RIDING DIRTY (Steel Titans MC Book 4)

by Franca Storm

  With that, she turned on her heel and sauntered away down the hall.

  “Hey! Hold up, woman! Where’s my room at?” I called after her.

  “Seeing as though you seem to know everything, you figure it out!” she yelled back.

  I growled under my breath, and heard a door slam in the next second, making it clear she was done with me for the night.

  Fucking devil woman!

  So much for keeping the peace.

  The woman didn’t know the meaning of the word, didn’t have no clue when or how to back down. She was a self-righteous, ball-busting know-it-all. A real pull-no-punches hell bitch.

  Staying here was gonna be a hell of a thing.

  7

  ~Willa~

  THUD. THUD. THUD

  Groggily, I reached out in the dark and grabbed my cell off the bedside table. Turning it on, I eyed the clock and growled to myself. Three in the morning. Was he fucking serious?

  I knew exactly what those sounds were and where they were coming from.

  When I’d acquired this place a few years back, I’d set up a home gym down in the basement. This was a safehouse, so it meant that if I had to come here, there was some kind of threat coming at me. It meant I was at war. And that required constant training to make sure I stayed at my best, especially if I was forced to stand still and go into hiding for a while. I couldn’t afford to get sloppy and be out of practice. That was the time to step everything up and ensure I was at my best.

  With a grunt of annoyance, I climbed out of bed and stormed to the bedroom door. I snatched my robe off the hook on the back of the door on my way out and slipped it on as I made my way down the hall.

  I made a sharp turn that led to the top of the basement stairs, then I stomped down them.

  The moment I reached the bottom and looked through the open basement doorway, the sight before me caught me off guard and had me pulling up short.

  Holy hell.

  Ink and flesh straining, morphing, and twisting with rapid-fire movements.

  Skin glistening with a sheen of sweat.

  Muscles bunching, flexing and rippling.

  Fists powering into the bag with unchecked ferocity.

  Jabbing, ducking, weaving.

  Slade was in the battle of his life.

  Preparing for enemies that were all too real.

  Fighting for his life, fighting for the freedom so long denied him.

  His truth was all over him, his face, his every movement.

  It hit me in the gut.

  Raw.

  Brutal.

  Dark.

  Pained.

  The grief and regret.

  He was beautifully broken.

  And it made him incredibly dangerous.

  It was because it called to the same thing I recognized in myself.

  And in that moment, I desperately wanted to help to put him back together. I wanted us to put each other back together.

  “You waiting on an invitation?”

  His booming, gritty voice jolted me from my thoughts, that sentiment that had gripped me fading bit by bit into the ozone as I managed to get a hold of myself. It was a weakness I couldn’t afford. Ever. I shook the remnants of it off as I made my way down the remaining steps to the basement floor.

  Folding my arms across my chest, I glared hard at him. “It’s three in the morning.”

  He froze mid-punch. “I woke you, yeah?” Regret plagued his features as he turned to me. “Sorry, darlin'.”

  He was? I’d suspected that he’d done it on purpose, on account of the antagonistic way we’d left things earlier.

  “I figured this basement having some kind of soundproofing, knowing you.”

  “Knowing me?”

  “With you being the over-prepared type.”

  “Right, yeah.” Scanning the room, I told him, “No. No soundproofing, or any extras, unfortunately. This place was a hasty purchase.”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “Hasty? You?”

  Yeah, that didn’t exactly fit with my reputation or the personality he’d seen up close. “Rogue elements arose,” I told him.

  Interest shone in his eyes and he snatched a hand towel up off the bench in the corner, then made his way over to me, wiping the excess sweat from his body as he went.

  I swallowed hard at the sight of his naked chest, his muscles rippling with his every step my way. He was a sight to behold, for sure. The right side of his torso was covered in a patchwork of interwoven tattoos. Both his arms were heavily inked too. The designs and overall look of his ink gave a machine-like quality to him. And that was the man I remembered. The machine. The unstoppable hardass, relentless and merciless in his quest to protect and empower his club.

  He was magnificent.

  Cut from marble.

  Forged in steel.

  Slade Mitchell was beauty and strength melded together in one alluring package.

  Dabbing his forehead with the towel, he stopped in front of me and queried, “What kind of rogue elements?”

  “The Jackals.”

  Unbridled shock infiltrated his features. “Jesus. How’d you get mixed up with those batshit crazy fuckers?”

  His reaction was warranted. Anyone who walked in our sort of world had heard of the notorious, brutal cartel.

  “A mutual associate of ours, actually. Rick Vale.”

  “Another job you two did together,” he muttered with distaste.

  I ignored it and went on, “A few years ago, his big boss, Nik Stone, was considering doing business with The Jackals. Nik had sent him down there for a meet to make first contact and work out the first draft of a lucrative deal. Ricky didn’t always agree with everything Nik wanted. That became even more prevalent near the end as Nik grew more twisted and unhinged. In fact, covertly, Ricky actually got in the way and secretly sabotaged several of his potential projects. In this case, he witnessed some horrific things while he was paying a visit to the compound belonging to The Jackals. Unwilling women being taken advantage of, abused, and tortured, right out in the open. They trafficked them for business, but also kept many for themselves. He came to me for help. I set the women up here at this safehouse while I dealt with the situation. He helped them find new lives afterward too. He had a soft spot for women and couldn’t stand them being mistreated. Two examples you’re aware of are Natasha and your late wife. He stood in the way many a time to protect them both from Nik.”

  “That shit’s exactly why I spared his life.”

  “I figured as much. More than once, you protected him. You gave kill authorization to Cole to take out Mikhail Baranov, but refused it on Ricky. He’s the only one of the surviving Strikers MC members that you’re not worried about.”

  He nodded, then eyed me intently. After a few seconds, realization sparked in his eyes. “It was you.”

  “What’s that?”

  He folded his inked arms across his chest and shot me a look of incredulity. “A few years back, the whole cartel was wiped out in one fell swoop. You were behind it, weren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Rick helped you out? Or, some kind of army you got waiting in the wings for big jobs?”

  I shook my head.

  He frowned. “There were sixteen of them, the way I remember it. You’re telling me—”

  “I took care of it. Solo.” I winced as the brutality of that day flashed through my mind. “Bringing an army into it would’ve involved too high a level of risk. Maintaining discretion and silence from so many people would’ve been a nightmare.” I shrugged. “It was easier to go it alone.” I ran my hand through my hair. “Well, easier from that point of view, but I didn’t exactly come out of it unscathed.”

  “You got hurt?”

  The concern in his eyes took me aback. It wasn’t just that we hadn’t really been on the best of the terms and that we’d had very antagonistic interactions as a rule. It was also that I wasn’t used to people being concerned. Care, kindness, sympathy, and all of th
at, weren’t exactly a part of my life. It had me off-center for a few moments and without thinking much about it, I opened my robe. His reaction didn’t escape my notice, his gaze running the length of me, lingering on my legs bare in my neon-pink and black plaid shorts, then traveling the length of my curvy figure, then lingering again once his eyes met my breasts encased in my gray, strappy pajama tank.

  “So, you do have a soft side, huh?” he teased.

  I rolled my eyes, then peeled up my tank to reveal the jagged two-inch scar to the left of my navel. I turned and pointed to a bullet scar at my right lower back.

  I started in surprise when I felt Slade’s warm fingers on it, tracing over it. “Weren’t a through and through,” he commented. “Went deep, caused a fuck load of damage, yeah?”

  Turning back around, I told him, “Yeah, it took a while to recover.” I pushed up each of my sleeves in turn, briefly revealing the burned, scarred flesh running the length of both my forearms that would never return to the smooth skin that it had been beforehand. “I was too close when the C4 detonated.”

  “That’s how you took out so many of them alone. Blew them to hell.”

  “Kind of a fifty-fifty split.”

  “Why would you risk going that route first?”

  “I guess I just like hand-to-hand combat too much.” I gave a nonchalant shrug. “It gets me off.”

  He shot me a withering look. “Funny, darlin’.” Then his eyes burned into mine, the heat between us flaring as he reached out and slowly, and more gently than I’d ever thought possible for a brutal man like him, eased my tank back down, covering me again. His intense gaze never leaving mine, he then tied my robe. “Now, what’s the real reason?”

  “Does it matter?” I croaked out.

  He let go of me and stepped back. “Motivations always matter, more than the actual acts. They tell you all you gotta know about a person.”

  Avoiding sentiment was the go-to for me. I didn’t want to entertain it and I couldn’t actually afford to either. And, recalling that awful day meant roaring headlong down that road. So, instead of answering, I pointed to his t-shirt tossed over the bench and said, “You seem dry enough now to be able to put your shirt back on.”

  He smirked.

  “What?”

  Walking over to the bench, he called over his shoulder, “Just, I ain’t that easily distracted, so don’t think I’m gonna drop this.”

  “Why is it important to you?”

  He pulled his black t-shirt back on and turned to face me. “Wanna know I can trust you.”

  “We’ve worked together before Slade. Plus, would I have saved your life if I wasn’t on your side?”

  “Who fucking knows? People change over the years more than you think. So how about you just answer my question, yeah?” He slumped down onto the bench and eyed me expectantly. “I’ll wait, if I gotta.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You’re a ridiculously paranoid man. You came to me. We’re doing business together.”

  “And you’re a hell of a dangerous woman.”

  “You’re a dangerous man.”

  “True story, darlin’,” he said, leaning back against the wall and getting comfortable, making it clear he really was willing to wait it out until he got what he wanted here. “But, the thing is, you already know my motivations. All I’m asking for is the same, an even playing field. In my position, can you really tell me you’d be demanding anything less?”

  He was a stubborn bastard.

  An absolutely infuriating man.

  Unfortunately, he was also right.

  “Fine,” I conceded, folding my arms across my chest and settling in to reveal something nobody else actually knew. Well, apart from those in that brutal cartel. But dead man couldn’t talk. Unfortunately, ghosts could, and I’d dealt with more than enough of that, that day and what I’d done haunting me. It had eased off over time, but I knew it never would fully. It was the price for what I’d done. Despite that, I wouldn’t change it. I’d make the exact same choice again and again. “What those sickos did… what I saw when I showed up there… there was no other way for it to be than downright personal.”

  “The same thing you were on me about doing with Nolan.”

  “That was different.”

  “How?”

  “Unlike you, I had systems in place to ensure it went the way it needed to. Every detail had been accounted for. I’d planned it that way. I knew I was going to go hand-to-hand with them for as long as I could. The explosions were a backup.” I found myself snarling, just recalling it, even briefly, “Those bastards deserved my worst.”

  “Jesus,” he said, scrubbing his hand over his face, pain in his eyes as my recollection became all too real. It definitely had some similarities to what he’d done to the Strikers as well, so that had to be hitting close to home, much more so than he liked, or ever cared to admit. “It was a massacre.”

  “Absolutely,” I said, unapologetically. I didn’t doubt for a moment that they’d deserved it, or that it had been the only way to protect those women, and to rid the world of The Jackals, once and for all. The law wouldn’t have been able to stop them, even if they’d somehow ever managed to get enough solid evidence on their activities to put them behind bars. Even imprisoned, guys like them could go on with their network of contacts on the outside. It would never have been truly over if I’d gone that route. But, death. Yeah, death was an absolute guarantee. Permanent.

  “It was a necessary act to cleanse the world of demons,” I told Slade.

  “I get it,” he admitted. “More than I wanna admit sometimes.”

  I leaned against the wall with a heavy sigh. “Unfortunately, you and me carry burdens that most others can’t stomach, or ever hope to live with.”

  “Yeah,” he murmured. “Sometimes, we gotta do bad things to protect people who can’t be protecting themselves.”

  “We are what the world needs us to be.”

  We locked eyes, the heavy realization hanging between us.

  Just like the weight of the darkness, grief, and brutality that we carried with us every day of our lives.

  Slade Mitchell was the only person I knew who met me on my level with all of that.

  He was unprecedented.

  Unfortunately, that also made him a complication.

  A rogue element.

  8

  ~Slade~

  “SHIT.”

  I scrubbed my hand over my face and tried to force the grogginess away and wake up fully.

  It’d been another long night working out my frustrations on the punching bag in the basement. After discovering it that first night here, it’d become a stress-relieving and anger-reducing routine for almost a week now.

  A week.

  I’d been holed up in this safehouse doing fuck all and just damn well waiting and benched for that long. It was enough to drive a man insane, especially a guy like me who was used to doing.

  But as frustrating as it was, I knew it was necessary. If I went after Nolan again too soon and unprepared, it was real likely I wouldn’t make it out alive again. Nah, I had to do it right. And to achieve that, we needed more intel. More intel was how we’d find an opening to get at him again, and a strategy to see it through all the way, until he was put to ground.

  So, keeping it together until then had me working out like a madman basically. I’d hit the sack at around five in the morning, thinking I’d still be able to get four or five hours’ worth of sleep and manage to get a good start on the next day.

  It’d barely been two fucking hours and I’d been woken up.

  The damn alert I’d set up on my phone had been firing off its high-pitched, hyper annoying beep. Well, it was annoying for a reason. I’d wanted it to cut through anything so I’d notice it right away.

  And it was a good thing I had.

  The blinking, red triangle was moving across the screen.

  Before I’d headed into Indulge, I’d tagged Nolan’s car with a tracer. He’d been
in the hospital pretty much since I’d left the area. Now he was out and he was on the move, big time. He weren’t just heading back to Indulge. In fact, he was going in the opposite direction. A direction I didn’t like the fucking look of.

  Before I could get much further with it, the door to my room flew open.

  I looked up to see Willa striding in. She pulled up short when she caught sight of me sitting up in the bed naked, the covers slung over the other side, basically exposing me all the way. I didn’t have a problem with her seeing me in my birthday suit, but she sure did. Her breath caught in her throat and she went beet red.

  I couldn’t help grinning.

  “Oh, shut up,” she snapped.

  I chuckled. “Didn’t say a word, darlin’.” But her reaction said a hell of a lot.

  Just like last night.

  I hadn’t missed her eyes roaming all over me when she’d come down to find me working out in the basement. She’d looked about ready to jump me. She was lucky I’d had the good sense to steer things away from that. There was no way she’d be able to handle me, especially not the way it would end up being with all this crazy-ass tension building between us. I’d fucking well break her. Didn’t matter how tough she thought she was, that was different. Especially, given her revelation about it being a while since she’d fucked anybody. Nah, that wouldn’t mesh well with my hard, rough, and brutal brand of fucking.

  “What’s wrong? What was that sound?” she demanded, averting her eyes. “It sounded like some sort of urgent alert. Not exactly your typical alarm clock.”

  I rolled my eyes at the ridiculousness of her not being able to look at me right now. I walked to the dresser, grabbed a pair of black boxers, and pulled them on. It didn’t seem to do enough, so I also snatched a black t-shirt out of another drawer and put that on too. “Christ, woman,” I muttered.

  She finally managed to return to normal, or whatever passed for normal with her, and look my way again. “So?” she pressed, urgency and her usual kind of brashness returning.

  My go-to reaction was always to play things tight to the vest, to only reveal things on a need-to-know basis, or when there was no other choice. But things weren’t operating the regular way right now. She’d had my back with Nolan and I was staying at her safehouse. I also needed her to take care of the other threat for me, so I didn’t want something out there that would piss her off and screw with her getting it done for me.