He’d booked us on a flight back to Whitefish around noon, which meant we had a little over eight hours before we had to board the plane. With the war against the Savage Bones waitingfor us when we got back, I wanted to savor the little bit of time we had together in Vegas.
“Let’s go check in at the hotel. I can’t wait to get you out of that dress and consummate this marriage,” Crank said.
I gathered the full skirt of my wedding dress in my hands and climbed on the back of the bike. Before Crank could fire up the engine, his phone pinged with an incoming text.
“Oh, shit. You’re not going to believe what Eeek did while we were gone.” Crank held the phone up to show me the image on his screen.
Atlas, the president of the Mustang Mountain Riders, glared at the camera. Three red lines crossed his cheek. The skin around them looked puffy and raw, and his neck had swelled to twice its normal size.
“What happened?” I squinted at the image.
“I forgot to tell him Eeek was in his office. Guess the two of them had a little run-in and Atlas got the worst of it. Sounds like he caught a bad case of cat scratch fever.” Crank chuckled and tapped out a text before sliding his phone back into his pocket. “He’ll be fine, but Juice says it’s the first time Atlas hasn’t been able to have things his way with a piece of pussy.”
“He’s not going to hurt Eeek, is he?” I hadn’t even met her, but already the cat had earned a special place in my heart.
“Nope. Juice told him I got her as a wedding gift for you. She’s going to be just fine, but I probably ought to tell you one more thing I forgot to mention.” He twisted around and looked at me. “I’m pretty allergic to cats.”
“And yet you got one anyway just so you didn’t get caught in a lie? I don’t know what I’m going to do with you, Crank.”
His smile worked its way past all the defenses I’d held in place for so long. I didn’t need them anymore. I could be myself with Crank. He loved me for who I was, not who he wanted me to be. For the very first time, I felt truly seen.
“I can think of a few things you can do with me, angel, though none of them involve sitting on this bike and wasting time when we have a perfectly good hotel room waiting for us a short ride away.” His grin widened, and I couldn’t help but smile back.
“I’m not sure I’ll be able to wait until we get to the hotel. Do you think your friends would be offended if we did it on the bike they loaned you?”
Crank’s brows lifted. “I hit the jackpot with you, didn’t I? They’ll never have to know. Hold on tight, angel. We’re about two minutes away from making one of my longest held fantasies come true.”
I laughed as he gave the bike some gas and we sped away from the glittering lights of the Vegas Strip. Tomorrow we’d be back in Mustang Mountain and preparing to fight for the town both of us loved.
But tonight… well, tonight the only problem we had to solve was how to get me out of this dress in the quickest way possible.
EPILOGUE
ATLAS
I feellike I've been away from the clubhouse as much as I have been here lately. I'm grateful that the other clubs are coming to help out, but that just means more people need my attention and less sleep for me.
“Hey, man. I'm just checking in. The guys want to know if you had a chance to look at those photos,” Thunder, my vice president says, peeking into my office. “What the hell happened to your face?” he says, instantly sobering up once he steps into my office and gets a good look at me.
“Crank’s cat is what happened to my face,” I say, trying to organize the papers on my office desk, the ones I can salvage, anyway.
“Crank has a cat?” Thunder asks, as shocked as I was when I heard the news.
“Yep. He thought locking it in my office was a good idea, and when I walked in, the cat apparently did not like me in her new space.” I look over at the pile of shredded papers that I will never be able to make sense of again.
“Oh shit,” Thunder says. Then the laugh he's been holding back breaks through.
I'm sure at some point I will be able to laugh at this too, but right now I’m just pissed. I get it that Crank wanted to impress his girl, but there are just some lines that should not be crossed in the president's office. Maybe I've been a little too soft on these guys lately and I need to reestablish by dominance and let them know I'm not to be fucked with, especially not until the Savage Bones are taken care of.
“I’ll pass on the rule that there should be no animals in your office, though I would have thought that would be an unspoken rule,” Thunder says as he shakes his head.
“That makes two of us,” I say as Thunder shuts the door behind him, and I pull up the email Crank sent. He said he took some photos at my buddy Shane's place, where the Savage Bones have apparently been holed up.
Shane's place has been abandoned since his parents passed about a year ago and left it all to him. I have no idea what his plans are for it, but I need to call him and let him know the place needs to be secured. It's been a while since we’ve talked, so it'll be good to catch up.
As the photos download, I'm reading texts on my phone and not really paying attention. Everything seems to pile up when you don't have service for even just a few hours
So when I look up, I'm caught completely off guard by the stunning beauty on the screen in one of the photos Crank sent over.
