The Darkest Flame

by Christina Lee

  “Let’s go,” I said, and Vaughn nodded. Neither of us spoke of him returning to his apartment in the next couple of days. We kept our bubble perfectly contained. It was sure to burst with one wrong flick of a finger.

  Right as we were about to walk out, we heard a tap from the outside.

  Vaughn opened the door a sliver and Sawyer from the Scorpions was standing on the other side. What in the fuck was he doing here? Jealousy and anger tightened my gut. Did he think he’d get Vaughn alone?

  “Fish sent me.” Sawyer looked warily over his shoulder. Maybe this was club business. “Can I come in?”

  Something pricked at my brain. This didn’t feel right. I swept my hand over my back pocket, feeling for my knife. I had rarely used it, though I made sure to have it with me every single day. We all did. Some of the guys still packed a gun, but most of us left them locked up in our houses now, the threats mostly gone. Or so I thought.

  Vaughn looked back as I stepped up to the door, now wishing my Glock was tucked securely inside my waistband. Vaughn kept a gun in his safe here as well, but that would do us little good if this turned ugly. “What is this about?”

  All of a sudden, the blur of another figure shoved past Sawyer, brandishing a nine-millimeter and aiming it at Vaughn’s head.

  “Stand down, Smoke,” the guy growled.

  I thrust my hands in the air. “What the fuck, Jake?”

  Vaughn’s eyes snapped to mine and then over to Jake, looking him up and down. I could see the wheels spinning in Vaughn’s head. So this is the infamous ex. The one who ruthlessly pissed in my house and poisoned my cat.

  What in the hell was Jake doing with Sawyer?

  “You’re brave to show your face here,” I said.

  “Your brothers will have other things to worry about tonight,” he sneered.

  Fear lanced through my heart. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead, he directed Sawyer to fasten Vaughn’s wrists with some plastic cable ties and lead him to one of the tables. “You even move an muscle, a bullet goes through your lover’s head.”

  “You still think he’s my lover?” I bit out as Vaughn was forced into a chair in the middle of the room and Sawyer bent down to secure his ankles. I tried like hell to think of a way out of this, but Vaughn was unarmed, and it would be two against one.

  And Jake was just crazy enough to pull that trigger.

  As Sawyer manhandled my wrists together, I attempted to catch his eye. “You’re betraying your club?”

  He forced me into a chair across from Vaughn while he tied the plastic strip around my ankles. “The club that was going to kill my boyfriend?”

  “Your—”

  My words were halted when Jake yanked Sawyer by the front of his shirt and kissed him, his tongue practically deep-throating him.

  “Mmmm…those lips,” Jake murmured against his mouth. “He even gives better head than you, Smoke.”

  I nearly gagged on my own saliva. I stared at the back door, hoping that one of the brothers would decide to return tonight. Jonas for his keys. Felix for some water. The other night in the kitchen seemed ridiculous in comparison. I’d shout from the rooftops that I was with Vaughn if it meant keeping him alive.

  Jake stood smirking in front of me, and my gaze scanned behind him to Vaughn. Our eyes met and held as I tried to convey an apology to him. He minutely shook his head as if to say it wasn’t my fault. But it definitely was. I had brought Jake into his life. All because I desperately needed to be with him.

  And even now, tied up across the room from him, possibly minutes before our deaths, I felt the exact same way. I loved him. Wanted to make a life with him, if only we had a decent chance. I forced my gaze away from him and back to Sawyer.

  “You know that he’s been stalking me?” I said, angling my head toward Jake. “The sick shit he did to Vaughn’s apartment?”

  “Of course Sawyer knows,” Jake said, rolling his eyes. “He also knows I have unfinished business with you.”

  “Well, I don’t have any with you,” I said. “Getting clean and leaving your club was the best decision I ever made. Saved my life.”

  “Always so condescending,” Jake hissed. “Think you got your life all figured out?”

  “At least I was getting there,” I said, shaking my head. “More than I can say for you. Still committing petty home invasions just for kicks? You’re even high right now, aren’t you?”

  “Your club might not be pulling deals anymore, but you’re still involved in stolen property,” he said, now aiming the gun at the ground. “Still got dirty money coming in.”

  “You sure seem to know a lot about our business,” I said, then turned my attention back to Sawyer. I needed somehow to force him off balance. “Your boyfriend tell you how he followed me out on patrol and asked me to take him back?”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed how Vaughn’s jaw dropped, but I kept my gaze trained on Sawyer and Jake.

  “He doesn’t care who I fuck as long as I’m in his bed most nights,” Jake said with not one ruffled feather. “We have an open relationship.”

  “Yeah?” I called to Sawyer, “He top you real hard when you’re high, leaving his marks?”

  Vaughn winced, finally understanding why I couldn’t let anybody have control for the past few years. Nobody but him.

  “He likes it rough, don’t you, baby?” Jake asked Sawyer, who nodded slowly, his jaw ticking, either from my questions or from Jake’s attention being so trained on me. “Besides, who do you think told us you were working on the inside with the Scorpions?”

  I looked into Sawyer’s eyes, and something unreadable shuttered in his gaze, but I couldn’t quite place it. “I wouldn’t want to be you when the Scorpions find out you betrayed them,” I told him.

  Jake reached for Sawyer’s shoulder. “He won’t have to worry about that anymore.”

  My chest felt as tight as my bound wrists. “What the hell do you mean?”

  “The Scorpions and the Disciples are going down tonight.”

  My heart jumped to my throat as I stole a look across the room at Vaughn, who blanched. We’d been double-crossed. Fuck, I knew something was off. What the hell was Mal thinking, working with that crew?

  I’d had that feeling the entire time I was helping Fish, and now it was all making sense. Sawyer. All because he liked being fucked by Jake.

  But hadn’t I been doing same thing? Practically throwing it all away because of a good lay?

  Yet as I stared into Vaughn’s turbulent eyes, my body flooded with different emotions. There was no shame. Only a sense of longing and protection and need.

  Nah, I couldn’t place myself down on their level. I wasn’t betraying my club. I was only trying to chase love.

  “So why are you here instead of helping your club take us out?” I choked out the words, trying to keep my brain from going numb and shutting down on me.

  “I told you I had unfinished business.”

  Thirty-one

  Smoke

  I adjusted my wrists against the ties, hoping he’d secured them too loosely. No such luck. “What kind of unfinished business do you think we have?”

  Jake’s gaze swung to Sawyer, and his lips curled into a sneer. I’d seen that look directed at other people plenty of times. But now it seemed downright sinister. Like he was the devil himself.

  But even the devil was vulnerable.

  A familiar crinkling sound filled my eardrums, and my entire body went numb. Sawyer fished a small plastic bag from his pocket, and all of my senses went on high alert.

  I didn’t need to see the spoon or the cotton ball or the syringe. My trained nostrils had already picked up the faint hint of vinegar that heroin tabs produced before being dissolved into their purest form.

  Saliva coated my tongue as my mouth watered. Actually fucking watered. It was like an old lover calling me to surrender. This time the lover wasn’t Jake. But she was nearly as deadly as
him. Fun while she lasted, leaving you as hollow as a cavern when she was through.

  “Fuck, man.” Vaughn’s voice burst forth in a jagged pant across the room. For the first time since being tied up, Vaughn had spoken up. “Why the hell would you go messing with a man’s sobriety?”

  “Oh please,” Jake said as he eyed the heroin crystal like it was liquid gold. And it definitely was to many of us. Until it turned your life to acid and gouged out your fucking soul. “He thinks he’s better than me now that he’s sober.”

  “No.” Vaughn shook his head almost violently. “He’s just trying to make a decent life for himself.”

  That got a good, hearty laugh out of Jake.

  “Is that what this is about?” I asked, and Jake’s gaze snapped to mine. “I left you because I was going to die if I didn’t.”

  His eyes softened momentarily, and I knew I had hit on something raw. “You get that, right?” I said. “It wasn’t you. It was the drugs.”

  “If it was the drugs, then why not come back to me after you got sober?”

  My gaze swung briefly to Sawyer, who stood staring with his mouth hanging open. I couldn’t allow my eyes to search for Vaughn’s. I hoped he understood that I was trying anything I could to save our lives. I would never in a million years feel for Jake how I felt for him. Vaughn was everything and Jake was nothing.

  “I had to go through the program twice, Jake,” I said. “And even now, it’s hard to be near…near…”

  I couldn’t even say the name of the drug that had wrecked my life. I was weakened by her very presence in the room.

  A smile tugged at his mouth. “You still crave it, don’t you?”

  He watched me closely until I nodded. “In the program, they teach you not to be around it anymore. Or anybody who uses it.”

  “Me,” he said, as if finally understanding.

  “You.”

  We stared each other down, and I thought maybe I had gotten through to him, until there was movement beside us. Sawyer had produced a lighter from his pocket, and Jake’s gaze darkened against the flicker of flame.

  I watched as his eyes turned nearly black. He stepped toward Sawyer, kissed him, and motioned to the lighter. When he looked back at me one final time, I knew I had lost him again. Probably for good.

  Sawyer’s gaze shifted wildly to the door as if somebody would come busting through to find them at any minute. Fuck, I hoped against hope that his fears turned to reality.

  As Sawyer positioned the flame beneath the rounded plastic, nothing could force my gaze away from that white goddess, now lying in wait on a spoon.

  My entire body shuddered from the vivid memory of how she inhabited my brain, ravaged my veins. I looked down at my elbow, attempting to find the best entryway in the crook of my arm, nearly ravenous for her.

  I could envision the track marks on my skin, the purple and yellow bruising, now faded with time. If I ran my finger over the sensitive area, I’d still feel the knobs of scar tissue, some of which were visible to the naked eye. My forehead became slick with sweat, and a couple of drops trickled onto my lap.

  “You remember this beauty,” Jake said, gaping at me. “How she makes you feel?”

  “No,” I said, nearly strangling on the syllable, but still keeping my gaze trained on her.

  “Oh yeah, baby,” he said, pushing my hair away from my eyes, like he used to do. “You’re going to beg me for her.”

  “Never,” I rasped, but I knew I was already fighting a losing battle.

  “You will. You’re going to skyrocket to the moon, and then I’m going to fuck you while you fuck Sawyer.” I yanked my head away from Jake and his fingers moved to Sawyer’s hair instead, playing him like a finely tuned violin. “Isn’t that right, baby?”

  Sawyer looked between the two of us and nodded. In my peripheral vision I could see the chair tilting across the room as Vaughn struggled to get loose.

  “Shoot me up instead.” Vaughn’s tortured voice struck a chord deep in my soul. “You fucking animal. If you ever felt anything for Smoke, you’d cut him this break.”

  Jake threw his head back and laughed. “Why, so you can get fucked by me instead?”

  “Do whatever the hell you want to me,” he said. “Just make sure that heroin goes in my bloodstream instead.”

  “Vaughn—” I cried out.

  “Shut the fuck up, Smoke,” he growled, and I when searched his face, I saw a conviction there I’d never seen in another lover’s eyes before. Or probably would ever again. “Not another word.”

  “Maybe it would be fun to see why Smoke likes fucking you so much,” Jake said, watching our exchange. “Or do you fuck him…hmmm?”

  “Shoot me up instead of him and find out how good I can be,” Vaughn said, and I squeezed my eyes shut so tight I was seeing stars. Vaughn was taking up for me, being so fucking brave. I was determined not to look in the direction of that spoon again.

  “Might have a good time with that one,” Sawyer drawled, and I wanted to punch the motherfucker in the face. What had Fish ever done to make him want to betray him like this? To me, his offense was way worse that Jake’s. At least Jake had been an asshole from the onset.

  “You’re both going to die tonight,” Jake said. “So what does it matter whether your brain is addled or not?”

  “Smoke has a lot to be proud of,” Vaughn said, slouching in his seat. “At least let him keep his dignity. He worked so fucking hard to achieve his sobriety.”

  I had a gigantic lump in my throat, because we were more than likely not getting out of this alive. It sounded like none of the Disciples were, either. At least if I was going to die, I was doing it knowing somebody cared for me that fucking much. I hoped he knew it, too.

  “Vaughn,” I said, my eyes frantically searching his, wanting to convey everything I was thinking. Feeling. For him. Only him. No way I wanted these motherfuckers to be our audience, but this moment was all that we had.

  Vaughn’s raw emotions were written all over his face—he was flayed open, laid bare to me. All of our hopes and dreams down the drain, only anger and fear and love—deep and desperate and tragic love—remained between us. So visceral I could practically taste it in my mouth.

  “Will you look at this, Sawyer?” Jake said, nudging him. “A pair of bartenders who like fucking each other. Right beneath Mal’s nose.”

  “You’ve been screwing behind the scenes this entire time,” I spit out. “Terrence isn’t wondering why you’ve taken such an interest in me tonight?”

  His jaw ticked. “I told him I wanted to kill you myself. That you burned me good after I took you in, helped you out.”

  “You call that helping me out?”

  He looked around the space as if for the first time, taking in the fixtures on the wall, and zeroing in on one of my welded pieces. “You miss having a bar to call your own, Smoke?”

  “You know I do.” There was a spark in my peripheral vision as Sawyer flicked the lighter one final time. A cotton ball would soak the liquid up like a sponge and filter out any particles so that the syringe could work its magic. Though I kept my eyes trained on my feet, I was practically tilting my chair toward the flame now.

  “Too bad your uncle took that from you.”

  “My uncle?” My eyes darted toward Jake. “Because he got the insurance money?”

  “How do you think he arranged that?”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “He wanted the money,” Jake jerked his shoulder. “And I wanted you.”

  I thought about how Jake would come up to the bar when I worked with my father. How he’d make small talk with me. And then when he approached me after the fire. How I was so distressed and alone. How my uncle skirted town directly after the funeral.

  “You saying my uncle committed arson?”

  “I’m not saying anything,” Jake told me on a yawn. As if he hadn’t just tilted my entire world on its fucking axis.

  “The way I heard it,�
� Sawyer said, watching the cotton ball soak up the heroin, “you were too wasted to follow up on any police leads, anyway.”

  I lifted my bound feet and kicked at his shin, hard enough that he nearly dropped the spoon.

  “Gotten feisty, haven’t you?” Jake spun on me and grabbed me by the collar, so we were nose to nose. “There’s the spark I saw when I first met you.”

  “Hard to keep the spark going when you’re always high,” I said, practically spitting in his face. “Maybe that’s what Jake’s doing to you right now, Sawyer. Ever think of that? If I were you, I’d watch my back.”

  “Enough of this bullshit,” Sawyer growled. “Let’s shoot him up already, fuck him raw, and then torch this place down.”

  I held in my gasp, but Vaughn said the words for me. “Why does this place need to be torched?”

  “Got a tie to the joint, huh?” Jake barked out a laugh, his saliva flying in my face. “How else we gonna destroy the evidence?”

  “C’mon, we’ve got enough to shoot both of them up,” Sawyer said, shoving the lighter back in his pocket.

  I grimaced, barely keeping it together. “You guys won’t be joining us?”

  “Aw, how sweet, worrying about us,” Jake said. “You liked it when I fucked you high, didn’t you?”

  I shuddered, and Jake’s grin was so devious he could’ve grown horns right then.

  Jake approached Vaughn, and I bit so hard into my lip that I tasted blood.

  “How about only you and me take the two hits?” Vaughn said, and I could see his fingers trembling as he tried one last time to reason with Jake. “You show me what you got.”

  “I’m going to enjoy shooting up your boyfriend, Smoke,” Jake said, petting Vaughn’s hair. “Especially since he asked for it.”

  “No!” I watched as Vaughn squirmed and resisted the needle. As Jake squeezed the plunger, sending the heroin into his bloodstream, his eyes rolled in the back in his head. Saliva gushed to my mouth as I remembered the sensation of that first high. I wanted to feel it, too, so fucking much, my teeth were chattering.

  I loathed myself for needing it so desperately.

  Jake whistled as he stared at Vaughn, whose mouth had gone slack. “That good, baby?”