by Warren, Rie
The memories flooded back. Quintessa. Against all odds, I’d pursued her. It wasn’t the time or the place to have feelings or to give in to the sway of emotions. She was sweet as summer rain, soft as silk, and still a virgin when she’d first given herself to me many months into my trial by fire at Vicente’s hands.
I’d believed I’d save her. Maybe even marry her.
But the first raid at the gun warehouse had gone bad. Vicente had suspected my dual nature, and he’d had my entire team killed. Only Walker had saved me from certain death.
“That night when we got the guns out from under your gringo nose and killed your unit, Quintessa was hysterical when you didn’t return with me. I didn’t tell her who you really were.” He took another slow sip, watching to see if my expression changed from the usual mask of indifference. “She loved you. I didn’t want to break her heart more.”
His thin lips curled in a sneer. “Didn’t expect you to have cock big enough to make a second try that night. Underestimated you.”
“It was my last chance. Couldn’t let twelve months of work go down the drain.”
“Si. You always were smart. That’s why I like you. You knew we’d still have the guns at the club, and the compound was on lockdown—we wouldn’t have a chance to move them until the next night.”
Between patching each other up and getting our heads back together, Walker and I had quickly assembled a small secondary unit from operatives in the area. We’d made it inside the Outlaw compound undetected. Every one of us was a trained assassin, lethal with or without weapons. We’d taken out the threats in utter silence until Quintessa saw me and shouted my name.
She ran toward me, trying to get to me, not knowing I’d been working against the MC the whole time. I could still see it all.
The bullets puncturing her body. Her, caught in the crossfire. Vicente bellowing, already thrown down to the ground. Walker pushing his face to the floor, cuffing his hands behind his back. And Quintessa . . .
Accidentally gunned down by another MC member, Servando, she kept walking toward me dreamlike, nightmare-like, as shouts had echoed in my earpiece and the room lit up with endless gunfire.
Her dress dripping with red blood, the red of her lips, she’d fallen into my arms. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t stand up. I hadn’t thought this would happen. I held her against me as I dropped to the floor. Blood made my fingers sticky as I stroked her face and begged her to hold on, to life, to me.
Quintessa died with a small gasp, leaving her lifeless in my arms.
My head snapped up. “Servando deserved every knife blow.”
Vicente would get exactly the same if he so much as harmed a hair on Jessica’s head.
“You didn’t stop with killing him. You butchered him.” Vicente had infected me with his sick ugliness secreted away under the slick clothes and well-groomed features. Or maybe I’d always been sick inside.
I had butchered Servando until his intestines rolled into my hands and Walker dragged me off the gruesome remains.
My unit had stared at me, wariness in their stiff stances while the last standing members of Tampa Bay Outlaws MC were escorted to the armored vans outside. Vicente, bereaved of his sister, was the biggest prize.
He’d cut the deal to earn his freedom and come to find me.
He didn’t smile or sneer or smirk, he merely slid deeper into the sofa. “You disappeared. The Feds did the rest of the work, burying my club. I buried Quintessa. I did.”
I wouldn’t tell him I hadn’t loved Quintessa the same way I loved Jessica—with truth and honesty and absolute hope I could be better. That I deserved more.
“I am sorry for your loss.” I bowed my head toward him.
“And I yours, for selling your soul for what you believe ees American justice.”
For the next hour we played verbal warfare. Tequila was shot back, and we shared memories, even brotherhood, and reminiscence, always balanced on the straight blade of a lethal sword. I had been his friend, his Segundo, his sister’s cariño . . . I had killed for the man and danced the salsa of death. I’d been his confidante and committed the dirtiest deeds in his name to secure my place in Outlaws and by his side. In order to take him down.
And I had enjoyed some of it—my primal animal nature surfacing.
I was a different person now.
I looked up with clear eyes from the filmy liquid spinning in my glass.
Vicente tufted the groomed black mustache between his fingertips, aware of the absolute change of my attitude.
“The night Quintessa died in your arms, that was when you finally chose you were good.”
“Yes.” I downed the last dregs of tequila. “What do you want from me?”
I knew him. This wasn’t just old friends, new enemies, catching up and knocking back shots.
“What do you want so I can keep my family safe from you?”
“Loyalty. Like I say before.”
I scoffed, getting ready to rise, but he continued.
“Your complete willing loyalty. I want you to walk away from everything you’ve built here, everything you have, your son, your lover, your life.” His lips twitched. “Just like I had to because of you.”
“That’s a fucking high price you ask.” My heart already felt the loss, knocking around in my chest.
He gripped the back of my neck. “Come home, Cazador. I asked you here to tell you to come home with us where you belong. You don’t have to be ashamed by who you are, what you do, what makes you whole.”
Funny. Putting a hole in another person’s body with my gun had only left me high for a few hours then hollowed out for months. That was what Vicente offered . . . a long dark fall into Hell.
“If I don’t?”
“I will kill you.” There was no inflection to his voice and no expression on his face.
I had expected nothing less.
Gaining my feet, I shook his hand. “How long do you give me to decide?”
“A week to get your gringo shit in order. Then you’re mine for life. Fair trade for Jack Angelo and Jessica Barnes, si?”
“Ten days. I want ten days.”
He replied with a faint nod of his head.
I turned to him and bowed from my waist. “I’ll be in touch, compadre.”
Chapter Thirteen
I RACED INTO MY house, digging out the embedded ear-wire.
“So, you and Quintessa. I never knew it went quite that deep.” Walker dogged my heels as I sprinted up the stairs.
I stopped on the landing, spinning toward him. “You still don’t have a fucking clue. This isn’t about Quintessa for me, you fuck. It’s about Jessica.”
Pent up with rage from Vicente’s demands and scared fucking shitless about Jack and Jessica, I hit the red line and drew my hand back, primed and ready and deadly as any gun.
Walker ducked from my fist, and I splintered plaster instead of his face.
“I see why Valderas hates you now.”
“That’s not it. The problem is he respects me. He wants me back. He thinks he can turn me into the man I never wanted to be,” I snarled.
Shoving Walker away from me, I made for the shower. The past rose up around me. The ghosts of those I’d killed and those who’d died because of me no longer confined to the night terrors of my sleep. The haunting infected me. A cold sweat broke out on my face. My muscles quivered. My stomach rolled like the ocean.
I stood motionless in the shower hoping the hot water pouring over me washed away some of my sins. When I could move without feeling like I’d puke up on the shower floor, I lathered every inch of my body, my face, my hair. I rinsed clean and turned off the shower with resignation. It would take more than soap and water to cleanse me. I needed Jessica.
Pounding down stairs after I dressed, I left the house. Walker lounged against the porch railing, smoking a cigarette.
“He wasn’t shitting when he said he’d kill you, you know.” He aimed the glowing tip of the cigarette at me.
“Yeah. Probably.” Stopping beside him, I dragged in a deep breath of the cold night air, and it expanded my lungs.
“You don’t care?” he asked after a deep drag.
“I care too much.” Gripping the railing, I turned my head in his direction. “Have you ever loved a woman?”
“Can’t say as I’ve had the honor,” Walker answered, regarding me curiously as if I’d suddenly become someone other than the man he’d only ever known as Ghost.
“It fills your spirit with sunshine. But I’m not talking about Quintessa—it was never her. It’s Jessica. If I can have a little more time with her, then die keeping her and Jack safe, I will.” I stared out at the midnight dome of the sky, a color reflective of Jessica’s eyes. “That’s all I want.”
“If he goes after them too?”
“That’s why you’re here.”
“Why do you trust me, Kemosabe?”
Lit by the porch lights, Walker stood tall, staunch, and strong. A face of unyielding angles and his will was just as unbending.
“Because you’ve been by my side through it all. Because you are my brother, no matter what.”
He flicked his cigarette to the floor and stomped it out with his boot. “We can call in some favors. Get some other guys down here to help.”
I’d already considered that option. “Don’t think so. I don’t want any more people getting hurt because of me. Not like last time.”
“Wasn’t your fault, Hunter.”
“Tell that to my therapist.”
“What do you plan on doing? Just so I can be prepared.”
“Go down guns blazing or give myself up? Haven’t decided.” My gut roiled. Try to kill Vicente one more fucking time? Agree to join him and leave my life forever—Jessica, Jack, and any thoughts of freedom?
To keep them from harm’s way.
“I got your six, whatever happens.” He gripped my hand in a hard clasp, giving me his word with that one gesture.
****
The wounds of my past were still raw, but they’d started to heal because of Jessica. I hadn’t realized it before, but she was my savior, undeserving as I was. And I would be hers one way or the other.
I let myself silently into her house and slipped stealthily upstairs.
Vicente would never lay a hand on my woman. I’d destroy him first. My thoughts ping-ponged back and forth between finding a way to live this life and handing myself in to him.
I undressed in the near dark beside Jessica’s bed. The small bedside lamp illuminated her face, relaxed and peaceful in sleep. She was so breathtakingly beautiful my breath caught in my throat. I settled under the covers and pulled her against me.
“I love you now and forever.” I kissed her neck.
She snuggled closer—soft, naked, and inviting. “Mm. Always so warm, Hunter.”
“I didn’t mean to wake you.” Shifting the long sable curls from her face, I pressed a kiss to her lips.
“You came home to me.”
“So long as you’ll have me.” I managed the words through the tightness in my throat, knowing I lied, knowing it wasn’t true. It couldn’t be no matter how much I wanted it.
“Now and forever?”
“You heard that.” I groaned, hiding my face behind my forearm. I shouldn’t have said it out loud but the past was rushing up to me, almost outpacing me, and everything I felt for her became stronger and more powerful than ever before.
Her hand skimmed down my chest to my stomach then back again, sifting through the dark chest hair. When her palm landed on my deeply pounding heart, I lifted my arm to look at her.
“I heard that.” Her smile was as soft as her body as she laid herself over me.
“God, how I want you.” I was desperate to have her, all of her. I needed the absolution of her body to chase away the demons of death.
There was the quiet rustle of a condom wrapper and the sure slip of her fingers as she rolled it down my cock. With a slow shimmy, she seated me inside. Her hips swiveled on the long slow descent to my lap until her ass rested against my thighs, her hands on my chest. Her hair surrounded us, a cloudy curtain of silky curls, and everything disappeared except for her and me.
Jessica dragged the covers to her waist, baring her breasts to my touch and my tongue and my lips. She rode me like a woman who knew just what she wanted, who would take exactly what she needed. I was more than willing to give myself over to her in the only way I could now that my time was borrowed.
She tossed her head back and arched, moaning in a breathy voice. My cock was heavy, huge, and harder than ever, drilling up into her as I held her hips. She sped down onto me. My abs tightened. Her hips rolled. My legs straightened and my toes curled as a burning bolt of fire licked the base of my shaft. She reached back to cup and roll my balls, parting the seam between my sac, lifting and feeling me up.
I started to sweat. To swear and shake. She shimmered above me, her head thrown back, her lip caught between her teeth, her face a mask of desire. With a howl, I slammed her down onto me, burying myself inside her as the rhythm of our lovemaking overcame despair and loneliness and hopelessness.
Shuddering as I came, I held onto that one impossible moment of perfection, sealing it inside my heart. I held onto Jessica, pulling her against me as if I could hold her forever and no one would force us apart. And I watched her in orgasm—the shimmering shiver of her body, the wide-open expression in her face, the gasping cry of my name leaving her lips as the climax bore down on her.
‘Beautiful,” I whispered. “So beautiful.” I stroked her until her trembling ceased and she stilled completely on top of me.
“You know, you’ve never mentioned family, besides Jack.” Jessica’s hand on my chest triggered chills as much as her words knifed into me.
“Not much more to say.” I shrugged, carefully hiding any telltale twitch of emotion.
“So you’re like Superman, and you were just catapulted to earth, fully formed, to do good for all humankind?”
I sniggered, scooping her closer to me. “And you’re my kind of kryptonite, sweetheart.”
She brushed the hair off my brow, contemplating me. “I don’t see a cape, but I do see lots of scars, Hunter. And they’re not just on the outside.” She touched pale bullet wound on my chest and skimmed her lips over a scattered array of gunshot leftovers on my stomach.
I drew her hand to my lips, kissing her palm. “I . . .” I struggled for words. “I don’t talk about it because it’s not anything good.”
“I’d like to know more about you, the good, the bad, the ugly.” She bent her head to my chest, and all those tumbling waves of hair filled my senses with everything clean. “Not that you’re ugly, far from it. You’re the most gorgeous man, baby. You’re the most honorable.” She kissed the tip of my nose, grousing, “And the most secretive.”
Inhaling deeply, I pushed the next words out of my throat before they got stuck there. “I don’t remember much of anything before the orphanage in Boston. The whole Sisters of Mercy thing, you know? I was just three when someone left me there, presumably my mother. Not exactly fairytale fodder or a superhero story, sweetheart.”
Jessica gasped quietly and her hand stilled its soothing motions for a moment. “Oh, Hunter. You don’t remember anything at all?”
“My mom, sometimes. Just her voice, or flashes of her face. Indistinct. Couldn’t say what she looked like, to tell the truth.” To tell the truth. Something I was so rarely able to do. “I vowed the second Jack was born he’d always remember me.”
Jessica laced her fingers through mine and kept her head tucked against my neck. Her moist breath on my neck was a comfort.
“Don’t know anything about my dad. And Angelo was the name they gave me at the orphanage. Italian, that’s about all I can say for sure about my parentage.”
“Could you find out now? Are the records available?”
I shrugged with a twisted sort of smile I was glad she didn’t see. “Don�
��t know. I’ve let the past go. It’s not anyplace I want to revisit. I don’t need that. ”
They didn’t refer to orphanages as the school of hard knocks for nothing. Boys figured out early on which side they played for. The good or the bad. Me? I’d walked the line, as I still did.
“I used to steal shit. Got to be a pretty good petty thief and pickpocket. Gave crap to the bigger, older boys to keep them off my back. Got bigger myself. Protected the little kids, the weaker ones from the bullies. I couldn’t wait to get out of that fucking place.”
She pressed a gentle kiss to my neck, shaking her head.
“I wanted to be better. Do something bigger. Didn’t want respect so much as to be left alone, invisible.” I laughed under my breath. Invisible. Fitting. That was exactly what I had become. At least the orphanage had toughened me up, mentally and physically. Taught me emotions were for pussies. Made me excellent material for my future career.
Pulling Jessica’s hand to my lips, I kissed her palm and held it against my face. “Angelo though, sometimes even that feels like just another identity I adopted. For a long time I didn’t realize who I was or what I wanted.”
“Now you do?” she asked, stroking my face and neck.
I rolled to my side and lifted her chin. “You. Jack. A life I can live without endangering those I love and a job I can do openly and be proud of.”
Jessica looked up, doe-like eyes bright with unshed tears and her grip firm in mine. “Well, I see you now, and I’m proud of you.”
“That’s because you’re stubborn.” I placed a smiling kiss on her lips, touching her softly with the tip of my tongue.
“Damn right,” she murmured against my mouth.
When Jessica relaxed beside me, I watched her through half-lowered lids. She idly played with the muscles of my pecs and the ripples of my abs as goose bumps raced across my skin from her exploring fingertips. I wound strands of her hair between my fingers, tugging the locks when she tweaked my nipple so hard I hissed. It only made her laugh with a low gurgle.