by Violet Blaze
“We don't have a lot of time,” I say and he nods. “We need this place cleaned out before we leave on Tuesday.” Just saying that makes me feel like a bleeding cocksucker of a man. In my heart, maybe I'm not ruthless enough. But I can make myself take the hard choices and run with them. It's how I got to be president after all.
“Missing Lyric?” Glacier asks and his voice sounds strange enough that I have to glance over at him and study his face. I realize suddenly that this is a shift I haven't heard in a long time, like we're talking as friends instead of brothers, instead of president and enforcer. Right now, we're just two old buddies having a good chin-wag.
“She might leave on Monday,” I say and watch as Glacier wrinkles his brow. “But if you bloody breathe a word of this to Dober or anyone else, I swear to Christ that I'll castrate you in your sleep.”
“What do you mean leave?” Glacier asks, blinking big blue eyes at me. It's so fucked up, how innocent and pretty he looks when really he's the biggest monster I've ever met. “She can't leave; she's seen too much.”
The way he says that makes my skin crawl.
“On Monday, she's going to decide once and for all: either she's all in and we're getting married … or she's hopping a plane to Washington and never coming back.”
“You'll let her go?” Glacier asks, and I don't have to hesitate, not even for a second.
“Abso-fucking-lutely.”
There's a long pause before my enforcer decides to speak again.
“If it makes you feel any better,” he says, cool as a cucumber, “I fucked Serenity.”
My eyes go wide and I curse under my breath.
“Are you fucking serious?” I ask as he gives me a tight smile and I shake my head. “I knew it, goddamn it. What about Jack?”
“Jack doesn't have to know if you don't tell him. It was a one time thing. It's not going to happen again.”
“She's seventeen, Glacier.”
“Yeah. I know. That night, Monday night, she came to me in tears over her mother. She took off her shirt, climbed on my lap.” He recites all of this like it doesn't mean shit to him, mechanical and cold. I can't tell if it's an act or not. “We fucked in one of the dorm rooms. We haven't spoken since.”
“You're as much of a dumb shit as I am,” I say as I run my hand over my face. I'm pissed off, but what the hell am I going to do? I need Glacier, and I need Jack, and I know if this ever gets out, one of them is going to kill the other. My money's on Saint, but then again, when it comes to a man and his daughter, things can get dangerous fast. “At least I feel better knowing I'm not the only one fantasizing about a woman I shouldn't have.”
“At least you and Lyric work,” he says, cocking his head to the side and pulling a lolly from his pocket. He strips the white wrapper off and drops it to the floor, slowly sliding the green candy into his mouth. Scary. My skin breaks out in goose bumps. “Serenity … I would never let myself even think about having a girl like that. I don't work right, Royal. Something's wrong with my heart; I'm not even sure that I have one.”
“I know,” I say as I glance over at him with a tight expression on my face. “I've known that since the day I met you.”
“Think there's a cure to melt all the ice inside my chest?” he asks with a smile that tells me he doesn't believe there's any such thing.
“Try the three W's, Saint.” I lift up a hand and count off my fingers. “Warm food, warm bed, warm woman.” With a slight smile, I pat him on the shoulder and head outside to grab my bike.
I think I've put in enough work today that it's about time I claimed those three things for myself.
Coming home to a bright, warm house is an underrated bonus to having an old lady around.
The fireplace is roaring hot, the smell of food hangs heavy in the air, and there's a gorgeous curvy girl dressed in some of my old sweats and a tank top. The pants are so big they bunch up at her ankles and hang off of her hips.
I want to fuck her so goddamn bad.
I settle for leaning against the wall with one shoulder and crossing my arms over my chest.
“Well now, aren't you a lovely little bird? A man could get used to coming home to something like this.”
Lyric snorts, bending down to remove something from the oven.
I stand up and move into the kitchen so I can check out her ass, gliding my hands down her sides and cupping her hips as she stands up and sets the hot food on the counter.
“You're going to give us both second degree burns,” she says, but there's nothing but a playful humor to her voice. “As for that other thing, don't get used to it. I don't plan on being a housewife.”
“No, you plan on flying to D.C. and leaving your old man to fend for himself.”
“Seemed like you did a pretty damn good job of it before I came around,” she says, lifting her hand to indicate the remodeled kitchen.
“Well, bugger it, you've got a valid point.” My hands squeeze her hips hard enough to elicit a sharp gasping moan from her throat. I lean down and press my mouth to Lyric's neck, inhaling her scent, holding her still so I can press our bodies together. For several long seconds, she lets me hold her like that before wiggling away and doing a spin to move around behind me, on her way to the fridge.
“How do you feel about salad and lasagna?”
“Homemade?” I ask and she snorts again.
“Um, frozen and baked for an hour at 400. That's about the best I can do.”
“Fine by me.”
My eyes track Lyric's movements as she takes some lettuce and tomatoes over to the counter, slicing into the shiny red skins with clumsy knife skills.
“Breakfast was a disaster, wasn't it?” she asks as she glances over her shoulder at me, pursing her lips slightly. She's not wearing any makeup now either, and I love the pink swell her mouth makes. I'd love to slide my cock into that hot mouth, feel her moan around the thickness of my shaft. Instead, I watch her cut tomatoes on one of my wooden cutting boards, one of her small pale hands dropping down to drag up the waistband of her borrowed sweatpants.
She notices me looking and changes the subject.
“You're one lucky man, Royal McBride,” she says with a long sigh, shredding the lettuce into a bowl and then dumping the sliced tomatoes on top as I raise an eyebrow.
“Yeah? And how do you figure that? Lately it seems like I'm a pretty unlucky son of a bitch.”
“I got my period today,” Lyric says and the relief in her voice is starkly evident. “Thus, the borrowed pants.” She points a finger at the black cotton fabric. “I bled through my own pj's.”
A cucumber comes out of the fridge next and she starts to slice that, too. I whistle under my breath and shake my head, running my fingers through my hair.
“Would it have been all bad then? To have my baby? Do you want kids, Pint-Size?”
“I … don't know,” she says and then sighs again, another laborious sound that makes me really wonder if I'm losing out to the fantasy of a political sortie to Washington, D.C. “Yes. No. Maybe. But definitely not right now. We need to be more careful. It's condoms only this week.”
I groan and feel my heart skipping inside my chest. My girl might leave me the day before a big raid against the powerful Mexican drug cartel that stole my best friend from me, and now I'm banned from bareback?
“What a lot of tosh,” I say but Lyric doesn't bother to look at me, continuing to slice the cucumber with uneven strokes of the knife. “You're ripping my heart out, Lyric Rentz.”
“I had an interesting conversation with Heather Shelley today,” she tells me and I sigh again. Fuck. Apparently avoiding the subject is the name of the bloody game this evening. This is not how I want to spend my few hours of free time.
“And?” I ask as I put a cig between my lips and light up, moving over to the kitchen window and opening it, so I can lean out and blow smoke through the screen. Lyric adds the cucumbers to the salad and then turns to look at me, leaning back against the edge of th
e stone countertop.
“She knows you're the one that beat Sully's ass,” she says as I have to stop and look at her, cigarette ash drifting into the sink. “He blurted it out before I could stop him.”
“Fuck.” I drop my fag and it sizzles out against the wet surface. “What the hell did he go and do that for? He knows I'm going to have to do something ten times worse now, yeah? Can't abide by a fucking snitch.”
“He was playing her game, Royal. And you know what? She's damn good at it. She told me her sister was abducted by human traffickers working for the cartel. This case is personal for her; she basically implied that she's willing to do anything to get closure. Anything.”
“That means what then? You want to spill club secrets to an FBI agent?”
“I'm telling you about the conversation so that we can decide what to do—together.” Lyric spins on me, the sweats drooping down her hips and flashing me a creamy swath of belly between the waistband and her tank top. “You're so used to being—and excuse the pun—a lone wolf that you don't know how to make a partnership like this work, do you? There's give and take, Royal. Give and take. You … I understand that you can't give a lot when it comes to the club, so it's me that has to let you take. If there's any chance of me ever being okay with that, we need to work on this now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Now.”
My nostrils flare and I feel that familiar surge of old anger, but I won't let my inner turmoil touch this woman, so I close my eyes and take a step back, lighting up another cigarette as I lean my arse against the counter.
“You could bring a grown man to his knees, you know that, Pint-Size?”
Her green eyes stare back at me, big and wide and unblinking.
“Fine. What do you think we should do?” I ask, gesturing uselessly at her. There's not a lot of wiggle room with the club, but why not hear her out? I think of Dayna bleeding in Glacier's chair, of Rebecca buying two grand worth of clothes on a debit card while Landon rots in the sea. I think of Lyric getting on a plane and never coming back.
So, whatever suggestions she has, I'm keen to hear 'em out.
“I tell her what I know, what I learned from Clayton.”
My brows go up.
“Clayton? The hell did he say to you?” When I think of that shaky phone video of Lyric and Clayton facing off in the parking lot, my blood gets hot and I start to feel a hell of a lot less guilty about that man sitting in Glacier's basement. I hope it hurts, you son of a bitch.
“Nothing really,” Lyric tells me as she crosses her arms under her breasts, lifting up the enticing swells of her cleavage and sucking all the blood from my racing heart straight down into my cock. My shaft thickens as I reach down and cup my crotch with a groan. “But he might've. Maybe he told me about that shipment that's on its way from down south?”
I see where she's coming from, but …
“Why the hell would he do that?” I ask, but I'm not trying to be a dick this time. Just throwing that out there. I specialize in airtight fucking stories. It's the only way to deal with the constant flow of law enforcement that shows up at the compound.
Lyric shrugs.
“Because I was going to die. Because they never planned on letting me go. I was thinking, that script they gave me when they handed me a phone and told me to call my dad, they wanted the FBI and all local law enforcement distracted from the Wolves' Compound. Their goal was to get rid of you guys—supposedly. But if that's the case, then wouldn't they have a hell of a lot more manpower in town? Even with Mile Wide to pad their ranks, it's not enough.”
Suddenly, it fucking clicks.
“There could be more guys in town than even Clayton knows about,” I say and the revelation sends a chill straight through me. But my boys have been everywhere, canvassing every crack, checking under every rock. We haven't seen hide nor hair of these assholes. If they really are around, then they're lying low, biding their sweet bleeding time. I think of Clint Woodrow, of him sitting in his car at the hospital, too scared to leave the parking lot even though he knew we'd get his ass.
I run my hand down my face.
“You know,” I tell Lyric as I drop my arm by my side and take a drag on my cigarette. “When I ran drugs for the Wolves' last president, Bill MacDonald, I dreamed of taking his place. Wanted it with every last breath.” I stand up and drop my fag in the sink, moving over to Lyric so I can brush the knuckles of my ringed hand against one of her pale, smooth cheeks. “I thought being in charge of the Wolves was my destiny.”
“And now?” Lyric asks, her voice soft as her eyes slide closed for a moment and she leans into my touch. I love that about her, the way she surrenders to me, but stays in control, all at the same time. Never met another woman who could or would do that for me.
“Now, I wish things were simple enough that if you decided to leave, to go to Washington, that I could go with you.” I drop my hand from her face and step back. “I need to make a quick call, okay?”
“Sure,” she says, taking a deep breath, crossing her arms over her chest again. “Think about what I said though, about me and Agent Shelley. If I talk to her, she'll listen. I know she will.”
Even if Lyric's idea is brilliant, the boys will never go for it. Team up with the Feds? May as well brand my ass a snitch now and let them hang me in the parking lot of Wolf Cycle Service and Repair. Letting the FBI do our dirty work, waste their money and time and manpower, it's a far more enticing option but hell. Lyric's right: politics are everything.
I step outside and dial Glacier up, tapping my foot against the sea weathered wood of the front porch, my eyes locked onto the inky purple darkness where the sky and ocean meet. I can just barely see caps of white crashing against rocks in the distance.
“Boss?”
“Are you still at the house?”
“Yep. I was thinking of sleeping upstairs on that air mattress I dragged over, at least until we clean up, you know?”
“Be careful,” I tell him. “Call in some backup. Lyric finally told me what was in that hostage script of hers. The cartel was gunning to get law enforcement—including the Feds—distracted with her kidnapping, leaving the compound wide open.”
Glacier curses under his breath and I hear the distinct sound of his boots clomping up the creaky old stairs in the main part of the house.
“There could be more cartel members in town; there'd have to be if they were planning on storming our home base. Call for some backup first, and then press down hard on Dayna and Clint. They were both squirreling up somewhere. I imagine they might know more than they're letting on.”
“You got it,” Glacier says and then pauses for a long, uneasy moment. “Fuck.”
That single syllable rings in my ear as I tense up and listen carefully to the sound of several car doors slamming in the background.
“Boss, that backup, I'm gonna need it sooner rather than later.” There's the distinct sound of Glacier cocking his crossbow. The motherfucker cocks it by hand. Do you have any idea how goddamn difficult that is?
“No,” I snap, before he can fire off a bolt and give away his position. “Leave them. Get the hell out of there. Where's your bike parked?”
“Where it always is when I'm the only asshole here, next to one of the mausoleums behind the house.” There's another curse and the sound of smacking gum. “There's a good twenty men downstairs,” he continues, his voice lowered to a whisper. “I could probably take them. I have a shiny little M240 Bravo in the closet.
An M240 Bravo is a machine gun favored by the US military. Glacier's probably right; if he managed to surprise the cartel members, he probably could take them all out.
But no.
It's not worth the risk or the cleanup.
“Get out of there, now,” I snap, letting my voice go cold as I open the door and head back inside, pausing in the entrance to the kitchen to look at Lyric. She was right. Of course she was. Makes sense she could see what several chapters of my boys couldn't. She's smart like that, so mu
ch better for the world as a politician with a heart than rotting away in the kitchen as my old lady.
I feel sick to my goddamn stomach.
I wait in silence as I listen to the crinkle and rustle of Glacier's clothing—his phone probably in his pocket—as he climbs out the back window, drops to the roof of the old gazebo and grunts as he leaps to the muddy surface of the dying grass in the backyard. When he starts to run, I imagine him moving through the broken fence in the back, around the moss covered structure of the old mausoleum.
The sound of his bike firing up is all I need to hear before I hang up.
“What's wrong?” Lyric asks, stiff and frozen in the center of the kitchen, her eyes locked on mine.
“You were right, Pint-Size,” I say with pursed lips, pausing to glance longingly at the two plates on the counter. “We've got trouble. Fancy another visit to the compound?”
Glacier's waiting outside the clubhouse when we get there on my bike, Lyric dressed in her leather riding clothes, her warm, curvy body pressed up tight to my back. It's heaven. Bloody fucking heaven. I could die a right happy man with her tucked up close to me like that, riding the curves of the road with the growling purr of the engine and the backdrop of the roaring sea.
It's a disappointment when we finally arrive at our destination.
“Looks like you made it out alive,” I say, but it's only half of a joke. My skin feels tight with stress, pulled taut over muscles cramped and twitchy with violence.
“Only by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin,” Glacier says with a half-smile and a wink for Lyric. He flashes us his right arm, pushing up the short sleeve of his shirt over his shoulder to flash two white bandages. One of them is from the fight with Mile Wide, but the other is already leaking red. “Fuckers managed to clip me on my way out of there, but we've been riding the police scanner and there's no activity. Might want to take an army and head over there, just in case.”
I nod, but I have some idea of what I'll find.