by Franca Storm
Stepping up to me, he reached out and cupped my cheek, telling me softly, “We just need to hang on a little while longer, and we’ll be free. We’ll be at peace and have a real life.”
I smiled. “I know. I can’t wait.”
“Me neither,” he said, grinning.
Moving closer, I looked up at him and said, “So, all that stuff about cuffing me to the bed…”
“Ah, I was just pissed. I didn’t really mean nothing by it.”
I slid my hands up and down his arms. “I was going to say that I wouldn’t be opposed to that when we get down and dirty.”
He screwed up his face.
Huh. Not the reaction I was expecting, from him, of all people. Given what I knew of his exploits, the whole bondage thing seemed to fit right in for him. “You’re not into that?”
“Not with you.”
“Why not?” Something occurred to me and it got my back up right away. “Because I’m pregnant? If you think for one second that I’m going to accept you treating me differently and like I’m fragile, or—”
“Willa, if you really want to do it, I’ll do it. For you.” He stroked his thumbs over my cheeks, warming me, sparking my nerve endings to life. “It just ain’t gonna be my go-to. With you, I don’t want the restriction of none of that. I want you free, your body responding naturally, all the fucking way. I want that wildness. It’s real special and a hell of a turn-on. It shouldn’t be tamed.” He leaned down and whispered hotly at my ear, “I want you all fucking over me, woman.”
His words heated my blood, turning me on fiercely.
I fisted my hands in his tee and jerked him to me. “I’ve missed being all over you, baby.”
He had me squealing in the next second as he swept me up in his arms and carried me to the bed. “Time to fix that, darlin’.”
***
I slung my duffel bag over my shoulder.
I’d barely made a sound as I’d finished packing it. I hadn’t been able to do it last night after Slade had caught me and I’d given him a believable explanation that had reassured him.
In truth, he’d been completely right. I had been packing for a mission. But seeing his reaction last night had made it clear he wouldn’t have been on board with what I was doing, what I needed to do.
The club didn’t know yet, but I had the location on Will Decker, the commander of the militia working for Freeman. They couldn’t know. Slade couldn’t know. Any action they’d take on their part was a risk, because it was going the outright aggressive and offensive route. It was their only option.
But it was different for me and I’d found another way.
I just knew that they’d never accept it. Well, Slade wouldn’t.
He wouldn’t want me to make the sacrifice. But it was my sacrifice, my choice to make.
And it would fix everything.
My hand on his bedroom doorknob, I shot a look back at him.
Sound asleep, he looked so peaceful. So carefree. So free of everything.
It was so very far from the truth, though.
He was pained, burdened, and haunted.
It just fueled my determination to go through with my mission.
I’d fix it.
I’d fix everything.
I was the only one who could.
So, I was going to do what I did best.
One last time.
33
~Slade~
UN-FUCKING-BELIEVABLE.
That was what she damn well was.
And not in a good way this time. Nah, what she’d done here was another level of bullshit altogether. How the hell had she reconciled this?
It burned even deeper after she’d looked me right in the eye last night and sworn that she’d be careful from now on, for her and the baby’s sake.
And now she’d pulled this? Going after Decker alone, trying to sort things alone? Again. We were supposed to be a fucking team, the team. Her doing this had just set us back so many goddamn steps.
I’d never been raging with fury and terrified at the same time before. But that was what she’d brought out in me tonight.
I scanned the note she’d left on my bedside table for the fourth time in the last fifteen minutes since I’d woken up to find her gone from my room.
Slade,
I know how to end this. You and the club can’t do what needs to be done. It has to be covert. It has to be diplomatic. Most of all, it requires leverage. I have that. It’ll be over before you know it. No violence involved. No high-risk action. I’ve got this. Sit tight and I’ll be back within a few hours.
Love you,
Willa
She’d time-stamped the note like the intense control freak that she was, so I knew she’d only been gone an hour at the most so far. Still, that woman could get into a shitload of trouble in a real small amount of time. And sit tight? Did she seriously think I could ever do that, especially when her safety was at stake? Nah, of course she didn’t. It was why she’d snuck out, to give herself a head start.
“Fuck,” I growled. I took a few moments to get a grip. I needed to focus. Not on what she’d done, but on what could be done about it.
And there was a shitload I could do.
In her desperation to take care of the situation, she’d clearly forgotten how well I actually knew her. I’d believed that she’d wanted to live up to her promise to play it safe, but I also knew that it wouldn’t be an overnight thing. She’d lived a certain way for a long time, it was more than even a habit. It was need for her. Survival. Hell, I weren’t far off from that neither.
So, I’d taken precautions.
And this time I was going to act right away without anybody getting in my way and derailing it.
I’d tagged her duffel bag.
I knew exactly where she was.
***
666.
That just about summed it up.
Fucking devil woman.
I was right back where this crazy-ass mission had started, outside her building.
Well, her last known active one.
The area was almost as empty as before, except for one of the club RAM trucks she’d taken from the clubhouse lot to get down here. And, there was also a fucking Hummer parked right outside that I knew weren’t hers. It was a safe bet that it belonged to that commander shithead, Will Decker.
I scanned the area once more.
Seeing nobody around, I pulled my gun and cocked it, then strode up to the entrance. For all I knew, Decker hadn’t come alone. That Hummer was an armored H2 and it could hold six people. Willa might’ve had that Jackals mission under her belt, where the odds had been worse than that and she’d still come out on top, but she weren’t at her best right now. Plus, she’d taken some serious damage during that mission.
The door wasn’t locked, so I shoved it open and slid inside quick, my gun at the ready.
There weren’t nobody in the reception area. That didn’t mean shit, though. A bunch of them could still be here anywhere.
As I scanned the place, voices coming from down the hall reached me.
One of them was hers.
Adrenaline shot through me and I sprinted down there, ripped open the door and burst in.
She was sitting behind her desk with some guy in the chair opposite, his back to me.
He shot to his feet and spun around at the commotion. His hand went to reach for his piece, but he hesitated when he saw my gun was already aimed his way.
“Slade!” Willa cried, shooting to her feet. “Take it down.”
Take it down? Was she fucking serious? “Like hell,” I seethed, glaring at the guy I assumed had to be Will Decker.
He was a big guy, broad and tall and packing a ton of muscle, just like me. He had spiky salt and pepper hair and hadn’t aged well in the face. He looked to be about late fifties.
“She’s not in any danger from me,” he spoke. “Neither are you. Not anymore.”
“And I’m just gonna take your word on th
at?”
“Take mine,” Willa said, coming out from around her desk and approaching me.
I kept my focus on Decker. “You had your guys locked and loaded to wipe out me and mine. Now I got this shot to do the same to you, you really think I’m gonna pass that up?”
He held up a hand. “It wasn’t personal. Just business.”
I scoffed. “Not personal? You’re planning to wipe out my club, my brothers, our home, and you don’t want me taking that personally?” I took an aggressive step closer and shifted my aim to his head, a dead-center, surefire kill shot.
The asshole didn’t look as scared as he should’ve been. Either he was too numbed by the fucked-up world he was caught up in, or he was arrogant as all hell.
“Like I said, you and yours are no longer a target.” His eyes shifted to Willa. “Blake Freeman is no longer my client.”
What the fuck?
Before I could get another word out, Willa stepped in front of me. “Let him leave,” she said, her eyes flashing, letting me know she had a hell of a reason to be allowing our enemy to walk free. With her putting herself right down the barrel of my gun, I lowered it right away and flipped the safety on. I couldn’t stand having it aimed her way even for a second. It made me sick to my stomach. Of course, she damn well got that. Good thing I knew her well enough to offer up that kind of trust. Even so, it was still a lot to ask.
It was why she made sure to keep herself between me and Decker as she ushered him through the door. She even locked it behind him and leaned against it as an extra precaution, eyeing me more than a little nervously. It was because she knew she’d been a fucking idiot and that she’d broken her very recent vow to me.
I shoved my gun back into my holster with a growl and glared at her.
“How’d you get him to stand down?”
“I used diplomacy.”
That was it! Rage exploded out of me and I slammed my fist into the wall, taking a chunk out of the drywall. “Enough! No more bullshit, Willa! Jesus fucking Christ!”
She shifted her weight uneasily. “I made him a lucrative offer.”
“What kind of offer?” I barked.
She cast her eyes downward and couldn’t look at me, as she revealed, “One that exceeded Freeman’s several times over. I had to buy out the contract and put some hefty insurance in place that would protect us and your club indefinitely.”
“How?” I knew she had money, but what she was talking about wasn’t just a few grand.
She blew out a breath and straightened herself. Folding her arms across her chest, she eyed me steadily and said, “I did what I had to do. It worked. The militia is called off. Freeman is on his own now. Nolan is running scared. Instead of a whole army, we’re down to two individuals who’ve had their power stripped from them in more ways than one. We’re back on top now. We have the advantage. They’re easy targets now.”
I could feel my rage dissipating as she explained, as she drove home what her deal had accomplished.
I wanted to run with it, to relax and revel in it.
But it weren’t that simple.
I walked to her. “What exactly did you sacrifice here, darlin’?”
A bittersweet smile ghosted her lips. “Everything.”
34
~Willa~
DAMMIT.
I hauled myself up from the bathroom floor and flushed the toilet.
That round of vomiting had seemed endless. This baby was really putting me through my paces. Maybe it was a warning to take it down a notch and calm the hell down. Soon enough, kiddo.
My successful meeting with Will Decker had gone a long way toward that.
I was sure Slade could see that too, even if a lot of that relief for him was clouded by what it’d cost me. Didn’t he get it? There was always going to be a cost involved. We were just damn lucky it was only financial, because it just as easily could’ve been our lives.
I’d amassed substantial wealth over the years. People paid a lot to have their obstacles removed without a trace. To say I was wealthy was a gross understatement. I had a dozen properties spread all over, most being safehouses, which I took turn at staying at, rather than settling at one permanent address. Doing the work I did, that was too risky. To go along with that, I also owned several different vehicles. I had clothing, rations, tactical equipment, surveillance and security equipment, numerous high-priced gadgets conducive to my profession, as well as a large cache of weapons and ammunition, many military-grade.
Now, after the deal I’d made with Decker, all of that would be stripped away. I’d be back to square one financially, back to basics.
But with what Slade and I had, the family we were creating, the new life we were embarking on, I’d be leaps and bounds ahead in other ways.
A heavy knock on the bathroom door jolted me from my thoughts.
“Darlin’, you all right? Said you were just ducking out to take a leak, and it’s been fifteen minutes.”
That long? Shit. “Just freshening up,” I called back.
I snatched up my toothbrush, put more toothpaste on it than normal, and hurriedly started brushing my teeth to rid my mouth of that putrid taste of vomit.
The door opened and Slade walked in warily.
He put it together without me needing to say anything. “You’ve been in here chucking up.”
I gave a nod as I finished up brushing my teeth.
“I thought those meds I got for you from our doctor were helping to curb that?”
Spitting into the sink and rinsing off, I put my toothbrush back in the holder, then turned to him. “I forgot to bring them with me.”
“You what?”
Yeah, letting anything slip my mind wasn’t like me at all. I didn’t make mistakes. And knowing I’d actually made one with this got my back up. My eyes flashed his way and I snapped, “I had a lot on my mind, all right? I wasn’t… thinking, I guess.”
“Yeah, I know you weren’t.” He stepped up to me, taking his harsher town down a few notches as he said, “It actually worked in my favor.”
I cocked an eyebrow.
“I tagged you. It’s how I found you. You think I was gonna wait around for Mason to get the location on Decker when I knew you already had it? Every second counted. I did it just after you fell asleep last night.”
“Shit.” Running my fingers through my hair in distress, I eyed him worriedly. “I’m off my game, big time.”
“We’re both desperate. That’s when mistakes get made. It’s why we need to do this together.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I can’t fucking believe you went rogue on me after the promises made last night and—”
“I get it!”
“The fuck you do. You never would’ve done it then!”
“I did what needed to be done!” I bit back, my voice shaking with the ire coursing through me that was quickly reaching an uncontrollable level.
“The price was way too high, woman!”
“It would’ve been your life if I hadn’t stepped up!”
“What?”
“Don’t you get it? I did this to keep my promise to you!”
Confusion blanketed his face, cutting into his temper, pulling him up short for a few moments. “How?”
I took a step back and sucked in a breath to get a handle on my wild state, to rein in my temper enough to answer him coherently and rationally. Calmly. All this yelling was getting us nowhere. It had each of us blurting out things in the heat of the moment that just generated more questions than anything close to substantial answers.
“You and me, we’re both strategists. We’re both able to rise above all the bull and emotion and see a situation rationally, figure out all the possible tactics and outcomes from each. But in this case, out of the two of us, only I could follow through with that. It’s why I didn’t clue you in on this plan. You were compromised. Because of your history of already losing somebody and your first child.”
Pain flashed on his face and he started
shaking his head. “That ain’t—”
“I’m not judging you, baby. And I get it, big time. The situation with us is way too close to that, the danger and threats out there against us, just like what existed back then. But there’s also a major difference. Me. I’m a world away from incapable or inconsequential.” I took a step closer to him. “I’m not a helpless damsel in distress. I control my fate. I control my enemies. I find a way through when there seems to be none. You and me are from the same world, but I’m way deeper in it than you. I’m connected. I’m the thing these so-called brutal kings fear. They don’t want war with me and they’ll do a hell of a lot to avoid it, even settle and make a deal. I was in a position to go that route. You and the club weren’t. I also knew you wouldn’t be on board with me even being in the same room as someone as dangerous as Decker. Especially not now that I’m carrying your child. So I took it out of your hands. It was the only surefire way to deal with the militia threat and render Freeman virtually powerless, without suffering casualties, maybe even fatalities and collateral damage. This was the only safe way.” I grasped his hands. “It was the only way I could keep my promise to you. I handed over what I have to keep us and the baby safe.”
He squeezed his eyes shut and cursed.
When he opened them, the emotion there threatened to overwhelm me. “You gave up everything you worked for, darlin’. Didn’t fucking want that for you.”
“With something like this, there was always going to be a sacrifice that had to be made. We’re fortunate that it wasn’t our lives. This was the better way, the only way that was acceptable to either of us.” I took his hand in mine. “I don’t regret it. I’m glad I did it. For us. For our family.”
Although it was clear he wasn’t ready to accept or be okay with what I’d given up, he made an effort to drop it for my sake, smiling down at me as he said, “We’ll get it back, build a new life together.”
The bittersweet moment shattered as he eased us back to reality, saying, “Without those meds, you ain’t gonna make the ride all the way back to the clubhouse.”