by Nina Levine
“Fuck,” he muttered, his chest rising and falling with hard thuds.
Evie bolted forward in the bed, scrambling in her haste to get to him. “Is Kick—” The words tore from her, cutting off abruptly as if she didn’t know which word to use next.
My soul twisted with an ache I’d never rid myself of at the pain I heard in her voice. That kind of agony would always touch me regardless of my efforts to maintain immunity.
Nitro faltered and his eyes came to mine. Searching. Needing. Unsure. He shoved his fingers through his hair as he shifted his gaze back to Evie. “He’s with the doc.”
I left the bed. Looking up at Nitro, I said, “Evie will be the first to know when there’s news, right?” I wanted him to reassure her of that and hoped he would.
He didn’t let me down. “Yeah.”
Evie, however, seemed anything but convinced. “No… I need to see him now.” She was confused. Disbelieving. Before either of us could stop her, she ran from the room.
“Christ!” Nitro turned to go after her, but I grabbed hold of his wrist to stop him.
“Let her go. She needs to see for herself.”
He frowned. “There’s nothing to see. The doctor is still working on him.”
I nodded. “Yes, and she needs to see and hear that from King.”
He moved past me to the bed, sitting on the end of it. His shoulders hunched and he lowered his chin to his chest. He remained silent until I closed the door behind me. Looking up, he said, “Thanks for looking out for Evie.”
I sat next to him. I wasn’t sure why except that for the first time since I’d met him, he seemed like he needed someone. Even if it was just to sit with him. I stole a glance at his face. It was hard to find skin under all the dried blood. “I take it the other guy lost.”
He held my gaze for a long time before answering me. God, how I wondered what thoughts ran through Nitro’s mind. It felt like he either ran from them or got lost in them, but I wasn’t convinced he was often comfortable with them. Something we had in common. “That depends on your definition of winning.”
I didn’t need him to spell it out for me. And I didn’t push him for more. Instead, I walked into the bathroom. Locating a clean washer in the drawer, I wet it and walked back out to him. Standing in between his legs, I began the task of cleaning up his face.
This was something I knew well. My brother had often turned up on my doorstep in this state. Caring for him had always been my responsibility. How could it not be when his journey in life had been dictated by my own?
Nitro hissed when I accidentally pressed too hard on his cheek. His hand landed on mine and he halted my progress. “I can do this myself.”
I pulled my hand away from his face. “Yeah, you can, but I’m doing it, so just let me.”
“Always arguing with me,” he murmured, allowing me to go on.
I worked in silence and when I’d cleaned the blood from his face, I said, “I’m going to get some ice for your face. Wait here.”
I hurried down to the bar because I figured he had work to get back to and no time to waste. Kree loaded me up with ice and a towel to wrap it in. When I arrived back in his room, he was in the shower. He didn’t take longer than a few minutes and when he exited the bathroom wearing only a towel around his waist, I sucked in a breath at the magnificence of his body.
Nitro was a powerhouse of hard muscle that went hand-in-hand with his fearless warrior instincts. Standing before me, almost naked, his masculinity caught me off guard and a rush of desire hit me. My thoughts stalled and I momentarily forgot what I was doing. All I could focus on was the throbbing need deep in my core. A new hum filled my entire being, unlike anything I’d ever felt before.
Damn.
Shit.
No.
“You got ice?” His deep voice snapped me from my hypnosis.
“Ah… yeah,” I mumbled, shoving the towel with the ice in it at him, almost dropping it as I did so.
He frowned, his eyes searching mine. “You good, Vegas?”
Fuck, no, I wasn’t.
I was fucked.
Completely.
I nodded, swallowing hard. “I’m good.”
I was so far from good.
I wanted something I didn’t want to want.
I wanted him.
How the hell did my world turn in such a short space of time? What the fuck triggered that? Because whatever it was, I needed to un-trigger it.
He took the ice from me and turned to head back into the bathroom, grabbing clothes on the way. I was helpless to do anything but watch him walk away. My eyes stayed glued to the powerful muscles that built his back. And that ass. God, that ass. Even covered in a towel it was hard not to stare at.
I was so engrossed in his back and ass that he caught me off guard again when he dropped the towel and dressed without closing the bathroom door.
Fuck it, I was out. I yanked the bedroom door open and left as fast as I could. I needed to find a quiet corner and gather my thoughts. I needed to wipe everything that had just happened from my memory. Somehow, though, I suspected Nitro was not a man to ever be wiped from a woman’s memory.
19
Nitro
“The Way It Goes” by Keaton Simons
“You’re fucking kidding me!” I stared at King in shock, waiting for his reply. It was nearly midnight and I was exhausted after the shit we’d been through, but what he’d just told us had sure as fuck drawn my attention.
Weariness lined King’s face; he was feeling it as much as anyone, maybe more so. “I’m not,” he said. Although he didn’t give me the answer I wanted, I heard the misgiving in his voice. “Bronze is under pressure to clean this mess up and he doesn’t think he can keep us out of it much longer if we continue the way we have been. He wants us to lay low for a while and let the dust settle. That shit Silver Hell pulled today didn’t help.”
“So,” Devil cut in, “any idea how long we have to back off for?”
“Not to mention, how the fuck does he expect us to not retaliate when Silver Hell come at us again?” Hyde said, a scowl on his face. “Because sure as shit they’re going to.”
King held his hand up signalling he wanted the floor. “The list of potential charges he rattled off is enough for me to pay attention. I’m going to call a truce—”
The room erupted in chaos as he made his announcement. None of us wanted a truce; we wanted to bury the motherfuckers.
“Enough!” King roared, slamming his hand down on the table in front of him. “Let me fucking finish!” When he had everyone’s attention again, his eyes glittered with the crazy he was known for and he continued, “The truce won’t be forever. And we’ll use the time to make plans. No one kills a Storm member and gets away with it. I fucking promise you that.”
With that, he stood and ended the meeting before leaving the room. I knew he was heading back to see the doctor about Kick. I also knew he wouldn’t sleep until he knew Kick was going to pull through. That was King—loyal to his men until the very end.
* * *
Tatum’s eyes met mine as soon as I entered the bar after I left the meeting. She looked away almost as fast as she looked at me.
I pulled up a stool next to her at the bar a moment later and jerked my chin at the woman Kick had found to replace Brittany. Kree Stone. From what I’d heard, she’d kept the bar running with no problems the last couple of days.
“What can I get you?” she asked as she drew close. I didn’t miss the frown she sent Tatum’s way before giving her attention to me.
I ordered a beer and once she left us, I said to Tatum, “Something bothering you, Vegas?”
She’d left me without a word earlier. That was after she made it clear she wanted to clean up my face. Fucking confusing. I had no clue what was on her mind and I had no interest in dealing with female issues that night, but I also didn’t need shit interfering with club business. If there was a problem, I wanted to know about it for that reason on
ly.
She faced me. “I’m just trying to get through this, Nitro, and right now I don’t feel like talking.”
I swallowed some beer. “That makes two of us, but I need to know if you’ve changed your mind about staying here.”
The confusion she looked at me with matched my own. “Why would I have done that?”
“Because there’s a lot of shit happening around here. And you seemed to be taking it okay until you walked out on me this afternoon. You’ve gone from wanting to clean my face to not wanting to look at me or talk to me. I don’t know what the fuck happened, and I don’t really care except if whatever it was causes you to call Billy and screw up the shit we’ve got going on.”
She pushed off her stool and picked up her phone. “I’m not going to screw anything up. And fuck you. Just when I start thinking you’ve got something here”—she jabbed at my chest—“you prove me wrong.” With one last filthy glare, she stalked away from me. If I thought I was confused before, I was at a fucking loss after that outburst.
I threw back some more beer. “Fucking women,” I muttered as I raked my fingers through my hair.
“I see you fucked that up.”
Jerking my head up, I found Kree watching me. “Fucked what up?” I demanded.
“You were an asshole to her just now.”
I gripped the beer bottle tighter. “Most women would tell you that’s my specialty, but I don’t see how I fucked anything up because there was nothing to fuck up.”
Her mouth spread out into a small smile as she shook her head. “Clueless too, I see.” She rested her elbows on the bar. “I’ll give you a tip—when you want to sleep with a woman, you should never tell them you don’t care about something that’s on their mind. It makes their vagina snap closed.”
My shoulders tensed. “Let me give you a tip, Kree. Stay the fuck out of my business if you want to keep this job. And for the record, I might have wanted to fuck Tatum, but pussy is easy to come by. And when it comes without fucking baggage it’s even better.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. Sure, travelling without baggage seems easier, but when all is said and done, it’s what’s in the baggage that makes the trip sweeter.”
I drank the rest of my beer and shoved the empty bottle her way before sliding off the stool. Without another word, I stalked out of the bar. I didn’t need another woman getting in my face that night. Tatum was enough of a fucking handful to be dealing with.
* * *
The next morning, I woke before sunrise after only a few hours sleep. Renee was fast asleep but Tatum was nowhere to be seen. I dressed and went in search of her.
She sat outside, wrapped in a blanket, on the wooden bench I often sat at myself when I was seeking solitude. The first rays of light cracked through the sky as I stepped through the front door of the clubhouse, illuminating her face as she stared out into nothing. She turned to me as I approached, the hard set of her jaw from last night gone.
“It’s cold. You should get something warmer on,” she said, surprising me. Always surprising me. I’d expected another tongue-lashing, not more care from her.
She was right, it was cold, but my jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt were enough for me. I didn’t tend to feel the cold too much.
I sat next to her. “You sleep okay?”
She stared at me for a long moment before sighing. “Do you really care?”
I scrubbed my hand over my face. “Fuck, Tatum, I’m not a complete bastard. I know you think I am, but—”
Her hand moved over my arm and her fingers curled around my wrist. “I don’t think you are, but you sure make it hard for people to think otherwise.”
My gaze was glued to her hand wrapped around my wrist. Her touch heated my skin like no other woman’s ever had before. The desire to fuck her took hostage of my mind. And on top of that, there was something else. Something I’d never experienced before. A desire to take her into my arms and just be with her. The idea of simply holding her, even if I wasn’t inside her, took hold like a needy fucking child.
Jesus, I was losing my shit. Even my breathing was under siege. Breaths forced their way from me in choppy waves. I stood, forcing her to let me go. “I’m hoping to get you home today or tomorrow. We should have things settled soon so it’ll be safe for you to be home.” I said, leaving the rest of our conversation unspoken.
She blinked. It was her only reaction to my swift change of direction. Thankfully, she moved right along with me. “How’s Kick?”
I gripped the back of my neck, massaging the kinks out. “I’m about to check on him. Doc was hopeful he’d pull through the night, but it was touch and go for a bit there.”
“So you guys have a doctor on call who comes here rather than you going to him?”
I nodded. “Yeah, it’s better that way.”
“I bet,” she muttered, her words full of acid.
I wasn’t a fucking mind reader so I had no understanding of why she switched her inner bitch on all of a sudden. My irritation at whatever the hell was happening between us flared into anger. “You bet? You have no fucking clue who we are or what we stand for, so don’t come here and throw your opinions at me.”
Her eyes widened and she stood in such a hurry and came at me with such force that she nearly knocked me over. I didn’t see her hand coming until it was too late. She slapped my face and spat out, “That was for all the asshole things you’ve said to me! And maybe you’ll recall that I didn’t choose to come here. And as far as me giving you my opinions… get the fuck used to it, because I keep my mouth closed for no one.”
As she strode back inside, I tried to push the realisation away that I’d checked on Tatum before Kick. I really was losing my shit.
* * *
“Kick’s doing better,” King said to me later that afternoon. “Doc’s hopeful.”
We stood out the back of the clubhouse, the cold wind whipping around us. Winter this year had been a bitch with unusually high winds and heavy rain, and that day hadn’t been any different.
I shoved my hands into my pockets. “Evie’s doing okay? The baby?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I had the doc check her out, too, and she’s fine.”
“Good.”
“I’m meeting with Dragon tonight.”
“And?” I understood the need to call a temporary truce, but I didn’t like it. That was why King would always make a better president than me. I would have led Storm right into hell because of my need to seek revenge. There would have been no coming back if I was in charge.
“I’ll take Hyde and some of the boys with me while you and Devil watch over things here. I’ll call you once it’s done.” He stopped for a beat, his eyes boring into mine. “If that call never comes, you need to see this through.”
Fuck.
“That’s not a scenario we ever wanna see around here, King. Take me and leave Hyde. He can see shit through if needed, but you never want to leave that up to me.”
Determination lit his eyes as he shook his head. “No,” he said with force. “Hyde’s not in the right place mentally to do it at the moment. You are.”
I sucked in a breath. “I don’t know what’s going on with Hyde, but I’m telling you, honest as fuck, that I’d take everyone down with me if I had to lead the club out of this shit. There would be no club left.”
The determination in his eyes glittered and morphed to crazy. “I’m counting on it, Nitro. If this goes south today, I want you to deliver a level of pain they’ve never known.” His face twisted with hate. “I want you to rip their fucking hearts from their bodies and burn their club to the ground.”
* * *
I sat at a table in the corner of the clubhouse bar alone that night, waiting for King’s call. The mood in the bar was sombre. We all knew what hinged on the meeting with Silver Hell, although no one besides Devil knew of King’s orders for what was to go down if he was unsuccessful. That shit had fucked with my mind since he’d issued the directive. I was a so
ldier, not a fucking leader. I’d been indoctrinated in the art of war from a young age and had always known my place as a soldier. I served. I carried out orders. I got shit done. What I didn’t do was command, so that call from King needed to come.
Tatum entered the bar with Evie and took a table on the other side of the room. My presence remained unknown so I was able to observe her freely. She’d stayed out of my way all day. In fact, I hadn’t seen her since she’d slapped me that morning. That didn’t mean she was far from my mind. On the contrary, she’d fucking filled it nearly all day.
I couldn’t get the night she’d slept in my arms out of my head. Or pretty much anything since that night. Tatum was broken and I found myself wondering who did that to her. I knew a lot about her, yet I knew nothing important. Someone somewhere had shattered her, and she’d built walls of steel around her heart. Her mood altered so often I struggled to keep up. The fact I tried to keep up pissed me off.
“Nitro, you need to come and sort Dustin out.”
Renee stared down at me. She’d had a hard few days at the clubhouse, hating the confinement. Most of her time had been spent in my room working on school assignments. Standing, I said, “What’s he done?”
A tired sigh escaped her lips. “What do you think he’s done? The usual.”
“Jesus,” I muttered.
“It’s okay, he hasn’t taken it too far yet, but I can tell the woman has had enough of him. I came to you before it got out of hand.” Thank fuck. The last thing I needed to be dealing with was another of Dustin’s screw-ups.
I followed Renee, stealing one last glance at Tatum. Up closer, I could see that her lips were pressed together in a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. She watched Evie talk, but I wasn’t convinced she heard her.
I caught her attention as we moved past her. Our gazes locked. She didn’t smile, but she did sit up straight in her seat and turn her head to track my movements. She bit her bottom lip and her chest rose as she took a deep breath.