When her eyes lingered on my hands, something inside me went viciously still. She stared at my knuckles like she was imagining what they’d feel like. She didn’t smile or blush. Her quiet and intense expression lit me up inside.
I’d been around women my whole life. Was raised by a strong, loving mother who’d taught me to respect them. I'd worked with them. Protected them. Watched my brothers fall for women and get knocked on their asses by it—which I found fucking hilarious at the time. Though they didn’t tend to appreciate my sense of humor. Boring motherfuckers.
Never been the guy who lost his head over a girl. For sure, I never looked once and felt something primitive snap into place like a lock.
But fuck if that wasn’t what happened.
Mine.
The thought had come uninvited, sitting in my chest while every breath fought to be set free.
While Ink kept talking, I realized she belonged here in my space. But I wasn’t sure how I felt about that yet.
She wasn’t mine. Except my body didn’t believe that shit for a second.
But I didn’t let any of what I was feeling show when I murmured, “C’mon.”
My pace was steady as I led her across the room, but my body was very aware of her presence beside me. I could hear the soft scuff of her boots, the faint rustle of her clothes, and the quiet inhale she took when we passed one of the open booths where a machine buzzed against skin. Every time she drew in a breath, my mind supplied a different sound to go with it, something lower and broken that she’d make if I had her pinned to a wall with my mouth at her throat.
I was losing my fucking mind.
She was too young. And much too sweet.
I was patched into the Hounds of Hellfire Motorcycle Club, for fuck’s sake. We weren’t the damn devil, but we certainly weren’t choir boys either. My life was filled with secrets and darkness. It was the nature of the beast.
Motorcycle clubs were built on silence and loyalty—ours more than most. People on the outside didn’t know much, but they got enough to stay the fuck out of our way. We weren’t saints and never claimed to be. We had blood on our hands, dabbled in shit that never made it to paper, and handed out our own kind of justice when the law fell short.
But we had honor. Loyalty. Limits.
And unlike a lot of other clubs, we actually lived by them.
The Hounds didn’t just run bikes and muscle. We had legitimate businesses, more than people realized. And Ace, with his freakish brain for the stock market, made sure our investments stayed fat.
But the real money came from the shadows.
We didn’t kill people for cash. We killed identities. Scrubbed them clean. Rewrote lives from the bones up. It had started with a few favors, but it turned into something bigger. And lucrative. We became the place you went when you needed to vanish for good—no questions, no trace, and no slip-ups.
The government had WITSEC.
We offered something better.
No red tape. No weak links. Just results.
It only worked because we trusted each other with our lives. Every patch earned its place. We had specialists in every corner—tech, weapons, fire, finance, theft, and intel. Some had military backgrounds. Others learned in darker places.
Ink and I brought our artistic talents into the mix. When King forged documents, we took care of the watermarks and other shit needed to make them hold up against the most intense scrutiny. We built lives from paper to digital footprint and made them stick. But no client ever knew who did what. That was the deal.
We didn’t take every job. Some we did for a price. Others we walked into with nothing but instinct and a sense of justice. No receipts. No favors owed. But nobody talked about those, which kept people from showing up with sob stories they thought could play us.
We weren’t above the law because we thought we were better than it. We just knew how broken it was. Sometimes, even the cops looked the other way. Especially after the MC madea generous donation to the police fund. Friends in high places didn’t hurt. We didn’t buy them—we just gave them a reason to see things our way.
We even had a fucking SKIFF room—sealed tight and soundproof, meant for the kind of ops the alphabet agencies pretended didn’t exist. It wasn’t about paranoia. It was about control. And the Hounds didn’t operate without it.
Elena didn’t belong in my world. She didn’t belong anywhere near it.
But I wanted her anyway.
When we reached my booth, I stopped and turned, letting her come up short in front of me. She lifted her eyes to meet mine again, and the look she gave me wasn’t shy. But it wasn’t bold, either. It was the look of someone who felt something they couldn’t name and didn’t know what to do with.
