He wasn’t wrong, but madness swept over me. I shoved Priest hard, sending him sprawling into Drummer as he staggered out of the hole the King’s enforcer had dumped him in.
Drummer was bruised and bleeding, eyes pointing in different directions. He used Priest to steady himself, confusion marring his ugly face as he struggled to focus. “Get the vans,” he slurred. “We’re done here.”
Fury raged in Priest’s vicious gaze. He was far from done. But before the shout let loose from his fat mouth, a brick smashed into him, knocking him to the dirt, and a victorious howl pierced the air behind us.
Drummer was right. It was over.
It wasn’t in me to pluck the wounded Crows from the ground.
I strode back to the vans and slid behind the wheel of the one some fucker had been dumb enough to leave the keys in.
It was a rusty piece of shit. The Crows didn’t take care of their vehicles any more than they looked after each other. It started on the third try. Wounded Crows heard the sputtering roar and crawled towards me while the Kings watched.
All but one.
McGovern’s attention was on his men, checking their injuries. Their state of mind. Embracing them, and I swear to god, he planted a smacker on the cheek of the enforcer Priest had been boneheaded enough to callbaby. That dude was kinda hot too, but whatever he had to offer was dulled by the beauty of the man beside him.
McGovern.
McGovern.
His name became a drumbeat in my chest, a welcome distraction from the clusterfuck my existence had become six years ago when my unbending, principled twin brother had unwittingly chucked a grenade under his life.
I was still lying flat over that fucker. Every damn day. But staring at the blond-haired,blue-eyed dreamboat across the way made it easier for the long seconds I got away with it.
Then he caught me looking, and that was the moment I should’ve pulled my shit together. But I didn’t. Not until his enforcer stooped and swiped the knife I’d refused from the pot-holed tarmac. The jagged blade Priest carried around like it was fuckin’ Excalibur or some shit.
The enforcer twirled it in his long fingers, and I probably knew before he did that he was gonna launch it.
McGovern stopped him. A big arm around his shoulders, a low murmur in his ear. Warmth. Kindness. Everything my life was missing.
Jealousy was a bitter thing. I forced myself to look away as Priest hauled himself into the van, blood and discontent seeping from him in equal measure.
“Fuck it,” he spat. “We’ll get the girl instead. Wait for her to leave their place and drive home. Rancid Kings’ snatch, but it’ll do.”
Priest talked about all women like that. But I knew who he meant. Orla O’Brian, sister to the president of the Rebel Kings MC. I’d never seen her, and to my knowledge, neither had Priest, but even less vile Dog Crow rumours had her beauty on the same level as my secret obsession with McGovern.
Not that it made any difference to her right to exist without the constant threat of fuckin’ gang rape.
Priest fired off directions. With one eye on the Kings’ bikes, I put the van in gear and moved off, disgust and despair warring for dominance in my heart.
But if there was one thing I could rely on the Crows for, it was terminal predictability. I’d seen this coming from the moment Priest had brought his plan to Drummer’s ear, and I’d already crocked the van.
Two miles tops before it conked out at the side of the road.
Ten minutes before Priest realised he wasn’t getting his rape game on and came for me instead for throwing hands at him in the field. He didn’t have his blade, but he still carried a pipe and those fuckershurt. A fact as real to me as a summer sky being the same colour as McGovern’s eyes.
Afactthat didn’t matter. Cos I didn’t give a shit. If playing Priest saved a woman I’d never met from the curse of his dirty hands, I’d take whatever he threw at me until the end of fuckin’ time.
And McGovern?
I’d keep him for my dreams.
2
NASH
Present Day
