“Thanks,” I told him when we were inside the house. “You didn’t really have to come with me.”
“Grimm asked me to help you,” he said with a small smile. “You look like you’re about to drop. Let me help you get to the shower.”
I wanted to protest, but truthfully, I was only too glad for his offer. The stairs were daunting, but leaning on him, I was able to reach the top. Cass took me straight to Grimm’s bedroom without me having to point it out to him. He didn’t stop once we were inside but led me to the adjoined bathroom.
“Take off your clothes,” he told me.
“Excuse me?” I asked, leaning against the vanity.
“They’re stained with Booker’s blood,” he replied. “If you take them off, I’ll do a load of laundry before I go to bed. I’ve got a solution that will make it as good as new.”
“Oh, thanks.”
I shrugged off the coat and started on the top button of my shirt. Cass stood next to the door, trying to look uninterested, but he kept casting me curious glances beneath his impossibly thick eyelashes.
“Cass, may I ask you something?”
His head shot up, and he bit his lower lip. “Umm, okay.”
Shirt undone, I kicked off my loafers and reached for the waistband of my slacks. “You seem quite familiar with Grimm’s bedroom,” I remarked, watching his expression. He stepped back, bumping into the door at his back, but he couldn’t meet my gaze. When he didn’t reply, I added, “Did you sleep with Grimm too?”
“I’m sorry,” he hastened to answer. “I tried to stay away from you because, well, some of the other members say you go a little crazy when it comes to Grimm. I did try to hit on him last week, but he turned me down, and I realized he was serious about you. I’m so sorry, and I hope you don’t hate me.”
Before I could respond, he grabbed my clothes from the floor and ran out of the bathroom. I sighed and got into the shower, adjusting the temperature so a little warmth could seep into my bones. I hated thinking of Grimm sleeping with anyone else, especially since in my mind he’d always been mine.
I washed my body thoroughly, removing all the blood from beneath my fingernails. When I was satisfied I was clean, I dried off and stepped back into his bedroom. I raided his closet for a T-shirt of his and slipped it over my head, the scent of him soothing me. I didn’t bother to hunt down a pair of underwear but climbed into his bed and waited.
I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I knew was Grimm slipping into bed with me. His arms came around me, and he pulled me against him, his lips landing on the side of my neck. He feathered several kisses over my skin. His hand slid beneath the T-shirt and ran over the narrowness of my hips and my legs.
“Grimm,” I murmured against his caress.
“Shh.” Another kiss on my neck. “I’m just feeling for myself that you are right here in my bed unharmed.”
I turned. The light glow of the lamp I’d left on illuminated his face sufficiently for me to see. I had every intention of asking him about his relationship with Cass before I fell asleep, but in that moment, I realized it didn’t matter. Now was all that mattered, and Grimm would never be with someone else while we were together. I was sure of that, so I didn’t need to pry into his past sexual exploits. After all, he had truthfully told me that he’d slept with almost all the men in his club. He’d even joked that the pros to a gay biker club were getting ass whenever he wanted.
Now there was Booker to worry about, and that was the important thing.
I leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his collarbone.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Grimm
“Daddy Grimm.”
I woke up with a start to Jamie’s whispered voice calling my name while he shook my shoulder. At the urgency in his tone, I instantly became alert, springing up to a sitting position in bed and turning to assess him. Booker being shot was still fresh in my mind.
“Jamie, what is it? Are you okay?”
As soon as the words left my mouth, I heard it—the ominous ringing of my phone in the middle of the night. That sound could be welcome during the day, but a call at this hour usually meant the bearing of bad news. Good news could wait, but bad news was delivered without respect for time.
“Your phone woke me up,” Jamie remarked, still speaking in that low tone of his, almost as if he thought someone would overhear our conversation.
“Sorry,” I mumbled and shuffled across the bed to grab my phone from the night table. There was no sense in prolonging the inevitable.
“It’s okay,” he said at my back.
I peered at the phone screen, noting the god-awful hour of three a.m. I had barely been asleep for a couple of hours. Whip’s name flashing on my phone screen, however, couldn’t be ignored.
“Hey,” I answered the call. “Give me a minute.” I held the phone away from my ear and turned to Jamie, who lay on his side, staring at me. His face was a picture of calmness, but his pretense couldn’t hide the way he clutched the bedcovers to him as if they would ward off the inevitable.
“Go back to sleep,” I ordered him, leaning to plant a kiss to his lips. “I’ll take the call in the bathroom so I don’t keep you up.”
I didn’t wait for him to respond. I padded to my bathroom and closed the door behind me. Sticking the phone between my ear and shoulder, I pulled down the front of my boxers to relieve myself.
“Whip, we’re clear,” I told him.
“Sorry I had to wake you, Grimm,” Whip responded. “I know you’ve got your boy with you and all, but it couldn’t wait.”
“Why? What’s going on? It’s not Booker, is it?”
“Booker’s fine. I just got off the phone with Zak. We would have handled this on our own, Prez, but Zak didn’t want to leave Booker, and he thought you’d want to be in on this.”
“For fuck’s sake, Whip, don’t bother with the suspense. Just tell me what the hell’s going on.”
“We caught the guys who were driving the car tonight.”
That bit chased away the last lingering shroud of sleep. I flushed the toilet, adjusted my boxers, and moved to the sink to wash my hands. The water that ran over my flesh was cold, but I hardly noticed.
“How many?” I asked, my mind already racing with possibilities.
“Just two,” he replied. “Noose and I were able to trail them to a deserted parking lot. The fuckers were smoking pot and poking fun, but they ain’t laughing now for sure.”
“Are they dead?”
“No, but they can be. Just say the word.”
I turned off the faucet and grabbed the towel. Jamie’s hands clutching tightly at the bedsheets flashed through my mind, but I shook it off. I had to do what had to be done, and that wouldn’t change because he was now in my bed. When he fell in love with me, he’d made the brave—or stupid—decision of loving all of me. The parts that were good and the others that were deadly.
“A dead man tells no tales, Whip,” I reminded him. As much as it would give me immense satisfaction to know the men who’d shot Booker no longer existed, I needed information from them. “They are more valuable to me alive right now. I’ll meet you at Metal Madness in thirty minutes.”
“We can make them talk for you,” he insisted.
“Another time. This time it’s personal, and personal matters I like to handle myself.”
“Suit yourself. We’ll meet you at Double M.”
“Good, and Whip?”
“Yeah?”
“You can warm them up a bit for me.”
Even though I couldn’t see him, I imagined the grin he must be wearing on his face. “I was hoping you’d say that. We’ll do our fucking best for sure.”
“You see that you do.”
I hung up the phone and made to leave the bathroom but caught my reflection in the mirror. I quickly looked away from the clenching of my jaw and the granite features that stared back at me. There were days I barely recognized myself.
Would Jamie sti
ll see me after this? I couldn’t keep him locked away in a tower with me as the dragon of the keep when I was the danger.
I reentered the bedroom, where he sat with his back to the headboard. I felt his eyes on me as I made my way to the closet, avoiding looking at him. If I saw fear or loathing in his eyes because of what I had to do, that would break my fucking heart.
“You’re not sleeping,” I commented, taking a shirt and a pair of jeans from the closet. With my back to him, I got dressed.
“I was waiting on you to come back to bed,” he replied.
My hands froze on the zipper of my jeans. With slow, deliberate movements, I did my zipper and the button as well.
“I have to go out for a bit,” I stated, pulling my shirt over my head. I stalked over to the chair beside the chest of drawers and grabbed my cut.
“Here, let me help you with your boots.”
Surprised, I turned. Jamie stood beside the bed, my boots in his hands. At his gesture, I felt like a boulder had rolled off my chest. I allowed myself to breathe normally as I walked over to him. Cupping his chin, I upturned his face to me and nibbled on his bottom lip with my teeth.
“You continue to surprise me,” I said, licking at the area of his lip I had bruised with my teeth.
“Then that’s a good thing,” he replied. He dropped my boots and wrapped his arms around my neck. He held me firmly to him while I kissed him hard, tasting his love and acceptance of who I was. I groaned, the emotion behind his kiss so overwhelming I almost hauled him back to bed and finally took all of him that he had to give.
But now was not the time. When I eventually claimed him, it would be done when we didn’t have to try to catch up on time and consequently time didn’t have to wait on us.
I released his lips and brushed his cheek with the back of my hand. “You’ll be safe here. I’ll have Zak check on you if you’d like.”
“Okay.” He gave my chest a push, and I sat on the bed while he helped me with my boots. When he was finished, he wedged himself between my legs and cupped my face. “How long will you be gone?”
“As long as it takes.”
“For what?”
“To get answers.” I took his hands and squeezed them. “If there’s a threat out there to you, Jamie, I’m going to wipe it out, and I don’t care who it is. Understand?”
He nodded, biting his bottom lip. “I understand. Just…”
“What?”
“Just come back to me,” he said on a whisper. “I don’t care what you do or who you have to-to kill, as long as you come back to me.”
It took damn near everything I had in me to pull his hands away from my face and stand. “You be good until I get back.”
“Then I can be bad?”
I chuckled. “Yeah, you can be bad all you want with me. Now go back to bed and get some proper sleep.”
“Yes, Daddy Grimm.”
His tone was full of exasperation, but I didn’t have the time to chide him. With a nod, I got my keys and left him alone. Once the bedroom door was closed, I put Jamie from my mind to keep focused on the task ahead of me tonight.
A stop in the kitchen got me outfitted, and then I made another at the clubhouse to check on Booker and task Zak to keep an eye on Jamie. I believed by now all of my men got the drift how important Jamie was to me, but I wasn’t leaving anything to chance.
I took my motorcycle; it would get me there faster. It was less conspicuous than my truck too, and I didn’t need anyone tailing me. The familiar vibrations of the engine and the seat beneath my ass felt good. Even if I reached eighty years old and was shaky, if I could straddle a hog, I imagined I would still be doing so.
Within twenty minutes, the hardly legible sign of Metal Madness aka Double M loomed before me. I eased some of the pressure off the gas and made a sharp turn inside the junkyard, a site for scrap metal owned by the reverend of Smoky Vale’s only church. The good reverend wasn’t exactly an affiliate but believed in the necessary evil of the Grimm Reapers to keep the other more destructive one-percenters in line.
If we could only get the local authorities to see us that way.
I easily located the twin motorcycles belonging to the brothers leaned up against one of the older metal containers we paid the reverend handsomely to use.
Whip pushed the doors of the container open. He had a lit cigarette between his lips and his whip coiled in hand. Without a word, I parked and climbed the small incline inside the container, my gaze skimming over Noose, who had his shirt off. His torso glistened with sweat like he’d been running a marathon.
“Somebody’s having fun,” I commented, turning my attention to the two men who were strapped to chairs, their backs together. They’d worn their badges of stupidity when they attacked us. Angry welts marked their chests, shoulders and legs. No doubt Whip’s handiwork. It seemed I got there just in time for Noose to get started on his rope, which was tied in a loose noose around one of the men’s necks.
“Fun that you’re about to ruin,” Noose replied on a groan. “Just five more minutes.”
Ignoring the hunger for blood in Noose’s eyes, I strode over to our captives and yanked the black hoods from their heads. I’d never seen them before in my life. Neither wore the customary ink of the Bloodlets on their bodies. Not that that meant anything.
As far back as I could remember, there were nomad Bloodlet members who wore no ink to identify them. Dubbed the Biker Body Baggers, they moved from state to state as killers for hire for the various motorcycle clubs. No ink meant nothing to link them back to clubs if they were caught.
“There’s usually the easy way or the hard way to get something done,” I remarked, stooping before the first man and brushing the raised flesh that crossed his torso with my finger. “So I think it’s only fair that we abide by that same principle.” I fished my small blade from the loop in my jeans and used it to trace the same path I had just done with my finger. Crimson droplets dotted his skin.
“We don’t know what you’re talking about,” the man I had under my knife blurted out. He desperately tried to even out his breathing and stop his chest from moving erratically under my knife. “We didn’t do anything.”
“You’re not listening,” I said on a sigh. It would be so easy to let my fury get the best of me and slit his throat, taking satisfaction in watching his blood drain out of him. “Let me try this again. We can either do this the hard way, or you can choose the complicated way. Your choice. Something you never gave my men when you opened fire on them. So, what’s it going to be?”
“Fuck you, man! I’m telling you, we don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I stared at him for a few seconds, the only sound disturbing the otherwise peacefulness of the container their harsh, fearful breaths. But they didn’t know fear yet. They had absolutely no idea.
I patted his cheek and rose to my feet. “Very well, then. The complicated way it is.” I turned to the twins, who stood behind me, watching, waiting. “Noose, will you get my kit from my bike, please? We’ve got some work to do.”
Without a word, Noose strode from the container, and I turned back to our first captor, ignoring the second one for now. I was certain that if we didn’t crack his partner in crime, watching him suffer and listening to the sounds death made would get him to talk without much persuasion.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Jamie
“For God’s sake, Booker, if you don’t hold still, I’m going to have Zak hold you down while I shove this needle up your ass!”
From his half-reclining position on the bed, Booker glared at me. I crossed my arms over my chest and glared right back at him. I had been all empathetic and apologetic this morning for him taking a bullet meant for me. I was still grateful, but he’d been a pain in the ass all day, refusing to listen to a word I said and making it difficult for me to take care of him. With Grimm still gone, I was at the end of my tether and barely holding it together. Him kicking up a fuss about me changing his ba
ndage was not making it any easier on me.
“You’re a doctor,” he grumbled, lying back on the bed. “You’re not supposed to be threatening a patient with bodily harm.”
“When you start acting like a patient, then I can start treating you like one,” I returned, still glaring at him. “Now, are you going to keep your baby ass on that bed so I can check your wound?”
“Just be gentle.”
The irritation fettered away when I noticed the nervous way he was looking at me. I hadn’t expected such a hardened criminal to be so affected by his own wound, but seeing this side of him made him seem more human. Sure, he was a grouch, and he didn’t seem to like most people except for Grimm, but the guy had taken a bullet for me. Even if I didn’t want to like him, I was pretty sure it was in a rule book somewhere that you had to like the guy who almost died for you.
“I’m always gentle,” I replied, and when he scoffed, I rolled my eyes at him. “Let me finish. I meant to say I’m always gentle with patients, especially since I know the tough ones are always the squeamish ones.”
“Like hell I’m squeamish!”
“You are squeamish,” Zak stated as he entered the room and took in the patient. “I barely got my dick in before you cried uncle, and I got to tell you, Booker, I don’t plan to be your bitch all the time. One day you’re gonna have to ride me too.”
Choking back my laugh, I observed Zak, who looked much better than I’d found him this morning, sitting at Booker’s bedside with bloodshot eyes from a lack of sleep. They were all supposed to take turns sitting with Booker, but he hadn’t let anyone else near the other man. He had only caved in to take a shower and go to sleep after I had promised to stay with Booker.
“Stop spreading lies, Zak. While you’re at it, you can come over here within reach of my foot so I can insert it in your ass.”
Zak laughed but kept out of reach. “Don’t be coy. Doc won’t tell. We both know what you really want to stuff up my ass.”
I hid my smile, listening to them squabbling over my head while Booker turned on his side so I could reach the bandage covering his back. He was damn lucky the bullet hadn’t hit his spine. A couple of inches to the left and he might have never walked again.
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