Clover is a dog. He’s not a second.
Clover is a very alert dog. I’ll bring Blade.
Rampage set the phone down and shook his head. Irish always brought Clover on perimeter rotation. He’d bring another brother with him this time. They didn’t know enough about the men who were trying to grab his girl.
Upstairs, he heard a door close. He couldn’t be sure it was hers, but he suspected so.
He sat there in the kitchen for a long time after that. If he went upstairs before she was asleep, there was a good chancehe’d knock on the door and tell her everything she wanted to hear. Yes, he is a Daddy. Yes, he wanted to be her Daddy. No, he wouldn’t take no for an answer.
And yes, there was something that rattled him. The thought of her leaving before she came to the conclusion on her own or something happening to her. That thought rattled the hell out of him but he wasn’t ready to admit it out loud. Not to her. Not to himself.
CHAPTER 9
EMILY
Her second day in Grand Ridge had been mostly uneventful. She’d met the rest of the women when Savannah took her to Trinity’s coffee shop. They were all super sweet and easy to talk to. After, Makenzie took her on a drive through the town and onto Valhalla where two club members were working the gate. After meeting Bull and Mad Dog, she met Mia and Veronica. They were a hoot. Some of the women were very open about their DDlg relationships and Emily couldn’t stop thinking about it. She was mulling over the rules the girls had told her about when Rampage dropped another one for her.
"Yesterday I came looking for you and couldn’t find you. Luckily, Irish was nearby and told me you were with Mak. From now on, if you go somewhere, you tell me first," Rampage said, not looking up from his coffee. "Even inside the compound. If I don't know where you are, I'm going to come find you. You might not like the consequences when I do."
Emily looked up from her toast. "Inside the compound."
"Yes."
"You want me to report my location inside a building."
"Yes."
She opened her mouth. Closed it. Looked at Savannah across the table, who was studying her own mug with the focused intensity of a woman actively not inserting herself.
"That's—" Emily started.
"Non-negotiable," he said. Same even tone. Like he was reading from a list of facts about the weather.
"I was going to say something else," she said evenly. "But okay. Non-negotiable works too."
He finally looked at her. Something in the look that said he'd expected an argument and was recalibrating.
She picked up her toast. "I'm not going to fight you about my own safety. I told you that."
"You told me. Didn't know if it would hold when the rules got specific."
"I'm a woman of my word." She took a bite. "Can I at least use the bathroom without a check-in, or?—"
"Emily."
"I'm asking a genuine logistical question."
Nicole made a sound into her coffee that was almost certainly a laugh.
"Use your judgment," he said. "Anytime you are going further than twenty feet from me, you tell me."
"Twenty feet. Got it." She considered that. "That's a very specific number."
"It's the distance at which I lose immediate response capability."
She stared at him. "You calculated that."
"Yes."
