by Jani Kay
Then she groaned. It was a pained noise, but it sounded sweet to my ears. At least she was alive. As long as she was breathing, I had everything to fight for—everything to lose. I couldn’t help the sigh of relief that escaped my lips.
My mistake.
Masterton sneered. “For someone who doesn’t care about the bitch, you sure are relieved to hear she’s alive. I should’ve slammed her head harder and killed the bitch.”
I clenched my fists by my sides and ground my teeth together. When I took this motherfucker down he was going to pay. My nostrils flared. I was unable to hide my contempt any longer.
Sneaking up behind the madman, Harrison appeared out of nowhere. I'd thought he’d left long ago. How was it that he always showed up when shit was going down? Did he have an internal shit-detector?
I had to keep the crazy man busy, keep his attention on me.
And. Not. Look. At. Summers.
I spat in her direction, but not far enough that it would reach her. “I don’t give a shit about her. She turned me down. Told me I wasn’t good enough for her.” My heart squeezed—partly this was true. She had thought that when we first met. I was shocked at how much it hurt me to say now.
“She’s right about that. Crims like you should be cleared off the earth, not clogging our jails or wasting taxpayer money. So I’m going to do society a favor and get rid of you today. One less burden on the system.”
He raised the gun from pointing at my chest, squinting through one eye as he aimed directly at my head. Fuck, I needed a miracle. Summers was still too far away to stop him. I’d be dead on the ground before he could disarm the cocksucker.
The miracle I needed happened.
Jade’s father held his hand over his heart. “Oh God, help me,” he groaned as he collapsed. “My heart. My fucking heart. Get my pills . . .” He hit the ground like a sack of potatoes.
Summers froze to the spot, his eyes wide and horrified.
“Huh? What the fuck?” Masterton turned his head toward the old man, dropping the gun for a moment.
It was all I needed. I lunged forward, smashing Masterton to the ground. I gripped the barrel of the gun, trying to wrestle it out of his hand. A shot rang out.
For a few long seconds everything stood still. The echo of a gunshot deafened me for the second time this week.
Both Cobra and Harrison were standing over us, guns pointed at Masterton; then I felt the pain. Blood seeped through my jeans. I’d been shot in the thigh. Fuck, it hurt.
Masterton still had the gun. He’d squeezed the trigger during our roll on the ground, our arms and legs tangled as we both fought for possession of the firearm.
Summer’s eyes fixed on my leg, all the blood drained from his face. He looked as if he were going to pass the fuck out. “Your old man,” I groaned, nodding my head to where Owen Summers lay writhing on the ground. “Help him.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and turned away from me.
I crawled toward the body of my girl. “Jade. Talk to me. Fuck, Princess, open your eyes,” I commanded, fear and dread overtaking my body. I dragged my useless fucking leg until I got to her and pulled her head onto my lap with trembling hands.
Her lips were blue-ish, and her eyes stayed closed. I felt for her pulse. It was so faint I wasn’t sure if I were imagining it. Mia knelt by my side, holding Jade’s head in her hands.
“Mouth to mouth. Let me do it.” Her voice was soft but authoritative.
I leaned back to give her space. Panic rose in my gut. Fuck. I squeezed my eyes shut, dizziness and nausea overtaking me. Since that single groan, she hadn’t made a fucking sound.
I couldn’t lose her. The thought was too much to bear.
Chapter Fifty-One — Harrison
“Nine-one-one. How can I help you?” The woman’s voice brought me back to my predicament with my father. Shit, I had to act fast.
“Heart attack. Send an ambulance, now.” I gave the details of where we were while I fished for the bottle of tablets my father always had in his suit pocket. With shaky hands, I shook two from the bottle and held it to his mouth.
“Dad. Your pills. Open your mouth.”
He could barely respond. I forced the tablets in between his lips and pushed them down his throat, forcing his swallow reflex to work. He gagged a bit, but then mercifully swallowed. I sat on my knees, watching Mia give Jade mouth to mouth as I placed my palms on my father’s chest and started counting as I pressed down.
Jesus Christ. Whenever I was around these bikers there was mayhem. Not even a funeral could go off without drama. But how come it was my family that was lying on the ground? My sister barely breathing? My father in the throes of a heart attack? Could it get any fucking worse?
It could.
Masterton ignored the gun Cobra pointed at him. He got to his feet and stomped over to Jade, murder in his eyes as he saw Ryder holding her.
“You lying scumbag,” he shouted at Ryder. “I’m killing you both.”
He lifted the gun, aiming at Jade first. Two shot went off in quick succession. Fuck!
Masterton crumbled to the ground. Cobra had shot him twice: one shot clean through the shoulder so that he had to drop the weapon, the other through his hip. He screamed in pain as he hit the ground with a thud.
Frankly, I was impressed with Cobra’s restraint. A less experienced man would have panicked and shot to kill. Not that Masterton didn’t deserve to be dead. His type was the real threat to society. Their kind of crazy usually went undetected until they caused major damage. To be truthful, I would’ve preferred to see the sucker dead and buried, and out of my family’s life.
Seven minutes later, the wail of the ambulance screamed toward us. In the space of an afternoon we had buried one, and had three casualties on our hands. How was I going to explain this back at head office? Nobody would believe that I was actually not responsible for all this, that I’d mostly been a spectator in the fiasco.
The paramedics were blown away when they realized that the scene meeting them was more than a heart attack. There was fucking blood everywhere. The driver immediately called for reinforcements.
“He’s serious. I don’t think he’s going to make it,” the medic who’d taken over said. “The next few hours are critical.”
An oxygen mask was placed over Dad’s face and he got hooked up to the machines in the ambulance. The female medic placed her hand on my shoulder. “I'm afraid we have to go; we can’t treat your sister further or we may lose your father. Understand?”
I nodded, dumbfounded as they closed the ambulance doors and sped off. It was dusk, and I didn’t know if I'd ever see my father alive again.
Jade was lying on a stretcher, covered in a blanket. For the second time this month she looked frail and vulnerable, lying unconscious. The fucker had deprived her of the one thing she needed most—air. Hooked up to a portable oxygen tank, I couldn’t bear to look at her, and especially not at Ryder. He’d virtually pushed the medics off him and insisted they treat Jade first. Cobra had removed his skull headscarf and Mia had wrapped it tightly around Ryder’s leg in an attempt to stop the bleeding.
He grimaced as he moved closer to Jade, leaning over and whispering in her ear. A small smile touched her lips. It was a good sign. She’d definitely suffered from concussion, and I was worried sick about brain damage.
Thank fuck two minutes later another ambulance arrived. Funny that both Jade and Ryder insisted the other be treated first, Jade hardly able to speak because she was so weak. It was then that it hit me. She really did love the biker. And nothing I did or said would change that.
“What about me?” Marcus wailed, unhappy that he was being ignored while Ryder and Jade were treated first. Mia, bless her kind soul, had gone over to help him as soon as the medics took over from her caring for Jade. The asshole was only worried about his own survival.
A third ambulance arrived twenty minutes later to take care of the crazy lawyer, with a police escort. Charged with intent to
murder, he’d be taken to the prison hospital and treated there. I pitied the poor fucker for a moment. His shining career was fucked forever. He was going nowhere but to prison, unless he had a smartass lawyer friend who could get him out. I wouldn’t be surprised. It happened every day.
I was tired to the bone. Tired of the eternal battle that was raging inside me. Tired of pretending I didn’t care what happened to anyone because I didn’t want to admit how much I loved them, and didn’t want to see them leave my life like Amy had.
And Knox? He surprised me. He was having a hard time from his president and club brothers about Jade. Yet, he hadn’t hesitated for a moment to save Jade’s life. The way he looked at her . . . I knew she was all that mattered to him.
Finally the ambulance was ready to take Jade and Ryder to the hospital. Before Ryder was lifted in, he stopped and turned to Cobra. “Brother. If you want my patch, I’ll have it on your desk as soon as I am discharged from hospital.”
Cobra sucked in a breath. It was evident he never expected Ryder to say those words to him.
Ryder continued. “Today, I learned the most valuable lesson of my life. Without love there is no point to living. If I don’t have Jade by my side, it’s all a waste of time. My Princess is the only woman for me. I love her with every breath in my being. So if I have to choose between the club and Jade, you leave me no choice.”
He turned toward me. He gestured between himself and Jade, making his intentions very clear. “Jade and I are a couple. We plan to get married. We plan on having a family. Deal with it.”
He got into the ambulance with the help of the paramedics and took Jade’s hand in his. Both Cobra and I were staring at them openly, at a loss for words. That didn’t stop Ryder from telling us straight. “And as soon as Jade’s out of hospital, we’re planning our wedding. For Jade and I, it can be no other way.”
He turned toward Cobra again. “You once said we were a modern day Romeo and Juliet. Guess you were right. Only difference is we refuse to die on one another. We will write our own ending to our story. It will be a fucking happily ever after—just like Jade wants.”
Jade’s eyes were brimming with tears as he leaned down to kiss her.
A knife twisted in my heart.
I wanted a love like that. I wanted an all-consuming, all-sacrificing, never-ending love that would stand the test of time and be stronger than all the obstacles thrown at it.
How could any person not want that?
I was no different. I craved eternal love.
I’d never felt so empty, so utterly fucking alone as in that moment.
Chapter Fifty-Two — Harrison
As soon as I got back to my apartment after saying goodnight to my father at the hospital, I got beneath the hottest shower I could tolerate. I needed to wash off all the day’s stress. More blood—this time my sister’s—had freaked me out. Again. And Dad . . . fuck, I’d never been that close to losing the old man. He was my hero, always had been . . . and it messed with my mind to watch the man I idolized go down and be so helpless. It was too much to handle.
I sighed heavily—it was no secret I got my workaholic tendencies from Dad. Owen Summers had set an unrelenting pace. Starting from scratch as a young man, he had built his empire through hard work and obstinance.
Luckily he’d had his tablets in his pocket and I got them into him quickly. A week’s rest in hospital would do him good, and Mom would make sure he listened to the doctors and took less strain at work. It was time for him to slow down; he had six years till retirement, he didn’t need to work insane hours any longer. If Jade worked hard, she could take over the reigns and be groomed to run the company with the guidance of the partners.
Lately I didn’t want to spend time alone at home. The bachelor pad with its minimalistic furnishings I’d always been so proud of didn’t do it for me any longer. Cold metal and hard stone surfaces echoed every sound in the vast open-plan space—sterile and uninviting. Hollow. I’d turned the music on as soon as I got home to drive the emptiness out.
More restless than ever, I’d been virtually working twenty-four-seven to get Eva out of my head. On top of that, doing an extra hour of gym every day to exhaust myself in the hopes of falling asleep when my head hit the pillow was far better than to lie awake for hours, fantasizing about what I wanted to do to her. The self-imposed ban I’d placed on going anywhere near her was testing my self-control. In truth, my resistance was crumbling.
I got out of the shower and dried off. Ding dong. Was that the fucking doorbell? Jesus, it was one-thirty a.m.—I wasn’t in the mood for Savage or anyone else right now. I wanted to crawl into bed and drift into a dreamless sleep. For once, I was so exhausted that I'd actually get to sleep.
Wrapping a small towel around my waist, I padded to the front door. The stereo blared, and although nobody could hear exactly how loud it was if they stood outside, I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t home or that I was sleeping.
Glancing at the security screen, I sucked in a breath. This was certainly an unexpected visitor, all right. Eva stood in front of my door, clutching her coat tightly to her body. Her hair was messy, as if she hadn’t bothered to brush it. Had she just gotten out of bed?
A frown rested between her perfectly bowed eyebrows. She rang the bell again as she glanced at her watch, pouting. I was still thinking about what to do when she rapped her knuckles on the door as if she couldn’t wait a minute longer.
“Open the fucking door, Harrison,” she called out.
Was she mad at me? Christ. What reason did she have to be angry? Was it because I hadn’t sent her flowers the day after I'd fucked her? I never did, usually because I didn’t even know the chick’s name or address. In this case I'd been fucking drunk for three days, then thrown myself head over dick into work. Fuck sending roses with a sentimental card.
She was just about to knock again when I jerked the door open. Her eyes flared for a moment when she saw that I was only wearing a towel and a smirk.
“Are you that much of a selfish prick that you don’t care that your neighbors are sleeping?” She pushed passed me into the hallway and through to the living room where she turned the music right down.
She didn’t give me time to explain that I had state-of-the-art soundproofing. I could have a live band play in here and my neighbors would be none the wiser. I liked it when my women screamed during sex, so it was one of the first things that had attracted me to this apartment. It had belonged to a muso before, and he’d paid big bucks to soundproof the place. I was happy to pay top dollar for his effort.
I shrugged, then followed her back to the living room. “You’re not here to complain about my noisy music,” I said, raising an eyebrow. Fuck, it was good to see her again. She looked even more gorgeous than I remembered, her dark, untamed hair reminding me of her just-fucked look the last time I'd seen her. My cock stirred under the fucking towel. Down, boy. This was not the time to show Eva how much I wanted to be buried deep inside her. But since I hadn’t emptied my balls inside a woman since fucking her, and since the object of my desire was standing only inches away from me, it was impossible to prevent.
I busied myself by changing the music and lighting the fireplace while waiting for her answer. But mainly I was trying to control my fucking dick.
“No, Harrison, I'm not here for superficial reasons.”
Still messing with the controls, I kept my back to her and turned my head only to stare. “What then?” My voice was hard and brash. It was late, I was horny as fuck and I wanted her gone because I didn’t know how much longer I'd be able to rein it in before I grabbed her and fucked the shit out of her. My self-control was slipping, especially as her fucking perfume wafted to my nostrils. My cock was hard and there was nothing I could do about it. It wanted Eva. I wanted Eva. Fuck.
“Are you going to turn around and talk to me like an adult?” she said, her voice sharp and a few pitches too high.
“I can hear you just fine,” I growled. Right now I
wanted to grab her and pull her over my lap and spank that delectable ass of hers for challenging me. I ground my teeth together, my jaw working overtime. Did she know what a dangerous position she was placing herself in?
Probably not, or she wouldn’t be standing there, her hands on her hips, demanding to be controlled.
Chapter Fifty-Three — Eva
Droplets of water fell from his wet hair onto his ripped chest, making me want to jump him and lick the water off his torso. And now he’d turned his back on me and shoved his tight ass in my face while fiddling with the music instead of listening to what I’d come to say.
A fire sprung to life in the sleek steel-and-stone fireplace, instantly warming the space. I looked around the room, curious to learn more about this complex and damaged man. But the apartment seemed to be as sparse and cold as his heart. It could have been on the cover of a fancy magazine; there was absolutely nothing personal about it.
Beautiful, expensive and heartless.
Like Harrison.
“Why did you come here tonight, Eva?” His voice was low and hoarse. “How did you know where I live?” Creases formed between his brows as he frowned, then turned his face away from me.
Hot from the heat of the fire and the blood boiling under my skin, I wiped the sweat from my brow. I was tempted to remove my coat, but I hadn’t come to stay—I just wanted to tell Harrison what I thought of him and then leave, because I wanted to get as far away from him as possible. Plus under the coat I wore a satin chemise and thong only as I’d come straight from my bed. Maybe it wasn’t such a great idea in retrospect, but I’d wanted to tell him face to face what a lowlife I thought he was.
Disgusted for wanting a man that was so cruel and coldhearted, I couldn’t help myself coming here. His partner, Savage, was my best friend’s brother, so getting information on where Harrison lived was easy. The difficult part had been not coming here before tonight.