His dark, dark eyes landed on her.
Longing. Need.
Her breath caught. Then she wasn’t just standing inside the doorway any longer. She was rushing across that bar.
He stood there, shaking his head, and then—then he just jumped right over the bar. He caught her in three steps. His hands wrapped tightly around her. “What are you doing here?”
“Coming to you.” He’d gotten a new life, courtesy of Gray. Gray and all his strings. No more badass MC leader. Now Cass was a bar owner in a small town. A quiet life. Peace.
And she missed him so much.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
There was no other place that she’d rather be. “What does a woman have to do,” she asked, as her hand rose to press against his cheek, “in order to be loved by you?”
His mouth crashed onto hers. Not softly. Not carefully. But with a wild, voracious hunger that she eagerly met because this was her Cass. Her partner. Her lover.
Hers.
He kissed her like he’d been starving, and she kissed him back the exact same way. As if she’d been desperate for him. As if every single day had ripped out her heart, and she’d been walking around empty on the inside because she did not have him.
I have him now. I will not let go.
But his mouth tore from hers. His eyes glittered as he looked down at her and then…
Then he was taking her hand. Marching her through the narrow hallways of the bar and out the back door. He threw open that door and rushed them into the night.
Surprise, surprise, a motorcycle waited not too far away.
You could take the biker out of the crew, but you could not take the bike from the man.
“I didn’t want you giving up anything for me, Agnes.”
Precious words. He stood with his hands fisted now because he’d let her go. She didn’t want his hands fisted. She wanted them on her. “Can we go for a ride?” She’d missed riding on the motorcycle with him. I missed him. Everything about him.
“You need to leave.”
“Is that what you really want?”
A shake of his head.
“Then what do you want?” she asked.
“You. Here. With me. Always. Because I am a selfish bastard like that.”
“It’s funny. I guess I’m selfish like that, too. Because I want you, here, with me. Always.”
“Agnes—”
“Your uncle is dead. He was murdered in his cell. His throat was slit. Ear to ear.”
Cass didn’t even blink. “Did you come to ask me if I ordered the hit?”
“No.” She hadn’t. Cass had pulled out of the MC world, but…he was gone, not forgotten. The intel picked up by the FBI indicated that Cass still held plenty of power. Javion had taken over the Strikers, and, at the big, bad meeting for leaders in Arizona—a meeting that she and Cass had never quite made it to—Javion had flatly announced that Cass would always belong to his crew, that he would be protected, no matter what.
Rumors were swirling about Cass, though. The man was even more of a myth, a legend these days.
Some people insisted Cass was dead, killed in the blast at the warehouse. They didn’t get why Javion would protect a dead man.
