by Evie Monroe
“Don’t thank us,” Cullen said as I loosened the embrace, taking my hand and squeezing it. “This has been brewing for months. It should’ve been taken care of a long time ago. I’m sorry your mother and you got caught in the middle of it. But we’ll get you out.”
I smiled gratefully as he left, closing the door behind him. Drake went to the kitchen and started to cook the eggs again. I wobbled over to him in my cowboy boots, leaning over the bar from the dining area. “You two keep saying things like that, I’ll almost start to believe you.”
“What? You don’t?” he said, turning up the burners and pouring the eggs in the pan. He moved them around as they sizzled. Then he plated them, two piles of perfect, fluffy scrambled eggs. He set one plate in front of the stool near the bar. “Believe it. None of the Cobras are worried, Cait. Slade’s got this coming to him. It’s our privilege to stop him from taking his wrath out on the innocent people of Aveline Bay. Once and for all.”
I swallowed and winced as my blister started to burn again. I slid onto the stool.
Drake noticed. I lifted the fork as he said, “Your foot still bothering you?”
“A little. I lost the bandage a while ago.” I devoured my food like a rabid dog.
He let out a low laugh and came around to have a look. “Give it here.”
I lifted my leg and he slipped the boot off, resting my foot on his thigh. He tilted his head to get a look at my heel. The skin was raw and angry and had started to bleed.
“Jesus,” he said, shaking his head at me. “Can’t take you anywhere.”
“Well, I would’ve changed my shoes if I had any.”
Without warning, he scooped me into his arms and carried me down the hallway. Slipping my arm around his neck, I asked, “What are you doing? I wanted more food.”
He laid me down in the center of the bed and walked around it, feathering a kiss across my lips. His rough, delicious voice said, “Oh, I’ll feed ya baby. But you look like you could use a doctor’s attention right now.”
I laughed. “What did you have in mind?”
He disappeared into the bathroom and came back with a Band-Aid and a tube of ointment.
I pouted. “That’s disappointing.”
He shot me a look as he lifted my foot, spread the ointment, and applied the bandage over my cut. Then he kissed my toe. And then he really made me squirm when he licked the arch, all the way to the heel.
“Foot fetish?” I asked, my thighs clenching in anticipation of what he might touch or kiss next.
He shook his head. “Sexy lady fetish.”
He slid off my other boot and tossed it to the ground with a thunk. Then he reached for both of my feet and gently dragged me up to him, standing between my open thighs. My skirt rode up to my hips and his hand fell between us, stroking my pussy.
Tingles ran through my body as he leaned forward, burying his head in my neck. “I definitely have a fetish for this. You. Wet like this, for me.”
I reached for his belt, unbuckling it, opening it, tearing at his buttons and sliding down his fly. I dug my hand inside and pulled out his cock. I wasn’t the only one who was ready. “Looks like you can use some attention, too.”
He grinned wolfishly down at me. “What did you have in mind?”
I licked my lips and dug my hands into his jeans, cupping his ass, tugging the fabric down. Gazing up at him, I touched my tongue to the springy mushroom head, tasting the salty sweetness of the little bit of pre-come at his tip. “Maybe a little of this?”
He shifted his stance a little. His breathing sped up as I cupped my hands around his dick.
The hungry, low rumble of pleasure ripped from his throat as I tongued him, licking around the head and then up and down the shaft. And when I took him totally into my mouth, his hair skimmed the sides of my face, tangling in my hair. He rocked his hips slowly into my mouth and I milked it, wrapping my lips around his huge, hard cock.
“Fuck, girl. That’s good.”
I added a little teeth then some more tongue, then wrapped my thumb and index finger around his cock and let it slip down his slickened shaft, in time with my thrusts. I looked up at him, catching his gaze. He pumped in and out of my mouth, his fingers fisting in my hair, his muscles tightening.
“I’m going to come,” he growled, and I wrapped my lips tight around him and sucked to capture every last bit of him.
When he finished, I tore my lips from his cock and wiped at my mouth as he stumbled to the edge of the bed. “Where the fuck did you get a mouth like that?”
He slipped off his jeans and sat up against the headboard, reaching for me. He grabbed my thighs and scooted me up so I straddled his waist. Then he tugged off my camisole, his big hands dragging it up slowly, taking a nipple into his mouth. I gasped and my head fell back, my hair grazing his thighs as he sucked my breast into his mouth.
“This is much better than breakfast,” he murmured huskily as he flicked his tongue over my skin. “Let me have you.”
And I was powerless to do anything other than let him have me.
Chapter Nineteen
Drake
We finally ate breakfast, though by the time we did, it was after lunch. Cait finished her eggs at the counter, again with one of my big t-shirts hanging off her body, red hair a mess, long legs bare, looking smoky and sexy and every man’s wet dream.
I was damned glad she’d agreed to stay at my place and hadn’t fought Cullen on that. That way, I knew what would be waiting for me when I came home.
I couldn’t wait.
And I didn’t know what it was about Slade’s daughter, but it wasn’t because of Slade that I wanted to protect her. There was something deeper there, something that made me want to keep her close to me. When I looked at her, I felt dangerously possessive, and I wasn’t sure where the hell that feeling was coming from.
I was the last thing she needed. She already had one possessive asshole in her life.
“So let me get this straight. Your dad wanted you to go into plastic surgery. And you came back from Africa and decided you didn’t want to. So you just dropped out? You never thought of going back?” she asked me, taking a sip of her coffee.
She had her toes up on the rim of the chair, pink-painted and pretty, and I had the urge to sit her on my lap. “Yeah.”
She laughed. “I almost don’t believe it. So you’re fixing bikes now? And what? Eighteen years of education, you just threw away?”
“Yeah. Well. No point in doing something if it doesn’t make you happy. Right?” I gave her a grin. “And aside from doing you, not much makes me happy.”
“That’s not true. You have a perfect bedside manner. You’d make a great doctor.”
“But being good at something, and being happy doing it? Two different things, sweetheart.” I drank the rest of my coffee, reached for her chair, and dragged it closer to me so that I could put my hands on her. She squealed as my fingers walked up her thigh, under my t-shirt. “What about you? What makes you happy?”
“Me?” Her eyes widened like I was the first person to ever ask her that. Maybe I was. “I don’t know. I mean, I had aspirations, once. It’s not like I ever dreamed of working for Enterlease. I thought I could do something else, something bigger. I liked math and science. I was good at them. But . . . it didn’t work out.”
“You mean that your asshole father didn’t let you do it, right?” I asked gruffly. My father had definite ideas of what he wanted for me, but he never physically held me back from the things I wanted to do. The more I heard about Slade, the more I hated him, down to my soul.
She nodded, looking small and ashamed.
“What would you have done differently, if it weren’t for your dad? Go to college?”
“Yes. I was good in school. I liked school. Probably because I always hated going home.”
My heart fucking broke into a thousand little pieces. Her words made me feel and made me numb, all at once. “Damn, baby.” I patted my knee because now I real
ly did want her on my lap. “Come here.”
She scooted her little ass onto my lap and sat with her arms around my neck. I leaned into her, smelling her. It drove me wild, the smell of her. I had to take a taste. I licked at her, my cock starting to spring into action again.
I had to put a stop to it before I was late with Cullen and he really gave me shit. Reluctantly, I separated from her. “Got to be at church.”
She pouted. “All right. So you’re an officer with the Cobras?”
I nodded. “Treasurer. You aren’t the only one who’s good at math,” I said to her with a wink.
“Oh, really? Do you get off on the quadratic equation like I do?” she teased.
“Stop. You’re making me hot.”
She giggled.
“I put your clothes in the washer,” I told her, running my tongue along the seam of her lips as I prepared to leave. “You can switch it to the dryer, or is that too grown-up for you?”
She wrinkled her nose at me. “I can manage.”
“You can watch television, too.”
“I was planning on tearing through your bookshelf. That molecular biology textbook is calling me,” she said with a wink.
“Oh, yeah? Have at it.” My hands roved under the t-shirt, finding her bare ass as I kissed her mouth. She slipped a hand around my neck, opened her lips and kissed me, hard, with slow, thrusts of her tongue.
My cock stiffened. She wriggled against me, pressing her tits against my body. Holy God, this girl was going to be the death of me.
I reached between her legs and cupped her pussy, hoping I could torture her half as much as she was torturing me. “Don’t answer the door for anyone,” I told her.
She agreed, finally letting me go after I whispered what I thought would be sexy and witty but ended up being stupider than I thought. “Maybe we can do algebra together, later and I’ll plug my solution into your equation.”
I slipped out the door, laughing like I hadn’t in a long time.
I rode my bike to the clubhouse, thinking of the sweet little girl waiting at home for me. Thinking of all that she’d told me. Then, I thought of how she’d looked when I met her. How she was easily the hottest girl I’d ever seen.
Then I wondered why all I could do was think of her. Cait. Cait. Cait.
This was uncharted territory for me. I hadn’t had a steady girlfriend since college and I wasn’t looking for one. I was happy alone. But Cait being in my apartment the past two days had me thinking some crazy shit. Like what it’d be like to share my place with a woman, something I’d always thought would suck, since I was pretty particular about my home and the way I lived. I had to admit, though, there were some really nice perks to having her around.
Like coming home to her tonight. That sounded damn good.
I cruised past The Wall to see if her car was still there. She’d told me it was an old blue Honda Civic, one I couldn’t miss. Even though the lot was packed, I didn’t see a car fitting that description anywhere. I wondered if Slade’s men had found it or if The Wall had gotten it towed.
When I finally pulled up at the clubhouse, most of the guys were already there. It was the third time in as many days that Cullen had called church, so they had to know something was up. I sat down next to Jet, who leaned over and said, “Let me guess. You’re still fucking that Fury pussy.”
I scowled at him.
“Fuck. You are? Cullen’s going to—”
“Cullen knows, asshole,” I snapped, silencing him. “That’s what we’re here about. I’m keeping her at my apartment because she won’t be safe if we let her go back to Slade.”
His face twisted. “What the fuck? She’s at your apartment alone? You really trust her? You’d better be watching your back tonight because I bet you that—”
“Cut it out, Jet,” Cullen barked from the head of the table as Zain walked in.
The rest of the men took their seats at the table, and Nix said, “You told us to pack some heat. What’s this about?”
“Yeah. We have to perform a little search and rescue operation. Tonight. Who’s in?” I said.
“Whoa,” Cullen said to me. “Let’s back up. Why don’t you tell them what the fuck’s going on, first?”
I looked at each of the men in turn around the table in the smoky haze of the clubhouse. “I tried to take Slade’s daughter home, but Slade showed up. Didn’t see me, but he started to thump on Cait’s mom. I couldn’t leave the girl there, so I took her back to my place. Now, we’ve got to get Cait’s mom out of there. Get her out, and end Slade.”
Jet drummed his fingers on the table. “What you’re saying is that you have a thing for her. Because you could’ve left her there.”
I tensed up and my scowl deepened.
“She’s Fury!” he shouted. “I saw her. She’s fake as a three-fucking-dollar bill. She’s playing you so she can get us to feel sorry for her and then she’s going to bring their whole club down on us. Mark my words.”
I glared at him.
Nix growled at him. “Shut up, Jet. You and your hunches. You fucking don’t know shit.”
Jet slumped in his seat, a sour look on his face. His big brother always knew how to knock him down.
“Thanks, man,” I said to Nix. Not too long ago, Jet had been pretty damn sure Nix’s girl was bad news. Turned out to be a crock of shit; his girl Olivia was as sweet as candy and pregnant with his kid. Jet might’ve known how to charm a woman, but that was where his knowledge of women ended.
“Look,” I said. “It doesn’t matter whose daughter she is. She and her mother are in trouble and I know not one of you sons of bitches would just sit there and let a woman get fucked with. Especially by someone like Slade. We’ve been meaning to end it with him. Let’s end it.”
Jet, looking beaten, said, “Yeah. We’ve been meaning to. But we still haven’t gotten any intel on how to do that. Have we?”
The men had to give Jet that. We were still fucking in the dark, without a plan.
“It’s like I said. We just go down to his house and take Cait’s mom out of there while he’s at the clubhouse,” I said.
Cullen shook his head. “We have to do that. But not before putting someone on Slade. Because the second he finds her missing, he and his boys will figure it’s us and be on the offensive. We can’t risk that.”
“Yeah, but we can’t do that. They move their clubhouse all the fucking time. We have no idea where the hell they are,” Zain put in.
We all looked at Hart, our resident tech guy. He’d been good at scouting out their last clubhouse location a month ago based on some burner phone hacking skills, but the problem was, they never stayed in one place for more than a few weeks. They had about six locations that we knew of, and who knew how many more we didn’t know of, so following them around was like holding on to a slippery fish. Hart shrugged. “Haven’t seen anything. Sorry.”
“Why don’t you just ask your booty call?” Jet asked me, his voice biting with sarcasm. “Let her give up the location to you, if she’s on our side. She’s got to know, right?”
I frowned. “I don’t think she knows.”
Cullen looked at me and said, “If she knows, and we can get that information from her, our problems are over.”
“Our problems aren’t this girl and her mother,” Jet countered. “They’re the Fury. That’s what we need to be concentrating on. Wiping them off the map. Forget about Slade’s family. That’s a waste of time. I say we get the girl here and make her tell us where the clubhouse is.”
Zain and Hart nodded in agreement and looked at me.
I gritted my teeth. “I don’t fucking think she knows. And I’m not going to make her do anything.”
Jet laughed sourly and shook his head. “Then I will.”
I jumped to my feet so fast that my chair skidded backwards, tipping over and crashing to the ground. “You touch her and you’ll get a face full of my fist.”
He gave me that dimpled, cocky grin. “I’m sca
red. Really.”
“Cut it out, what the fuck? Are you five?” Cullen asked, looking over at Jet. “Stop being an asshole and let’s try to figure this out.”
“Asshole? I’m trying to protect this club. Which is more than I see Drake doing, sleeping with the fucking enemy.”
“For the last time, Jet, she’s not the enemy!” I growled. “She’s the victim. Slade’s been lording over her the way he’s been lording over the rest of the club. He’s a fucking dictator and I’ve seen the bruises on her to prove it. And I don’t fucking care if none of you assholes are with me on this. She needs help, and I’m going to give it to her.”
“We’re with you,” Cullen said. “Cait and her mother are innocent. We’re going to take care of them.”
Nix nodded in agreement. Jets face hardened into a rigid scowl. “Mistake,” he muttered under his breath.
Cullen gave him a hard look. “And while we are at it, we’ll deliver a blow to the Fury that Slade can’t ignore. Once he finds out we have his wife and kid, that might unravel him. He might do something stupid, which will only help us by making him an easier target.”
Jet crossed his arms over his chest and scoffed. It was almost like he wanted the rest of us to kick his ass. “Whatever you say, boss.”
I scowled at him. What the fuck had gotten into him? He was usually contrary about everything. One of the men would say blue, and he’d say red, just out of spite. But eventually, he’d fall in line. What was the deal, here? Was it because Cait was Slade’s daughter? Or was his ego still suffering because Cait had done the one thing no woman had ever done to him, and turned him down?
Chapter Twenty
Caitlyn
There was only so much reality television that a human could endure in one afternoon, and I easily reached that mark after the third hour, cocooned in a blanket on Drake’s comfy sofa. Flipping off the television, I took another shower, then got my clothes out of the dryer. I slipped into the warm jean skirt and camisole, wondering if I’d be in trouble with Drake if I went down the street to the Target and got some panties.