“I’m fine. You’ve done your duty, so you can go.” She waved me away like a fly and stalked to her bathroom, slamming the door.Like hell. I stayed exactly where I was while my eyes roved over her room.I’d only been in here a handful of times. Being in her room, breathing in her scent and seeing the place she let her guard down and was her most uninhibited self was a heady thing, and I made a point to avoid it. The temptation was too great when all my senses were overwhelmed by my kitten, which I knew with absolute certainty after my last visit to her bedroom.
Lennon took her time showering away the day and her hangover. She’d gotten completely smashed last night, dancing with some townie fuck and carrying on at Rook’s party. All night, my palm had been itching to smack some sense into her bratty little ass for flaunting herself around the room, but I knew I had no right to touch her. I’d crossed that line too many times; once more might break me.
The bathroom door opened, and a humid puff of steam filled the room with the mouthwatering citrus scent of Lennon’s body wash. The woman herself emerged a few moments later, dressed in a tiny pair of shorts and a Rusty’s Garage T-shirt, her curly mane tied up in a microfiber towel. “Why are you still here?” she asked over her shoulder as she walked over to her bedside. She rifled around in the drawer above the one I knew held all her naughty toys and sat down with a bottle of lotion. I watched her as she began applying lotion to her legs and arms, noting that she refused to look at me.
“Like I said, I needed to make sure you’re okay,gatita.”
Lennon’s head snapped up at that. “I said I was fucking fine, Santiago.” I relished the lick of fire in her eye, knowing if my girl could be feisty with me, she’d be alright.
“MaybeI’mnot fine, Lennon. Have you ever thought of that?” I raised my eyebrow. “Maybe I need to be here, to see for myself that you’re alive and those motherfuckers didn’t hurt you.”
“I gave up trying to understand how you felt a long time ago, Santi,” Lennon murmured, eyes downcast on her bronzed legs. “I’ve tried to make sense of how you feel about me since I was eighteen years old. I’ve spent more hours than I’d like to admit puzzling through your expressions, your coldness, your restraint.” She set her lotion down and walked over to a dresser and gazed into the mirror on the wall behind it. She stared at her reflection blankly for a few beats before Lennon removed her hair towel and scrunched some kind of product into herlong curls. She turned on a complicated-looking hair dryer and draped her hair over it in sections until it was dry.
When she was finished taking care of her hair and mulling over whatever was on her mind, Lennon finally turned and gave me one hundred percent of her attention with a weary sigh. “Are you okay, Santiago?”
I shook my head. “No.” My dark eyes bored into the depths of her honey-colored ones. “I’m not okay, Lennon. I’m two seconds away from snapping and razing the Iron Raiders to the ground. I’m fucking furious that you had to defend yourself, and I wasn’t there to do it for you. I’m angry someone thought they could lay a finger on the woman that—” I choked on the wordsI love, but Lennon was across the room in an instant, hugging me tightly around the middle.
“I’m okay,” she murmured into my chest, squeezing me so tight that the fist gripping my stomach relaxed, and I felt the red tinge of madness seep away from my vision. My arms banded around the woman I loved, but emotionally, I still held her at arm’s length. Tonight just proved that I was right. This life was too dangerous for Lennon. I was right to hold myself back and encourage her to pursue a career and relationship separate from the club. I was weak, though, and I couldn’t stop myself from coming to her tonight.
Wordlessly, Lennon held my hand and towed me to her bed. It was still early, but she slid the covers back and tugged me down beside her. I pulled back from the closest I’d probably ever be to heaven, only for my kitten to surprise me by yanking me down with more force than I knew she contained. “Just tonight, Santi. Just to sleep. You need to know I’m okay, and I…” She swallowed and looked away, refusing to meet my eyes when she laid herself bare. “I need to feel safe.”
There was nothing left to say. I toed my boots off, and Lennon turned out the lamp. I crawled into bed with mygatita, and she immediately burrowed into my side. Her hand fell on my chest right as her bent leg snaked over my thigh. Comfort like I had never known washed over me, and the moment felt infinitely precious and fleeting. I may never get to hold Lennon like this again, so I pressed her closer to me and took a deep breath and filled my lungs with her scent. This moment in the twilight gloom of her room may be stolen, but if I lived a thousand years, I neverwould regret it. I pressed my lips gently to Lennon’s forehead and wished that there could be a future where she could be mine. It was a fantasy, one I didn’t indulge in often, but I couldn’t help it when her palm rested over my beating heart. If she cared to listen, she’d hear that it only continued beating for her.
Lennon
I’d gotten forehead kisses from the two most important men in my life tonight. Hangover from hell, unsuccessful abduction attempt, and accidental homicide aside, I went to bed in the arms of the man I’d pined for since I was a girl. I guess today wasn’tthatbad of a day, after all.
Chapter 19
Indigo
“Whoaaa.” I held my pretend microphone up to Malice, the Iron Raider who survived his parking lot beatdown, where he was strapped to the chair in the confessional. “Come on, Malice, I know you know the words! Whoaaa, we’re halfway there…” I raised my eyebrows in encouragement so he could join in my sing-along, but the spoilsport screamed instead of finishing the Bon Jovi lyric. “Ugh, never mind then. Now that Priest took your pinky, we’re more than halfway there.” I sighed. “The moment has passed. I’m not mad, Mal.” I shook my head sadly. “I’m just disappointed.” I dropped my pretend mic and hopped up on the metal table next to Priest’s tool chest. Priest had tourniquets laid out to control blood flow and an iron for cauterizing wounds to make sure he could keep anyone he questioned alive for as long as it took to get the information he needed.
Priest had been working on Malice for hours. He started small, smacking the Raider around and blackening his eyes. When that didn’tproduce results, Priest moved on to burning patches of his torso with a butane torch, which made the confessional smell atrocious. The scent of scorched flesh wasn’t my favorite. It brought back memories of Priest’s branding and Roark burning me with his cigars. After Malice passed out, was revived, and given an IV drip so he wouldn’t go into shock, I complained about the smell, and Priest moved on to removing fingernails and toes instead. He was so thoughtful.
I was interested to see how Priest worked when I wasn’t the subject of his machinations. To be completely honest, I had to say that my faith in Duke’s delegation skills had been restored. After my own time in the confessional with Priest, I’d been concerned that his lackadaisical approach to my interrogation meant he was bad at his job, but I was happy to report I was wrong. Priest moved way past the taser ouchies he’d given me and had removed six of Malice’s toes and all of his fingernails on his quest of discovery.
Despite his refusal to belt out ’80s rock hits like a grumpy grump, Priest was able to persuade Mal to share important Iron Raider information. Malice had told us that the Raiders were working to secure an alliance with the Callahans, which we already had assumed. He said that his prez, Riot, wanted to expand their drug trafficking to the East Coast and expand their human trafficking and protection operation. He’d given Priest a bunch of information I wasn’t interested in, like the locations of their drug and weapons caches, upcoming transfers from the cartel they partnered with across the southern border, associates in Canada they’d been working with to ferry people, guns, and drugs into the US, and the super-secret recipe to his grandma’s Christmas cookies. Well, that last one might have been wishful thinking on my part.
Honestly, torture was kind of boring in my opinion. If I wasn’t the one being tortured, that was. Blame it on violence in the media or additives in processed foods, or maybe it was my childhood spent locked in a basement with a psycho, but I was just…kind of… over it. Like, don’t get me wrong. I knew learning new things was super important and people like Priest who learned how to extract information in order to save lives were skilled and important and valuable members of the workforce or whatever. I just thought it was boring, and if we were really thinking about it, a waste of my creative potential. But! I wasn’t here for me.I was here as a supportive friend for Priest. He took evident pride in intelligence gathering, and to be a good friend, you had to be supportive when your friend had an interest or a hobby. I was happy to let Lennon dye my hair to help with her cosmetology class, after all. I could watch as Priest questioned this Iron Raider and clap when he got a new tidbit of information.
Ratched was on call, coming down occasionally to adjust Malice’s IV. He had been grumpy at first that Lennon and I hadn’t come to him after we were attacked, but he’d just finished a long shift at the hospital and didn’t deserve to have Iron Raider shenanigans ruin his breakfast. While Priest was working on Malice’s fingernails, Ratched forgave me for protecting the sanctity of his short stack, and he even showed me how he could administer adrenaline if needed. Priest had Ratched hook Malice up to a heart monitor he’d pulled out from under the stairs, so he could make sure Mal didn’t die before we were done with him. I could see from my time observing Priest in his natural habitat that my experience with him in the confessional had been atypical. Priest was clinical, cold, and exacting in his methods of wrenching confessions from Malice. When he questioned me, Priest was much more emotional. I understood now the difference between the man who was desperate enough to kidnap for me answers, and the professional who systematically extracted every morsel of information held by the sobbing Iron Raider.
When severing Malice’s final little piggy didn’t yield any additional information, and Priest put his bolt cutters away in exchange for cordless power drill, I stepped between the biker and his victim. “Why don’t we take a break, huh?” Priest stared at me coldly, his blue gaze peering right through me and to the Raider that was working against his club, his family. “Let Malice sit here andthink about what he’s done.” I wagged my finger at the naughty biker weeping in his chair, who now had two abnormally small feet since his toes were currently in an old coffee can next to Priest’s workbench. “Don’t think this is the end of our conversation, mister. You’re in big trouble. Just ask your friend.” I nodded to the corpse of his buddy, who thought he could hurt my bestie and live to tell the tale. Well, I disabused him of that notion. Turningback to Priest, I gently grasped his hand. “Come on, Growly Gus, it’s time for a breather and maybe a snack. Don’t want to get hangry.”
Priest turned on Mal’s heart rate monitor, leaving the drill nearby, and then stomped his way out of the confessional. We walked side by side over to the garage while he opened the monitor’s app to make sure Mal remained among the living. Priest took a moment to wash his hands and scrub his forearms at a big utility sink on one of the garage walls.
His shirt contained blood spatter, which he dabbed with a paper towel before giving up. Maybe I could get him an apron for Christmas…a frilly one! I’d never given anyone a Christmas present before, and the idea made me feel giddy. Priest leaned back against the sink and reached into his cut, but instead of pulling out a cigarette like I’d seen him do a hundred times, he pulled out a blue lollipop instead. I quirked my head to the side. “No cigarettes? Or are you addicted to sugar now, too?”
Priest chuffed out a laugh. “I’m addicted to something alright, and it ain’t sugar.” I nodded along like he made sense, which wasn’t strictly true, but I didn’t want to say anything that might make Priest relapse. I was a supportive friend like that. “In your professional opinion, how do you think your session with Malice is going? Think he’s left it all in the sharing circle, or do you think he’s holding back?” Priest rolled the lollipop around in his mouth for a moment in consideration before he answered.
“I think maybe I need to change track, try asking different questions. I haven’t gotten the sense that he’s lying, but maybe he knows something and we just haven’tasked the right question yet.” I considered what we had already gotten from Malice, all the various issues the club was facing, and how those issues connected back to the mob. An idea popped into my head, but I’d need Priest’s cooperation to see if it would pan out. “Alright,” Priest said with a sigh as he pushed off the sink, “let’s wrap this up. I don’t want to spend all day with this asshole.”
“Totally,” I replied. “Hey, so I have an idea, and it might speed things along with Malice. Mind if I take over for a minute?”
Priest shrugged and crunched his lollipop between his teeth. “You know what, sure. Why the hell not?”
“I’m not trying to step on your toes, Growly Gus, I promise. You’re a much better interrogator than I originally believed, so snaps for you.” Ismiled at Priest, who gave me a mocking bow. “Honestly, I’m not a super big fan of torturing people. Because, you know”—I gestured to myself—“of my past.” Priest looked concerned, so I quickly continued. “Look, I’m not knocking your profession. I understand that when you’re looking for information, it's to save lives and help people, and I know you don’t do it for fun like Roark does.” I swallowed and turned to Priest. “But I do want to help. I feel like Ineedto help. And I think I’ve thought of a way I can do that without riling my ghosts up too much in the process.”
