“I don’t—we can’t…”
“Not tonight,” he said, even when her scent made him so hard that his jeans were uncomfortable. “Just sleep.” He pulled her from the chair and over to the bed, then stood and took off his jacket, resting it on the back of the seat she’d vacated. Crawling onto the bed and over to her, Tom pulled her back against him and nothing had ever fit him as right as her head against his chest. Grace’s chest rose and fell slowly, more slowly, until sleep claimed her. He’d stay until he was sure he wouldn’t wake her, he told himself. But soon her warmth lulled him to sleep too, and the room was silent except for the slight whisper of breath.
CHAPTER 15
Tom stalked into the club, slamming the door behind him hard enough that a prospect sitting at the bar jerked on his stool and moved his hand to his jacket—jumpy fucker, Tom thought, raising his eyebrows at the move.
“Have a shit day?” Jack asked, and Tom jerked his head in a short, brisk nod.
“Need to talk to you and Ace.”
“He’s with Crash over at Carly’s. They’re fixing some plumbing problem or some bullshit like that.”
“How’d you get out of it?”
“I wasn’t here when they left. Just got back from Ann Arbor.” The Storm Runners were looking into the activities of a group forming in Ann Arbor that could, with enough time, spell trouble for the area—and for the club. Jack was already insinuating himself into the group, to find out whether something needed to be done.
Tom walked to the bar, grabbed a bottle of rum and poured a healthy amount into the glass. He’d been without a drink for 12 hours—the longest he’d gone in months—and his skin was starting to feel itchy and dry. Jack was watching him when he turned around with the drink in his hand, but said nothing, even when he sank down onto the couch and swirled the liquid around, pensive.
“You alright?”
“Fine. Just having some lady problems.”
“The stripper?”
Tom scowled. He’d been happy when Grace was a stripper and things were uncomplicated.
“Yeah.”
“I won’t say no woman is worth the trouble, but remember there are always other options if she isn’t. Can’t remember the last time you looked this concerned over a female.”
“She’s different,” Tom said with a shrug, looking down at the liquid in his glass. God, he wanted to drink it and ease the rough edge of grief and anger that was already creeping up on him again. The scent flooded his nostrils and made his mouth water—but he couldn’t stop picturing the man who’d pulled Grace’s friend into the alley and how he almost hadn’t made it through the crowd soon enough.
If Grace had been a stripper—really been a stripper—he might not have made it in time. Exiting the club without a gun could have signed her death warrant, or she might have been taken as well. Part of him wondered if the two glasses of alcohol took his edge off and made him a less effective protector that night.
He shook his head. It wasn’t his job to protect Grace. She’d proven herself more than capable of that.
Putting the drink down on the table, he sent a text to Ace.
Small problem. Need to talk to you ASAP. I’m in the club.
Only seconds passed before his phone buzzed.
Be there in five.
“Any luck last night?” Jack raised his eyebrows and studied Tom. “You don’t look like you ever made it home.”
“What makes you say that?”
“You were wearing the same shit when you left yesterday.” Jack smirked and Tom rolled his eyes. One of the reasons Jack had become the sergeant-at-arms so young was that he was more observant than anyone in the Storm Runners. His memory and attention to detail were useful when it was time to judge the prospects or track the activity of a gang, but it was fucking annoying when he used it to interrogate his friends.
Not that I’ve been acting much like a friend this year.
Before Max and the other club members were killed, Tom was different. He’d been the first one ready to party at the club. The first to lend a hand. He’d been happy and well-adjusted and satisfied with his lot in life. Figured he’d eventually meet some sweet girl in leather who came to play with friends at the club and settle down with her. Figured he’d move into the place his mom and dad had shared together with whoever the woman was—his sister was long gone and not coming back, and Max had already moved into one of the smaller houses on the Storm Runners property once his wife died.
All those dreams shattered to shit the night they’d found out the truth. The idea of moving into his father’s house was laughable—you don’t take over the home of someone you failed so utterly. The Storm Runners were the only thing that had held him to the world for so long, stopped him from doing despicable things in the name of finding Butch. But marriage, children, spending his days running the bar and fixing up his bike—those were things he’d left behind him.
He’d shut down, Tom realized. On Ace, Crash and Jack worse than anyone, though his friends deserved better. The club deserved better.
Something in him cracked when he realized that by failing the club and his brothers, he’d failed his father again.
He looked at the glass of rum again, laying on the table next to the Xbox controller.
“You want to get in a Forza race before the others get here?”
Jack raised his eyebrows but mercifully didn’t comment on the request that would have been commonplace six months ago. “Yeah, sure.”
“Xbox On.” The console started up with a series of beeps and turned the TV on with it. Tom grabbed one of the controllers and handed the other to Jack. “I hope you’re ready to lose.”
“Always ready. But not to you.”
They grinned at each other and Tom decided he could go another five minutes without sipping the booze.
______
“What’s up?” Ace had come back to the clubhouse with Crash and the four officers had gone into the meeting room. The circular table was lined with cushy chairs and covered with coffee mugs that someone hadn’t picked up yet from church the week before.
“The girl I’ve been seeing is an undercover cop.” A trickle of guilt seeped from his mouth and into his stomach as the words he’d promised he wouldn’t say came out. His loyalty was to the club and not to Grace, but still he felt sick as he broke the first and only promise he’d made her. “The one from the strip club.”
“How did you find out?” Jack’s eyes has gone flat. The club was changing, but there were plenty of things they were liable for and there was no way he was going to let anyone in the Storm Runners take a fall. Even the old members would be dealt with by the men in the club-not by the cops, who’d coddle them in jail and interrogate them for the information they held about past misdeeds.
“Was she investigating you?” Crash asked, always more willing to look at every side of a situation than Jack, who immediately leapt to defend. He sat back in his chair and laced his fingers, waiting patiently for Tom to go on.
“No,” he said, shooting a dark glance at Jack. “She’s not doing anything related to the club, but it isn’t that simple either.”
“Why?” Ace said, his voice tense. Already his eyes were darker than usual, the clouds gathering before the storm.
“She’s looking into the women that have been disappearing in Detroit.”
“Fuck,” Ace said softly, his eyes darting to the window and in the direction of the cabins on their property. “Is she dirty?” Every cop working the case they’d come across had been dirty, which wasn’t out of line for Detroit. Everyone was on the take—it was just a matter of who they were taking from.
“I don’t think so. From what she told me, though, someone is. Someone is holding back the investigation, which is why the case she’s working is off the books. Her superiors put her in the club to listen for rumors and suspicious activity.”
“Has she heard anything?”
“I don’t know yet.”
; “Why not?” Jack looked pissed, which was understandable. The subject of the human trafficking ring always raised his hackles, since they’d taken his now-wife before he’d married her after she’d spent too much time snooping into their business, trying to find her best friend.
“She fell asleep and I left before she woke up.” He wondered whether she’d been disappointed to find him gone.
“You should have questioned her,” Ace said. “If she knows something, it might give us a direction we haven’t thought of yet.”
Their eyes met and Jack wondered how he’d judged Ace as immune to Butch’s treachery. For months, he’d silently hated the president for not working harder to get revenge, choosing instead to focus on rebuilding the club and making it stronger both financially and in membership. But now he saw the flames of fury burning in Ace’s eyes at the thought that they might finally meet their adversary.
“I just…couldn’t.”
“She mean something to you?” Jack had eased up a little and his knuckles were no longer white with tension. Hearing that one of his brothers might even be contemplating the big fall he’d taken with Anna was enough to set him back on his ass and take the edge off his teeth. If Grace was Tom’s woman, the club would go father for her too. But that didn’t matter—she’d never be able to be a part of this life as a police officer.
Tom would never walk away from the club. Not for anything.
“I…don’t know.” Yes. He wanted to say it. To admit the truth. But people who mean something to you get taken away and if you don’t have connections, you aren’t weak.
He couldn’t be weak. Not when he was getting closer to Butch with every heartbeat, finally finding new pathways to walk down in search of that ultimate confrontation.
“It doesn’t matter,” Crash said, learning forward and putting his elbows on the table. His eyes met Jack’s and held there. “I don’t care if you want to fuck her or if you want to wrap her up and make her property, the club has to come first. We all know what Butch did and he did it to take the reins of an organization that hurt Anna and Carly both.” All the women who stepped into the clubhouse were safe on the property, but women claimed by the club members—and women they considered family—were theirs. Theirs to protect. “You don’t have to hurt her to keep up with what she’s doing. It might help us find Butch and her end her case.”
“If we find Butch, she’s not going to have a perp to bring in.” Ace said, his decision final. Tom nodded in approval. Death was the only sentence he’d accept.
“But finding Butch will help shut down the ring.”
“It’s not enough,” Ace said. “This goes higher and farther than Butch. But if he’s taken out of the picture, the local organization will crumble, and in the panic and we might be able to get a foot in the door to find out who’s running the show above him.”
“Why is that our job?” Crash didn’t sound accusatory, just curious.
“No one else is doing it and I’m fucking tired of seeing women disappear off the streets.” Ace leaned back in his chair, his big body practically radiating rage. Tom hadn’t seen their president erupt in weeks and was glad, for once, that he wasn’t going to be the focus of his anger. “The police are fucking useless and our new strip club opened this month. Are we going to let them use Storm Runner property to take dancers and sell them to be raped and abused?”
“We can protect them.”
“On the property, sure. But what about when they leave? What about the women that don’t work for us? When we find out who’s running the show, I’ll be glad to call in an anonymous tip and see how it goes. I don’t want us embroiled in a war with a drug cartel or any other piece of shit gang. But I’m not letting this shit go on unchecked in my city or in my fucking country.” He slammed his fist on the table and Crash nodded, unphased.
“Fair enough.”
“Crash is right.” Ace turned his laser focused eyes on Tom. “It’s not going to hurt the cop to find out what she knows and keep an eye on her. But it might save a lot of others.” Since Anna and Carly had been affected by the human trafficking ring, Ace was touchy at the mention of it. More than once he’d disappeared for a few days and come back with bruises and no explanations.
“What if I tell her what we know?” They’d managed to compile some information that might be useful—and Butch’s identity might help Grace and the other people she worked with get closer to actually finding the rat bastard. Information they missed might be something she could get with her police access. It was worth a try, he thought.
“No,” Ace said. “Butch is for the club to deal with. Your woman can’t know until we get a location on him. If she finds him first, she might take him in. Then that rat bastard can spill all the information he has on the club and control the trafficking ring from the prison. It’s not hard—we’ve seen people get their orders out more than once. We need him gone if we’re going to take advantage of the confusion to clean all the filth off the streets.”
Tom nodded, his mouth tight. Should have corrected Ace, he thought. Grace isn’t my woman.
But he stayed silent and left the club, the weight of what he was going to do heavy on his shoulders.
CHAPTER 16
Grace wasn’t sure whether she was disappointed or relieved when she woke up alone in her bed. The spicy, fresh scent of Tom’s cologne still hung in the air and she rolled over in her soft sheets, closing her eyes at the surge of longing that ripped through her. Even with the torment in his eyes the night before—and the anger in the fisted hands at his side—she’d wanted him so much that her skin ached with it.
Pressing her face into the pillow, she gave a short scream of frustration when she looked at the clock before she pushed herself off the mattress and headed into the bathroom to get ready for the day. A quick brush of her teeth and a little soap, moisturizer and sunscreen later, she was ready to pull on leggings and a t-shirt so she could head out the door to the gym.
The day was brisk and she regretted not bringing her coat, even though the gym was only blocks away and the early afternoon sun was bright in the sky. She jogged a little faster to get out of the wind, looking down at her feet to shield her face from the harsh chill. Once she walked into the scents of metal and sweat that greeted her at the door, some of her tension melted away. The gym had become her happy place since moving to Detroit and she was more than ready to get to work.
An hour on the treadmill had her panting and sweating. She’d run like the hounds of hell were on her ass—but she wasn’t done yet. Grace made her way over to the free weights and started working her way through her routine. The repetitive motion and the burn in her muscles made her feel stronger. With every motion of her body, her breathing evened and she was able to work on coming to terms with what had happened the night before.
Seeing Mandi get snatched out of the club had set her nerves on edge and made her skin feel like she’d plunged into a February ocean. Despite all the night patrols and shifts in dangerous neighborhoods, Grace had never felt ice coat her teeth and quickly spread down all her muscle fibers. As she pushed through the crowd to the back door, to Mandi, that ice had made it difficult to move. Difficult to breathe through the chill.
She’d never frozen before.
She hoped she never would again.
Mandi was safe at home, though. When Grace woke, there was a text from her thanking her for the night before and promising that she’d decided to take a few days off.
Grace’s thoughts turned to Tom. She’d never seen a man as wrapped in fury as he’d been the night before when she’d walked out of her bathroom. Still, she hadn’t been scared of him—not really.
Everything in her body wanted him desperately. Even when he was raging at her, the planes of his face were so attractive that she’d been tense with arousal.
His anger in the face of her betrayal was so at odds with the way he’d gently held her in his arms, the stress of the night overwhelming her desire to stay awake and talk
. The warmth of his body helped too, she admitted. Something about his large frame wrapped around her slight one made her feel so safe and so cared for.
But he was gone when she woke. Which was for the best.
She put down the weight and headed for the door and home. Outside, the cold was welcome on her heated skin, at least until she’d made it two blocks toward her apartment. At home, she turned on the shower and made it extremely hot, letting the water spray her skin until it was red and everything felt loose and easy.
Stepping out, she wrapped herself in a fresh towel, put more moisturizer on her face and headed into the kitchen, padding over the hardwood floor. Hunger was a dark pit in her stomach that had her pulling out fresh sliced bread, roast beef, cheddar and more from the fridge. Layering the meat and cheese on the bread, she sliced a few thin pieces of red onion and arranged them on top. A healthy dollop of mayonnaise and mustard completed the sandwich and she used a sharp knife to make a diagonal cut across the bread, splitting it into two halves.
She slid the sandwich onto a plate and brought it into the living room. With a sigh, Grace sat down on the couch and turned on Netflix, clicking to continue the episode of Daredevil she’d been watching two days before. Losing herself in crime she didn’t have to fight, she ate the entire sandwich and the better part of a bag of chips before it was over.
One of the benefits of working at the Ladies Night was that she didn’t worry about fitting into her slacks anymore. Working the pole was a tough job that burned a lot of calories.
Once she cleaned her dish and turned off the TV, she went into the bedroom and got dressed. Unsure what to do with an entire day off, she was about to head out in search of new clothes when her cell phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Grace? It’s Tom.”
“Oh.” Awkwardness coated everything in her at the sound of his voice. The last time she’d heard it, she had been slipping into sleep while he warmed her with his body. She wasn’t about to admit it to him, but the thought that they might do more when she woke had been at the forefront of her mind.
STRIKE: Storm Runners Motorcycle Club 2 (SRMC) Page 11