Slater's Claim

by Amber Morgan

  Her answer was to glide her tongue up and down his shaft, keen to bring him to release. He was close. She could feel the tension in his body, ready to explode, and she was dying to be the reason he exploded.

  Suddenly his knees buckled and Freya grabbed his thighs, holding him tight as he spent himself into her mouth. He hissed as he came, slapping his hands against the wall for balance, and she loved the fact that she'd made him weak, made him shake as hard as she was shaking.

  “God, Freya... Fuck...” He reached down and pulled her to her feet, kissing her fiercely again. “Your turn.”

  “You'll have to owe her one.”

  Punk's voice made them both jump, icing the heat between them instantly. Freya yelped as Slater shoved her behind him, protecting modesty she was pretty sure she didn't have.

  Punk leaned against the wall just a few feet away, grinning merrily and clearly unfazed by the scene before him.

  “What the fuck, man?” Slater demanded, glowering at Punk.

  “Sorry,” Punk said, unrepentant. “I'd have stayed quiet, but it's probably only fair Freya knows now you can't satisfy a woman.”

  Despite herself, Freya laughed as she reclaimed her sweat pants. “I can satisfy myself pretty damn well, thank you.”

  “Not as well as I can,” Slater said, still glaring at Punk. “Did you want something, or do you just love cockblocking me?”

  “Can't it be both?” Punk asked. “Put your pants on, bro. Alessi and his goons are gonna be here in an hour.”

  Slater frowned now, reaching for his jeans. Freya couldn't help pouting as he covered up that glorious cock. She ached for an orgasm of her own, and the thought of waiting fuck-knew how long to feel him inside her again was absolute torment.

  “Already? That's early,” Slater said. “And anyway, Nash doesn't want me involved in the meeting.”

  “Oh yeah, I know,” Punk said. He cracked his knuckles and gave them both a wicked grin. “But I bet you wanna watch, right?”

  Freya and Slater exchanged a look, a silent agreement passing between them.

  “Hell yes.” Freya answered for them both, trying to ignore her simmering lust. “We want to watch.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Slater wasn’t surprised to find there were rooms in the old mill he’d never seen. It was a big place, haphazardly converted from a working mill to a clubhouse, and there were enough dark, dusty passages and locked doors to fill a dozen haunted houses.

  Punk guided him and Freya past the room they used for a church, around a corner, down a short flight of stairs, and through one such locked door. It was a long, narrow room, the walls lined with wooden shelves. Most of the floor space was taken up with cobweb-coated boxes, filled with dented petrol cans, gasoline signs, rusted bike parts, and other pieces of Americana. He saw Freya’s eyes light up at the grimy treasure trove and fell a little bit more in love with her.

  Love.

  Shit.

  But it was love. No other word fit, so why pretend any different? He was crazy for Freya Markham, and every minute he spent with her, that craziness crystallized into something solid, intense, and unshakable. He was in love.

  She caught him staring and smiled, her expression a mixture of lust and tenderness that made his heart race and his cock hard.

  Did she—

  “Stop mooning at her and come over here.” Punk was at the far wall, hefting aside a crate full of metal signs. “If I get tetanus for helping you spy on Nash, I’m gonna be pissed.”

  “Spy on him how?” Slater forced himself to concentrate on something other than Freya. He went to help Punk move the crate off the shelf and understanding dawned immediately. “How do you know about this? Does Nash know about it?”

  Behind the crate, the brickwork was pale and crumbling. One of the bricks had fallen away, leaving a hole in the wall about the size of Slater’s fist. Through it, he could see the church, the empty room as silent and solemn as its namesake right now. The wide, round table had been laid out with bottles of beer and bowls full of chips, a touch that struck Slater as far too inviting and homely for a Mafia sit-down.

  “The beer will be warm by the time Alessi gets here,” Punk grumbled. “Maybe that’s the point. To answer your question, all the club girls know about this. It’s like some sacred feminine secret they pass down to newcomers. And I know because Taylor lost a bet and had to tell me.”

  Freya leaned between them to peer through the spy hole, and Slater rested his hand on the small of her back, absent-mindedly possessive.

  “Why is Alessi coming so soon?” she asked, a nervous thread in her voice. She glanced back at him with a sly smile. “Or is it really that soon? I kinda lost track of time for a bit.”

  “It’s earlier than originally planned,” Punk said. “Mind games, power plays, I don’t know.” He shrugged. “The call just came through. Nash wants all the officers on hand and he’s adamant nothing leaves the church.”

  “So why are you helping us break the rules?” Slater asked, worried for his friend. Nash didn’t fuck around and Punk didn’t think ahead. If Nash found out Punk had helped them spy on a meeting they were expressly barred from, he wasn’t going to be amused.

  Punk clapped him on the back. “You’d break ‘em for me. Besides, this is Freya and Kayden’s lives, right? Nobody should be making calls about it behind their backs.” Darkness flashed across Punk’s face, and Slater understood then.

  He gave Punk a friendly shove. “You’re a hero.”

  “Thank you,” Freya added softly. “I feel like we’ve come in here and set a bomb off. I can’t imagine how much more shit we’d be in without you.” She spoke to both of them, but she reached for Slater’s hand as she said it.

  He kissed her hair, relishing the memory of his hands tangled in it as she sucked him off. “No es nada,” he said.

  “Stop trying to impress her with your fancy foreign words,” Punk said. He drew back from the wall, rolling his eyes at Freya. “He's thinks he's so intellectual, but he actually failed Spanish at school.”

  Freya laughed.

  Slater frowned and gave Punk a less-friendly shove. “Don't you have somewhere to be?”

  “Yeah, I guess.” Punk didn't sound enthusiastic.

  Slater didn't blame him, but three was a hell of a crowd right now. The possibilities of him, Freya, and a locked storeroom were intriguing, to say the least. “Great. Thanks again, man. See you later, yeah?”

  Punk grunted and headed for the door. “Just keep the noise down, okay? Nothing kills a Mafia showdown like high-pitched girly screams from the next room.”

  “I don't have a high-pitched scream,” Freya said indignantly.

  Punk winked at her over his shoulder. “I wasn't talking about you, honey.”

  She laughed as he closed the door on them, and Slater rested his hands on her hips, reeling her in.

  “Just you and me again, then.”

  She gave him an impish smile and rose on her tiptoes to drag her tongue slowly down his throat and press a lingering kiss to his pulse.

  Slater groaned, the blood rushing from his head directly to his dick, but before he could act on his flaring lust, Freya pirouetted away from him, laughing.

  “We are not having sex in a tiny, grimy storeroom.”

  “You didn’t mind having sex in a narrow, grimy corridor,” he pointed out.

  She wagged a finger at him, striking a deliberately provocative pose. “You said that next time we were going to take it slow and do it properly. I want a big bed, silk sheets, champagne, roses, the works.” She blew him a kiss. “You do owe me.”

  He folded his arms, faking a scowl and trying to remember the last time he’d given a girl “the works.” Hell, probably never. He’d always been too picky for his relationships to last long, and as much as he’d adored Rhonda, her living with him had been a pretty effective contraceptive. Having sex with her in the house had felt too similar to having sex with his mom in the house. A fast fuck and a faste
r goodbye had been his pattern with women for a long time now.

  But Freya was magic. She deserved more and he was ready to give it to her.

  “Deal,” he said. “Champagne and roses is a cliché though. I can do better than that.”

  “I can’t wait.” She danced back in again and gave him an all-too chaste, all-too quick kiss. Then she started rummaging through the boxes stacked high around the room. “I love this kind of stuff. I always wanted an Oldsmobile Rocket.”

  “Me and my brothers used to fix up old cars with my dad,” Slater said, joining her. He pulled out an ancient license plate, so rusted it was impossible to read the numbers on it. “I bet there’s a fortune in rust in this room.”

  “Maybe once this is all over, I can dig through it?” she asked hopefully. “You know, just organize it for you guys. I owe you so much—”

  “Don’t say that. Nobody’s expecting anything from you, Freya. Or from Kayden. Well, I might have certain expectations, but I think you know that already.”

  She dropped her gaze down to his crotch and licked her lips. “Mmm.”

  Fuck. She was determined to make this hard. To make everything hard, apparently. Trying to distract himself, he shifted away from her a fraction and asked, “What are you going to do once everything’s settled?”

  She frowned into one of the boxes, eyes clouded. “Keep dancing, I think.”

  “Seriously?” He didn’t like the shot of dark jealousy he felt, but he couldn’t deny it either. “What the hell for?”

  “The money.” She tugged an oil can free and rubbed the dusty metal with her thumb, avoiding his eyes. “I still need it. I blew through my savings trying to help Kayden, and if I want to get into college for pre-pharm, I need it fast. I’ve already wasted enough time. If I’m not kicking money back to Benny and Sammy the Asshat, I can make enough that I won’t have to waste much more.”

  Slater shook his head but held his tongue. He didn’t have the right to tell her not to, and she’d already made it clear offering her money was a bad idea. But the thought of her out there, showing off those gorgeous curves for other men… It made him sick and furious, like something was gnawing at his gut.

  But now wasn’t the time to deal with it. He was keenly aware that everything could still go bad tonight. He’d go to any lengths to protect Freya from Sammy, and anyone else who tried to fuck with her, but until they knew what the fallout from today’s meeting was, he couldn’t make any real plans. He silently thanked Punk for bringing them to the storeroom. At least he could watch it all unfold. Information was power.

  In the meantime, he needed distracting again, this time from the uncertainty of the future. “So, an Oldsmobile,” he said, moving close enough again to press his thigh to hers. “You ever actually driven one?”

  There was one thing he damn well could plan for, and that was everything he intended to do with Freya Markham the first chance he got.

  ****

  Nash didn’t believe in luck. He believed in being prepared. Sammy Alessi hadn’t given him as much time to prepare for their meeting as he’d wanted, but he’d made the most of it. Pushing aside Slater’s update on Livi—as hard as that fucking was—and the looming issue of what to do with Zeke—because he had to do something, or Roxy would kill him—Nash locked himself and Rattler in his office and dug up every last thing he could on Alessi.

  Surprisingly, there wasn’t that much. And not because Alessi was a slick operator keeping his tracks hidden. There just … wasn’t much. He hadn’t been in the game that long, evolving from petty drug dealer to Wakefield’s top drug baron quickly enough, but without trying to make inroads anywhere else. He seemed content with Wakefield and drugs. The recent purchase of the Hot House was the first sign of Alessi branching out. Maybe his success at seizing the drug trade in the city had made him ambitious, or maybe he’d always planned a long, slow game. Either way, he was nowhere near the level of the men Nash had mixed with once upon a time.

  “He’s a baby,” he told Rattler, closing down half a dozen web browsers. “I doubt anyone’s tested his mettle yet.”

  “So he’s happy just pushing around waster kids and roughing up strippers.” Rattler curled his lip. “Big man.”

  “He could still be dangerous,” Nash said. “I think we can handle him, but let’s not assume anything.”

  “All right.” Rattler sprawled in his chair, fixing Nash with a challenging look. “So let’s talk tactics. What, exactly, do we want out of this meeting? Because as far as I can see, we don’t have much skin in the game. Slater’s chick and her brother really aren’t our problem.”

  Nash swallowed his instinctive response. He didn’t want to start arguing with Rattler. Hadn’t he given him the VP patch because Rattler would push him, after all? “They became our problem when Slater brought them here. We can argue the rights and wrongs of that later. And Alessi upped the ante with the fucking hit-and-run attempt. We can’t let that slide. He came into our territory and threatened one of our brothers. If we let that slide because we don’t like Slater’s taste in women, Wild Blood becomes a fucking joke. Weak. Vulnerable. That’s one thing I’ve never wanted us to be.”

  Rattler nodded slowly. “Yeah. We agree on that. so again—what do we want? For Alessi to just back off? That won’t change the kid’s debts.”

  Nash laced his fingers together and rested his chin there, wishing he could have a joint. He made a point of never doing business drunk or high, though, as nice as it would often be.

  “Yesterday I'd have said getting rid of Alessi would be enough,” he said, letting the thought unwind slowly. “But...”

  But yesterday he hadn't known Livi was just a day's ride away. Yesterday he hadn't been thinking about the Hounds of Balor, about being Ciarán Reardon, aka Kieron Redmond, aka Colum Rooney. He hadn't been thinking about his past.

  He hadn't been thinking about his future. About how his promise to Judge, that he'd take care of Livi, might come to smack him in the face so hard and fast. And that threw everything else into doubt.

  “But now we know Alessi is a small-time player, we could turn this to our advantage,” Rattler said, surprising him. “The long-term plan was to potentially invest in that strip joint anyway, right?”

  “Yeah, if it looked like a good deal.”

  “Selling sex? How hard can that be?”

  Nash resisted the urge to rub his temples since Rattler, rightly, would interpret it as a gesture of frustration. “You want—what? To persuade Alessi to take us on as business partners in exchange for ... what?”

  “We can offer a lot to a guy like that in exchange for not starting a war. Yesterday we thought he was some big-time Cosa Nostra bad guy. Today we know he's a petty thug in a sharp suit. Why do we have to make nice and wheedle our way out of the kids' mess?” Rattler stroked his goatee, dark eyes bright. He looked like a vaudeville scoundrel. “Why don't we turn this from a clusterfuck to an opportunity?”

  Nash thought about Livi. He thought about the news Tanner had brought him. He thought about Kayden, and Zeke, and Roxy, and Elena, and Judge. All the lives he had to manage, all the tempers and passions, all the fears and ambitions, and suddenly he felt incredibly tired. More than anything right now, he wanted this shit cleaned up, and if Rattler had a way to do it, Nash was willing to try it.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let's hear what you got.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The atmosphere in church was suitably hushed and solemn as the officers waited for Alessi's arrival. Tanner picked miserably at the label on a warm beer bottle. His mind was clearly elsewhere, and although Nash didn't like that, he couldn't blame his new Sergeant at Arms for the lack of focus. They'd deal with that later, though. After Alessi and after Zeke, and after whatever the fuck else was going to happen here next.

  Punk stared at the far wall, flipping a pen over his knuckles in a ceaseless pattern that would start irritating Nash in about five minutes. He'd debated internally whether this meeting re
ally needed the club Treasurer, or the Secretary for that matter. But leaving out Punk and Pigface meant they weren't presenting a united front. No matter how small-fry he suspected Sammy Alessi was, Nash still wasn't taking chances. They were all in, no matter how fucking annoying some of them were.

  For his part, Pigface was drinking a beer and fussing over Skids, seeming nonplussed by the whole deal. Rattler was the only one looking like he gave a shit. That wicked gleam in his eye hadn't faded. He was looking forward to this. Nash was glad someone was, but he took careful note of Rattler's ambition. Nash had moved Wild Blood away from its criminal roots specifically to avoid the wrong kind of attention—like the police, or the mob ties he'd left behind. It hadn't been out of a desire to go straight or a great love of the law. It had been simple expediency that saw him play by the rules. Wanted murderers couldn't afford to take too many chances.

  Working with Alessi came with risks. But then, tracking down Livi did too.

  Which risks were worth taking?

  “I'm too old for this shit,” he muttered, reaching for a beer.

  Punk cackled. “What's that saying? You're only as old as the woman you feel? How old is Shelby, anyway?”

  “Shut the fuck up, Punk,” Nash said, after struggling to think of a smarter reply.

  A knock on the door saved him from Punk's retort. Shelby herself poked her head in the room. “They're here. Alessi and three goons. They're in the bar with Taylor and some of the other girls right now. Should I bring them through?”

  “Leave 'em out there. Make 'em sweat a little,” Rattler said, grinning. “We can do this on our time.”

  Nash scowled. “They're not gonna be sweating with our girls dancing attendance on them. Bring them through, Shelby.”

  She nodded and disappeared. Rattler glowered at Nash.

  Nash tapped his finger on the scarred wooden table pointedly.

  “I'm fine with using your plan, Rattler, but I'm still President. I make the calls, not you. Got it?”