by Evie Monroe
I parked beside them and went in to the clubhouse.
The first thing I saw was Hart running his hands through his red hair. “Fuck me. Fuck me. Fuck me,” he kept saying, over and over again as he paced the room. Jet was there as well, slumped on a chair, looking equally spooked.
“Dude. Thanks for the invitation, but I’ll pass,” I said, striding in and dropping my shit at the table in front of the room, where I usually sat when I conducted church. “What the fuck’s going on?”
They looked at each other. Then Hart pulled out his laptop. Hart, our tech guy, had that laptop more attached to him than his own ass. He opened it and showed me a picture. I leaned forward, looking close at two men, who appeared to be in heavy discussion. “That’s Bruiser from the Fury.”
He nodded and pointed to the other guy. “That’s Walsh.”
Walsh dealt in stolen arms from overseas. “So they’re buying up weapons.”
Hart nodded. “A lot of weapons from the looks of it. I heard a couple of people online say that Bruiser’s been getting in huge shipments. If those are guns, then they’re prepping for an all-out war.”
Just then, Drake and Nix showed up. I checked my phone. As usual, Zain was late. I paced the floor as Hart filled the other guys in. “So what does this mean?” Jet asked.
“It means just what we said,” Nix grumbled. “That we should’ve wiped ‘em off the face of the fucking earth when we had the chance.”
I held out my hands. “Now hold on. Yeah. But look at it this way. They’re building up their defenses probably because they expect us to go in there and rain hell on them.”
Jet frowned. “They had another choice. They could’ve disbanded.”
I shook my head. “After what happened last month, they still had more members than we did. They’d never just disband. Even without Blaze to lead them.”
“But the point is, they’re gathering strength,” Drake said. “And we’re the first targets they’re gonna go after.”
“No. Now listen. I don’t know Slade like I knew Blaze,” I said, hopping up onto the table and resting my hands on my knees. “But we still don’t know what we’re up against. Maybe Slade’s just out to protect his guys.”
Jet raised a doubtful eyebrow.
“Hell, it’s what I’d do for you. If the Fury was on our asses, I’d make damned sure I’d built up our reserves to make sure they didn’t try anything. That might be all Slade’s trying to do.”
Nix leaned back in his chair. “So what are you proposing? You proposing you meet with him?”
I nodded.
Zain walked in just then, as all four of the other guys were staring at me like I was insane. Zain frowned. “Shit. I missed something big again, didn’t I?”
Drake hung his head. “Our esteemed leader is going to try to make nice with the enemy.”
I shot Zane a hard look. “When I say eight, I mean eight. Not eight o five. Not eight thirty. Eight.” I turned to Drake who looked surprised at my firmness. “Not make nice. But if we can avoid an all-out war, we ought to. I don’t want to lose any of you. I don’t want to put any of you guys in a bloodbath if I don’t have to, got it?”
Nix nodded. “Makes sense.”
Thank fuck I had him on my side. Now the rest of the club would agree. As I slipped off the table, it hit me. I’d have to somehow find a way to communicate with their new president. A guy I barely knew. What I knew of Slade was that he was from overseas and did a lot of travelling. He hadn’t even been at the altercation last month. People called him cocky, smooth, elusive, quiet. Unlike, Blaze, he liked to fly under the radar.
“Hart,” I said. “How do I get in front of him?”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to do something face to face, Cullen,” Hart warned. “He’d insist it be on his turf and it’d be too risky. I’ll get a message to them that you want to have a call.”
“All right. Do it soon. This can’t wait. The sooner we put out these sparks, the sooner we can go back to the way things were,” I said, thinking of Grace.
The way things were? It was funny how people never knew they were in the good old days until after they’d passed. I might never have had truly good days before, but when I thought about those months with Grace, I knew something for sure.
That was as close as I’d ever gotten.
I checked my phone. It was after nine. I called an end to church, told the guys I’d see them later, and strode outside. The sun had already set, and the sea was a void of black as I straddled my bike and sped away from the docks.
I got to the Best Western motel after 9:30 and cursed at the piece of shit it was. A homeless guy wheeled a cart through the parking lot, and a group of gang-bangers were playing rap music at an ear-shattering volume in one of the rooms. I could hear their laughter and whoops over the roar of my bike when I pulled in.
“What the fuck,” I said under my breath as I slid off my bike, eyeing those assholes. How could Grace pick this shithole?
I strained to see the numbers on the doors. All the bottom rooms started with a one. I found an outdoor staircase and climbed to the second floor.
On the landing, I saw a girl sitting alone, her bare knees pulled up to her chest, tangle of hair falling in her face. She was smoking a cigarette. When I got closer, I saw it was Grace. “For the first time ever, I didn’t hear you coming,” she said miserably.
“Hey,” I said. “You shouldn’t be out here.”
“Don’t got many places to go, it seems,” she said softly, taking an uneasy drag of her cigarette. She blew the smoke out in a hard rush.
I walked up so that my boots were nearly touching her bare toes. “Didn’t know you smoked.”
She laughed bitterly. “I don’t. But I really needed something.”
She lifted the pack and offered it to me. I took one, tucking it in the breast pocket of my shirt. The whole building was shaking from the bass of the music playing downstairs. “No wonder. This place is shit.”
She wiped her tired eyes with the back of her hand. Her fingernails were bloodied and chewed to the quick. Her pale skin trembled. “I’m tired. Ella won’t go to sleep. She’s in there right now, crying.”
I listened but couldn’t hear with all the other noise.
“All right.” I reached for her. “You’re coming with me, baby.”
She yanked her arm away. “Like hell. I knew you didn’t like me, but you want us to get shot to death?”
“I called the security company. I’m getting twenty-four-seven monitoring put in tomorrow. No one will be able to get in. I’ll pick up anyone even hanging around the perimeter. You and the kid will be safer there.”
She shook her head. “No, Cullen. You already showed me how much you want us in your house. Did something change?”
Just then, a car backfired. I broke into a crouch, my normal fight response, as Grace eyed me suspiciously. I exhaled and leaned over the railing to see the source of the noise just as whatever party was going on downstairs spilled down into the street. “Yeah. It changed. Word’s been going around about you and the kid. If the Fury find out, they could come after you. That’s why I want you where I can see you.”
She shook her head slowly and rested her forehead on her knees. “Perfect. Just what I need,” she mumbled. “As if I didn’t have enough problems.”
“And I can solve one of them, at least. Let me call you an Uber to get you back to the house. For tonight at least. You know you can’t sleep here. We can talk about it more tomorrow.”
There was a break in the music downstairs. I heard a baby’s cry. She heard it, too, because she bristled. Then she stubbed out her cigarette on the concrete floor, pushed her back against the wall, and slid up to standing. “Fine.”
I opened my phone and ordered the Uber, surprised at how quick she agreed. That told me that stubborn Grace had to be at the end of her rope. “On the way. Get your shit.”
She pushed open the door to the shithole hotel room and I peered
inside. The sliver of light from the open door shone a light on a very red-faced kid with platinum ringlets. Grace lifted her up out of a playpen and said, “Can you help me?”
She went to hand me the kid but I backed away. Hell. Fucking. No.
“She’s not a time bomb,” she said, shooting me an incredulous look. “Fine. Could you get the groceries packed up and I’ll get our bags together?”
I did as she asked, feeling stupid. She was right. It was a kid. My kid. What was I? A coward?
Ten minutes later, everything was loaded into the Uber and it was on the way to my house, carrying Grace and Ella. I followed on my bike, and by ten, we were inside. I flipped on the outside lights and armed the security system as she watched me, a sleepy kid drooping her head on Grace’s shoulder.
“You’re safe here,” I told her.
She pressed her lips together. “Cullen. I don’t know if we’ll ever be safe, anywhere.”
Chapter Ten
Grace
After I got Ella settled into her bed, I tried to sleep. Ella fell asleep right away, but I ended up tossing and turning. When I did finally drop off, I had dreams of gunshots, and people running. Chaos. Ella screaming. Me running with her, trying to keep her safe, but falling, endlessly, into a dark hole with her in my arms.
I woke with a start, enveloped in that sinking feeling I got whenever Cullen would leave to be with his club and not return until much later than he said he would.
I rolled over in bed and looked at the ceiling. Strong morning light slashed through the blinds, painting prison bars above me. The irony of that wasn’t lost on me.
But then I noticed something strange.
It was morning, possibly late morning, and Ella wasn’t making her normal, nonsensical morning conversation with herself.
I cocked a sleepy eye toward her pillow fortress on the wall. Then I cranked my eyes wide open and flew up in bed.
Her makeshift crib was empty.
Wildly, I scanned the room. Her sweet blonde ringlets were nowhere to be found. I scrambled to the side of the bed and looked over. Opened the closet, finding it empty. Peered under the bed. Nothing.
Heart in my throat, I threw open the door and ran downstairs, nearly tripping as I grabbed the handrail and flung myself around it, toward the kitchen.
I smelled bacon at the same time I heard Ella cry out. I slid to a stop on the polished kitchen floor, hardly able to believe my eyes.
Cullen was standing in front of the stove, cradling Ella against his chest with one arm and holding a spatula in the other. Bacon and eggs were sizzling in a frying pan. He put the spatula down, cracked an egg on the side of the counter, and one-handed opened it and let it slink into the pan.
Wait. Cullen knew how to cook?
Ella wasn’t crying in pain. She was smiling, big as ever, and observing the fledgling Gordon Ramsey’s exploits with great interest.
When Ella saw me, she squealed in glee and started to kick her arms and legs in excitement. “Mama!”
“What are you doing?” I asked, rushing in and taking Ella away from the hot stove before she got splattered. My heart was beating double-time from the race downstairs.
“Relax, baby” he crooned in a low, sexy voice. “She and I were just getting to know each other. Making Mommy breakfast and shooting the shi—I mean, crap.”
His eyes swept over me, and it was then I realized I’d fallen asleep in just a camisole and panties, the only clean things I had in my bag. Ella was running out of clean clothes, too. I really needed to do some laundry.
He licked his lips.
I knew that look. Knew that look well. Cullen always had sex on his mind. Always. He was a walking sex machine.
I felt naked. Bare, my nipples poking out.
I used Ella as my shield, holding her close to me and felt her diaper. It was swollen and bulky with pee. It was a good thing Ella never let a wet diaper get her down, but she probably had diaper rash by now. “She could’ve been splattered by grease. And her diaper needs changing.”
He didn’t look at me, just lifted the eggs and two slices of perfectly crisp bacon onto a plate with the spatula and said, “I think the words you were searching for are thank you.”
I gave him a sour look. “For nearly killing her?”
“Relax. She was screaming. You were sleeping. I figured you needed your rest.”
All right, all right. I was being too hard on him. Underneath all that bravado and motor oil, there was a good heart. He didn’t know any better. And for once, he was thinking of someone other than himself. But after everything he was willing to put me and Ella through as a member of the Cobras, I wasn’t about to let him get away so easily.
He set the plate down on the table and pointed at the chair. “Eat.”
Once again, back to the dog commands. I thought of about a hundred not-so-nice comebacks for that, but I bit my tongue and went back upstairs to change Ella.
And of course, get changed myself. I slipped into a not-so-dirty pair of cut-offs and threw a hoodie on over my camisole.
When I came back, I felt a little more relaxed. In control.
Until I saw him sitting there, at the kitchen table, bare-chested and in his backwards base-ball cap, shoveling eggs into his mouth. He had a pile of mail in front of him and was reading a piece of it, oblivious to me gawking at him, thank God.
How was it possible or fair that he looked hotter, every day?
“Did Ella eat?” I asked him dubiously, sitting in front of my plate and setting her down on my lap.
“Banana,” he said with a nod. “Didn’t know what else you gave her.”
I saw that her sippy cup had been filled with fresh milk. She reached for it and started to suck on the mouthpiece happily. I broke off a piece of bacon and shoved it in my mouth.
It was divine.
I finished off my breakfast in record time. You’d think I’d never eaten before in my life, for the way I devoured it. But no, it was just that good.
“I thought you didn’t wake up until after noon,” I said to him.
He shrugged. “Told you. The security people came to start the installation. We’re gonna make this place a fortress, just you watch. A regular Alamo.”
“Oh?” I looked around. I hadn’t noticed that anything was different. “And that’s going to make Ella and me safe?”
He nodded. “That and my men.”
“Your men?” My skin crawled. Those Goddamn Cobras, who he could never forget for a second. “When are you going to see that they’re the ones who got you into this situation of needing added security in the first place?”
He set down the piece of mail he was looking at and gave me a hard glare. “Grace. Maybe it was touch and go before. But I’m president now. They ain’t gonna let anything happen to me or my people. That includes you. You’re safer than the President of the fucking United States here. Okay?”
“I don’t understand. The Fury will be after me just because I know you? They hate you that much?”
“I don’t know what they’ll do.”
“So anyone who knows you is in trouble? What about Aria?”
“She moved to New York a year ago with her boyfriend.”
I looked at Ella and inhaled sharply. “This isn’t the kind of life I want for Ella. Gunfights? Feuds with other bikers? Not knowing whether her daddy’s going to come home from one day to the next? It’s not good.”
He exhaled. “All right. Then I won’t get too close to her. Is that what you want?”
Ella was gazing at him, her eyes drooping closed. It was time for her morning nap, I guessed, but the way she was looking at him? He’d already gotten too close. The fortress and security cameras outside could only do so much. I needed to put a wall around our hearts, too.
I’d been there. I feared that kind of damage could be a lot more severe.
“Yes,” I said. “That’s what I want.”
It didn’t seem to break his heart. He bit down on a piece of
toast and started to read his mail again. I loaded my dishes into the dishwasher and settled Ella down for her nap. When I stepped out of the guest room, I heard a shower running somewhere.
As I walked to the stairs, I heard the shower turn off. I noticed the door to his bedroom was open, for the first time. I peered in and saw a massive, dark mahogany four-poster bed, like something royalty would have, covered in a pile of rumpled blood red sheets.
I wondered how many women he’d entertained between those sheets.
As I was about to move away, the door to the master bathroom opened, and he slipped out, wearing nothing but the tiniest of towels, wrapped dangerously around his hips.
I’d always known that Cullen was glorious in the body department. Even two years ago, he had the six-pack, the bulging pectorals and corded muscles on his arms. The snake tattoo on his stomach was his first tattoo, he’d gotten it on a dare when he was eighteen. But now? He was covered in the most delicious ink. Everywhere. And everything just seemed more chiseled. More cut. More tanned. More man. He was six feet of pure, hard, inked beauty.
I froze when he caught sight of me. A thin, devilish smile spread over his lips. “See something you like, baby?”
I opened my mouth to say no, but nothing came out. Because HELL YES. All of it.
Still grinning, he reached to his hip, loosened the towel, and let it fall.
“How ‘bout now?”
His cock. Oh, my God, he had an amazing cock. And it was there, only semi-hard but hanging proudly between his legs, saying “here I am!” like it knew it was something special.
And yes. I wanted it.
Even more now.
So much more now. Warning bells went off, but I ignored them.
I felt wetness between my legs and my salivary glands kicking in at the same time. An aching need, low in my abdomen, gripped me.
He knew it, the cocky bastard. He’d always had a shit-ton of confidence, but now as Cobras President and owner of the nicest house in Aveline Bay, he was even worse. He was just taunting me.