Such bullshit, in fact, that Chaser and Roscoe had been on Greeley the minute he set foot on club property, ready to handle him if he went nuts. Which he was more than ready to do, and he wasn’t about to allow them to handle him when he did.
“That piece of shit stalked my woman over a thousand miles,” Greeley threw at his president, shaking off the hand Roscoe put on his arm and throwing Chaser a look that should have taken the grim-faced enforcer down where he stood with his arms crossed, his back to the closed office door. “I found her out on the edge of a goddamned roof, twelve feet off the ground with blood all over her face. He beat off on her fucking childhood bed. Repeatedly. If I hadn’t had Pony on her, what do you think would have happened?”
Digger sighed. “Greeley.”
“I know what would have happened, because Pony heard him. You want me to bring him in here for a replay? This scumbag didn’t chase her here from New York because he wanted to have a goddamned tea party. He wanted to violate her. He terrorized her. Why the fuck do you think she came home in the first place?”
If he’d been less enraged, he might have been interested in the fact that neither Chaser nor Roscoe was stepping up to argue him down. Meaning not only were they pissed about the call Digger had made to save Antony’s life because the cartel wanted him alive, but they were taking their sweet ass time backing the president’s order and talking Greeley down. Which was new all around, and not in a way that was good for the club. But tonight, for once, he didn’t give a fuck about club politics.
“It didn’t happen,” Digger said, looking like he was trying to be patient and hold on to his temper, which did nothing but rub Greeley the wrong way. “If it had, this would be a different conversation.”
Greeley wanted to burn the damned town to the ground. He wanted to start with Digger. He focused on his president and tried to remind himself that no matter the squirrelly shit that had been going down lately, which he couldn’t prove anyway, what mattered were all the years that had gone before. And that even if Digger was shady, it didn’t mean this was part of that.
Digger claimed this was business, pure and simple. They couldn’t afford to declare war on the cartel, which was what killing Antony now that they knew the Devil’s Keepers had him would do.
Pretty much every part of Greeley wanted nothing more than to take the business and shove it up that douchebag Antony’s ass. He wanted to know how this asshole had found Merritt, of all people. The one lawyer in all of New York City who had a connection that would keep him alive no matter how crazy he got. Had he known that? Or was he just the luckiest bastard around?
“This is bullshit,” Greeley muttered, shoving his hair back from his face because it was better than using his hands in other, more violent ways. He had to step back from Digger before he lost it completely and went for the older man. Chaser was poker-faced against the door. Roscoe had his arms crossed over his chest and a cold look in those blue eyes of his that at the moment weren’t the least bit friendly.
The tension in the room was so thick it was in his throat, choking him.
“Brother—” Digger began, a conciliatory note in his voice, and that was too much.
It flipped a switch in Greeley that he’d been avoiding for months.
Everyone always told him he thought too much. This was him not thinking at all, just speaking.
“Are you my brother?” Greeley snarled, not getting in Digger’s face—but not backing down, either, not even when his president reared back like Greeley had clocked him in the face. Which, all things considered, he had. “Can I trust you these days, Digger? Tell me how the hell I would know that with all the shit going down you pretend isn’t happening.”
Digger’s ferocious scowl went way into the red zone, but Greeley was past caring. He’d bitten his tongue for months. He’d waited. He’d been fucking patient. And all that had done was get him into a situation where his woman had been terrorized and he couldn’t do a goddamned thing about it, like some stuffed shirt, pansy ass bitch.
Fuck that. Fuck this. He kept going, not backing down no matter what look was on his president’s face, promising a brutal payback. Greeley didn’t care.
“I don’t know if you’re backing the cartel tonight for the club or for you,” he threw at Digger, hard and fast, like a beat down. “I know you’re not making this call for me. If you had my back in this at all, that fucking loser would be in painful little pieces before he ended up a gator snack and you know it.”
Chapter 10
“What the fuck?” Digger’s face was lethal. His dark eyes were hard and some part of Greeley was surprised he didn’t pull out his piece and aim it in Greeley’s face, then and there. “What did you just say to me? Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“Everybody needs to chill the fuck down,” Roscoe said, but Greeley didn’t look away from Digger. He didn’t move a muscle and neither did his president.
“Where the hell have you been lately, Dig?” Greeley demanded, because he didn’t give a shit. Not anymore. Not tonight. “Speaking of club business. What have you been up to?”
“You better rethink this crap and your mouth, Greeley,” Digger bit out.
Greeley did not rethink. He kept going.
“If any other brother ripped through that speed trap and got in a cop’s face with no provocation, there’d be consequences, but apparently not for Whale—who also shot his mouth off to everyone in this room like he had some big conspiracy going on. That because he’s your kid or because he knows something the rest of us don’t? I notice he’s not here tonight, taking my back when shit goes down. As fucking usual. But it makes me wonder.” He cocked his head to one side and gave not one shit that Digger looked like he was ab
out to jump him and deliver a smackdown. “How am I supposed to take it that the one night you’re in town and available and ready to deal with club business is the same night the cartel wants to kick me in the balls? And you’re letting them?”
He heard Roscoe make a low, warning noise, but he ignored it. He kept his eyes trained on his president. The man who was more like a father to him than any of the loser boyfriends his mother had paraded through that trailer in Tennessee. The man he’d looked up to for years.
The man who could be betraying the club he’d helped build.
The man who was sure as hell not doing a goddamned thing to take Greeley’s back when he needed it tonight.
For a long time there was nothing but serious bad shit in the air of the office, pressing in on all sides, making Greeley tense and ready. Digger wasn’t the only one packing a piece. And there’d been blood all over Merritt’s face when he’d told her he had this. He couldn’t bear it.
“I’m not going to pistol-whip you for that crap like you deserve,” Digger gritted out after a while, every vein on his neck popping out and showing exactly how pissed off he was. “Because I know you’re not right in the head tonight. She’s not even your old lady and still, Doc’s girl has been fucking with you hardcore for years.”
“She’s mine,” Greeley snarled.
“I don’t care.” Digger’s voice was brutal. “If it was Crystal it would be the same dance, and she’s not just my old lady, she’s my wife. The mother of my kids.”
“I know who the fuck Crystal is. Jesus Christ.”
Digger pegged him with a furious look. “You can’t kill him, no matter what crap you throw in my face. You can rough him up, but not too badly. He still has to be able to do his job.”
Greeley practically bared his teeth. “Fine.”
“Yeah, but the state you’re in I can’t trust you to hold back, can I? You just ran your mouth in my face like you have a death wish.” Digger didn’t mention Whale. Maybe that meant something, maybe he was full of shit. That was the problem. No one could tell. “So guess what? You can’t touch him. That’s nonnegotiable, Greeley.”