“I caught my dad leaving Ben on Mom’s doorstep when he was four. His mom had overdosed, and Dad didn’t know what else to do with Ben. I’m the only safe place my little brother has left, and you slammed him for seeking me out.”
Landon swallowed. “I fucked up. It won’t happen again.”
When I didn’t respond, dark eyes searched my face with an intensity that made me acutely aware that we were only inches apart. The heat from his body invaded my space, making me want to lean into him. A wiser woman would have slid away, but that seemed like cowardice. I wasn’t afraid of him. Landon would never hurt me. That would go against every wannabe superhero bone in his body.
“I still hate you.”
“Noted.” His gaze drifted to my lips. “But I hear hate sex is incredible.”
His clean, masculine scent tickled my senses and made me want to squeeze my thighs together. What was it about this man that made me lose my goddamn mind? “If anything happens to Ben, I’ll probably have to kill you.”
He shrugged, completely unfazed. “May I suggest you try smothering me by sitting on my face?”
Asshole.
Still, if he kissed me right now, I wasn’t sure whether I’d kiss him back or knee him in the balls. Possibly both. I pointed to the door. “Get out of my office.”
One side of his lips curled up in a smirk that shouldn’t have been sexy, but God help me, it was, as he eyed my hand. “You’re not trembling anymore.”
He was right. Had that been his goal all along? He reached for the doorknob, and the last of my common sense flew out the window.
“I’ll be finished at the gym by seven,” I said.
The bastard winked at me and ran his tongue across his lips, making me shudder, and then he left.
13
Landon
I NEEDED SOME goddamn answers, and there was only one place I could think of to get some. Leaving Mom and Mercy at work, I walked home and went straight to my bedroom. One item was in my trash can: the business card Sage had given me for the Dead Presidents Motorcycle Club. I’d tossed it there Friday afternoon, right after he’d given it to me, before everything went to shit. It was time to find out how much these bikers knew about what was going down in their city.
If they were in on the destruction at the preschool, I would likely end up in jail.
Grabbing the keys to Dad’s old truck, I entered the address on my phone’s navigation and headed out. The club’s headquarters was an old fire station that occupied a significant portion of the block. I parked with at least a dozen bikes in the covered lot, wondering if any of these losers worked. There was a side door that led into the building, but I walked around to the front entrance.
The door opened before I reached it, revealing a black man with a toddler on his hip.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
The closer I came, the bigger the man seemed to grow. He was massive, and his wingspan had to be huge. I stopped just out of swinging range and wondered how best to approach the situation. This had to be Havoc, the man who’d carried me to my bed after I’d passed out. That knowledge suddenly made me uncomfortable as hell.
“I’d like to see your club president,” I announced.
He must have recognized me, too, because he cocked his head and asked, “What’s Beth’s son want with the prez?”
Fuck, he was intimidating, and he wasn’t even doing anything. I couldn’t tell if he was scowling or if that was just his natural expression. Every goddamn brain cell I had demanded that I march right back to my truck and get the hell out of there. But the big man was holding a kid. How dangerous could he be? Not that his threat meter mattered, though, since I had to know the truth.
“Someone broke into Bold Beginnings this morning. You know anything about that?”
His brow furrowed, and he looked genuinely stunned. “The preschool?”
“Yeah.”
Havoc gestured at another biker who came and took the toddler from him as he asked, “Is everyone okay?”
“They were when I left.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “And you think we had something to do with it?”
