by Ivy Black
I stood and pushed him to sit on the edge of the bed, and then I crawled on top of him. He hooked a finger under the hair tie that held my hair up and yanked it out, and as I pressed my lips back to his again, he guided his already hard self to my entrance, and I lowered over. I curled my arms around his shoulders and held on tight as I moved in a rhythm of rising and falling.
Colin’s hands slotted into the curves of my waist, and his fingers clawed into me with the same desperation with which my hands had moved earlier. How was it possible for one person to destroy me so much and, at the same time, build me up? His lips worked away from mine and down my neck, and before I could stop them, tears were slipping down my cheeks. When Colin noticed them, he tilted my head down so that he could kiss away the drops.
“I’m so sorry for hurting you and lying to you,” he said. “I’ll never do it again.”
“You’d better not,” I huffed back. “Or I really will shoot you.”
He grinned. “I accept the terms.” He cupped my chin in his hand. “I love you.”
He didn’t necessarily deserve to hear it just yet, but I couldn’t stop myself from responding, “I love you, too.”
I lost track of time as we poured into each other again and again and again. It seemed that Colin was dedicated to kissing every inch of me, feeling every inch of me. I couldn’t have strung coherent sentences together if someone had offered me millions of dollars to do so. Instead, I let myself slip safely beneath the surface of Colin’s waters, drowning in him and letting him be my air when I ran out. Even when the rising sun started to peek through the window, we didn’t stop, not until it was the only option we had left.
“When are the flights to Munich?” I asked, and I was legitimately impressed that I was able to say it.
“Not until tomorrow. I have a motel room, though. It’s disgusting, but it’s outside Hoppa. We can stay there until it’s time.”
“What do I tell my dad?” I asked.
“Oh, that’s not something you’ll have to worry about.” Colin’s and my heads whipped toward the bedroom door, where Taylor was standing in the doorframe. “I’ll take care of telling him everything.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Phantom
Tess and I were sitting ducks when we realized that Taylor had gotten into the house. We were both totally naked, and neither of us had guns within arm’s reach. It was dumb of me to get caught up in her when we were still in Hoppa, but when she pulled me back, any resistance in me dissipated. That small indicator that she was willing to forgive me took all the logical, methodical parts of my brain and scattered them across the desert.
“Taylor,” Tess said.
Taylor shook his head like a disappointed dad. “I honestly expected more from you, Tess. I handed you the truth on a silver platter. Did you not figure it out, or are you so dumb that you’re going to look past it?”
“Colin’s past has nothing to do with his present,” Tess replied.
Taylor’s face lit up at that response. “Ah, so you did figure it out.”
“You,” I hissed.
Taylor was how Tess figured out the truth about me. In truth, I only had myself to blame. Taylor had been an issue from the beginning, and though I knew he was around back when Tess and I were friends, I never saw him much, and I was hoping he wouldn’t remember me. It was a possibility I didn’t see, or rather, one I didn’t want to see. A hole that large would have willed me away from Tess before I even followed after her when I first came to Hoppa. Whether consciously or subconsciously, I put that fear out of my mind and pretended like it wouldn’t be an issue.
Well, now it was, and that’s what I got for ignoring my better nature.
“You should have left Hoppa when you had the chance,” Taylor said. “Now I get to kill you, and I’m going to do it in full respect of the bylaws.” He turned his back and waved a hand through the air. “See ya later.”
Neither Tess nor I was in any position to get up and run after him, so we both just sat in stunned silence, each letting out a sigh of relief when we heard Lockjaw’s distant growls before the door opened and slammed shut, followed by the sound of Lockjaw’s claws on the floor as he came to investigate.
“We have to go now,” I said. “The motel is about an hour out of Hoppa. Take only what you need. We can replace our stuff when we get to Munich.”
I sprang up out of bed, but Tess reached out a hand and took my arm. “Colin, we can’t run.”
“We have to. Your dad is going to order him to kill me. In a straight up fight, I can defend myself, but if all the Knights are holding me down, I don’t stand a chance.”
“He wouldn’t do that,” Tess yelped. “My dad likes you. Hell, he considered giving his entire fucking club to you. He knows that Taylor is batshit. He’ll listen to reason.”
“I was an Unchained Dog, Tess.” I crouched on the bed and took her head into my hands. “I love you so much, but if I go back there, I won’t leave.”
“He’ll listen,” Tess said. “Please, just trust me.”
There was nothing about what she was saying that made any logical sense. I needed to get out of Hoppa, not go to the epicenter of where I’d committed the most transgressions. Still, Tess had given me the benefit of the doubt more than once, and so did Nick, for that matter. She deserved a little bit of faith. If we could solve this one last problem, Caid and a brand-new life awaited us in Germany.
“Okay, baby,” I said finally. “I trust you.”
She kissed me. “Thank you. Get dressed. We’ll leave in five minutes.”
My fight or flight told me to flee, so the closer I got to Hoppa’s Taphouse, the closer I felt to a meltdown. Tess clung tightly to my hand as I drove us in her car to the Taphouse and parked in one of the designated Steel Knights spots. My stomach did backflips as we walked through the front door and nearly emptied out when we walked into the bar and saw Nick standing there, waiting with all of the Steel Knights, Taylor included, behind him like a pack of wolves that were ready to pounce.
He locked eyes with me. “Is it true? You’re a Dog?”
I held my head up high. “I used to be. I stole a shit ton of money from ’em, and there’s a hit out on me.”
Nick’s jaw clenched, and in all of the tense interactions I’d seen him have with the other club members, nothing compared to the way he bore into me. “I trusted you.” He looked at Tess. “Both of you.”
“This was all me,” I said. “Tess had no idea.”
“She knew you weren’t CJ,” Nick said. “She wagered her position on you. She knew what she was doing, and she will pay with the loss of that position.”
Even though we were planning to leave, Tess deflated next to me when Nick said the words. “I understand.”
“As for you,” Nick said. “Your actions break more than one of our bylaws. Hiding your true identity is strictly forbidden, as is having served for a rival club. The latter of these is considered betrayal in the highest regard and is punishable in our bylaws by death.” He shook his head at me before turning to look at Taylor. “As Sergeant at Arms, the task will be Taylor’s.”
“Daddy!” Tess barked. “You’re not even going to hear him out?”
“There’s nothing to hear,” Nick replied, but there was desperation and sadness in his eyes when he looked at Tess. “I’ve been outvoted.”
“Our bylaws give anyone who has been punished with execution twenty-four hours to get their affairs in order,” Tess spat back. “Colin’s owed that.”
“He’s owed nothing,” Taylor said. “He lied.”
“Fine,” Nick said. “He can take his twenty-four hours.”
“Nicky, don’t be stupid,” Bernard said. “He’ll just run.”
“I won’t run,” I said. “I’ll accept my punishment as I’ve earned it.”
“These aren’t bent rules, Bucky. She’s right. Our bylaws explicitly state that.” He looked back at Taylor. “Correct?”
Taylor glared at me. �
�They do.” He looked at Bucky. “Let it go. This will be the last of Dear Old Dad’s favoritism.”
“Get out, both of you,” Nick ordered, and neither Tess nor I hesitated.
We turned and rushed out of the bar, and the second we got outside, Tess started to panic. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I honestly thought he would listen.”
“He wanted to,” I said. “He ran out their patience.”
“I never should have made you come.” She grabbed my hand and pulled. “Come on. We gotta go.”
We climbed back into Tess’ car and took the fastest route home, speeding while we were at it. Tess packed a few of her essentials while I grabbed a couple of changes of clothes from the guest bedroom and grabbed some of Lockjaw’s dog food.
“We’ll take the car,” I told her. “We can leave our bikes in the garage and leave the lights on so that they think we’re here if they come by.”
Tess let out a deep sigh. “Okay.”
“I know. I don’t want to leave them, either, but it’ll be better this way.” I kissed her on the forehead. “Let’s go.”
We didn’t spend more than five minutes in her house before we were back in the car with me at the helm. We both spared longing gazes at our bikes as I backed out, but then we turned onto the road headed out of town, leaving our bikes and, unfortunately, our Hoppa lives behind.
The motel I’d secured was about an hour outside of Hoppa. It wasn’t any place I would ordinarily want to bring Tess or Lockjaw, but we were making do with what we had. It was just one night. By tomorrow afternoon, we’d be on a plane on our way to Munich.
We got in the dingy and dirty room, and Tess immediately worked to make the place as comfortable as possible. She took her time, cleaning as much of the dust—and God knew what else—off every surface in the room using a rag that she found in the bathroom. In truth, her efforts were pointless. Her cleaning seemed more like a nervous tick than anything else, so when I caught her trying to clean the exact same spot over and over, I grabbed her and pulled her over to the bed to lay next to me.
“I’m sorry, Tess. I never wanted it to be like this.”
“Maybe this is always how it was meant to be,” she replied. “I was always hoping that if I just stuck it out, things would change, but ten years is a pretty good indicator that’s not the case, eh?”
“Some people just don’t want to change,” I said. “I’m just sorry that it took me coming here, lying to you, and disturbing your life for you to realize it.”
Tess’ fingers gently caressed the side of my face. “You still have a lot of making up to do for those lies, by the way.”
“Oh, yeah?” I looked down at her. “We do have a lot of time.” She rolled over and straddled me, and my hands were already sliding up under her shirt when I heard a sound that made me sick to my stomach. I clung onto her to stop her moving. “Shh. Do you hear that?”
Tess twisted her head a little and listened, and her face registered a fear that let me know she could hear it, too. We could both hear the distant roar of multiple motorcycles, and it was getting louder.
I carefully set Tess to the side and climbed out of bed. The door unlatching was louder than I might have liked it to be, but I ignored that fact and poked my head out the door. The open layout of the motel rooms allowed me to look right out onto the road, and as much as it made my stomach knot up to stand there and wait for the sound to reach me, doing anything other than that didn’t make any sense. I stood in wait, staring up the road toward Hoppa, waiting to see the Steel Knights come cresting over the horizon.
“Is it them?” Tess asked, but I just shook my head and remained quiet.
And then came the only thing worse that could possibly happen. The bikes’ rumble finally reached the motel, but it wasn’t Steel Knight bikes heading out of Hoppa. My heart and head pounded unbearably as I watched a familiar sleek, gray and black, modern street bike go flying past the motel. Even though the rider was wearing a helmet, his long blond hair blowing out of the back in the wind was unmistakable.
“It’s Luther,” I huffed.
“What!” Tess yelped, and a second later, she was at my side, looking out the window.
We watched in horror as at least a dozen Unchained Dogs’ bikes rode past the motel. Any relief that I had that they weren’t turning into the motel abated in a flash. I wasn’t their target.
Hoppa was.
“They’re going to the Knights.”
“Fuck,” Tess said. “What do we do?”
It was my fault. I was the one who gave Nick the idea to start a rumor mill to bring the Unchained Dogs to Hoppa sooner rather than later. Luther acted impulsively, exactly as I expected. The ten or twelve bikes he had with him weren’t a nick in his total army, but I’d originally planned to be there when the Unchained Dogs arrived.
“We have to go back,” I said.
“What?” Tess said.
She grabbed my arm, pulled me back inside the motel room, and shut the door. “You want to go back?”
“They need us, Tess,” I said.
Her eyes shimmered with concern, but I could see the gears turning in her head as well. “We may not leave Hoppa if we go back.”
“I know.”
Tess reached into her back pocket and pulled out her go-to brass knuckles. “All right. Let’s go.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Phantom
All I could think about as Tess and I drove at top speed back into Hoppa was how, for the first time in my entire life, I was truly happy that I’d left my bike behind. All it would have taken for the Dogs to stop to investigate was for one of them to glance to the right and see a pair of bikes. Luther would have recognized my bike without an issue. Bless my logical brain because Tess and I would be face down in a ditch instead of on our way back to Hoppa if I hadn’t thought to take the car.
It was almost poetic justice. All I’d done for the past two months was try and put as much space between the Unchained Dogs and myself as possible. In any other circumstance, I’d be cutting my losses and living up to my name, Phantom. Tess and I could have well left the Unchained Dogs and Steel Knights to battle it out instead of hunt us down, and by the time the dust cleared and anyone was on our trail again, we’d be sixty thousand feet in the air.
But something about the last month I’d spent in Hoppa just wouldn’t let me leave things that way.
Nick had taken me in like a son, and whether or not they agreed with my presence there, the Steel Knights accepted me. With more time, things might have been different—for me, at least. In a year or two, I could have had people looking at Tess the way she deserved to be looked at.
Unfortunately, time just wasn’t something I had.
I still felt obligated to help defend the club that had kept me hidden and safe for a month, and maybe I was looking for an opportunity to face Luther again, too. Maybe I was looking for a final battle with the man who’d built me and broken me down. If Tess and I could make it in and out of this fight alive, we could put this world behind us and start a new life somewhere where no one was looking for us, where no one was judging us.
This seemed like a fair final obstacle before my happy life.
In the time that we were driving, we never caught up to the bikes, so the fear that we were too late slowly washed over Tess and me the closer we got to the Taphouse. As we were crossing the city limits into Hoppa, Tess slid on her brass knuckles and pulled out her gun. A few minutes later, we turned onto the block where the Taphouse was, and we saw that all of the Unchained Dogs’ bikes were parked haphazardly outside.
Two of the Dogs were standing in front of the door with their arms crossed. I looked over at Tess, expecting her to be afraid, but she had a wide grin on her face. She twisted her head to one side, and her neck cracked. “I’m so fucking ready for this.”
She looked so sexy as she geared up for a fight, and it sent a jolt of excitement rushing south, but we had no time for that. Instead, I laughed and parked t
he car outside the Taphouse, and we climbed out. We walked up to the front door, and I could see that the men standing out front were two of Luther’s watchdogs, a pair of burlier men who insisted on vests with no undershirts, Fred “Bedrock” Marcus and Anthony “Fat Cat” Kirio.
“Fuck,” Bedrock growled when he saw me. “Is that fucking Phantom?”
Fat Cat looked right at me, and the fear that flashed across his eyes gave me a needed boost of confidence. He looked back toward the Taphouse and then back at me. “I ain’t letting you in there.”
“No?” I asked. “Then meet my better-half, Valkyrie.”
Tess didn’t stop in her stride. She marched right up to Fat Cat and decked him in the face. Bedrock went for his gun, but Tess quickly kicked him in his groin and sent her brass-armed fist crashing against his face.
“Go,” Tess said. “I got this.”
There was no reason for me to hesitate. I stepped over her—she was easily handling Fat Cat and Bedrock—and passed through the front doors of Hoppa’s. Unexpectedly, the place was totally empty, but I could hear scuffling coming from the warehouse. I used both hands to hoist myself onto and over the bar. I rushed through the door into the kitchen and then through the door into the warehouse, where all hell was breaking loose. Unchained Dogs were battling Steel Knights left and right, and though no one seemed to have the upper hand, there was one Unchained Dog that had the better of the Steel Knight he was up against.
Luther was looming above Nick, who knelt on the ground with a gun pressed to his forehead.
“Where’s that pretty daughter of yours?” Luther asked Nick. “I was really hoping to see her, Nicky.”
I took a few steps into the warehouse so that I could clearly be heard when I yelled, “How about me instead?”
Everyone stopped in their tracks and turned to look at me. Luther’s head turn was slow like he was savoring the moment. To my relief, he completely turned his back to Nick and faced me.
“Well, now isn’t this an unexpected treat,” Luther started. “You sure do know how to get around, I’ll give you that.”