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The rest of that sentence hung over the table.

Preacher put it together fast. A prospect on Main in the mornings, in his own car, no patch. Havoc and Lock rotating nights on the street behind her place. Somebody on the ice house. “Quiet,” he said. “Nobody parks a bike outside her shop. Nobody walks in there wearing a cut. We watch. That’s all, for now.”

“For now,” I said. “And her? She needs to know.”

“Tell her enough to keep her careful.” Preacher’s voice stayed flat. “Leave out anything she could let slip across a counter.”

It was the right call for the club, and probably her. I hated it anyway.

Preacher’s eyes settled on me and stayed there. I felt every man at the table follow them.

“You’ve got a stake in this,” he said.

It was a statement. I answered it like one.

“Yeah.”

Havoc’s eyebrows went up. For once in his life, he sat on it.

“Then you keep it behind closed doors,” Preacher said. “The minute this town decides she’s your old lady, Tomas’s people will also decide she stops being leverage over her father and starts being a message to us.” He let that land. “You understand me?”

“Yeah, I understand you.”

I went to her that night meaning to tell her.

I walked the two streets from the feed store with every word lined up. Your father knew. They’ve been watching you since spring. They watched you walk into my clubhouse. I’d put it plain and I’d stay while she took it, however she took it.

She opened the back door with flour on her hands and a smile that knocked the breath out of me, and said, “I made you a batch,” and lifted a tray of green chile rolls still hot from the oven.

Tell her, I thought.

I kissed her instead.

I backed her into the kitchen and kicked the door shut behind me. The tray went down on the steel with a clatter. She laughed into my mouth, and then she stopped laughing, because I meant it and she could feel it.

Upstairs I turned the lamp on. I wanted to see her. All of her, lit gold, nothing hidden in the dark this time.

I undressed her one piece at a time. Her shirt, her bra, her jeans, taking my time with every button, and she stood there and let me with her breath going quick and shallow. I turned her by the shoulders to face the mirror on the back of her bedroom door and stood behind her, one arm across her stomach, my mouth at her ear.

“Watch,” I said.

I slid my hand down between her legs. She was already wet. In the mirror her eyes went heavy and her lips parted, and I worked her in lazy circles, with my other hand spread over her ribs, holding her up against me. Her head fell back on my shoulder.

“Eyes open.”

She opened them. She watched herself fall apart in my hands, knees buckling, a sound breaking out of her that I felt in my own chest. I kept her upright through all of it.

Then I took her to the bed and let her push me down on it.

She climbed over me, and she sank down onto me an inch at a time with her palms flat on my chest. The lamp caught every freckle on her shoulders. I held her hips and let her set the pace, and for a while it was easy and rolling and she was smiling down at me, pleased with herself.

I couldn’t stand it. I sat up and wrapped both arms around her so we were chest to chest, and took over.

Deep. Deliberate. Every stroke all the way home. I cupped the back of her neck and made her look at me while I did it, and I watched the smile slide off her face and heat take its place.

“Deacon. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”