by Kati Wilde
I’m pretty sure she sees me the same way, but opposite—sometimes wishing it were easier, but not willing to give up what she’s earned just to walk a smoother path.
So I hold her gaze as I down my shot. She grins and takes a swig in return. We aren’t good friends. We aren’t anything alike. But damn if I don’t understand that woman.
“Jenny?”
I’m not expecting a voice behind me—the only thing on this side of the bar is the employees’ door that leads to the back rooms and offices—and I’m not expecting that voice. Heart in my throat, I whirl on the barstool.
“Uncle Thorne?” Caught by utter surprise, I stare at him. Tall, wiry, and with gray turning his dark hair to iron, he’s not really my uncle. Not by blood. But it doesn’t matter. As VP of the Titans, he’s called my father ‘brother’ for as long as I can remember. “What are you doing here?”
It’s just an automatic question—he won’t tell me club business. But if my being here is considered a minor territorial breach, then his being here means that something big is going down between the clubs.
“I’d ask you the same.” Gravelly voiced and smelling of Marlboros, he pulls me in for a quick hug and a kiss to the top of my head. “But I think I know.”
He does? When I draw back, I quickly search his face. No, I don’t think he knows. Because if he were aware of the Eighty-Eight on my tail, he wouldn’t be looking at me with such concern and affection. Steam would be pouring out of his nose, instead.
So whatever Thorne thinks brought me here, I’ll keep on letting him think it.
“Yeah,” I say, then he comes around me to grab the next barstool and my heart clutches painfully in my chest.
Heaven. Hell.
Because Saxon Gray is standing behind him.
2
My breath stops when I see Saxon. Everything stops. I hate this, hate how I can’t process what this man does to me and how he just shuts everything down.
I hadn’t seen him that day at the rally, almost fourteen years ago. The first time I saw him was at the trial that followed it. I’d been sixteen, my mom hadn’t been dead even a year, and I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going. Even if I had been paying attention, I might have gotten lost in that crowded field anyway. But I got turned around after visiting the portable john and ended up in the Eighty-Eight Henchmen’s section. They recognized me as my father’s daughter. Everyone called me Baby Red then, even though my hair isn’t the auburn shock that his was. I was still his girl. Before that day, I loved the nickname.
As soon as I recognized their eagle and death’s head I tried to get the hell out of there. But they’d already surrounded me, and the Henchmen’s president, Timothy Reichmann, pinned me to the dirt on my stomach.
I don’t remember much. Just his voice in my ear—You got a baby pussy, too?—and the tearing pain as he shoved his fingers into me. The laughter as he showed the blood to his men. Baby Red! they shouted then. Sick with pain and fear, I was fighting and screaming all the while. But when I heard his belt unbuckling, I puked.
Then the world exploded around me. I didn’t learn until later that Saxon Gray had roared in and sent Reichmann flying off me with a brutal kick to his head. I didn’t know that the rest of the Riders charged in after him. I just knew that Reichmann wasn’t holding me down anymore, so I crawled through the chaos as fast as I could, then got to my feet and ran.
But that one kick sealed Saxon’s fate. Reichmann didn’t wake up. After three days of lying in a hospital bed he was dead. I don’t know how the cops tied Saxon to the kick. Most likely, one of the Eighty-Eight broke code and snitched. After a search, investigators found Reichmann’s blood on Saxon’s boot, and when the time came, Saxon didn’t deny it. He just said he’d seen a girl attacked, he’d helped her, then he hadn’t given another thought to the piece of shit that Reichmann had been until the cops showed up at his door.
No one named me. The Eighty-Eight said no girl was there. The Riders backed up Saxon but kept their mouths shut about who I was. My dad would have let it stay that way, but I insisted that he let me give my statement to the cops.
It didn’t make a difference. Almost a year later, Saxon was convicted of manslaughter, and I watched as the man who saved me from a brutal rape was sentenced to ten years in prison. I watched his mom sobbing in the courtroom as he was shuffled out in chains.
Saxon only served five years. But still. He isn’t much older than me—and was only twenty at the time. And just like that, five years were gone. By the time he got out, twenty percent of his lifetime had been spent behind bars. Just because a girl hadn’t watched where she was going. Just because he’d tried to help her.
I’ve never really been able to deal with it. Not the guilt, not the gratitude. But Saxon didn’t want an apology or a thank you. He made that clear. When I was eighteen and headed to college—to college, and he’d just been sent to prison—I wrote to him. I poured out everything. My thanks. My apologies. And a promise to repay him, if it was possible. I knew it wasn’t.
He wrote back. A short note in his heavy script.
Don’t you EVER be sorry. I’m not.
—Sax
I still have that letter, tucked away in a drawer beside my bed, tattered by frequent readings. And I tried to do as he said. I tried not to be sorry. But the first time I saw Saxon after his release, he was coming out of the auto store on Main carrying a box of motor oil. Already tall and built, he was even bigger than he’d been in the courtroom, as if he spent a lot of those five years pumping iron. His black hair had grown and was pulled back in a thick, short tail. My heart pounding, I rushed up to him and it was the first thing I said. That I was so sorry. And that if he ever needed anything, I’d do everything I could to give it to him, because I could never repay him.
He gave me a narrowed look before nodding—then told me he never wanted to hear it again.
I never said it again.
And it isn’t what I want to say now. Nine years have passed. I’m not bursting with guilt and gratitude anymore, though it still eats at me now and then. But life has moved on. I earned my bachelor’s degree in organic chemistry and a master’s in business administration before starting up my brewery. He bought a hole-in-the-wall dump, turned it into the Wolf Den, and took on the Hellfire Riders’ presidency. Through the brewery and the bar, through my friendship with Anna, my path crosses his often enough. But I’m still Red’s daughter. Saxon leads the Hellfire Riders. And there are still rules. Territories. I can’t risk stumbling over any lines again. Just coming here tonight walks the tight edge of one.
So it doesn’t matter that I feel much more than gratitude toward him now. It doesn’t matter that I can’t look away. Seeing him standing there is a gift and a punishment all at once. There’s no one in the world that I want more. There’s no one I’m less likely to have.
Especially now, when I’ll soon be leaving town. Knowing this is one of the last times I’ll see him is a physical pain, a burning knot in my throat that tangles up with the knot in my chest.
I can’t say any of that either. So I force a weak smile and a husky “Hey, Saxon.”
He doesn’t smile back. Instead his dark gaze falls to my mouth before sliding to the shot glass in my hand. Unlike most of the Hellfire Riders, he’s not wearing his kutte now. Just worn denim and a faded black T-shirt stretched over hard muscle. In the past year, he’s grown out a short beard. I’ve never been a fan of beards…until I saw Saxon’s. His jaw is a sculpted wonder, and I never imagined he could look even better with it covered, but somehow he does. The beard doesn’t conceal the shape of his jaw but just makes it seem even stronger—and the look fits him. Rugged and earthy.
To anyone who doesn’t know him well, he probably just looks big and mean. I think he’s sexy as fuck.
My entire body clenches as he steps in closer. His voice is low and deep, with a rough edge, like coarse sheets at midnight. Hearing him speak always leaves me restless and too aware of m
y skin. “You needed a drink before coming to see me?”
What? I frown up at him. “No.”
“Bullshit.” It’s evenly said. No anger or heat. He holds out his big hand. “Come on back then.”
Suddenly warm and lightheaded, I just stare at his hand. I haven’t drunk enough to begin imagining things. This is something else. Business I’d forgotten about? I’ve been in the back office with him before, but our contracts and delivery dates are set. Solid. They have been for a while.
“Jenny,” Thorne says beside me. When I glance over, he’s watching me with that steely look in his eyes that says these words are important and I’d best listen. “You don’t do this for anyone unless you want it, you understand? Not for your old man. Not for me. Not for the Titans.”
I don’t understand. But I can’t think, either, because Saxon’s callused fingers slide between mine and he tugs me off the barstool. Every question building in my head is suddenly drowned out by the roar of my pulse.
He hasn’t touched me before. Ever. Not even when he saved me from Reichmann.
I can’t stop my fingers from tightening on his. Clinging to him, almost, but I can’t make myself let go as he leads me toward the door. He could shake my grip so easily. There’s so much strength in his hands. His arms. The short sleeves of his black shirt tightly hug his biceps. My head barely reaches his shoulder.
But he doesn’t shake me off. He holds on and I follow, my heart thundering.
A single bulb lights the paneled hallway. Nothing fancy back here. A storeroom. An office. Not much decoration, just a big desk supporting a sleek computer with a wide flat screen, and metal filing cabinets against the wall. Posters for beer festivals and veterans’ rights rallies are tacked up beside a barred window overlooking the parking lot. The wall behind me is filled with employee-of-the-month plaques—all of them of Anna. She made them herself, and has been putting up a new goofy photo every month since she began working here. The first is dated almost six years ago.
Saxon closes the door, and the soft thunk of wood into the jamb suddenly transforms the pounding of my pulse into a riot of nerves. I pull my hand from his and face him, arms crossed beneath my breasts.
As soon as I meet his eyes, my anxiety increases. There’s something different in the way he looks back at me. Not so…stoic. His expression never gives much away, even though you can tell there’s always a lot going on behind it. Shadowed by heavy brows, his dark blue eyes are always intense. Always reading your face. Always assessing. When the Riders aren’t calling him Prez, they call him by his road name, the Wolf—and his gaze is like a wolf’s. Just steady. Waiting. Those eyes are a warning to anyone who meets him, because one look and you know through to your bones that if you make a wrong move, Saxon will tear you apart.
The way he looks at me now, it’s as if it’s too late for a warning. As if he isn’t waiting to come after me, but on the verge of taking me down—and only a leash of sheer willpower holds him back.
Oh, God. Maybe I have stepped over the line. Spine rigid, I stare back at him.
He leans back against the door, crossing his arms over his broad chest. Mirroring me—and that’s different, too. Usually he goes straight to his desk. Putting space between us or just trying to seem less intimidating by putting all that muscle behind a block of wood, I never know.
His heavy-lidded gaze slides down to my toes before coming back up. Gruffly he says, “You dressed up.”
Not really. I’m just not in my usual jeans. I spent the evening wooing a pair of lawyers who are opening a new pub, so I wore heeled sandals and a black capri pantsuit, with my brown hair in a loose braid over my shoulder.
“I had business up in Bend,” I tell him.
“You look good. You just got back?”
“Yes.”
Slowly he nods. Though his posture is casual, the stillness of his body and the intensity of his gaze aren’t. “Did you already decide, then? Or did you want to talk about it first?”
Okay. I’ve really missed something. “Decide what?”
For a long second, he says nothing at all, but I see the leash on his control tighten—as if he was close to springing, but now is pulling himself back. “Have you talked to Red today?”
“My dad? Why?” Worry immediately shoots into my heart. Why would Saxon ask me if I’d talked to him? “Did something happen to him?”
His jaw clenches. He turns his head, not looking at me now, but as if he’s walked into a situation that doesn’t look anything like he expected and is searching for a new direction.
“Sax? Did something happen? Is that why Thorne is here?”
I hear the rising fear in my voice. He must hear it, too, because his gaze snaps back to mine. “Nothing happened. He’s just fi— Nothing happened.”
Fine. He’d bitten off the word quick. So quick. Because my dad isn’t fine. And somehow, Saxon knows it.
I watch him carefully now. “What did he say to you?”
“Fuck.” With a heavy sigh, he shakes his head. “You need to talk to him first.”
“I’m asking you.”
“And I’m telling you, Jenny. Talk to Red first.”
Dammit. But even as I try to stare him down, I know he won’t give in. Then his eyes narrow, and I realize that real trouble is heading my way.
He pushes away from the door. “If you haven’t talked to him, why did you stop by?”
Fuck. Fuck. “To see Anna.”
“Bullshit.” Not evenly spoken now, but like the crack of a whip. “Don’t fucking lie to me. Why’d you stop here? You wouldn’t. You wouldn’t, unless you had to. So why did you have to?”
He’s still coming at me, all solid muscle and sharp focus. Breath shallow, I back into the file cabinets. The handles dig into my spine. “It was nothing, Sax.”
“My house. My den. I decide what’s nothing, princess.” Gaze like iron, he traps me. His big hands grip the edge of the cabinets on either side of my shoulders, his powerful arms caging me in. “Now you tell me what brought you in or I’ll fucking make you scream it.”
“Bullshit,” I throw back, lifting my chin. “You think I’ll believe a line like that? Hellfire Riders don’t hurt women.”
“I didn’t say I’d hurt you.” Before I can make sense of that, he leans in, bringing his face closer to mine. His gaze softens as it searches my features. “You aren’t afraid of me at all, are you?”
“No.”
The breathless response probably sounds like fear. I’m trembling, too. Ten seconds ago I was tossing curses back at his face and now it’s all I can do to hold his gaze. Because, God—he looks good. Not even dressed up. Just dark blue eyes and broad shoulders and tanned skin that I’d give anything to taste.
His gaze falls to my mouth. “I’d heard you were skittish with men. That you were afraid to let them touch you.”
“You heard what?” My cheeks catch fire. I don’t know if I’m horrified or angry. It’s true, almost every date I have turns into a disaster as soon as the guy touches more than my hand. But I didn’t realize people were talking about those disasters. “Who said that?”
He doesn’t tell me. Instead he eases his grip on the cabinet, watching my face as his long fingers push aside my braid and his thumb traces a path down the side of my neck. “This doesn’t scare you, does it?”
Aside from a shake of my head, I can’t reply. Only stare up at him, feeling that touch like a shiver over every inch of my skin. My silk camisole suddenly seems as harsh as burlap, and every panting breath rasps the material against my sensitive nipples, drawing them tighter.
His thumb pauses over my racing pulse. “You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
Not scared. But I’m not prepared. No matter how many times I’ve thought about him touching me, dreamed of it, his simple caress quickly undoes everything within me. Unravels my brain. Undermines my strength.
“Then I intend to kiss you, Jenny,” he says, and my knees almost give out.
A kiss. A kiss. First his touch. Now this. My fingers tighten on his forearms, his warm flesh like steel. I can’t even remember reaching for him, supporting myself against him.
He still watches me. The wolf, waiting. “You’re not afraid of that?”
“No.” Just desperate for it.
Saxon’s gaze never leaves mine as his head lowers. His voice is rough. “You’re shaking.”
“Only because it’s you,” I say just before his mouth claims mine.
A kiss, he said. Saxon Gray doesn’t know the meaning of the word. His big hands come up to cradle my jaw and his tongue strokes between my lips. Tasting me. Devouring me. Need twists me up with that single lick into the heat of my mouth, tearing open a hollow ache inside. The next thrust of his tongue draws a ragged moan from deep in my throat, then a soft cry as he pushes closer, the hard length of his body against the softness of mine.
“So fucking hot,” he growls against my lips. “You and me, Jenny. We’re gonna burn up together.”
His mouth takes mine again. Not a kiss. Possession. His hands slide down to my ass and he hefts me up, wrapping my legs around his lean hips and settling in, rigid and thick and right where I need him most. He rocks against me, slowly at first, then harder, as if he can screw his way into me right through our clothes. The cabinet handles jab rhythmically into my back and I don’t care, I don’t care. His tongue fucks my mouth in deep strokes and my pussy begins clenching as if he’s stroking that big cock inside me, instead. Mindless with need, I grind against him, wishing my pants gone, his jeans gone, and nothing between us but slick, hot skin.
Then he goes still and I whimper in desperate frustration. His fingers push into the hair at my nape and he holds me pinned against the cabinet with my legs circling his waist and my body aching.
“Why’d you come, Jenny?”