by Paula Cox
“There’s a lot I have to say,” Nash told her, though he didn’t squeeze her hand back when her grip tightened. “A lot to say about a lot of different things.”
She nodded. “Okay. I’m ready.”
“Please…” He cleared his throat and pressed his lips together, jaw flaring as he clenched it briefly. “Please let me get everything out. Just let me… say it all.”
A soft whoosh of air slipped past her lips, drawn in as she was about to speak, but Eliza quickly thought better of it. Instead, she just nodded again and stayed silent. Respectful. Obedient. Quiet. Her sub training kicked into high gear, because as much as she wanted to chatter and draw out every ounce of information right that second, she stayed silent because she knew that it would make Nash happy, which, in the end, would make her happy, one way or another.
“Okay, so…” Nash took a deep breath, and before Eliza was ready, he started. The secrets poured out of him remarkably smoothly, like a fine wine trickling over the mouth of the bottle and filling a glass. Unlike beer, there’d be no fizz, no thick white head of foamy bubbles to tickle her nose. No, the way he spoke was more like the Nash she was accustomed to—perhaps because she gave him the confidence to really speak, to really say what he needed to say.
Though she almost wished she hadn’t.
First and foremost, he wasn’t actually a business student. He had a business degree, however, but he put that into a local motorcycle club called the Steel Phoenixes. The thought made her shudder, but she kept her mouth shut. Suddenly, there was an element of danger to him, one that hadn’t been there before, and Eliza couldn’t tell if it frightened or aroused her—she’d need more time to consider it, but as she watched him talk, trying her best to listen and absorb, Eliza found she wanted to be touching him.
Secondly, Nash was on campus the day they bumped into one another all those months ago with a purpose—and had been ever since. Someone was killing people in his club, violently, and he’d been tasked with finding the perp responsible for the deaths. Apparently he’d tracked it down to hired hitmen, but someone was footing the bill. Holding the reins, sort of speak.
And the person he suspected as the grand mastermind? Her father. Unable to help herself, Eliza sputtered and pulled back, shaking her head furiously as color tinged her cheeks.
“No.”
“Eliza—”
“My father would never do that,” she snapped as she pulled away from him. Suddenly the room felt very hot. Stifling, even. She wanted to take off her sweater, but she didn’t want to incite his wandering gaze. Instead, Eliza stood and moved toward the window, her mind moving a mile a minute.
“Eliza…” Nash held up his hands, as if to calm her. “I’m only going by what the evidence has led me to.”
“Evidence?” She gave a hollow laugh. “What evidence? You aren’t a detective.”
“You don’t need to be a detective to put two-and-two together,” he argued, though he wasn’t harsh about it. He kept his tone conversational, perhaps realizing how much this was to take in for her. “I’ve been following leads for months, and the best of them have brought be back to your dad. I’m sorry, Eliza.”
She crossed her arms and leaned back against the window, eyes suddenly brimming with bitter, heavy tears. “Sorry for what?”
“For a lot of things, obviously,” Nash insisted as he stood. “For lying to you… I didn’t need to make up some bullshit about being a business student, but I did anyway. I was an idiot with you for a lot of reasons, and I am genuinely sorry. You didn’t deserve that.”
“Before you say anything else, tell me one thing…” She swallowed hard, struggling to formulate the question that was bouncing around in her head, the words glowing like a garish neon sign. “Did you agree to a relationship with me so you could get a closer look at my father?”
Her breath caught in her throat as she waited for a response, knowing that she’d rather jump out that window than accept that he had used her. Nash gave her a hard look, then shook his head.
“Of course not.” His hands fell to his hips as he started to pace, slowly, controlled. “Being with the dean’s daughter… It wasn’t an advantage in my mind. It’d put me in the spotlight if anything. I don’t do relationships, Eliza. Don’t you understand that by now? I don’t keep women in my life because… Well, my life is fucked.” Nash looked to her, frowning. “I’ve wanted to break things off because it’d be better for you. If I was using you to get to him, I would have… I don’t know, I probably would have proposed or something. Your dad just came on my radar for the shit going down with the Phoenixes because that’s where the trail led. I figured I owed it to you to tell you before I told the guys about my findings.”
“Don’t!” she blurted, a cold fear gripping her insides like an iron vice. Nash stopped pacing with a sigh. “Please don’t tell anyone. I appreciate you sharing all this with me, being honest with me, but please don’t.”
“Eliza, I have to.”
“He’s not like that,” she reasoned. Her father couldn’t be that man. He was many things, but he wasn’t a killer. A political puppet master, yes, but not the kind that would pull the strings of hitmen. “He would never—”
“I saw the way he treated you that night,” Nash interjected softly, his expression hardening. “He manhandled you, pushed you around. Shit, Eliza, he—”
“He’s a lot of things, yes.” Eliza let him cross the room to her this time, watching as he pressed a hand against the wall beside the window and leaned against it. “He’s strong-willed and stubborn, and he doesn’t give affection that often. But I know him. He dabbles in power politics with academics, not… not…”
“Drug dealing bikers?”
Her eyes flitted to his as she swallowed hard, the truth hurting more than a little. “Y-yeah. That.”
They studied one another for a long moment, as if appraising the other in a new light, until Eliza finally tucked her hair behind her ears and pushed away from the window.
“Are you scared of me now?” he asked as she walked toward the couch. She considered the question carefully, refusing to let the first thing she had in mind be said.
“No,” Eliza remarked, each word chosen with care, “I’m not. I feel… I almost don’t know you anymore, I guess. I don’t trust you like I did when I came here an hour ago.”
That was what was broken—trust. She didn’t care that Nash was a biker. Why should she? Everyone had a path in life, and Nash’s was just a more dangerous one than the average man chose. He’d hinted at criminal activity, however, and that would take Eliza a little more time to come to terms with than him being part of a motorcycle club. That particular fact would need to be mulled over when she was back at her apartment, alone, where she could come to grips with her feelings.
Here, standing in front of him, it was hard to be too critical.
Because she really cared for him, lies and all.
“I’d never hurt you, Eliza,” Nash said as he settled on the window ledge. When their eyes met, his lips turned into a sly smirk, and he added, “Not unless you want me to, of course.”
“Nash,” she warned, her tone less playful than his. “Not now.”
He nodded, his smile fading. “I know, I’m sorry. I was just… Shit, Eliza, I wish I hadn’t pull the shit I did with you, but here we are. And with your dad—”
“He’s not who you think he is,” Eliza argued. She knew in her heart of hearts that it was true. “Please. He’s a good man. Stern, yes. Controlling… Yes, I know that better than anyone does. But he would never do anything like what you’ve accused him of doing. He wants a cushy life as the dean and a big house and a good retirement pension. He doesn’t even drink, let alone do any harder drugs. I know him, Nash.” She looked to him imploringly, hoping that she was getting through to him. “Please don’t turn him in. Try another theory, because I know all signs may be pointing to him, but there might be another story here. Please. He’s a good man… and he’s the onl
y father I have.”
Nash licked his lips and looked away, muscular arms folded across his chest. She studied them appreciatively for a moment, then turned her attention elsewhere.
“You know,” Nash started, shaking his head slightly, “he doesn’t deserve a daughter like you.”
Unable to help herself, Eliza let out a deep breath, the tension easing from her body, and smiled.
Chapter 27
“So what is it, exactly, that you’re telling us here, Nash?”
Honestly, he had no idea. But he had to come up with something. Sitting in front of the usual assholes who held all the strings for the Steel Phoenixes, he was basically there with his dick in his hand after months of investigating—and all because Eliza had pleaded with him not to turn her dad in. If he had it his way, Nash would have thrown Darryl to the wolves in a heartbeat. Not only was the guy sketchy as fuck, but Nash didn’t appreciate the way he manhandled his daughter. If he did that kind of shit in public, what exactly was going on in the Truman house in private?
Still, Eliza had presented her case for her dad’s innocence, and against his better judgement, Nash decided to believe her. Maybe his leads were wrong. Maybe he was following the wrong trail of breadcrumbs. Maybe he was falling for her and suddenly her opinion held more weight than all his physical evidence. Whatever the case may be, he’d come before his Phoenix brothers tonight to admit he had probably followed a false lead all this time, and that the dean wasn’t the man they were hunting after all.
“Was my explanation unclear in any way?” he asked, stretching his legs, then crossing one leg over his knee. It was like facing a tribunal of some kind, all the king shits of the MC sitting behind one long table, Nash on a chair in front of them. Unlike a tribunal, however, these assholes didn’t have stacks of paper in front of them—just alcohol and a mountain of ashy, finished cigarettes. As he watched good ol’ Micky take a long drag, he was itching to fish the pack out of his pocket and light up himself. But this wasn’t a social visit. He wasn’t here to drink and smoke like the rest of them—Nash was here to present his findings, or lack thereof, to the men who were finally putting their collective foot down.
“No, there was nothing wrong with the way you explained yourself,” Hammond, an old Brit with a penchant for dipping into his own coke supply, growled in that cigarette-tainted voice of his. “It’s what you had to say that’s left us… confused.”
“Look, I don’t know what you want me to say,” Nash said with a sigh, offering up a little half-shrug to add to his projected nonchalance. His insides were churning, however. “I’ve been following a lot of leads. A lot. The freelance guys are good on their word because they got reputations to uphold, but I just think that the dean is too easy a target. It’s been hard to get here, but now it’s like a cakewalk.”
“Maybe with good reason,” Micky remarked. Nash’s eyes darted to him quickly. The old man was always in Nash’s corner, no matter the trouble he was in, but he could tell by the tone of Mick’s voice that he wasn’t totally confident in Nash right now. “Maybe you just finally got ‘im, Nash. Bring him in and let us do the rest.”
“But I don’t want to spook the real perp by going after someone with as much power and reputation as Dean Darryl Truman,” Nash argued. That much was true, anyway. If Eliza was right and her dad would never do anything like this, the real asshole behind the deaths of his Phoenix brothers might run. “You just gotta give me more time.”
“Nobody has a problem with giving you time,” Toby Barnes insisted. Head of accounting, bald-headed Toby refused all vices but women. “It’s that you probably have the guy and you aren’t acting on it. That’s where we have a problem.”
While he didn’t think the bigshots at the Steel Phoenix Motorcycle Club would take his news lightly, he hadn’t expected some kind of inquisition about it. Shaking his head, Nash scratched at the stubble on his cheek. Eliza liked it. She said she liked the way it felt on her thighs when she was tied down and he was teasing the absolute fuck out of her with his tongue. He hadn’t said anything at the time, but he loved the way she twitched and quivered under the roughness of the hairs. Nash swallowed thickly, somewhat annoyed at how easily his thoughts drifted to Eliza—and over nothing, really.
“Look,” he said again, his brain working overtime at how to rationally explain his somewhat irrational thinking. Darryl could very well be the asshole behind all of this, the grand mastermind who wants more than just controlling a university, but Eliza had planted a seed of doubt in Nash’s mind that was starting to blossom. “I don’t know what to say. Darryl Truman seemed like my guy, and now I’m having doubts. I want to be sure. I want to make sure I don’t spook the real perp and have a bunch of our guys end up dead as a consequence.”
“And why would that happen?”
“Use your fucking head, Toby,” Nash snapped. “It’d be a message. That’s what all the killings have been about… Sending the Steel Phoenixes a message, that we’re not at the top of the totem pole anymore, you know?”
To describe the silence that fell over the group of men as uncomfortable would have been an understatement. Shaking his head, Nash busied himself with a nonexistent bit of fluff on his pants, not looking up until Micky asked the question he’d been dreading.
“Aren’t you fucking the dean’s kid?”
Heat rose to Nash’s cheeks, his hands threatening to curl into fists. Even though he’d told Eliza what kind of world he actually lived in, he didn’t want her to be a part of it. He didn’t want to hear her name come out of any of their dirty mouths.
“Yeah,” Hammond mused, nodding as a lecherous smile spread across his lips, “what was her name again? Belle?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Nash said dismissively. “It’s not important.”
“Clearly it is,” Micky remarked, and when Nash met his eyes, he saw the familiar hint of betrayal lurking. “If it wasn’t important, if she wasn’t important, you’d give her name up without a second thought.”
“Come on, Mick—”
“I think you’re getting swayed, Nash,” Toby said loudly enough to speak over him. “Swayed by pussy.”
Nash scoffed noisily. “Are you fucking serious?”
“Look,” Toby continued, his little speech earning him nods from the rest of the men around the table, “if you think it’s the dean, you better fucking act on it and get his ass in here. You’re dangerously close to losing your place in the club, Nash. Consider that the next time you try to cover for some uptight bitch.”
If he wasn’t a man with a better sense of self-control, Nash would have launched himself across the space between him and Toby and throttled the prick. Instead, the only hint of anger to show was a twitch of his eye, and he was sure it was lost on the darkness of their little interrogation room.
With a half-hearted wave toward the door from Micky, Nash was dismissed, and he pushed out of his chair was such force that its legs scraped across the floor. Jaw clenched, he stormed out of the room and slammed the door behind him, in search of the nearest wall for him to take his frustrations out on—followed swiftly by a very, very strong drink.
Chapter 28
“So does it feel weird meeting me on campus now?” Eliza asked, as she and Nash strolled side-by-side. She had a two-hour gap between classes that they usually used as a chance to grab lunch together. Once she’d learned he wasn’t an actual student, Eliza assumed Nash would prefer not to come to campus anymore.
“No,” he told her, their hands clasped as they strolled lazily in the sea of students rushing between classes. “Is it strange that I’m here for you? I thought it’d be easier this way to meet.”
“It is.” She nodded, then tucked her thick blonde waves over her shoulder. As the end of February approached, the weather had taken a turn for the warm, and she was able to get away with just a spring jacket over her sweater and jeans combo. The dry weeks had also negated the need for her boots, and she was able to stroll around in a cute pai
r of ballet flats instead. When they’d met up only ten minutes earlier, her usually stern Dom had let slip how cute he thought she looked. The compliment had made things easier between them, but it hadn’t erased all that had happened.
Eliza was still in the midst of processing how she felt about all of Nash’s lies. One night, while they chatted on the phone, he’d admitted that he would understand if she wanted to run, if her interest in him had waned so much that there was no point in continuing what they had. Of course, her interest hadn’t waned—not in the slightest. In fact, Nash was suddenly infinitely more interesting to her, with more layers to him than she’d ever imagined before. Still, he’d lied, hid things from her, and she wasn’t just going to let it slide. If her relationship with Nash had taught her anything, it was not to be a pushover anymore—for anyone. While she was a submissive in the bedroom, Eliza was steadily finding her voice outside of it.