“Careful,” Harley’s gentle voice scolds me playfully, sleep edging her tone. “You don’t want to damage that before we get down to any real fun.”
I know that before I look at her I’m already going to find her hair mussed, sheet creases on her cheek, sleep clinging her to lashes, starring them prettily, a warm blush riding high on her cheeks. It still slays me when I look up and find her sitting up in bed, my t-shirt clinging to her shoulders, defining her breasts, the sheets tucked around her waist.Mybed.Mywoman.Mine.
Her face changes the instant she sees me, and I know it’s not just because my mug looks ugly as hell as the moment. “What happened?” she asks softly.
“Nothing.” I know better than to lie to her, so I don’t even try. “Steel called church. Gotta go. Snake’s rounding up the other guys.”
“No!” She swings her legs over the edge of the bed, but the look I give her stops her in her tracks. “I can go there. Try and change his mind,” she protests. “This is all my fault.”
“Stop.” I can’t stand the fear in her eyes. It bleeds my heart straight out. “This is not your fault. Second, Steel might have called church, but I get to plead my case. He might be Prez, but it isn’t a fucking regime. He doesn’t get the final decision. We vote. My brothers vote. If they want me out for loving you, so fucking be it. If not, then I’m staying and your dad will have to work it out for himself.”
Harley drops her face into her hands. “This is such mess.”
I stalk over and grip her wrists, forcing her hands away from her face. She shrinks back against the passion there, against the ferocity of everything I feel, all of it on display for her to feast on, to read like a damn novel.
“I want you to stay here. I’ll come back, I promise. Just give me a couple hours. Don’t leave. Don’t go back to your house. Do not try and see your father. You got me, Harley?”
She finally nods. “Good.” I take a strand of her thick dark hair and curl it around my finger before letting it go. “Go back to sleep, darlin’. It’s too early to be up.”
“You’re up,” she shoots back. Her eyes sweep over my face and, as usual, she misses nothing. “You’re not feeling well. You’re sweating and it’s not that hot in here. You probably have a fever.”
I snort and force a nonchalant grin just for her. “Been through a lot worse. Trust me. This doesn’t hurt nearly as bad as getting shot.”
“Well… at least let me make you something to eat.”
“I have to go, Harley. Right now.”
The pain in her eyes is nearly more than I can take. I want to throw her back against those pillows, spread her sweet legs and let her give me something to eat alright. Want to flip her over onto her stomach and spread her gorgeous round ass and feast on her there again too, but I can’t. I have to get moving. Harley is my heart, but the brothers and the club—they’re the reason I’m still alive, not rotting away in some prison cell or in the ground.
I pull Harley’s face to mine, roughly, so that our foreheads touch. Eventually, I force myself away, because I have to. I tug a clean t-shirt over my head, which causes it to throb like a motherfucker, and I shrug into my leather vest.
Harley watches me tug my boots on, her eyes huge and teary, filled up with worry and fear. I know it must be tearing herapart, what’s happening between me and her father, but I can’t help it.
I leave her like that, without looking back, because I know if I do, I’d stay.
I walk down the road for a few minutes, putting distance between myself and the house, before I get out my phone and call Snake. The bastard agrees to give me a ride, though I know I’m going to hear about it later.
All of us are on edge and no one has the ability to make jokes at the moment. He doesn’t even ask me what happened to my damn face.
***
It’s obvious, as soon as we’re all assembled at the clubhouse that Steel is out for blood. Most of the brothers lean up against the wall in the room we use for church, hungover as fuck. The room stinks like stale whiskey and smoke, because I was right, most of them haven’t showered yet. The chairs at the table are full and I take my normal seat beside our Prez.
Who refuses to acknowledge me in any way.
He runs a hand through his hair and clears his throat before he bangs his fist down on the oval-shaped boardroom table. We dragged that fucker in there ten years ago and assembled it, the same way we renovated the rest of the place. I remember sweating and cursing it, making jokes about having a smaller table, like the fucking knights of old. Steel had to have it though. Said it made us legit, a real club, where all members could be heard.
He pounds that huge slab of wood again, not that he needed to. He has everyone’s attention.
“Called this meeting this morning,” Steel starts, “because it’s fucking important and can’t wait.”
“This about the Devil’s Slaves up there in Jacksonville?” Tracker asks. He scrubs a hand over his face, still trying to wake the hell up.
“Told you that when you put one down, another springs up. I think you’ll find they’re significantly worse than we ever were.” Wraith pipes up from down the table. Now he’s gotten clean he’s a new man. Bright eyed and fucking bushy tailed, like he was already awake at five in the morning.
I have to hand it to him. He was as young a Prez as I’ve ever seen, of a piece of shit club. The Black County Sinners were eliminated, so to speak, after they took Steel’s woman and held her captive two years ago. They were in bed with her father, a real bastard, who wanted to wipe The Riders off the face of the earth after he tried everything in his power to clear us out of Helena. Fortunately, the town kind of likes us around, since we keep worse shit from creeping in, don’t trade in hard drugs, and never in women. We deal weed, grow ops all over Florida, but we leave it at that. We protect the town in a way that the cops can’t, and there’s been more than once where people have turned to The Riders to solve their problems and not the police.
Wraith was shot in the process, three times. He managed to survive, and Steel, because he can be an unpredictable son of a bitch at the best of times, decided to let him prospect for us if he swore loyalty. It was either that or die, and Wraith was more in favor of dying, but he came around. Steel got him checked into a good rehab facility and he stayed there for six months, detoxing off his own product, before he started prospecting for us. He just patched in and is the newestmember of The Riders. We stand at thirty-one members with Wraith, and that’s large enough for anyone to handle.
