Wolf (Black Angels MC Book 2)

by A. E. Fisher

  “Yeah. I got there first.” His voice cracked on the last word. I looked up to see a lone tear trail down his face. He didn’t brush it away or try to hide it. His tears of pain for Sasha and the others should never have to be hidden. I reached out and placed my hand over his knuckles. He opened his hand, allowing me to fit mine in between.

  “The man who did that to them...?” I probed, squeezing my hand in his. My mind went back to my reaction when I first saw the photos of the grim attack. I had wanted to throw up at the sight of them, the impact of them so overwhelming that I had to escape to the roof before I forced myself to go through the rest.

  “They’re dead,” Wolf confirmed my thought. “We were supposed to get ahold of the drug problem in Penza years ago. There were no more reports after that. At first, I had thought Oral might have died, considering the extent of her trauma, but when I found no death certificate, nor a grave location, I realized that wasn’t the case.”

  “Where is Oral now?” I asked softly, unsure whether Wolf would divulge the information. But that was entirely not the case.

  “I don’t know,” he said after a moment, surprising me so much my repetition blurted from my lips.

  “You don’t know?”

  “The day after the burial, I left for America.”

  Whatever I was expecting him to say, that was not even close. The news shocked me so much I didn’t know how to respond. I just found myself staring wide eyed, speechless for once as I waited for something. Some kind of explanation. But Wolf just continued. “I left a pregnant, scared little girl in a dark world, and I never went back. As far as I was concerned, everybody died that day.”

  Wolf withdrew, the tension curling his muscles tight into himself. The hand that held mine became taut, but it remained gentle as my own limp fingers felt cold in his grasp.

  My mind felt quiet as I looked to him for understanding. Looked for him to give me answers, to tell me the truth, just staring at him, at the face I knew so well, and the man who I’d looked to for the past three years. At the Wolf I knew.

  It was in that moment that I understood the truth was right in front of my eyes.

  The truth was in the faintness of the laugh lines in his face and ridges of his brow. In the way his hands unconsciously sought to touch those he held dear with a clasp of the shoulder, a pat on the back, a kiss on my skin. It was in the aroma of whiskey that tinged each of his warm breaths and in the hands familiar with the bottle, the hands holding mine.

  “You left her to protect her,” I said out loud, and Wolf spun toward me, surprise exaggerating the whites in his eyes as his pupils bore into mine. “Don’t look so surprised.” I gave him a soft bump with my shoulder. “People don’t change so easily. And I know you. I know who you are. You’re a stubborn bastard, but you’re loyal. Loyal to a fault. In a world like ours, sometimes sacrifice is necessary to protect those you love.”

  Wolf’s face softened on me, that rough exterior seeming more like a characteristic feature than a wall of protection. “I figured, if I was gone, she’d be free from the gang, disbanding it before I left. I loved Sasha, but drug hoards were infinite. If our gang had remained, they would no doubt track us down and use Oral against us. I couldn’t do that to Sasha, not to the girl he liked.”

  Wolf’s torn voice went silent, and I couldn’t bring myself to fill the void it left, leaving the silence to drag on between us as my fingers brushed across the scars marring his knuckles and the callouses rough on his skin.

  “Am I a bad man?”

  I thought about it for a while. I wondered about my own family back home but knew my situation would never compare. I wondered, What if I were Sasha or Oral, but knew we probably wouldn’t think alike. And in the end, rather than give half-assed consoling reassurances, I told him, “I don’t know,” because the truth was all I could tell him.

  Wolf nodded and accepted my answer, letting silence once again take us, the box of Sasha and his friends’ lives by Wolf’s side until its harsh end sat quietly between us.

  For a long time, Wolf didn’t say any more. But after his body relaxed and the disturbance of his emotions settled, he pulled the box onto his lap and opened the lid. He ignored the case details of the attack and instead pulled out a different little bundle of photos from the bottom of the box. My head lolled onto his shoulder, snuggled up to his warmth as one by one he went through the photos, telling me how old they were and what memory belonged to each photo.

  Sasha was a beautiful boy. He was slim but strong, with almost white-blond and long hair tied in a ponytail similar to Wolf’s, and brown eyes. He never seemed to get older than fifteen or so in the old photographs, so carefully preserved. The same could be said about the other children. Apparently, the triplets were pranksters; Ivan was the leader of their troupe, while Aleksei had been a pushover and crybaby. Of the two girls, both Oral and Lada were tough. They’d never let the boys push them around, choosing to rule over them instead, though I could tell they had a few of the older members wrapped around their fingers as well. Both beautiful, reaching only the ages of eighteen or nineteen before the photos stopped. The rest of the boys seemed to rally behind Sasha, however, considering he was the only one the girls couldn’t bully into submission. A golden sun in their own little youngster gang, always wanting to come on business deals, but with the exception of the rare use of the triplets, they were left to “guard” their base.

  I wondered what they would look like all grown up now. They’d all be in their late twenties by now, all having their own jobs, adult lives. The triplets, perhaps, still playing pranks on everybody. The boys would maybe have jobs—no doubt all hands-on jobs with Wolf’s influence. And maybe Oral and Sasha would have been married with children of their own.

  It was a nice image that warmed me as I looked up to see that the stars and the moon were at their peak in the sky. The noise outside wasn’t too loud; the music was mostly muted from indoors, with only light chatter and the crackle of the bonfire filling the night air.

  “Leaving Oral,” Wolf said suddenly, “it messed me up for a long time. I was getting drunk in bars to mask my pain, trying to forget about her. I would pick a fight with whomever, just to distract me from thoughts of going back for her. That’s how Roscoe found me. I was drunk off my ass in a bar, beating up some prick. Apparently, I told him my story, and because Bell was around that age, he couldn’t bear to leave me alone. I didn’t want his sympathy though, and once I made that perfectly clear, Roscoe stopped being sympathetic and kicked my ass back into shape. Taught me that I should never try to forget her, that the sacrifice the kids made should be honored, and that I do that by not shutting people out and making sure to treasure the things I hold dear.” Wolf turned to look at me, his face an open book, allowing me to see into this man who had remained half a mystery through most of the time I’d known him. He reached up, his hand cupping my face as the rough callus of his thumb brushed over my skin. “You’re one of the things I hold dear, Anna. You can give me as much shit as you want. You can try to near kill me every day. You can argue with me until I’m blue in the face. But I’ll love you anyway.”

  My whole existence throbbed at the mere mention of the L-word. My heart raced in my chest at the weight of his words, and for a person who had every comeback known to man at my disposal, I was lost for words.

  Wolf must have seen it on my face, too, because he suddenly let out a roar of laughter.

  “You’ll tell a deadly motorcycle club leader to fuck off to his face, but you’re scared of me telling you that I’m in love with you?” Wolf howled, nearly keeling over onto his side in his amusement.

  “Fuck you,” I hissed, slapping him on the arm. “This and that are different.”

  Wolf’s laughter calmed as he looked at my face. My eyes were glued to his huge leather-bound chest as I tried to process the words.

  Does Wolf love me? Do I love Wolf? Do I? Fuck, I suddenly felt confused as it brought everything I had been trying to ignore i
nto question. I knew something was happening between us, but I was pretending it wasn’t. Hoping that if I never acknowledged it, nothing would happen. How does someone even know if they’re in love? How does Wolf even know for sure? I wasn’t feeling some kind of impending eureka moment, ready to shout my love for Wolf at any second. Is that how it’s supposed to happen? I don’t know! How…? What do I…?

  Wolf pulled me forward, his lips crashing into mine, knocking my thoughts straight out of my head as he held my face between his huge hands and kissed me until I felt like my chest was about to crack open in two.

  “Don’t think so hard,” he whispered, his own breaths heavy in our kiss. “Just feel.”

  What? Feel? The hell does that mean?

  “I—”

  “How do you feel when I do this?” Wolf pulled me forward again, locking lips with mine and giving me no choice but to surrender to him as he growled against my mouth, the vibrations fluttering throughout my whole body, leaving me moaning in response.

  He pulled back, my fluttering eyes opening to see his deep brown ones looking back at me. “How do you feel?”

  “I... I don’t know,” I breathed. My thoughts were barely coherent, never mind being capable of figuring out if I was in love with this man.

  “Then how do you feel when I do this?” Wolf offered, his eyes twinkling almost as if he was enjoying my confusion as he pressed a strong kiss to the side of my neck, moving slowly further and further down, his teeth grazing over my collarbone and making me gasp.

  “I…,” I panted. “I don’t know.”

  Fuck. I couldn’t think at all.

  Wolf pulled back again and looked into my face. “Then how about this?”

  His smiling face sobered, and I felt my body stand to attention as he leaned slowly forward, his lips brushing over the tip of my nose and across my cheek and jaw until they touched the hollow of my ear, his moist breath rolling over my skin. “Ya tebya lyublyu.”

  The difference was like night and day. I didn’t know Russian, but I knew. My heart fluttered, and unlike before, I felt something swell up inside of me, something big, something that responded to the meaning of the words.

  It was definitely a eureka moment. But was that really love?

  A soft chuckle tore me from my head. Wolf gave me a soft smile. “You still look confused.” He lifted his big paw of a hand, reaching up to brush a few strands of my blonde hair away from my flushed face. “I think you know. But knowing and being ready to accept it are two different things entirely, so I’m not going to push you. When you finally get your stubborn ass to stop fighting it, you can get down on your knees and profess your love to me at any time.”

  “Like hell, I’d do that,” I growled back without missing a beat, covering the sudden wave of relief as Wolf offered me my temporary escape. The pressure was unbelievable. Saying how you felt about someone shouldn’t feel forced out just to escape from the weight of his expectations.

  “I’ll be waiting,” Wolf whispered, pressing a kiss to my forehead.

  He rose to his feet, picking up the wooden box and tucking it under his arm before he walked back over to the door. He paused with it open, turning back to me with a wicked grin. “Come to me on your knees at any time!” he yelled and ducked inside seconds before the heel of my boot crashed against the metal door.

  “Fuck you!”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Wolf

  Announcing the deal to the brothers the next morning had gone down pretty much how I had expected it to. No faces of shock or surprise met my eyes, most of them having figured it out beforehand. But this club wasn’t a dictatorship, and I didn’t want to go ahead with the deal if the rest of the brothers weren’t on board. But when I offered to go tell Charon right there and then that his deal could fuck off, none of the brothers concurred. They agreed with my decision, and Jasper even pulled me aside, mentioning that even though the club agreed with this choice, offering the boys a way out was the right decision.

  Since then, the club was eerily quiet. We heard no more news from Charon, and had no more incidents with the Black Jacks. Furthermore, Anna was avoiding me by holing herself up in her office on the other side of town, and she even started going back to her own house instead of sleeping at the club. Ignoring my dick’s opinion, I was fine with it. I knew what I’d said to her had put her on the spot, and confronting what both of us knew was the truth was something I knew she had never been planning on doing. But once she stopped fighting and accept it, I’d be here.

  Telling her about Sasha and the kids wasn’t something I’d planned. The only other one I’d told had been Roscoe, and despite the other brothers having their suspicions, I’d never felt the need to share it with them before. But somehow, having it off my chest, having somebody else know about my little girl didn’t feel as bad as I thought it would be. In fact, it felt like a relief. Without knowing it, I had felt it was something that stood been between us, but now it was in the open and Anna had listened to my story without any judgment or sympathy. She’d simply accepted that it was just another part of me.

  “You look happy,” Lamb interrupted my thoughts. I looked up at him to see his sharp face and pale brown eyes frowning at me. “It’s disgusting.”

  “Fuck off,” I grumbled, wiping the smile off my face and shooting him a comfortable scowl before taking a sip of my beer. When I looked back at him, his expression had sobered and he turned his back to me, revealing the skull and wings of his Black Angels cut. He was dressed in his club clothes for once as he began to mill around the bar, restocking for the party tonight with all the new booze that had been delivered this morning.

  “You sure about this party?” Lamb asked.

  “Yeah.” I sighed. “Can’t let them think they’re getting to us. But I don’t like how quiet it’s been, so I’m not letting my guard down; Pipe’s only allowed to let in members and affiliates. Nobody we don’t know.”

  “That a goo—” Lamb began, only to be cut off by a loud squeal.

  I spun on my stool to where the girls were sitting, watching as Mallory pulled out a long leather jacket. Her face brightened with the biggest smile before she pulled her curly red hair into a pile on the top of her head and slid the jacket on.

  “Spin!” Kay demanded, wagging her finger in the air.

  Mallory turned and presented her back. The black leather was christened with the same Black Angels’ skull and wings patch along with the official “Property of Hunter” rocker underneath.

  “What do you think?” Mallory looked like a kid on Christmas morning as she asked for Kay’s opinion first.

  “Hunter will love it,” Kay whispered, a soft smile taking over her face. “You know what?” Kay turned and took off down the hallway to her and Bell’s club room, where they kept some of their shit. Everybody’s eyes followed after her in confusion until she returned only moments later, donning her own black leather cut.

  Wrinkles covered the old thing. Holes had been stitched, and the colors had slightly faded over the years, but Kay had been Roscoe’s old lady for almost forty years, and I knew leather never stayed that good quality unless it was well taken care of.

  Kay hugged the leather over her front, almost looking self-conscious in the thing. I got up from my stool, shaking my head as I headed over to the women.

  “Beautiful,” I said, throwing my arm over Kay’s shoulder, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “Roscoe loved it when you wore that thing.”

  Kay was like a mother to the boys in the club. She was a strong woman, had balls of steel, and was more than ready to kick our asses if we needed it. But she was also a gentle soul, and Roscoe had been absolutely whipped by this woman. He’d chosen well.

  “Don’t let Hunter see you in that thing.” I turned to look over to Mallory. “He’ll end up sobbing like a little bitch the rest of the night.”

  She laughed, her cheeks blushing a bright red. She was a sweet little thing but didn’t hesitate to bust my balls over shit li
ke when Hunter and I ended up in lockup on his bachelor party. It was Jax’s fault, really.

  “Speaking of bitching,” I said, looking over the gathering of girls. “I see Anna’s not with you girls.”

  “Ha.” Amanda, Polo’s old lady, who I was more surprised to see since she didn’t come around the clubhouse all that often, scoffed. Now, here was a woman who took busting balls as a hobby. "You know very well why she’s not here, Wolf.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I chuckled, earning a pinch in my side from Kay, who rolled her eyes at me as she walked away.

  “You might as well go find her,” Mallory said, reluctantly sliding off her new cut and putting it back in the delivery box. “You need to get out of here while we decorate this place.”

  “The decorations just arrived.” Lamb gave me a shit-eating grin, and suddenly, I didn’t like the fact that Lamb had been put in charge of ordering them.

  “Can’t have the birthday boy here, now can we?” Kay returned to me, pushing me toward the door just as Mallory swung it open.

  “All right, all right. I’m leaving,” I said, throwing my hands up. Kay couldn’t move my huge size, but she’d been around the club for decades, so she learned a thing or two about getting guys twice her size to move, techniques I’d rather not acquaint myself with again.

  “Tell your bitch she better be here tonight, or I’ll drag her here myself,” Kay threatened as a parting gesture before my own club doors were shut in my face.

  Women.

  When I stepped into Anna’s office, she barely noticed my arrival. She was wearing her sexy uppity glasses as she stood looking down into a cardboard box, her knuckles pressed against her mouth, concern woven into her features.

  She was dressed in one of her dress suits, a black one with a tight blue blouse underneath, nearly the same baby blue of her eyes. For a moment, I was thrown back to the day I met her smart ass, wearing a suit similar to this in those red-hot boots she could pull off with anything. Her mouth had grabbed my interest back then, and it hadn’t lost it since.