Contents

1. Title

2. Rights

3. Family Tree

4. Chapter One

5. Chapter Two

6. Chapter Three

7. Chapter Four

8. Chapter Five

9. Chapter Six

10. Chapter Seven

11. Chapter Eight

12. Chapter Nine

13. Chapter Ten

14. Chapter Eleven

15. Chapter Twelve

16. Chapter Thirteen

17. Chapter Fourteen

18. Chapter Fifteen

19. Chapter Sixteen

20. Chapter Seventeen

21. Chapter Eighteen

22. Chapter Nineteen

23. Chapter Twenty

CARY

Henchmen MC - Next Gen #5

—

Jessica Gadziala

Copyright © 2022 Jessica Gadziala

All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author's intellectual property. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for brief quotations used in a book review.

"This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental."

Cover design: Jessica Gadziala

Cover image credit: Shutterstock .com/ Cara-Foto

Family Tree

Valen and Violet(Vi) - Adler and Lou’s kids

Layna - Edison and Lenny’s daughter

Louana (Lou) - Luce and Evan’s daughter

Seth - Repo and Maze’s son

Willa (Wills, Willow) - Paine and Elsie’s daughter

Billie - Sugar and Peyton’s daughter

Finn - Reign and Summer’s son

Hope - Renny and Mina’s daughter

CHAPTER ONE

Abigail

Sweat mingled with the dirt that had gotten kicked up on my chest and arms as I knelt so low to run that my thighs screamed in objection.

Being as small as possible was the most important thing right then. Small meant harder to see. Harder to see meant I might actually be able to get away.

A part of me was in disbelief I’d gotten as far as I had already.

I wanted to say it was all part of the plan, that I’d worked things out down to the most minute detail. But the fact of the matter was, there was a lot of dumb luck involved. Sure, I had all my plans in place. The thing was, I wasn’t supposed to act on it for another two weeks. I had the hour set and everything.

When life threw you an opportunity, though, you had to grab it with both hands.

I didn’t get a lot of those.

Opportunities.

So I couldn’t look away from this one when there was some sort of commotion in the foyer of the house followed by a rushed meeting behind closed doors in the study. A closed-door meeting that had all but the very bare minimum members of the guard abandoning their posts.

I knew better than to think there would be no one watching. There was always someone watching. Especially to keep an eye on me.

You’re a flight risk, pequeña ave.

Little bird.

That was what he called me.

A little bird with clipped wings in her gilded cage.

So he made sure all the possible exits were locked down tight, and there was someone always keeping an eye in case I tried to escape.

I’d just been lucky in that the guard who was closest to me was young and dumb, answering a call from a girl while on-duty and watching her as she, it sounded like, pleasured herself for him.

He would pay for the mistake with his life.

The part of me that was still good and moral and caring wanted to feel bad about that.

The part of me that had been kept as a prisoner in a mansion in a foreign country for actual years while these men looked on and said and did nothing, well, she wasn’t quite as magnanimous.

He could die.

They could all die for all I cared.

So long as I got away before that.

A hiss escaped me as a branch from one of the shrubs I was squat-running along sliced down the skin of my bare arm. It would match the other ones up and down my arms, legs, neck, and the side of my face.

It would have been easier to run across the lush green grounds. But the cameras were sure to see me if I dared. The longer I went without detection, the more chance of getting away I had.

No.

Not chance.

There was no option.

I had to get away.

Because if I didn’t...

Well, let’s just say that the consequences would be swift, fierce, and very painful.

Much more painful than some slices up and down my body.

I pulled to a stop at the side of the estate, taking slow, deep breaths to calm my frantic heartbeat before I craned my neck out to look into the driveway.

Sleek black cars lined the circle drive at almost all times, day and night. Because Raúl’s operation never slept. So his men rarely got a chance to either.

My original plan had involved grocery delivery day and the careful theft of the grocery store van.

But it was in the middle of the night.

There wouldn’t be any deliveries for days.

I was going to need to steal one of their cars.

There was one perk to being the unwilling kept woman of a cartel drug lord—I got a lot of time to observe things. Like how the organization worked. Like how the men behaved.

Which was how I knew that every one of those cars would have the keys or key fobs inside of them. Because no one would dare walk onto Raúl’s property and attempt to take from him. Not if they wanted to live anyway.

Rushing toward the cars would mean a much higher likelihood of someone seeing me. The cameras absolutely would. Even if no one was watching them currently, when they rewound them back, they would see me taking one of the cars.

It didn’t matter, though.

I wasn’t going to keep the car.

I just needed it to get as far as fast as I could.

Then I was going to ditch it, then take steps to get out of Mexico, and back to the United States.

Then I had to search for the only person in the world I thought could help me.

A man who probably forgot I existed, one who might not be happy with me showing up at his doorstep with all the problems chasing behind me.

But there was no other choice.

There was nowhere else to go.

Decision made, I crushed one arm to the backpack I had slung across my chest to keep it from bouncing against my body and making any sort of noise. I’d already kicked off my shoes on the back porch. If I was careful, I could get into the car without making a sound until I turned over the engine.

And with that, before I could let myself think myself out of it, I flew forward over the pea gravel that lined the flowerbeds to keep the weeds down, then across a few yards of lush lawn, the soft blades a nice break for my sore soles, then onto the warm paver driveway.

I threw myself into the car, ducking low, and locking the doors.

I hadn’t driven a car in six years.

Or was it longer?

Time was getting harder and harder to hold onto, just sand sliding through my hand as I desperately tried to hold onto it.

But I’d at least been in one of these cars before, so as soon as I saw the fob sitting in one of the cupholders, I knew all I had to do was press the break and then the push-to-start button.

And just like that, the car purred to life.

I didn’t hesitate.

I threw it into drive and drove off.

Not flooring it, not until I was out of the driveway anyway. Because, amazingly, no one came out to stop me.

Oh, they would be coming. I had no doubt about that. Raúl would never let me get away. Or get away with making a fool of him. So they would come. In force. Combing every neighborhood and city until they found me.

Which was why my first stop involved grabbing hair dye, makeup, and scissors.

But I didn’t dare stop for long enough to put them to use yet. I drove for another two hours before I abandoned the car behind a busy restaurant, then took off on foot, not knowing if the cars had trackers, and not wanting to risk them getting to me faster than I could at least drastically change my appearance.

I locked myself into a filthy gas station bathroom where I stood in front of the mirror, looking at the me I’d always known for the last time, with my wavy strawberry blonde hair, and my freckled face, and my big gray eyes, all of which made me look younger than I was.

Raúl liked the innocent look. I’d been so naive about what a red flag that was.

It was why he’d never let me dye my hair or wear makeup. And I was allowed to cut my hair, but only under his supervision, and the hairdresser was threatened with the loss of her hands if she took more off than he said she could.

On a disgusted sigh, I reached back to part my hair up the back, pulling the strands forward, quickly twisting each side into braids, then reaching for the scissors I’d picked up.

It didn’t matter if it wasn’t even.

I wasn’t going for perfect.

I was going for drastically different.

Exhaling hard, I snipped the long locks into a long bob that skirted my shoulder. Then, since there was no going back, I did the same on the other side.

I gathered up the hair and tossed it before going for the box of dark brown dye, mixing, and pouring it all over my head.

I’d never dyed my hair before.

And I hadn’t been prepared for how different I would look, how strange it would feel to look in the mirror and see someone who was not quite me looking back.

By the time I was done, I had dark dye staining my arms, neck, and a couple of dots on my face since washing all that out under a bathroom sink with just an empty bottle to use as a shower head had been a lot more complicated than I’d anticipated.

But it was done. That was all that mattered.

I set to work on the makeup with clumsy fingers and only a cursory knowledge of how to use any of it.

In my childhood home, makeup had been considered prideful and, therefore, sinful. In my ex-husband’s home, he’d seen it as “whorish.”

And then Raúl had been too controlling to let me experiment.

So I was working off of random snippets I’d caught on commercials or TV shows. Which meant that my mascara had smudged all over my eyelids, my liner was a lot more raccoonish than I’d set out to do, and my dark lipstick looked like it was bleeding outward off my lips. We weren’t even going to talk about how lopsided my brows looked.

But it was different.

Different was all that mattered, not good.

I lifted the liner one last time, pressing a beauty mark up on one cheek, masking a distinguishing dimple I had there.

By the time I changed into a pair of linen shorts and a tank—clothes Raúl would never let me be caught in outside of the confines of the master suite—I wasn’t sure I would even recognize myself if I saw me on the street.

I looked, I don’t know, harder, than a woman I would have recognized.

I guessed that was fitting, though.

I was harder.

Years of being browbeaten and abused would do that to a woman.

“You can do this,” I told myself, grabbing the sides of the sink as I leaned in closer, willing that niggling little negative voice inside to believe me.

I just had to find a bus and take it to the next town.

And then the town after that.

And after that.

By my rough estimate, I was about twenty hours away from the US border. That didn’t factor in transfers and possible routes that didn’t go straight in the direction I needed to go. But it would be maybe two, three days, tops, until I could get out of Mexico and, hopefully, out of the grips of Raúl.

I wasn’t stupid.

He had contacts all over the States, but it wouldn’t be like it was in Mexico, where he had people watching all over the place.

I figured that, by morning, everyone in the country who was even loosely employed by the cartel would know I was missing, would be on the lookout for me.

Once I was on US soil, I at least knew that, worst case, I could seek out police for help. Years of living with Raúl taught me that there weren’t a whole lot of forces in either Mexico or the US that weren’t corrupted by criminals. And the cartel had a pretty good hold on most of them.

Which was why the police weren’t my first line of defense.

No.

I needed someone who could operate around the law.

Someone who could help me untangle myself from the vines of the cartel for good.

Someone who was a criminal himself.

I didn’t even know how to begin to go about finding him. The last time I’d heard anything about him, he’d been in prison. But he should have been released a while ago, barring any new charges. And I really hoped he didn’t have any of those, because he would be useless to me if he was still behind bars.

I couldn’t imagine it would be too hard to find him, though.

He was a lifelong biker.

I doubted he was going to change career paths late in life.

He would have gotten out, and gone back to what was comfortable and familiar.

So I just had to figure out which of the biker, you know, organizations—or whatever they called themselves—he belonged to.

I knew that there were a lot of those, but I also knew that Cary had always belonged to the, you know, one-percent ones. Which meant that ninety-nine percent of the biker clubs could be marked off my list. I just had to look for the criminal ones.

I also knew that Cary said he preferred to have “all the seasons.” So he wouldn’t move too south or out to California.

It was a start.

I just had to cross my fingers that he even remembered who I was, let alone was fond enough of that memory to want to get involved in my mess.

I mean, it wasn’t like I was going to have him and his biker friends try to murder an entire cartel or anything. I just needed someone “in the lifestyle” to advise me on what I needed to do to get and stay safe, to be free after so long.

God, I wasn’t even sure I fully grasped the concept of free anymore.

After so many years living under such strict control, just being able to choose the color of my nails seemed like a luxurious amount of freedom. I couldn’t fathom choosing my own home, my clothes, my furniture, what I got to eat, or what experiences I wanted to have.

With a wistful sigh, I cleaned up as much of my mess as I could, then made my way out of the bathroom, walking toward a future that was uncertain, yes, but for the first time in maybe my entire life, it was mine.

CHAPTER TWO

Cary

“It’s not natural. That’s all I’m saying,” Dezi griped as he slouched in the passenger seat of the SUV we needed to take because he claimed it was impossible for a man to balance on a motorcycle before seven in the morning.

“And don’t come at me with all that logic shit about how through the course of human history, waking up with the sun was how we always functioned and blah blah blah,” he went on, stealing my argument from me. “‘Cause the way I see it, those poor saps didn’t have two-for-one shot deals at the gentleman’s club.”

“Don’t blame me, Dez, you were the one who wanted me to drag you with me to the gym,” I reminded him.

Dezi got on kicks when it came to his fitness. Which was good since, with his lifestyle habits, if he didn’t occasionally knuckle-down and work at it, he would probably be seven-hundred-pounds and need to be fork-lifted out of the clubhouse.

He would go for a few months, eating endless amounts of shit, drinking too much, and never moving his body. He’d get a little doughy. And maybe someone said something about it and got him determined to lose the extra couple of pounds.

Which was where I came in.

Hey, Zaddy, I want to be ripped like you.

Or some variation of that phrase.

“Well, that version of me didn’t have a brain soaked in booze and memories of lap dances from some pretty ladies.”

When it came to biker stereotypes, Dezi proudly sported most of them. He liked to do it all hard. Party, drink, eat, fight, fuck, and fuck up. Which meant that when he set his mind to putting in some effort at the gym, he actually made a lot of progress in a small amount of time. The guy made me feel like I was slacking when he was in the right headspace to make shit happen.

Clearly, though, his mind was on girls and parties. And, to be fair, that was where my mind had been when I was young and carefree as he was.

I mean, I wasn’t old. But when you get to a certain age, shit starts to creak and fall apart if you don’t set your mind to taking care of it. So, I’d dedicated a lot of my life to keeping fit and eating right. To slow down the years that felt like they kept coming faster and faster.

Days were still slow for guys like Dezi.

And he liked to spend that extra time on his hands having fun.

I couldn’t blame him, but I was a pretty dedicated physical trainer when he demanded it of me. So, despite all the bitching and moaning, he was going to go to the gym with me and sweat out all the shit he’d put in his system the night before.

“This might be that last round of L.I.T.s talking,” Dezi said, leaning his head against the window. “But you seem to be heading in the wrong direction, man.”

“Our gym doesn’t open for another hour yet,” I told him, meaning the one owned by Cash and a couple of the club old ladies. I preferred to workout there, having the option of not only regular gym equipment, but speed and punching bags as well. And the ring for some fighting.

The club hadn’t known a hell of a lot of peace since I joined up. I didn’t want to let my fighting skills get rusty. We never knew what kind of problem was right around the corner.

“The only other gym in town is owned by Shane Mallick.”

“Yeah, and?” I asked, not seeing the problem.

“It’s disloyal, man,” Dezi claimed.

“Disloyal to who?”

“To Valen, man. You know him and Jase Mallick have that rivalry going on.”

“Rivalry,” I scoffed. “They both liked the same girl a decade or something ago.”

“Nah, Zaddy. Jase was dating her. Valen stole her. It’s some shit. We gotta be respectful.”

“Of the decade-old shit?” I asked, shaking my head. “It’s not Jase’s gym. And Shane Mallick has always been someone our club has considered an ally from what I hear. It’s fine.”

And the only option.

Because, quite frankly, I didn’t want to go to the self-defense gym with Dezi.

I damn sure didn’t want to get into a ring with him.

Sure, the man was a food-obsessed teddy bear a fair chunk of the time. But the man could flip a switch like no one I’d ever seen. If you’d ever seen him in a fight, you’d think the man didn’t feel pain with the way he took his hits and kept coming back for more. He was a relentless fighter. And while I was fine to fight when a situation called for it, I wasn’t someone who enjoyed it like Dezi did.

So the normal gym was the plan.

Whether he liked it or not.

“Hey, look at that, Zadds,” Dezi declared a couple minutes later as we made our way toward the front doors of the gym. “There is someone in the club more dedicated to their physical fitness than even you,” he said as he nodded his chin at the man coming out of the doors.

He was a new addition to the club, still squarely stuck in the prospect phase along with Valen, who was a legacy.

Dezi and I, we officially got our patches just a week or so after they blew into town.

Voss had saved Valen in a fight somewhere down in Louisiana. And, for some reason, all Voss wanted in return was to get a chance to prospect with the club.

Voss was tall and a stocky kind of strong that said he absolutely spent a good chunk of time in the gym, lifting heavy. He had a full blond beard and matching hair, but he kept it shaved up the sides, giving him a Viking appearance.

When Dezi first met Voss, he’d referred to him as grumpy-faced, and, well, that wasn’t an inaccurate description. Part of it was the half-shaved head and all the ink, but he also had a stern, prominent brow that set his light blue eyes in shadow.

Grumpy-voiced, too, Dezi had observed when Voss’s mouth opened, and little more than a growling sound came out.

“Voss,” I greeted, nodding at him. “I thought the gym opened at six,” I said, though he’d clearly been there long enough to work up a heavy sweat.

“Twenty-four, seven, if you’re willing to pay for it,” he said, shrugging, flashing his key at us.

You didn’t exactly make much as a prospect. Really, Fallon was generous to pay us at all before we were patched. Most clubs I’d been in over the years expected you to offer your time to them with nothing in return. It was always a tense, uncertain few months—or years—when you were expected to give full-time work without an income.

So Voss having the kind of money he would need to bribe someone like Shane Mallick into letting him have a key to the gym to come and go as he pleased sort of re-wrote the narrative I had about him being a poor, scrappy junkyard dog before he’d made his way up to Navesink Bank.

We hadn’t really gotten a chance to get to know the guy yet.

He and Valen took to the town damn near every night, partying, drinking, hooking up. And while Dezi and I went out a lot as well, let’s just say that Voss and Dezi were oil and water. So we would often spend time at the same bars and clubs, but separate from one another.

Which was weird since the club was all about brotherhood.

I was giving him the benefit of the doubt since he didn’t come from a club-type background. I figured he would come around eventually. Besides, Brooks ruled over his prospects with an iron fist. They didn’t get away with shit. He worked them day and night to instill a sense of duty and loyalty. So we didn’t get a lot of time to sit around and talk at the clubhouse most days either.

If he lasted, the brotherhood would come.

Well, maybe not so much between Voss and Dezi who were sharing similar “the fuck are you looking at” glares.

“Never see you here,” Voss said, giving Dezi what could only be considered a disrespectful once-over, like he was silently saying that Dezi could use to be at the gym more.

“It comes in phases,” Dezi said, chin lifting, getting pissed already. “I like to get my workouts with female partners, not strapped to a machine.”

“Mmhmm,” Voss rumbled at him. “Got two of those workouts in last night before I came here,” he added, clapping a hand on Dezi’s shoulder hard enough to make Dezi go back a step.

Luckily, though, Voss kept moving.

Because, quite frankly, the two were going to come to blows eventually. And I didn’t want to have to be the one who got between them.

“Take it out on the treadmill,” I suggested as Dezi turned back to look at me with a muscle ticking in his jaw.

“That why you work out so much, Zaddy?” Dezi asked, eyes shining. “To avoid slamming your fists into our faces?”

“Nah, Dez. Just your face,” I told him, getting a chuckle out of him as we headed toward the doors.

We’d only made it through maybe half an hour of our workout when suddenly Voss was back, moving toward me at the free weights with a head jerk.

“What’s up?”

“You aren’t answering your phones.”

“Shit. Yeah. Left them in the car,” I admitted. No one was usually up early enough to bother me before I finished my workout. “Something happening?” I asked, setting down my weights and looking around for Dezi.

Who was supposed to be on the rowing machine.

But was chatting up the pretty blonde at the juice bar instead.

Really, you couldn’t take the man anywhere that women were present if you expected him to stay on task and be focused.

“No. But there’s someone at the club asking for you.”

“Asking for me?” I asked, taken aback.

See, the thing is, I didn’t have people. I’d been raised by my grandparents when my mother and father decided being parents didn’t suit them. They’d been old grandparents to start with, so they’d passed the year after I finished high school. Which left me alone in the world at nineteen.

That was when I turned to the clubs. To find brotherhood. To find family.

So I had no one outside of the clubs.

The last club I’d belonged to had been taken out by a rival while I’d been locked up.

And while I was sure some of the guys had managed to get away, or recover in a hospital after the attacks, I really doubted anyone would be that keen to seek me out after so long.

It wasn’t outside the realm of possibilities, but it just didn’t seem likely.

“Yeah. Brooks sent me to get you,” he added, letting out a barely-there sigh, and it was right then that I realized his eyes were heavy-lidded, and he’d changed into sweats and a tee. Like he’d left the gym to go to bed after being up all night.

But, yeah, Brooks didn’t give a shit about that.

If he wanted someone to do something, he was calling one of the prospects. It didn’t matter if it was to run an errand or to open a jar of pickles. That was the kind of boss he was.

And, typically, Voss took it with a grain of salt, doing a lot less grumbling than Valen, who’d been raised in the club, and was finding it a bit more difficult to adjust to being one of the lowest men on the totem pole after he’d been away, driving across country for years.

Clearly, though, after two fucks and one long gym workout during an all-nighter, Voss wasn’t feeling as go-with-the-flow as usual about Brooks’s constant orders.

“Who is it? Did he have a cut on?”

“Not a he.”

“What?” I asked, sure I misheard him because of his grumbly voice.

“It’s a chick.”

“A chick,” I repeated, mentally trying to run through any possible women who would come see me at the club. Maybe a casual one-night-stand who wanted another round? Still, that seemed kind of strange that they would show up so early in the morning.

“Relax,” Voss, said, smirking, “she didn’t look knocked up.”

Christ, that hadn’t even occurred to me.

I mean, it wasn’t outside the realm of possibilities. But the idea filled me with instant dread. I had nothing against kids. I was just too old to be taking one of them on full-time. I liked being a club uncle instead. Give some wisdom, toss a ball around, let the girls paint my face and fuck with my hair, then send them right on home with their parents to disrupt their sleep and spread sticky shit all over their possessions.

“Who’d she say she was?” I asked, all the names of my recent conquests at the ready. If there were two pink lines to think about, I hoped against hope that the mother would be one of the more sensible women I’d screwed around with, and not some random clubwhore.

“Abs?” Voss said, face scrunching.

Abs.

That didn’t ring a bell.

“What did she look like?”

“Pretty. Thin. Dark hair cut to about here,” he said, motioning just above his shoulders. “Kinda gray eyes.”

“I have no idea who the fuck that is,” I said, shaking my head.

“Dunno either. But she knows you. And she said she couldn’t leave until she talked to you. For what it’s worth, chick seemed freaked the fuck out. Not in a ‘bun in the oven, the fuck am I gonna do now’ sort of way. But in a kicked-dog sort of way. Jumpy, looking over her shoulder a lot.”

“Alright. I’ll just round up Dez…” I started, looking around, but not seeing him anywhere.

“Juice chick took him into the back. He can hoof it home,” Voss said, already turning to walk away.

Normally, I wouldn’t leave someone stranded without a ride. But we weren’t that far from the clubhouse. And Dezi didn’t exactly get much of a workout in, so the walk could be his punishment for fucking around.

Besides, I was too curious to waste anymore time.

I didn’t know who this Abs woman was, but I wanted to find out.

CHAPTER THREE

Cary

I rolled up to the clubhouse less than ten minutes later.

Voss was already there, parked, and gone. Likely to seek out his bed before Brooks decided to shackle him with another task.

One look around said there were no unfamiliar cars around. So, what? She’d walked? Weird, but okay. Just another piece to the puzzle.

I’d spent the whole ride back flipping through mental images of women I’d known over the years, but I hadn’t come up with a single woman who’d fit the description Voss had given me.

That said, women changed up their looks all the time. So the hair could be a fluke. But gray eyes? That didn’t ring any bells. That wasn’t a color you saw every day.

Curiosity more than piqued—even if I was dealing with a little bit of uncharacteristic anxiety about the whole possibility that she might be a pregnant former fling—I made my way out of the SUV, a little self-conscious that I hadn’t taken the extra couple of minutes for a shower, so I could look more put together.

The “kids” teased me about the fact that I made sure I was presentable. While Dezi’s ‘don’t give a fuck/ I forgot to put a shirt on under my cut’ look was charming for his age, I didn’t think that shit would be quite as accepted on me. So I shaped up my beard. I slicked back my hair. I put a little time and care into my outfits.

I figured older could just be older, or it could be distinguished.

I chose distinguished.

There was nothing to be done about my workout pants and black ribbed tank right then, though, so I just went with it. Though I maybe made sure to rake my hair back away from my forehead before I reached for the doorknob.

The door was silent, so the woman who was standing with her back to me didn’t immediately know I had moved inside, giving me a chance to look her over.

Voss was right; she didn’t look pregnant.

In fact, she looked so rail fucking thin that her body probably couldn’t support a pregnancy. It was a little cold still in Jersey for her shorts, and they put these long, spindly legs on display. So small, in fact, that her kneecaps jutted out on the insides and her thighs didn’t meet anywhere.

I was not a super picky man when it came to women’s body types. I liked someone I could connect with, have some fun with, before it got physical. Which was always more important than just being some physical “ideal.” But I couldn’t say I’d ever been with a woman who looked like she was starving herself. That wasn’t a turn on at all.

Taking a deep breath as the mystery got more and more interesting, I closed the door behind me.

Again, like Voss said, she was jumpy.

And not even just ‘I’m in an outlaw biker compound’ jumpy.

Her whole body jolted as she whipped around to face me, her hands immediately wrapping around herself.

Jumpy like a kicked-dog.

That was accurate.

I didn’t know the situation, of course, but if I were a betting man, I’d put my money on her having some sort of abusive ex-hole in her past.

“Oh, wow,” she said, shaking her head a little as she looked at me. Almost as if I wasn’t what she’d been expecting. Which was weird since she’d sought me out. “It’s you,” she added in her honey-sweet voice.

And I had nothing.

Not even being face-to-face with her.

I was coming up blank.

I was almost certain I’d never laid eyes on the woman before in my life.

I was sure I would remember.

She was fucking drop-dead gorgeous with her soft, rounded face, her big gray eyes that tipped down at the sides, giving her an almost sleepy appearance, and her abundance of freckles. There were traces of makeup left on her face—smudged under her eyes, still staining her lips slightly—but otherwise was fresh-faced.

If she maybe got a couple more pounds on her, she would go from sickly to damn near perfect.

“I wish I could share the same wonder, love, but I have no fucking idea who you are.”

To that, she sent me a sweet smile, her eyes searching the floor for a second before lifting up again.

“You’ve never actually seen me,” she admitted, shrugging those sharp juts she called shoulders.

“I’ve never seen you, but you came here to talk to me.”

“To ask for your help, actually,” she told me, sucking in a deep breath, almost as if she was bracing herself for a let-down.

“Okay,” I said, nodding. “How about we grab some coffee while you tell me why I would help out a complete stranger with some unknown problem,” I said, inviting her toward the kitchen even if she looked jittery enough without the caffeine.

“Sure,” she agreed, following behind me, a ghost of a woman at my heels.

In the kitchen, I noticed she’d situated herself with her back against a wall and close to the exit. So no one could sneak up on her. So she could get away in a pinch.

Yeah, it definitely seemed like she was a woman in need of some sort of help.

The jury was still out on whether I wanted to be the hero in her story, though. It wasn’t exactly a title that fit me—a lifelong biker with a long-ass rap sheet.

“How do you take it?” I asked. At her strange, high-pitched, momentary laugh, I turned, confused, finding her pink across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose.

“Sorry. Ah, cream and sugar, if you have it,” she said, voice small.

“Have the sugar here,” I said, gesturing with the shaker. “Check for the cream,” I invited, nodding toward the fridge. Finding it, she brought it over to me, putting it down when she was out of arm’s length, and pushing it forward with just the tips of her fingers. “Who are you?” I asked, not having meant to do so.

“Abs. Abigail,” she clarified, and suddenly a memory started to niggle at me.

But no.

No, that made no sense.

There were millions of Abigails in the world, after all.

Any one of them would be more likely than the one who first came to mind.

“I’ve heard that, love,” I said, passing the sugar toward her with her mug, and watching as she made it. And while she did it, she kept casting nervous glances at me. Like she thought I’d judge her for the abundance of additives she put in her coffee. Like I hadn’t watched Dezi pour a giant helping of chocolate syrup in then top it with a tower of whipped cream.

When she was done, I went on, “But it’s not ringing any bells.”

“Oh,” she said, face falling. “I… um… I thought you might remember me,” she admitted.

“You just said we never met,” I reminded her.

“We haven’t. You know, face to face. But we know each other.”

No.

No, it couldn’t be.

“I wrote you in prison for years.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Abigail

He was almost unbelievably good-looking.

I mean, I’d known that, to an extent.

Back when I first started writing to him, I’d looked him up online. It hadn’t exactly taken a lot of work to pull up his numerous mugshots from over the years.

He’d always been handsome.

But I guess the years had only served to recommend him.

He was tall and very fit with most of his exposed skin decorated in tattoos, so you could only imagine that underneath his clothes, he was extensively covered.

He had a square jaw with a full beard, dark blue eyes, and hair that had gone from black to mostly silver since his last mugshot. Which only made him even more attractive.

I’d shown up at the biker clubhouse still looking over my shoulder.

What could I say? It had been a tense week and a half. I’d just barely managed to make it out of Mexico without being discovered.

I’d known Raúl had a long reach, but I think even I had underestimated how many men and women and even children would be looking for me. Pictures of me seemed to be everywhere, a fact that had made me duck my head because it felt like everyone I passed was carefully examining my face to see if it matched the posters.

Thankfully, covering up my freckles, heavily making up my face, and dying and cutting my hair made me all but invisible. I’d actually bumped shoulders with a man I’d seen at Raúl’s estate more than a handful of times, and he’d been none-the-wiser.

But a part of me was terrified that it had been too easy. Like maybe Raúl had found a new way to torment me. Letting me taste freedom for a while before snatching it away from me again.

I wasn’t sure I took a proper breath until I finally crossed the border, then got far enough away from it to be sure that Raúl’s people weren’t on every single street corner.

Still, though, even when I made it all the way up to New Jersey after figuring out that Cary had headed in the direction of some weird town called Navesink Bank to join another biker club called the Navesink Bank Henchmen, I was paranoid that someone had picked up on my trail.

Even though I’d been as careful as my means had allowed me to be.

I hadn’t exactly left the house with much. A diamond necklace, some spare cash I’d very carefully been stocking away for years, and a single gold cufflink.

It had barely been enough for transport and a bare minimum of food. I had a measly two-fifty left in my pocket. I hadn’t eaten a full meal, slept in a bed, or had more than a restroom whore’s bath since I’d left Raúl’s home.

I was exhausted and dirty and starving and so freaking desperate that I just about burst out crying when Cary seemed to have absolutely no memory of me.

It hurt more than I thought it could have. For me, corresponding with Cary had been a really significant part of my life for many years. I guess I always figured it would mean the same—or more—to him. Since, in my head, I figured a man in prison for so many years without a wife or children to write him must have been desperate for a little connection.

I’d been wrong, clearly.

Just another blow in a long life of learning to roll with them.

I could process that later.

“No,” Cary said, shaking his head. His brows furrowed as his gaze moved over me again. “No. That Abigail was—“

“A long strawberry-blonde woman trapped in a miserable marriage and having a major identity crisis?” I asked, still aching for that girl I’d once been—so young, and so deeply unhappy. “Yes, I remember.”

“Jesus Christ,” Cary hissed, looking taken aback.

“It’s been a while,” I said, giving him a ghost of a smile.

“Last I heard from you…”

“I was getting served divorce papers from my husband because I couldn’t give him a child.”

“Fucking dick, that one.”

Just wait until you hear about the one after him.

And in both situations, I’d had very little choice in it, if you looked at both circumstances through an objective eye.

“He was,” I agreed, proud of myself for being able to say that about him. For the months after the divorce that left me damn near penniless and as incapable of managing by myself in the world as a newborn foal, I’d been an open, bleeding wound, so convinced that I was to blame for the dissolution of my marriage, that I was somehow less womanly or desirable or worthy because of something so out of my control.

Back in those days, my ex-husband had been the victim in my mind, a poor, unwitting man strapped to a woman who couldn’t give him what he needed, who forced him to do something as blasphemous as file for divorce from me.

It took a really long time and a lot of inner work to realize that Kian hadn’t divorced me because I wasn’t able to have children. He’d divorced me because he believed—as I’d been raised to as well—that the only purpose of sex was reproduction. So if I couldn’t ‘be fruitful,’ then he couldn’t have sex with me anymore. Which made him a miserable wretch to live with. Even if, admittedly, a part of me had been relieved that I wouldn’t have to endure those ‘attentions’ from my husband anymore.

In the end, the community we’d been raised in embraced him even as they shunned me.

“Why’d you stop writing?” Cary asked, voice low, a little soft, even. Maybe even a hint of raw and vulnerable, making it clear that our communication had meant something to him as well.

“I fell into a really deep hole after the divorce,” I admitted.

“All the more reason you should have written. I’d have been a lot more helpful than that cult you were raised in.”

Okay, maybe that was harsh-sounding at first blush. But time and distance had taught me that while my religion hadn’t been a cult, that the particular off-shoot of it that I’d been born and raised in definitely had some culty vibes. Complete with a creepy, but beloved leader who used fear and shame against us. Especially the girls and women.

And the rules had been harsh.

We couldn’t attend any public schools where we might have become privy to how the real world actually worked. Instead, we attended a small religion-based school in our community where the boys and girls were separated at all times. We couldn’t even go on the playground together.

We didn’t learn about sex until right before our weddings.

And even when we did, we knew of it as a duty and nothing more.

I’d been raised to believe I had one purpose and one purpose only.

To get big and round with baby after baby until my body couldn’t do it anymore.

In turn, Kian and all the other boys and men had been raised to believe their place was at the head of the house, and therefore, could expect absolute subservience from everyone under their roof.

I wondered at times what that community was still like, if there had been any progress in the years I’d been away. But my gut told me there wouldn’t be. If anything, as they thought the world was getting more and more evil and sinful, they would have pulled tighter and doubled-down on their narrow-minded beliefs.

They would be no help to me.

Somehow, they would spin the situation into my being at fault for what had happened to me. Not even my parents would offer a hand to help me. The parents who’d given Kian tearful hugs after our divorce proceedings, paying no mind to the puddle of despair their daughter had been reduced to right there in the office.

“I felt a lot of shame back then,” I admitted. Though I didn’t admit that I still sometimes felt that. About my marriage. But also about what had happened to me afterward.

“For what? Not being able to give that asshole kids?” Cary asked, scoffing. “Your body is meant for more than making babies.”

“I realize that now. But back then, it felt like the end of the world. I didn’t open up to anyone about it.”

“What did you do then?” Cary asked.

“I decided to go on a mission.”

“A mission? Like to make people join your religion type of mission?”

“Yes. Exactly.”

“Because it made you so happy,” he said, shaking his head at my previous lack of logic.

“I think my mindset back then was that if I was good enough, if I tried hard enough, if I did everything in my power to bring our ways to more people, that maybe God would let me back in his favor.”

“From the way you flinch whenever there is any noise around you, I’m gonna go ahead and figure that all that hard work didn’t end up how you wanted it to.”

“No,” I admitted, taking a steadying breath, feeling a little too open and exposed right then.

It had been a long time since I thought of my life before Raúl.

And I’d never actually openly discussed it with anyone.

Cary looked off for a second, giving me a view of his profile as he worked through something in his head before facing me again.

“So you need my help.”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?” I asked, slow-blinking at him. “You don’t even know what kind of help it is yet.”

“No,” he agreed. “But the way I see it, your first letter came to me in a down time. I needed someone then. And there you were. And you remained there for a long-ass time. I owe you for that. You made prison more bearable. But before I even want to hear about whatever shit has you jumping at shadows, I need to feed you.”

“Feed me?” I asked, even as my stomach churned hard in objection to its emptiness.

“Can’t fucking think straight with you looking like skin hanging over bones,” Cary admitted. “And maybe I can scrounge up some fresh clothes for you. The princesses leave their shit around all the time. Brooks, one of the guys here, makes the prospects clean them. So they’re around. Maybe you can use my room to take a shower and change while I make you something to eat. Then you can get a couple of winks without worrying about anything because you’re safe here. Then we can talk about it. Sound good?”

“It sounds too good to be true,” I admitted, letting out a laugh that didn’t have a hint of humor in it.

“It’s basic fucking civility,” Cary corrected. “Come on,” he invited, moving toward the doorway, leading me out into the main area of the clubhouse, then down a hallway that ran along the side of it. We went almost to the end before he pushed a door open, and welcomed me into his room.

He had a space big enough for what looked like a queen-sized bed and a private bathroom to the side. The bedroom kind of fit Cary, if it wasn’t too presumptuous to think I knew a thing about him after so long.

But the deep green of the walls and the rustic wood of the bed, nightstand, and dresser all had a sort of manly elegance about them. Which seemed to fit the man I spent so many letters getting to know once upon a time when I got a wild hair to join a prison pen-pal exchange with my women’s group.

We were supposed to get to know the men and women, then eventually start to try to introduce them to our ways with the hopes of a full conversion.

I’d been assigned to Cary. And I really hadn’t expected anything but to talk about his hardships and what led him to a life of crime, then show him how faith could help him back onto the right path.

I hadn’t expected someone with so much depth and experience, with so many stories to tell, and even advice to give when I eventually went off script and started to open up about my own life as well.

“This is really nice,” I told him, looking around the space that was masculine, yet still warm.

“Thanks, love,” he said, waving toward the bathroom. “Feel free to use anything in there you need. Let me just grab some clothes.”

And then five minutes later, he did just that.

In private, I went ahead and had a good giggle over the shirt he’d given me without checking out what image was plastered over the breast pocket. Which was a collection of really cute cartoon condoms and condom wrappers.

I didn’t exactly know what a “princess” meant when it came to biker clubs, but I thought that the owner of that shirt must have been very secure in herself and her sexuality. I couldn’t help but be just a tad bit jealous as I double-checked that I locked the door, then climbed into the shower.

I spent way too long under the blistering hot water. First, scrubbing at my body and hair with a vengeance, disgusted in how long it had been since I’d gotten a proper wash. But then after that was done, just standing there trying to think of how to ask Cary for the kind of help I was going to need. And what the hell I was going to do if he refused.

No.

He wasn’t going to do that.

I mean it was possible that he couldn’t help me, but he would at least send me in the direction of someone who could.

He was a good man.

That was why I’d decided to seek him out.

“Abigail, love, are you okay in there?” Cary asked, shocking me out of my swirling thoughts as I stared into the mirror without actually seeing myself. “The water cut off ten minutes ago, just wanted to make sure you didn’t pass out in there or something,” he added.

“Sorry. No. I’m okay,” I said, making my way toward the door and pulling it open.

I won’t lie, when his eyes did a slow once-over, my belly totally flip-flopped.

“Should have checked out the shirt, huh?” he asked, smirking as he raked a hand over his beard. “That one must have been Billie’s. She teaches tantric sex workshops and shit like that. I can lend you a different shirt,” he offered.

“It’s fine,” I assured him, shrugging.

“You’re sure?” he pressed, clearly thinking of my past, of the girl I’d once been.

“A lot has changed since then. This doesn’t bother me anymore,” I told him.

“Not sure if I should be happy for you, or deeply concerned,” Cary admitted as he led me back into the kitchen where the rich scents of cooking hit my nose and made my belly let out yet another grumble.

“Maybe both,” I admitted, making him turn back toward me with drawn together brows.

“I don’t like the sound of that.”

“It’s not a nice story,” I warned him.

“Well, have a seat, and let’s get into it,” he suggested, waving toward the table as he went to the stove to start making a plate.

I wasn’t sure I was ready.

Hell, I wasn’t sure I could ever be ready.

But it was time to tell somewhere what had happened to me.

How and why I’d disappeared for the last six and a half years.

CHAPTER FIVE

Abigail

“So, you went on a mission,” Cary prompted a few minutes later as he dropped down across from me. Like he hadn’t just dropped a full-on meal right in front of me like it was no big deal.

I’d never met a man who could cook.

In the society I’d grown up in, men wouldn’t even think about doing such a thing. If they even tried because their wife was sick or something, the whole community would blame the wife for her husband having to do such a ‘womanly’ task.

And with Raúl, well, there were cooks for such things.

I wasn’t even sure that Raúl knew the way to his own kitchen.

So the fact that Cary had just dropped a big plate in front of me with a hamburger, a giant baked potato loaded with butter, and a side of peas in front of me was just a little jarring. I couldn’t think past it to focus on my own story.

“Something wrong? Are you a vegetarian? We have veggie burgers in the freezer.”

“I’m having a hard time picturing a biker eating a veggie burger,” I admitted, smiling a little at the idea.

“I like ‘em on occasion. They’re Billie’s, though.”

“Same as my shirt,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“What’s a princess?” I asked.

“The daughter of one of the club members. The girls are princesses. The guys are legacies, if they choose to prospect.”

“Prospect means to try to join?” I asked as I reached for the burger, too hungry to feel weird about eating when he wasn’t.

“Yes.”

“Can the girls prospect?” I asked, even though I’d never seen a lady biker before.

“Ah, that’s a good question. I know with the older generation, under Reign’s leadership, they could prospect, but no woman was ever let in. I don’t know about how Fallon, our current president, feels about it. He’s with a former female biker president of her own MC. So I’m gonna imagine he’s more progressive. Why? You thinking about joining?” he teased. And it was teasing, since no one would ever look at me with my bones sticking out of my skin, and think I was going to be a badass biker.

“I’ve never been on a motorcycle,” I admitted before taking another bite of my burger, just barely managing to resist the pornographic sounds that bubbled up in my system at having some real food for the first time in days. Hell, if I were being completely honest, I hadn’t had anything like a burger in years.

“You ever feel up to it, I can take you out.”

“Yeah?” I asked, hearing the hope in my voice, excited about the possibility of being able to make my own decision, to do something just because it sounded interesting.

“Absolutely. But you have to do me a favor first.”

“What’s that?” I asked, stiffening.

“Stop starving yourself,” he said.

And, truly, there was nothing but genuine, very sweet concern in his voice. But I couldn’t help it. The laugh bubbled up and burst out of me, high-pitched, almost a little hysterical. It was just so insane to think I’d chosen anything that had happened to me since, well, my marriage.

“You okay?” Cary asked, looking even more concerned than he’d been about me not eating.

“Yes, sorry. It’s just… I didn’t choose to be this thin,” I told him, wincing down at my plate.

“Oh, fuck. Are you sick or something?” he asked, grimacing at his possible faux pas.

“No. No, it’s… it’s just a long story.”

“Right,” he agreed, nodding. “And it starts with a mission.”

“It starts with a mission. To Mexico,” I added, starting to dig into the potato.

“Why Mexico?”

“It was as close to home as I could think of,” I admitted. “I know you have had a very interesting life, and that you visited all these places. But I’d only ever known three places. My home, my husband’s home, and the church grounds. The prospect of a new country and a new culture was scary. So Mexico felt more familiar than, say, Tokyo or South Africa. Though, in retrospect, maybe I would have gone there and rediscovered faith and purpose.”

“Faith and purpose wasn’t what you found in Mexico?”

“I found Raúl.”

“Shit. A story is never good that starts with a man, is it?” he asked, trying to give me a smirk, but it fell quickly.

“Not in my history anyway,” I admitted.

“How’d you meet Raúl?”

“I was getting lunch,” I recalled.

I’d only been in the area for six weeks. I had barely managed to learn enough Spanish to actually order my favorite types of food, but not enough to help me understand what the lady behind the counter was trying to tell me about what I’d ordered.

All I could do was apologize and get more and more anxious about being that person, the one who expected everyone to accommodate her, to speak her language even when I was in their country.

“She is telling you they are out of salsa,” a deep, rich, masculine voice had said at my side, making me turn to find a handsome tanned-skinned, black-haired man in a suit, despite the heat, looking at me. “And asking if the Pica de Gallo is okay.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be a problem. But I just… I don’t know the difference,” I’d told him.

“How is it a problem to not know what you like?” he’d said, shrugging, making me immediately feel like less of the pain-in-the-ass foreigner. “They’re basically the same ingredients,” he’d gone on. “But salsa is more liquid. The Pico de Gallo is just finally chopped instead of pureed.”

“Oh, okay. Then yes. Sí,” I said, giving the lady at the counter a smile. “Gracias,” I added, first to her, then to the man who’d helped me from embarrassing myself further. Or, in lieu of that, having an empty stomach because I couldn’t figure it out.

What can I say? I was a recently divorced woman coming out of what turned out to be a loveless marriage with a man who only saw my worth as a home keeper and a womb to carry his children, not as a woman, least of all a person.

So when this stranger, this handsome and seemingly kind stranger let his gaze do a slow once-over of a body that had mostly been a source of shame and disappointment, I couldn’t seem to stop the way not only my body—but my mind—warmed.

I’d never really experienced before the way my skin flushed under his inspection, like each inch of my body got a slight sunburn from the intensity of the heat in his eyes.

In quiet, bitter moments in the years that followed, I tried to convince myself that the flush, that the warmth, was simply from the chronic mild sunburn I’d been sporting since I arrived in Mexico.

But I knew the truth.

That, in the beginning, I’d been really taken by the man who would turn my life into a living hell.

I’d been naive.

I’d been wounded in ways I hadn’t fully acknowledged—let alone worked through—yet.

And there was Raúl.

With his calm, confident demeanor, with his deep voice and good-looking face.

And, most of all, his interest.

He’d been interested in me.

Not as a womb or a homemaker.

As a person.

As a woman.

I knew from my raising that I wasn’t supposed to like that, to be happy about it. The body was a vessel for the soul; it was sinful to take too much pride in it, to want attention for it.

In my little world I’d been raised in, the only pride you were supposed to feel about your body was the kind of pride that came with keeping yourself clean, healthy, and modest.

Sexuality was only something to feel within the confines of your marriage. And even then, not too much. We women were taught to be “open” to “receiving” our husbands on demand, no matter how we felt. But we were also told that sexual intimacy, for us, was something to be endured, never enjoyed.

My marriage proved that to be true.

Within a week after our vows had been spoken, anything close to attraction or sexual interest I’d once felt as a healthy young woman disappeared.

Sex, to me, had been uncomfortable and embarrassing at best. At worst—and there were many times that it was at worst—it was painful and degrading.

There had been more than a few times when my husband had rolled off of me mid-deed with a loud grumble as he declared that I “didn’t feel good.” I was embarrassed to admit that I had no idea what he meant until I did some discreet research when he hadn’t been home and realized that when a woman was ready to receive a man, her sex got wet and slick, making things feel better for him.

The problem was, I couldn’t help that I didn’t have those feelings for him, that my body didn’t just automatically do what he wanted it to do.

Those same articles said that artificial lubrication could be used. I knew better than to even suggest that. First, because I wasn’t even sure I could form those words. Second, because a part of me was terrified that he would think I was saying he was doing something wrong, and I didn’t want to know what the consequences would be from that.

The other option the article suggested was to do a little… self-touching before your partner was ready for sex.

That was out as well since it went against our beliefs to masturbate.

So I was stuck with my husband and the uncomfortable or painful sex that seemed to dissolve anything sexual about my being.

Until Raúl looked at me like he was a hungry man and my body was a feast.

Despite my upbringing and the beliefs that had very much been a part of me at the time, there was no mistaking the way my body trembled inside when Raúl’s hand had grazed my lower back as he held the door open for me with the other, leading me out toward the seating area out front, and dropping down across from me without being invited.

“He’d spent the afternoon asking me all kinds of questions about myself,” I told Cary, only half in the present moment, a part of me stuck in the past, in the bittersweet memories of those early days. “No one had really been so interested in me before.” At the strange throat-clearing sound Cary made, I shook my head. “Aside from you,” I agreed. “But face-to-face, that had been a first for me.”

“So, you two started something up,” Cary guessed, his gaze going down to my plate then up again in a silent demand that I continue to eat.

“So, we started something up,” I agreed. “Though, at the time, I’d tried to tell myself that I was trying to, you know, teach him about my faith, bring him into the fold.”

It was the most half-assed lie I’d ever told myself. Because I knew that we never once actually discussed faith or religion those long, lingering afternoons when he would take me to lunch, then walk me around the area, showing me the sights and buying anything that had caught my interest.

I’d never received a present from a man before.

That would have required my father or husband to have actually thought about me when I wasn’t standing right there in front of them. And, well, both those men in my life were of the strong belief that you should never “spoil” your wife or children.

I’d become particularly obsessed with this little necklace he’d gotten me from a little shop. They’d had a million of them hanging in the window. Just thin black strings with a single bead hanging from them. A blue circle with a white inner circle and a little black dot.

To ward off the evil eye, he’d told me, a strange light in his eyes that I hadn’t really understood at the time. In fact, I’d convinced myself it was just joy at gifting me something that I’d been so appreciative of.

“It took a long time for me to realize that he’d thought of it as a joke of sorts. Since he was the evil in my life. And no little amulet was going to keep him away from me,” I told Cary, sighing.

I didn’t tell Cary, because it was just a bit too humiliating to admit, that I would curl up on my side in bed at night and stroke the pad of my thumb over the eye while I thought about the man who’d given it to me.

“It wasn’t long before he started to lay it on thick. So many compliments. So much interest.”

“Love-bombing,” Cary cut in.

“Yeah, exactly.” I hadn’t known the word at the time, or what it meant, or that abusers almost always did it at the beginning to get you hooked, and then often after each abusive episode, to keep you with them.

But it was the perfect way to describe it.

Love-bombing.

If you had asked me then, I would have told you that I was pretty sure no man had ever been as infatuated with a woman as Raúl had been with me.

So much so that I threw all of my upbringing and personal traumas and insecurities out the window one night on a blanket under the stars and let him undress me, let him be intimate with me.

It hadn’t been like it had with my ex-husband. Yes, there was insecurity. And, yes, uncertainty. But for the first time ever, my body had warmed and grown ready. There hadn’t been pain or even discomfort. There hadn’t been any sort of fireworks, either. Raúl proved just as quick a partner as my ex had been.

Despite that, though, it had been a sort of revelation for me, despite the fact that I hadn’t experienced that so-called pleasure that they claimed a woman could feel with a man.

It didn’t matter. It hadn’t felt bad. And it had felt intense and intimate.

That had been enough for me.

I was pretty sure I fell head-over-heels for him when he rolled off to my side, curled me into him, then stroked a hand through my hair as he murmured things to me in Spanish that I only half-understood. But I knew enough to know they were sweet words, ones of praise and adoration.

I’d eaten it up.

“I moved in with him not more than two weeks later,” I admitted to Cary, feeling the food lose its taste in my mouth.

Had I just been a little more careful, a little more patient. Maybe all that happened after could have been avoided. Maybe he would have shown me his true colors before it was too late for me to get away.

“Hey,” Cary said, waiting for my gaze to lift to his. “You can’t blame your past self for not knowing any better. You didn’t have those kinds of tools then.”

That was fair.

But I wasn’t quite as forgiving of myself as he was willing to be of me.

“I should have seen the signs.”

“Love, maybe there weren’t any signs,” Cary suggested. “Serial abusers get to that point because they are good at it. They’re master liars. They know all the right things to say and do. To their victims, they would just come off as a man in love. And to a woman who hadn’t really known that, can you really blame a much younger version of yourself for wanting to believe it?”

“You’re right,” I said, exhaling hard.

No one had given me a relationship common sense toolkit. Because, to my family, my future was always going to involve me settling down with a man they approved of. And then nothing that happened to me at that man’s hands was any of their business, was well within his rights as my husband. Up to and involving mental, physical, and sexual abuse.

That was just how it was, how it had been for generations.

No one taught their daughters to be on the lookout for a good man. Our fathers would do that for us.

“To be kind to that version of myself,” I went on, “things were good at the beginning. Raúl, as it turned out, had a massive home and sprawling grounds, had everything that money could buy.”

“Fuck,” Cary hissed, reaching up to rub a hand over his beard. “I think I know where this is going.”

“Well, I didn’t,” I admitted. “To me, he was just a successful businessman. I didn’t even second-guess all the bodyguards around with guns. I figured that if you were a man of so much wealth, of course people would want to come for what you had, would be a threat to your safety.”

In the beginning, I’d been vain enough to think it was a sign of my own worth, to be attached to a man like Raúl.

“Did you ever ask what he did for a living?” Cary asked.

“Of course. He’d told me distribution,” I admitted with a little snort. “That had just gone over my head. I was more than a little taken with all the lovely things around, all the fancy dinners, the nice clothes he got for me. It didn’t even faze me that he slowly but surely started to choose all of my clothes, and tell me which ones to wear.”

It didn’t even occur to me, either, that he also took control over my diet. I think, at the time, I figured the chef at his home just made what he made, and that was what we all ate. It took me months to realize everyone else was getting eggs and meat and potatoes for breakfast. While I had nonfat yogurt and fruit. Maybe, if I was really lucky, a little granola to go with that.

“The weight started to fall off within three months of moving in there. And I didn’t want to rock the boat, so I never complained about being hungry.” Though, yeah, a part of me knew there was no way he didn’t hear my stomach growling all the time.

“Why do you think he starved you? Just for control?”

“I’m sure that was part of it. But I think it was more than that. He liked small and delicate-looking women. Maybe it made him feel more manly. I don’t know. But I also think, to an extent, keeping me thin and frail and weak made it easier to control me, made it harder for me to get away if I ever decided to.”

A muscle in Cary’s jaw started to tick at that as his gaze slipped away for a moment. “When did it take a turn for the worse? As if starving you wasn’t bad enough.”

“That’s hard. I think it was little things peppered in over a long period of time. He spent less and less time with me. He found more and more faults in me. But not so much that I immediately thought he was a jerk.”

“Just enough to start wearing down your self-esteem.”

“Exactly. And I didn’t have a whole lot of that to begin with. Really, most of what I had originally had come from the love-bombing stage with him. So I associated all my good with him. Which made it harder to think of him as the one at fault. I blamed myself for not looking or acting a certain way. I bowed and kowtowed to all his wants and needs and demands. And that went on until we hit the year mark.”

“What happened then?”

“Honestly, I don’t know what the turning point was. I don’t know if the milestone somehow made him think he’d finally ‘gotten’ me or what, but it was right after that when he hit me the first time. It was over something stupid, too. I’d questioned the dress he’d picked out for me. It was really revealing and I didn’t feel comfortable wearing it in front of his business associates. He’d backhanded me across the face for questioning him, then told me to Put the fucking dress on.”

“So you did.”

“So I did.” And he’d paraded me around half-naked to men with leering eyes who made all that exposed skin feel slimy, who made my stomach flip over.

In bed that night, after our first sexual encounter that felt a lot like it had with my marriage, he’d pulled me to his chest and asked me why I made him hit me, why I’d emasculated him, why I’d hurt him that way.

And so the cycle started.

Prolonged periods of relative peace, followed by an outburst that left me bleeding or with scars. Immediately after would be the shift of blame for the incident and then a period of love-bombing.

“Until, eventually, he didn’t feel the need to even bother with the love-bombing anymore. He had me. He knew he did. There was no way for me to get away.”

“By the time you realized what was going on…” Cary said, waving a hand out.

“Exactly. There was nothing I could do.”

“When did you realize it?”

“Honestly? I’m not sure there was one moment of clarity. I think it was like waking up from a really deep sleep. I noticed things little by little.”

Like the fact that there weren’t just guards stationed around the house to look for threats. No. I had my own team. Who watched everything I did, then reported it all back to Raúl. Who would then punish me for anything he didn’t like.

Like there were cameras all around. In places where there didn’t need to be cameras. Like my room. Like my bathroom.

I never got a moment of peace.

Eyes were always watching me.

“And then I tried to test my theory,” I admitted.

A part of me had been so sure it was just paranoia, that I was losing my mind a little to be thinking so many conspiracy theories about this man that I thought I loved, that I thought loved me.

But then I tried to walk down the driveway one day.

Not only had guards closed in, but they’d called Raúl home.

“I’d been quick enough to spin a story about how I was just trying to take a walk, that I thought I needed some more fresh air and exercise.” I even told him that I wanted to get more fit to please him, though I felt a little too disgusted at that to even admit it to Cary. “But it confirmed my growing fears.”

I tested it a few more times over the next months and years, finding that with each attempt, Raúl seemed to get more and more suspicious of me. Which made him watch me even more, which made his disapproval and punishments of me ever-more severe.

“Sometimes there wasn’t even a cause anymore. He just used me to vent his frustration.”

“I’m sorry, love. No one should have to go through that.”

My gaze darted down to my plate as my eyes started to glisten.

God, how long had it been since anyone had shown me a shred of kindness? A drop of sympathy?

Too long.

Hell, maybe no one ever had.

“It got bad enough that I started to plan an escape. It took a long time. In movies and TV, they always make it seem so easy to monitor the comings and goings of guards, figuring out the cameras, getting the timing perfect. In reality, it took me months for each task.”

I carefully stored away all the information, repeating it over and over to myself so I didn’t forget a single thing since I couldn’t write anything down.

“But then it started to occur to me how difficult it would be to get out of Mexico. Let alone away from him for good. Raúl might not have ever loved me the way I thought he had, but he absolutely saw me as his. He could never allow me to get away. It would be a weakness for him.”

“Wish I could say you were wrong, but I don’t think you are. Seems to be that way with a lot of the organized crime syndicates. They like absolute control. And appearances are important to them. They can’t show any sign of weakness. Losing your woman would be a sign of weakness to them. As asinine as that is.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “I could feel it within hours of getting out of there. Eyes everywhere. I know that sounds like paranoia, but…”

“But cartel leaders really do have eyes everywhere,” Cary filled in.

“Exactly,” I agreed, nodding. “I’d always known his reach was far, but I think I underestimated how far. I managed to fly under the radar thanks to the hair change and all the makeup, but no matter how far I got from Raúl’s house, I could see the eyes scanning the crowd. At the border crossing, there were actually a couple guys flashing my picture around on their phones.”

“That must have been terrifying.”

If there was a word that meant something worse than terrifying, that was exactly what it had been.

I managed to take my full deep breath a state or two after I got over the border, but it wasn’t until I tracked down Cary that I felt like there was a chance I was going to get away with it.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “I know I have no place coming here,” I started, sucking in a steadying breath. “I just… I had nowhere else to go,” I admitted. “You’re the only person I know that is, you know…”

“A criminal,” he filled in for me, making my guilty gaze rise, feeling like scum for thinking of him that way, even if it was true. “It’s okay, love, you can say it. I’ve been a criminal since I was hardly more than a kid. It doesn’t offend me that you’d call me that. It’s what I am.”

“It sounds judgmental.”

“It depends on who is saying it. I’m not taking offense from you. If you don’t mind me asking, how did you find me?”

“Well, I knew that when you got out, you would go back to what was familiar. Bike clubs. I used some logic, location-wise. And then I just… watched a couple clubs, trying to find you.”

“You watched bike clubs? Outlaw bike clubs?”

“I, ah, yeah. I realize how dangerous that seems,” I admitted. “But, honestly, it was a hell of a lot safer than not finding someone to help me, and risking Raúl finding me.”

“Fair enough,” he agreed.

“I lucked out here in Navesink Bank. I asked a couple questions at the local coffee shop about the club members, saying I was looking for an old friend. The girls working there told me there was someone named Cary at the club. I figured there wasn’t much of a chance that there were multiple guys named Cary in one-percent bike clubs. So I showed up. And Mr. Congeniality told me he would go get you.”

At that, Cary let out a little dry laugh.

“Yeah, Voss is, well, practically feral. I’m glad you found me Abigail.”

“I’m not asking for much,” I rushed to say, not wanting him to think I was going to ask for cash or something based on some silly mail relationship we’d had ages ago. “Just some, you know, advice would be really appreciated.”

“Advice,” he repeated, reaching up to run a hand through that salt and pepper beard that had no right to be as appealing as it was.

“Yeah, just, I don’t know. Like how I could maybe disappear or whatever. I don’t know where to go, or what to do when I get there. Like how not to leave a paper trail, so I can stay under the radar.”

God, I sounded ridiculous, didn’t I?

“Or, I don’t know. Like where I might be able to get a fake ID and passport or something. I guess the further I get, the harder I would be to find. I mean, I don’t have any money right now. But I will find some little jobs or something to earn what I will need. I will do anything,” I added, desperation slipping into my voice.

To that, Cary took a slow, deep breath that widened his strong chest. And, yes, despite myself—and the crazy situation—I noticed that somehow.

“Okay,” he said, flattening his hand on the table. “Maybe I can do better than making you disappear to some foreign country,” he said, getting to his feet. “But I need to talk to my president first to clear it with him.”

“I, ah, okay. Yeah. I’d really appreciate anything you could help me with, Cary, really. Anything. I know you don’t owe me because of some silly little correspondence years ago.”

“Love, there was nothing silly about that. Those letters kept me going during one of the roughest periods of my life,” he told me, voice so deep, eyes so intense, that I felt my belly flutter at his words, at the sincerity there was to them. “So, no, I don’t owe you. But I do owe you. Let me work some shit out. You hang out around the main area or my room while I figure it out.”

He was gone before I could agree.

CHAPTER SIX

Cary

My head was still spinning as I got back out to my bike, sitting down on the seat, and taking a minute to get my thoughts in order before I took off to try to find Fallon.

Abigail was back.

And the reason those letters that I’d clung to like a lifeline stopped coming was because she literally couldn’t send them anymore.

I hadn’t been exaggerating when I told her that her letters meant something to me, that they’d found me right when I needed them most.

It wasn’t like being locked up was anything new to me. But, in general, my sentences had been relatively short. I tended to spend time in jail, getting my sentence cut down to time served by the time I even made it to court.

And maybe the longer sentence wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d been locked up with some of my men. Or if any one of them came to visit.

It wasn’t long after I got locked up, though, that the club fell apart. Everyone left was likely scrambling to find a new club, a new life. Which meant there was no one left to come see me.

I was alone.

I was unaffiliated.

And if there is one thing you want to be when you’re locked up, it was affiliated. With someone, anyone. If you weren’t, shit got rough.

Unfortunately for me, most of the bikers who I was locked up with were fucking white supremacists. That was not something I was ever going to be associated with.

So I was as alone as a man could be.

When you didn’t have a crew inside, your only choice was to keep to yourself, keep your head low, and stay away from all the other organizations.

I’d always considered myself pretty self-sustaining. The fact of the matter was, though, that I’d always reaped the benefits of a club and brotherhood. I never had to go through something alone if I didn’t want to.

Not only was prison life just a minefield to navigate to begin with, but going in without a buddy to help point out possible danger up ahead. Or to simply distract you from it, that shit was not easy.

Sure, I filled my days with cell workouts, focusing on fitness. Eventually, I got a job in the kitchen, which put me with the Italian mob, who pretty much left me alone. I read. I kept my head on right.

Slowly but surely, though, the loneliness began to creep in. Eventually, it brought with it something I’d never experienced before.

Depression.

It was something new and foreign to me. It took work to get out of bed. If I wasn’t forced to do it, I probably wouldn’t have. I’d have just slept the days and nights and weeks and months away.

I’d never experienced anything like it before. It was like this shadow behind me, leaning on my shoulder, a weight that made every footstep heavy, made each movement feel like actual effort.

Even when I finally recognized it for what it was, there wasn’t much I could do. What? Tell one of the C.O.s that I was depressed? So I could get tossed in segregation with the other crazies? So I could listen to them talk to themselves and scream all day and night?

Nah, I was going to pass on that.

Which meant I just had to deal with it in silence.

It got harder and harder as each day passed.

Then, like a goddamn miracle, one day I got a letter.

In this soft, curly, feminine handwriting.

Christ, just the look of something feminine was welcome after so long away from women.

The paper even smelled like a woman. Soft and sweet. A little floral, a bit vanilla.

Whatever it was, it was fucking intoxicating.

I didn’t even give a shit that the only reason I was getting a letter was because some woman in some church somewhere felt it was her duty to try to convert me from my evil ways.

All that mattered was that it was someone to talk to, even if I’d never really communicated with anyone with letters before.

They came infrequently at first. Those first several stunted, forced notes where neither of us really knew what to say. But I held my breath each time the mail came regardless, needing that little hint of the “outside.”

It wasn’t long, though, before personal details started to come out.

Like the fact that she was a lot younger than I first thought. Very recently married, in fact.

I remember being jealous of that man. The one who got to be in the presence of all her soft and sweet, who got to be in possession of her big heart, who got to smell her floral and vanilla scent whenever he wanted to.

It wasn’t long before I realized the bastard had no right to be with her to begin with.

But, well, Abigail had been raised to shovel the shit a man left for her, and do it with a goddamn smile to boot.

So she didn’t really even see how shitty he was treating her. Or if she did, she placed the blame on herself.

Especially when she couldn’t get pregnant, when her body wouldn’t do the one thing she thought could fix her miserable marriage.

Slowly, over the months and years, she helped dissolve my depression. So I was painfully aware of it when she started to show signs of it herself. I poured myself into trying to boost her up, trying to give her even a hint of the soft and sweet she’d selflessly offered me for years.

Then I got the letter.

As it would turn out, the last letter.

Her husband was divorcing her. As if that wasn’t bad enough, her fucking parents were on his side about it.

The letter I’d sent back had been four pages, front and back, full of everything I could think to tell her at that low point in her life.

I sent it.

Then I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

But nothing ever came.

I won’t lie. I’d been hurt. Probably more than was healthy seeing as she’d been writing to me out of the goodness of her heart, not because we had any actual connection.

It was always going to end.

I guess a part of me just hadn’t wanted to think that.

Fuck, if I were being completely honest, I’d even fantasized at times about getting out one day, tracking her down, and getting her out of that unhappy life of hers.

Was that insane? Almost certifiably.

But it was something I thought of more than was healthy, something a part of me genuinely wanted to happen.

Until, of course, she’d snatched that fantasy away from me.

Or so I’d thought at the time.

Eventually, you know, life went on. She stopped being a dominant thought in my head. Especially after I got out, and had to get my life back on track.

She was always there, though. She’d sneak in at quiet moments, like when I was falling asleep, or when someone was asking me about my time inside.

Over time, it was less and less frequent. I had a new life, after all. I had new brothers. I had a new family to get to know. I had actual women I could reach for.

Then there she was.

Telling me that she’d never chosen to cut off all communication with me, that she’d had no choice, that she’d been locked in her own kind of prison. Without someone to reach out to, like she’d been to me. And enduring a lot more torment than I’d ever been made to endure. With no end in sight.

I couldn’t imagine how much grit and determination and bravery it must have taken for her to finally get herself free.

No, technically, I didn’t owe her.

But at the same time, I absolutely did.

I was going to do whatever I could to make sure she never had to go through anything like that ever again.

The thing was, it wasn’t like I was just some Average Joe who could do whatever the fuck he wanted.

If I was, the woman would be in my place for as long as she wanted, guarded by me, and wanting for nothing as she healed and built a new life.

But I wasn’t.

I was a biker.

That meant that every decision I made outside of small personal choices had to be run by my president and signed off on.

So that was what I had to do.

Find Fallon and see what he would be okay with me doing.

He could be a hard guy to track down at times. He was all over the place. At his house, at the bar his woman owned, at meetings, with his parents, or doing work meet-ups. But given the time of day, I was placing my bets on him being at the diner that he owned with one of our other brothers, Malc.

Sure enough, his bike was in the lot. I pulled up next to it before making my way inside, getting a smile from one of the waitresses as she put a filter in the coffee pot.

“He in the office?” I asked.

She gave me a nod even as I heard a slam from the back.

“He in a mood?” I asked her, getting a smirk from her that confirmed I’d chosen a bad time to talk to him.

It was too late to turn back now, though.

I took a deep breath and moved into the office, finding Fallon walking from a filing cabinet toward his desk.

Seeing me, his shoulders fell, anticipating a problem.

“What is it? And if it is about Dezi and fucking Voss growling at each other again, I don’t want to hear it.”

“Nah, it’s not that. Well, it is always that. But this is different.”

“Okay,” he said, exhaling hard. “Shoot.”

“I’ve got a problem. There’s this woman—“

“Of fucking course there is,” he grumbled, shaking his head as he moved behind his desk. “You know, I kind of always thought my old man was being dramatic when he said ninety percent of the club’s problems came on the heels of a beautiful woman. Un-fucking-fortuantely, though, that seems to be a multiple-generation curse we got going on. Who’s the woman?”

“She was a pen-pal while I was in prison,” I told him.

“Like an ex?” he asked, brows pinching.

“No, I never actually met her before today.”

“Okay…”

“Long story short, those letters helped me get through my time with my head on right,” I told him, shrugging. I was too old to pretend that I was made of stone. We all had our ups and downs. I was doing no one any favors by trying to pretend that shit never touched me.

“I can understand that,” he agreed, nodding. “Why is she showing up now, though?”

“That’s another long story.”

“CliffsNotes,” he demanded.

“She never meant to stop communicating with me. She went on a mission—“

“Like a military mission?” he cut me off.

“Like a religious one,” I clarified. If that surprised him, his face was impassive. “And while she was down there, she got herself attached to the wrong kind of guy.”

“Down there,” Fallon repeated, exhaling hard. “Let me guess. The wrong kind of man has cartel connections.”

“Don’t know much about the cartel, but from the sounds of it, he’s not just connected.”

“Shit. Seriously, the fuck with these women? It can never be a normal problem, can it? No. It’s got to be some fucking international organized crime problem.”

“Yeah, well, she fell for the wrong guy. Who ended up making it impossible for her to leave.”

“Until she did.”

“Until she did,” I agreed.

“And she came right to you?”

“She lived a really cloistered life. I was the only person she’d ever been in contact with who was outside of her weird culty upbringing. She needs help.”

“I bet she does,” he agreed.

Fallon bit the inside of his cheek as his gaze slipped away toward the picture on the wall.

The family.

His family.

Full of strong-ass women who’d made sure they’d raised him right, that they made him acutely aware of his responsibility to help a woman when she needed it. Women who would whip his fucking grown ass if they found out he stood in the way of a woman in need being left to suffer on her own.

“I need to know what kind of help I’m going to be able to offer her,” I told him, shrugging.

His hands flattened on his desk as his head dipped.

He let out a small laugh before his gaze lifted.

“Well, I gotta say, Cary, I’m impressed that you would even come to me first. Most of the others would act first, and ask later.”

“Not my first club,” I reminded him, shrugging. “I get this is your call.”

“But if it was yours?” he asked.

“I’d do whatever it takes to make sure she doesn’t have to worry about that fuck ever again.”

“Alright,” he said, nodding. “I get it. Do what you gotta do. But I have one request.”

“What’s that?”

“Take her out of the club. That’s not me saying we don’t have your back if you need us, but get her somewhere else that is safe. You can even ask some of your brothers if they want to help do a guard shift if you are needed at the club. But I don’t want to invite any kind of ambush. Heard the horror stories about how that happened with my old man. I don’t want to have that be the future for us.”

“I understand that completely,” I agreed, nodding. “Thank you.”

To that, he snorted.

“Cary, man, don’t thank me. You might find yourself with such a headache that you will be wishing I’d told you no.”

“Don’t see that happening,” I said, shaking my head.

“Alright. Keep in touch. Let Brooks know what you’ve got going on.”

“I will,” I agreed, nodding. “Than—“

“You fucking asshole,” Hope’s voice roared as the door flew open.

“Oh, shit. Here we go,” Fallon mumbled under his breath as he dropped down into his chair like his legs couldn’t hold him up through any more problems.

“No, I mean, really, are you an idiot?” she asked, waving out a hand.

“Nice to see you too, Hope. How’s the family?”

“You’re goddamn right it isn’t going to be nice to see me right now. Just like it wasn’t nice to see you last night. When you fucking blew a three-week-long stakeout I’d had going on that was finally going to get me the evidence I needed for my client.”

Fallon exhaled a deep breath, his gaze slipping to me. “Why don’t you head out, man? This is my flaying, but she’s pissed enough to start peeling off your skin just for being here.”

I didn’t need to be told twice.

I got myself out of there.

I liked Hope.

She was a hardass with a tough shell to crack, but she was a fiercely loyal friend and family member with a heart of a romantic underneath it all. Though she’d go to her grave denying that.

But despite how much I liked the woman, I didn’t want to be anywhere near the kind of fury that was going to come out of her when someone got in the way of her job.

Did she maybe take her work too seriously? Especially considering how terribly they treated her, no matter how often she proved herself? Yes. But it was important to her. So it didn’t matter what any of the rest of us thought about it. It mattered. And Fallon had—inadvertently, I was sure—fucked it up for her.

If the man could walk right after she was done, I would be shocked.

Besides, I didn’t exactly have a lot of time to waste.

See, I didn’t have my own place.

A lot of the brothers eventually did so. Usually when they found a woman, or were thinking of starting a family.

That was never going to be the path for me, though, so I’d seen no reason to get a house or apartment of my own. I had my own space at the clubhouse. And since they were, essentially, my family, there was no reason to move out.

But if Fallon wanted Abigail out of the clubhouse—and I understood his reason—then I needed to get my ass in gear and find a place as quickly as possible.

Even if I was just going to rent a place, it was going to take at the very least a couple days for paperwork and shit to get drawn up. So I’d have to get her in a hotel until then. Which wasn’t ideal, but was relatively safe.

It wasn’t like a cartel was going to come shooting in a hotel on foreign soil.

But, in my head, hotels had a certain connotation to them, even if I made sure I got two separate beds. I didn’t want to make the situation more uncomfortable for her.

Though, I had to admit that a part of me was happier than I had any right to be about the idea of being stuck in a hotel with Abigail.

It was wrong in every way, and I knew there was no way I could make any sort of move on her. But I couldn’t seem to help the thought either.

“Hey, you,” Jazzy called as I finally made my way up to the counter at She’s Bean Around.

I didn’t actually want any more coffee.

But the fact of the matter was, if you needed to know something about anything in Navesink Bank, you took your ass down to the coffee shop. Because Jazzy and Gala were the gatekeepers of the inside track of all things Navesink Bank. I was sure that was partly from just overhearing people talking all day long, but it was also because they were talkers themselves, always getting information out of people. Add on the fact that Jazzy was settled down with a detective on the NBPD, and there was almost nothing that went down in the town without the She’s Bean Around chicks knowing about it.

“Heya, Jazz.”

“Did your old friend find you?”

“She did,” I agreed. “Thanks for pointing her in my direction.”

“I wouldn’t normally point anyone toward your organization without asking you guys first. But that woman had a kicked puppy look to her. I didn’t think you would mind this one time.”

“Not at all. Actually, she’s why I’m here.”

“Ah,” she said, giving me a slow nod that said she suddenly understood things were heading toward somewhere important. “Come over here,” she invited, walking behind the counter toward the corner, and waiting for me to follow, getting us away from the crush of the crowd that was always present at She’s Bean Around. “She’s in trouble, isn’t she?”

“She is. And it’s really important that you don’t tell anyone that you’ve seen her.”

“Honey, this is Navesink Bank. We protect our women here. You see that look once and you can recognize it forever,” Jazzy went on. “I wouldn’t tell anyone that she was here.”

“Not even Lloyd?” I asked, meaning her guy.

“Listen, my man and I have an understanding about this kind of thing. He doesn’t care who I talk to and get friendly with in this town so long as I’m not doing anything illegal myself. Are you asking me to do anything illegal?”

“No.”

“Then we’re good. I won’t say anything.”

“Okay. Thanks. Well, I need someplace to put her,” I said.

“And that place maybe needs to be unexpected and relatively safe without a bunch of people seeing the comings and goings?”

“You’ve got it,” I agreed.

Jazzy pursed her lips as she tapped a nail on the counter. “Okay, I might know something. I mean, I can’t get you someplace private like out in the woods somewhere. But I can get you somewhere off the books in town. Up high, so you can see anyone coming and going.”

“Sounds like it would work.”

“You know Vic, the old guy who used to run the print shop in town?” I didn’t, but it didn’t matter. “Well, Vic passed. And his son doesn’t know shit about the printing business. So he had to shutter the store while he figured it all out. He needs the cash. And the place above the store is an apartment. Vic used to live there, but I saw the moving and charity trucks there the other day, cleaning it out. That could work, right?”

“That would be perfect actually.”

“Good. Then head your fine silver fox ass over there and set it up before someone else snatches it off his hands.”

“Jazz, you’re a lifesaver, hon.”

“Don’t I know it,” she said with a big smile as she gave me a little wave before moving off.

I’d never really been attached to a town before. I’d moved around a lot as a kid and then a young adult. You kind of just saw each town as the same as the last.

There was just something about Navesink Bank, though. I couldn’t put my finger on it. And it wasn’t just because I’d stuck around it for a while. I’d lived in other towns for much longer than I’d been in Navesink Bank.

Maybe it had to do with the, well, thriving less than legal empires all cooped up in one space. It created a sense of community you didn’t often find in places anymore.

From there, you sprinkled in a few familiar mom-and-pop establishments like She’s Bean Around, Chaz’s, and Famiglia—the kinds of places where the owners and workers got to know your name and story—and it brought everything in even more tightly. In a comfortable way. Like an old favorite sweater.

If I lived out the rest of my life in Navesink Bank, I would be a happy man.

The old print shop was on a side street along with a salon and a pet store. It was a simple brick building with the typical picture window that was currently boarded up by wood and then doubly protected by the metal security door pulled down.

There was a sign duct-taped to the wood board that said the space was for rent, with a number to call.

From there, it was all pretty simple.

The guy who owned it said he was still cleaning it out, but that it would be ready in four or five days. So I dropped by his place, set down a deposit, then made my way toward one of the nicer hotels in the area, the one overlooking the Navesink River.

I don’t know. I guess I just figured that the woman could use some luxury that didn’t come with pain and abuse as well.

Once that was all handled, I made my way back to the clubhouse, stomach tied a bit in knots. Because I’d made all those plans without once consulting Abigail about any of it.

She’d had someone controlling every aspect of her life for so long. She didn’t need another man doing it for her. But, I reasoned with myself, this situation was different.

I had to get her safe.

And I also had my orders from Fallon.

If she wanted to change some of the plans once I got her out of the clubhouse, that was fine. We could figure it out together.

“You got something to fill me in on?” Brooks asked when I got back into the lot and climbed off my bike.

“How’d you know?”

“Because Dezi has been chatting up that girl who claims she knows you for the past hour.”

Jealousy and possessiveness assaulted my system all at once.

Why?

Because Dezi was talking to her? I mean, this was Dezi we were talking about. He talked to every woman. Literally every fucking woman. He didn’t have to be attracted to them. He struck up conversations with the old ladies at the grocery store just as much as he did with the pretty college girls at the bars.

It was all just part of what made Dezi… Dezi.

Still, though, there was no denying the swirling discomfort in my stomach, the tightness in my chest.

Over a woman I had no claim over.

She was a part of my past.

Though, admittedly, she was clearly a part of my present as well.

And as I filled in Brooks on what was going on, I had to admit to myself that there was some part of me that thought a future with the woman who’d saved me when I couldn’t save myself didn’t sound too shabby…

CHAPTER SEVEN

Abigail

“So, what are your feelings on mini-cows?” the guy who’d introduced himself to me as Dezi said as he dropped down in a chair across from where I was sitting on the couch.

From the looks of his outfit, he’d just gotten back from the gym like Cary had. But that didn’t stop this man from cracking open the pastry box on his lap and plowing right into a jelly donut.

“I, ah, I’m sorry?” I asked, confused.

“Mini-cows. Yay high,” he said, gesturing to the side of the chair. “Spotted. Big eyes. You like them?”

“I’ve, um, I’ve never really thought about it,” I admitted. My world hadn’t exactly involved cute farm animals.

“What about babydoll sheep?”

“I don’t think I even know what that is,” I admitted.

“Hm. Alright. Just working on a theory,” he said, shrugging. “Donut?” he asked, holding the box out to me. “Come on, you know you wanna.”

“I just ate,” I said, even as my mouth salivated at the idea of something so sweet.

“What’s that got to do with the price of eggs?” he asked, making a strange laugh bubble up and burst out of me.

“What?”

“I dunno. Something some older lady said to me once. Stuck with me. I just eat all the time. Still manage to eat a donut or six after.”

So then he gave me a donut. And I pretended to eat it demurely. But Dezi must have been onto me, because he barely paused after I finished before handing me another one. And then another.

My stomach screamed at the too-full feeling after so many years of surviving on the bare minimum. And all the sugar had me feeling like I was buzzing.

But, God, alive. I felt alive for the first time in far too long.

“I’m going to get some more coffee,” I told him, even though I didn’t need any more sugar or caffeine in my system right then. But it was too novel to be able to get my own food and drinks to turn down the opportunity to do so. “Can I get you some?” I asked.

“That sounds good. Wash down all this sugar with more sugar,” he added, giving me a wink.

This Dezi guy was, arguably, really attractive. But in a way that I guess had never been my type. He was a rough and dirty sort of handsome with his long hair, his tattoos, his scruff that looked more careless than cultivated, and his abundance of scars.

Still, though, I felt absolutely nothing at that little wink of his, or the warm look in his eyes.

Nothing like the gut-kick sensation I’d felt when I’d finally seen Cary in person.

No.

I couldn’t let my mind go there.

There was how all my problems in my life started.

Besides, he wanted to help me. I couldn’t let my complicated feelings get in the way of the original plan.

To get away.

To get safe.

To, eventually, be able to start my life over again. This time, on my own terms.

I didn’t even know what that would look like. I’d never really had any say in how my life turned out.

There were a few things I knew. Like I would need a job. What kind, I had no idea. I had no work history. I had no skills. But I would find something somewhere.

Then I would need to figure out how to get my own place.

That idea was both scary and thrilling. A whole place, all my own. To decorate how I wanted. To exist within in any way that made me happy.

I knew I was getting away with myself, but in my head, I was picturing paint swatches and what sorts of furniture I would want.

Not Kian’s style. Which I guess I could call “football fanatic.” Everything was overstuffed recliners in dark brown shades, giant TVs, sound systems, and not a single piece of art on the walls.

And it went without saying that Raúl’s style was out too. At least he’d actually had some. I would give him that. His house had been stunningly beautiful, but in a cold, stark way. It was massive, so it seemed almost under furnished. But all the accents were black and gold. He’d even had a giant gold leopard statue in the living room. There was art on the walls, but black, gray, and gold abstracts that didn’t really interest me.

The one thing both places had in common was the complete and utter lack of anything even remotely feminine. You would never know a woman lived there if you stepped inside either of their houses.

I wanted my future place to reflect me for once in my life.

Outside of work and a home, I had no real vision for the rest of my life. Biological children weren’t an option. And I wasn’t sure I could ever trust my taste in men again.

But some friends would be nice. A sort of chosen family. People to spend holidays and birthdays with.

Yeah, that sounded nice.

I was just finishing mixing the mugs of coffee when I heard male voices in the living room.

I knew I shouldn’t have, but it seemed like eavesdropping was how I was wired now. You could call it a survival tactic. It was always better to know what the men around me were saying when they didn’t know I was listening.

I moved closer to the doorway, but kept my body away from the opening, leaning as close as I dared, and making out both of the voices.

Dezi.

And Cary.

“Your lady friend looks like a strong wind would blow her over,” Dezi said, as though Cary hadn’t seen me himself.

“I know,” Cary said, voice concerned.

“I fed her donuts,” Dezi volunteered.

“Good.”

“She has no opinions on mini-cows.”

“Ah, good to know,” Cary said, sounding as confused as I had been about the topic.

“What you rushing off to do?”

“Pack,” Cary said, making me stiffen.

Did he get in trouble with his president? Was he being kicked out because of me?

No.

I couldn’t let that happen.

“Are you in trouble because of me?” I burst out as I rushed into the living room, watching as both men turned to face me.

“What? No, Abs, no,” Cary said, shaking his head.

“You said you have to pack,” I reminded him as Dezi took his coffee from my hand.

“Yeah, but not everything I own, love,” he said, shaking his head. “A bag or two. Fallon was fine with me helping you, but asked that I not keep you in the clubhouse.”

“Oh, okay. Where are you putting me then?”

“For a couple of days, it is going to have to be a hotel. After that, I will have a more permanent place set up. Is that alright? If you’re not comfortable with that situation, I could maybe ask one of the princesses if you can crash in their spare rooms. Or maybe I can ask Chris and Lo if you could stay at Hailstorm for a bit.”

“Hailstorm,” I repeated.

“Long story,” Cary said, shrugging. “But suffice to say it is a safe place.”

“I’m, ah, I’m okay with the hotel,” I decided. I didn’t really like the idea of being around a bunch of strangers.

“Good. Because it’s all set up,” Cary said, shooting me a sweet smile. “So I just have to throw some things together.”

“Can I come?” Dezi asked, making a big smile tug at my lips because it sounded a lot like a little kid wanting to join the adults on a night out.

“Both beds will be occupied,” Cary said.

“There’s usually a cot. Or the floor. Wouldn’t be the first time I slept on a floor.”

“I think I can keep Abigail safe enough in a hotel. But I might need to use you if Fallon needs me here. If that’s okay with you,” he added, looking over at me.

“We bonded over donuts. We’re practically family now,” Dezi insisted, getting another smile out of me.

“Yeah, that’s fine,” I agreed.

“See? Told you. I’m gonna go take my coffee and crash.”

With that, and nothing else, he was gone down the hallway.

“He reminds me of a puppy. Like a big, silly one. A Golden Retriever or something.”

To that, Cary let out a strange laugh.

“What?”

“He can be like a puppy, yeah,” Cary told me, holding an arm out to lead me back toward his bedroom. “But he’s one of the most vicious, violent sons of bitches I’ve ever met. Which, as you can imagine, is saying something. I was locked up with a lot of animals. But I would put my money on Dezi over all of them.”

“That’s hard to imagine,” I admitted, thinking of his scruffy little beard all dotted with white powder from his jelly donut.

“Well, let’s hope you don’t have to see it. Why don’t you sit? I just have to throw some things together,” he told me, finding some bags from under his bed, then going through his dressers before collecting some of his things from the bathroom. “You okay?” he asked, pausing before zippering his bag. “I know this is a lot.”

“No. I mean, yeah. I’m okay. And no, it’s not a lot. Not really. I was just thinking… I don’t have anything,” I told him.

It was bad enough to just have the clothes on my back and a couple bucks in my pocket to get from Raúl’s place all the way to Navesink Bank. I’d been fully in survival mode then. If people looked at me funny or silently judged me, I was too focused on following the next steps to really notice or care.

Now that I was safe—at least for the moment—I was able to see just how little I had in the world. Borrowed clothes from one of the club princesses and my old clothes that probably needed to be burned.

And, well, that was it.

I’d never had absolutely nothing to my name before.

Very little, yes, but not nothing.

“Hey, look at me,” Cary demanded, then waited until I could force my gaze to lift. “Don’t worry about all that shit. I’ll handle it.”

“I can’t ask—“

“You’re not asking. I’m offering,” he cut me off.

“You’re already doing too much for me.”

“Getting you fed and a safe place to stay is the bare fucking minimum here, love.”

“Still. I’ll…”

“Relax and let me handle it,” Cary cut me off again, this time with a teasing little smile.

“I… okay,” I agreed when his brow raised at me. “But I’m going to pay you back someday when I get a job.”

“Sure. You can think that. Go ahead,” he offered, getting a small laugh out of me. “Tell you what. We will drop my shit at the hotel. Then we can run back out to the store so you can do some shopping. Figure maybe that is something you haven’t been able to do for yourself in a while,” he added, reading the situation perfectly.

“That would be nice,” I agreed.

“Alright,” he said, grabbing both his bags. “We can borrow the SUV for the shopping trips, but we will have to drop it back off and pick up my bike later. Scared?” he asked, reading my face.

“Of a motorcycle? Yeah, kind of,” I admitted.

“It’s not a long ride,” he assured me.

I appreciated that. Not undermining my feelings, or telling me I was going to love it. Just giving me the facts to wrap my head around. If it wasn’t a long ride, no matter how miserable it made me, I could get through it.

“Okay,” I agreed, nodding.

“Okay,” he repeated. “Let’s get this shit going.”

So then we did.

I opted to wait in the car while Cary tossed his bags in the hotel room. Because, quite frankly, I didn’t want to waste any time checking out the room. I was more than a little excited to be going shopping.

Did I feel more than a little bit of guilt at the idea of spending the money of a man who most definitely did not owe me, someone who was already going above and beyond for me? Yes, absolutely. But I comforted myself with the fact that I could and would pay him back someday.

Oh, and it didn’t hurt that Dezi had sort of let it slip that the members of the club had a lot of disposable cash. So it wasn’t like getting me a couple of things was going to hurt Cary’s bottom line.

I’d always liked shopping when I was younger. Before Raúl kept me locked in his mansion.

True, when I was a kid, and later when I’d been married, it had been hammered into me never to spend money on myself for anything other than essentials. And to those people in my old community, that meant I didn’t get to buy new clothes until my old ones were threadbare or ripped.

Still, I got a certain amount of joy walking up and down the aisles in the big box stores, window shopping, looking at all the pretty things.

It had been so long since I’d been able to have something as simple as that.

I was eager to get a chance again. Even if I was going to be very careful to only choose the bare minimum of items. And even then, get them as cheaply as possible.

It wasn’t long, though, until Cary seemed to pick up on what I was doing. In fact, he turned the big red shopping cart away from where I was flipping through the clearance section of clothing, and came back a moment later with the back of the cart loaded down with every item I’d looked at or reached out to touch.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Absolutely not. That’s too much.”

“You need clothes,” he said, shrugging like it was no big deal.

“Not that many clothes,” I insisted.

He went ahead and ignored that. “Do you like them?” he asked, waving down. “Or you want to trade anything out?”

“Yes, for things off of this rack,” I said, waving toward the clearance section.

“Honey, what the hell are you doing?” a lady half a row over asked, looking over at me with drawn-together brows. “If the man wants to buy them for you, let him,” she told me.

“See?” Cary asked, smirking.

“I think she might want some shoes and pajamas while you’re at it,” the lady went on, clearly a bit taken with Cary. And, really, who could blame her.

“You know what? I think you might be right,” Cary agreed. “Shall we, love?” he asked, shooting dancing eyes over at me.

“Oh, ‘love,’” the woman swooned, pressing a hand to her heart. “Honey, grab on tight to this one, and don’t you let him go,” she said before pushing her cart away.

“Don’t gloat,” I said, shooting him mock-angry eyes as I followed him across the little aisle toward the pajamas. I was going to go ahead and sneak a quick look at the underwear while he was hopefully distracted. I didn’t have time to try on any bras. But, honestly, with the weight loss, I didn’t have a whole hell of a lot in the breast department that needed the support anyway.

“Hey, not my fault strangers in the clothing department clearly see how right I am,” Cary said as I went to move away from a cute pajama set I’d been looking at. “Nuh-uh. Pick it up, and put it in the cart,” he demanded.

“There are other—“ I started.

“And by other, you mean cheaper?” he asked, brow raising because he knew he had me there. “Listen, Abs,” he said, moving to stand in front of me, leaning down a bit so he could keep his voice low. “There’s no way for me to say this without sounding like a dick, so I’m just going to say it. I have quite a bit of money. So stop nickel and diming everything. Pick out what you like and put it in the cart. This,” he said, waving at the pile of clothes already in there, “is probably less than I spend on vegetables every week.”

To that, I nodded. “Dezi said you, ah, liked your vegetables.”

“No,” Cary said, shaking his head. “That was not what Dezi said,” he said, holding back a smile.

No, it was not.

“No, you’re right.”

“What did Dezi say?” Cary asked, making me wince. “Come on. What did he say?”

God, I couldn’t even think it without blushing, let alone say it.

“He said he didn’t know what you liked eating more,” I admitted. “Vegetables or…”

Nope.

There was no way I could say it.

Cary, though, didn’t seem similarly afflicted with embarrassment.

In fact, he leaned down just a little closer, creating a bit more intimacy, then just went ahead and said it. In that deep, intoxicating voice of his.

“Pussy.”

“I, ah, yeah,” I said, turning so fast that I rammed into a clothing rack, jamming my shoulder hard enough that I knew there would be a pretty bruise there in a few hours. “That was what he said,” I added, moving further away.

But when Dezi had said it, it had been kind of matter-of-fact, just a throw away word, with no real emphasis on it at all.

When Cary said it, though, there had been something like dark delight in his eyes, in his voice.

And something about that look and that voice, well, it made my belly do a strange, unexpected flip-flop.

Because my mind, which had a million other things it needed to be focusing on, conjured up a truly scandalous image.

I was a long way away from my upbringing, from my naive, girlish views on what happened between a man and a woman.

Raúl had been sure to erase all of that.

But, still, there were things that had simply not been a part of my life before.

Like, you know… that.

In fact, I couldn’t fathom a man actually being willing to do it, let alone be happy to do so.

In my experience, men were more about the taking than the giving.

Though, admittedly, my experience was extremely limited. And if you compared it to the experience of a man like Cary, well, yeah, I might as well have been a naive little virgin all over again.

Frazzled, I glanced back at Cary who was busying himself with throwing pajamas into the cart, giving me a couple of seconds to rush over toward the underwear.

But I managed to grab a robe before I left the pajamas, so I could hide the undies in when I grabbed them. Why? I don’t know. Since he was clearly going to see them when we checked out, but I couldn’t seem to find the courage to just let him see all the cute little panties I was grabbing out of the display case and tossing into the robe.

From there, we went into the shoes. I put my foot down there and insisted I only needed one pair of shoes.

“Fine,” Cary conceded. “But then you have to get yourself something else. Books, some crafts, I don’t know. Something just for you.”

“This is all for me,” I told him, gesturing toward the cart.

“These are all necessities. You need to get yourself something that is to enjoy.”

“Believe me, after not being able to choose my clothes for so long, and being stuck in outfits meant to display and demean me, I am absolutely going to enjoy all of this.”

“Abs, I’m not budging on this, so you might as well give in now.”

“Does a nice, fluffy blanket count?” I asked as we strolled past the men’s department, then the electronics.

“No, but now you’re getting one of those too.”

“I need to keep my mouth shut, huh?” I asked, shaking my head at him even if I was actually delighted by him right about then.

“I want you to have anything you need and want, how about that?” he suggested, nudging me into the book section. “Do you like books?”

“I did when I was a teen. I was very limited in what I was allowed to read, though.”

“You’re all grown up now,” Cary said, gesturing toward the fiction as he turned to look at the cookbooks.

I went ahead and let myself be amazed at the fact that he not only knew how to cook, but enjoyed it enough that he was willing to buy books with new recipes in them for a long moment before I set my sight on the books.

“You’ve been staring for five minutes,” Cary said a few minutes later.

“I’m trying to decide,” I admitted.

“Between what?”

“Well, the thriller. Which is something I’ve never read. And the historical fiction, which I know I like. And this paranormal-sounding one. Oh, and this one,” I said, gesturing to the one that, from the blurb, sounded like it might be a romance or something like that, but the cover was tame.

“Well, that’s easy,” he said, and I was just about to ask him which he thought I’d like before he grabbed all of them off the shelf and put them in the fact. “Shush,” he said, grabbing the cart, and rushing off before I could say anything. “Here, take the cart and grab some snacks. I’m gonna go hunt down a suitcase for some of this stuff,” he said, gesturing toward that section.

“Can I get you anything?” I asked. “Kale? Spinach?” I teased, getting a surprised chuckle out of him.

“Smartass,” he said, smiling. “You see anything healthy, toss it in,” he said, then turned and left me.

By the time we left the beauty section, the cart was almost overflowing.

“No, really, I have the books!” I insisted when he turned down the craft aisle.

“So you can’t read and… paint a jewelry box?” he asked, gesturing toward one.

“I don’t know if I even like painting. Or sculpting. Or… whatever that is,” I said, gesturing toward what looked like a loom for knitting.

“Well, only one way to find out,” he said, then damn near cleared the shelves. “Relax, love,” he said as we made our way up to the cashier. “It’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing,” I insisted.

“Listen, it’s—“ he started, turning back to me.

“No. It’s something. It’s a lot. It means a lot,” I added, finding the words clumsy on my tongue, but needing to say something, to let him know how much I appreciated all he was doing for me.

Seeing the sincerity in my eyes, his face softened.

“I’m happy to do it, Abs,” he said, reaching out to touch my hand on the cart handle, but pulling it right back, like he was worried that I might not like being touched.

From there, it was loading everything onto the belt, then refilling the cart with bags. And watching in stunned silence as the number flashed on the screen, and then Cary pulled out this massive wad of cash and counted it out like it was nothing.

I actually felt high off the whole encounter as we stood at the trunk at the hotel afterward, rolling and folding all the clothes into the suitcases he’d picked up, then arranging the toiletries and snacks before heading up.

The hotel was gorgeous, upscale, the kind of place that somehow managed not to look worn-in, despite how many people had stayed there over the years.

Our room was on a high floor with a floor-to-ceiling view of the Navesink River below.

The room itself was in shades of cream, spotless, and sported two queen-sized beds, a desk area, and a bathroom that was as big as my childhood bedroom. The soaking tub made me want to weep, and suddenly very thankful that Cary had the foresight to grab a couple bath bombs off an end-cap display.

“Wow,” I said after taking a long look around the space.

“I have to go return the SUV,” Cary reminded me, putting my books and craft supplies on the desk. “If you want, you can stay here. You will be safe for the fifteen—“

“I want to come,” I cut him off, voice a little desperate.

It wasn’t like I had any burning desire to ride on his motorcycle—in fact, I was dreading it—but the idea of being alone filled me with more dread than I could have anticipated.

Maybe it was because I’d been so alone and so scared for so long. If I didn’t have to be those things again, I didn’t want to.

It had nothing at all to do with liking being around Cary.

Nope.

Nothing at all.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Cary

I’ve been around for a while.

I’m saying this because it wasn’t like I was some young guy without life experience to teach him control and patience.

I had many years to get a handle of those things.

I generally prided myself on them.

But just three days in the hotel with Abigail was making me question everything I previously believed about myself.

It all started after the shopping spree.

When we went back to the clubhouse to drop off the SUV and grab my bike.

Yeah, I mean, it was little shit before that too, but the moment I finally convinced her to climb on behind me despite her reservations, that was when shit really took a turn.

Because, see, Abigail had been absolutely fucking terrified of the bike. That meant she scooted in real close, crushing her entire front to my back, her thighs pressing against the back of mine, her arms grabbing the sides of my cut.

I went ahead and made it worse for myself, of course, by reaching back, grabbing her wrists, and pulling her arms to grab me across my stomach.

Holding my cut would have been fine.

I was a fucking glutton for punishment.

But, yeah, the second her arms wrapped me up, and she pressed her face into my back, it was all over for me.

Any thoughts I might have had about being a good man, about being able to simply see her as a woman who needed some help instead of a woman I could be interested in went right out the window.

I tried to convince myself that I drove as slow as possible because she had been scared. The fact of the matter was, though, that I drove slow because I wanted to drag out the contact for as long as possible.

Was that fucked?

Yep, absolutely.

Especially given what she’d been through.

The last thing in the world she needed was another man who had less than pure intentions toward her.

So I told myself as we made our way back up to the hotel that I was going to keep a wide berth around her.

I’d been naive as fuck to think that would be enough for me.

Somehow I forgot that staying in a small space like a hotel together created forms of intimacy that I wouldn’t have had otherwise.

And it wasn’t just knowing she was naked a room away when I heard the tub running. No, it was that she was just a few feet away from me, tossing and turning in her sleep so her blankets slipped off. It was hearing her little murmurs as she did said shifting. It was hearing her little scoffs or sighs as she read one of the books she’d picked out. It was her laugh as we watched a movie. It was the way she mumbled to herself when she was frustrated that she couldn’t figure out the loom.

“Ugh. It’s hopeless. I would have made a terrible old-timey woman. I have no skill with yarn,” she declared, tossing the uneven multi-colored scarf she’d been trying to get right for several hours.

“Hey, at least you know that about yourself now,” I said, shrugging.

I’d suspected that Abigail had never really gotten a chance to be a person, if that makes any sense. Her father, then her husband, then that bastard Raúl had always seen her as a possession, as someone they could use to their own benefit. She’d never been allowed to explore things, to figure out who she was, or what she might be into.

Was figuring out if she could make a scarf some sort of monumental self-discovery? No. But at least it was something that she’d attempted, something she’d learned she had no love for.

It was why I’d picked up all that craft shit. Because my plan was to get her out of Raúl’s grips by whatever means necessary. Then after that, she was going to finally be able to have a life on her own terms. It would be nice for her going into that having at least a little sense of self.

No, she didn’t have skills with knitting.

And the thriller book made her anxious.

They were small things, but sometimes small things could be just as important as the big shit. It was slowly helping her build a picture of herself.

I couldn’t help but wonder what she envisioned for her future now that she actually had one of her own. Did she have some secret dream? Did she want to travel the world, or just have a nice, comfy little home to call her own? Did she want animals? Did she want to adopt kids? What did she see herself doing for work?

They were burning questions in my mind, but I tried not to burden her with them too much, figuring she was overwhelmed enough with the changes going on in her life.

Hell, even little shit like experiencing foods she hadn’t had in years was proving difficult for her. Her frail body, so used to surviving on very small, very low-fat and bland foods, hadn’t quite been ready for the greasy pepperoni pizza she’d ordered on the second night, sending her running into the bathroom, and throwing it back up.

She had a lot going on.

I didn’t need to burden her with what six months, a year, or five years down the line might look like for her.

I needed to get a grip anyway.

Because, sooner or later, I needed to figure out how to handle her situation. Which, I had to admit, wasn’t going to be easy.

I’d been in prison with quite a few cartel members. I knew how protected their leaders were. I knew how ruthless their men were.

If Raúl was as upset as Abigail thought he would be about her escaping, then I had no doubt that he would leave no stone unturned. Which meant he was coming. And I was wholly unprepared for him.

Yes, sure, Fallon said I had the backing of the club if I needed them. But I also didn’t want to put all of them in danger. Most of them had wives and kids. The ones who didn’t, had the hope of them in the future. I didn’t want to risk that for them all.

I needed to be smart about this.

But at the end of the day, there was only one way this could go.

Raúl had to die.

As did any of his men who were loyal enough to give a shit about Abigail after he was gone.

I mean, yeah, I’d been a criminal my entire life. But that didn’t mean I was capable of pulling off a plan like that without a huge amount of forethought. And, yeah, I was probably going to need some backup as well.

I knew if I asked, Dezi would be game. Voss, I had a feeling, was the kind of man you could tap the shoulder of for something as crazy and dangerous as this as well.

I didn’t know how I felt about asking any of the core “family” guys, though. Fallon, Finn, Seth, and Valen.

Which left me at a disadvantage, numbers-wise.

So, yeah, I needed to think.

The problem was, having Abigail around was making it difficult.

So when Dezi showed up to hang with her while I headed to the clubhouse to pull my weight around there, a part of me was almost relieved to get a little space to think straight.

“Brought her more donuts,” Dezi declared when I met him out in the hall.

“Good,” I said, nodding. “Have her pace herself, though,” I advised. “If she eats too much too fast, she gets sick. She needs to keep all the calories down that she can. What?”

“Are you a body double? Where’s my calorie-conscious Zaddy at?”

“That’s because you want to lose weight,” I reminded him, shaking my head. “She needs to gain some.”

“So, if I’m reading into this, your girl in there came from somewhere that she wasn’t being fed.”

“Not enough anyway. And she’s not mine,” I insisted.

“Sure sure. You all say that.”

“Who is all of us?”

“Oh, you know. Each one of you who suddenly has a chick around, but says it’s not like that. Until, a couple weeks later, it is exactly like that. All of you.”

“She’s an old friend,” I insisted. “We lost touch. During that time period, she got wrapped up with the kind of bastard who likes to control every aspect of a woman’s life. She got free of them, and didn’t know anyone else in this sort of lifestyle, so she came to me. That’s it.”

“Mmhmm,” Dezi said, unconvinced. “Does she cook?” he asked, forever thinking with his stomach.

“When she was married, she cooked every day.” Three times a day, in fact.

“Like food-food, or that shit you eat?” Dezi asked, making a dry laugh escape me.

“Arguably, the ‘shit’ I eat is the only real food-food,” I said, shaking my head. “But I dunno. Normal shit, I imagine.”

“Think she will cook when you move into the apartment?” he asked.

“I don’t know. But don’t ask her if she is going to cook for you someday. The last thing she needs is another man expecting shit from her.”

“Bad, huh?” he asked, looking past me at the door.

“Worse than you’re thinking,” I told him.

To that, he nodded as a muscle started to tick in his jaw. “Well, when you’re ready to remove his head from his torso, let me know. Until then, if you need someone to plump someone up, you know I’m your man,” he said, taking the key from my hand.

“I should just be a few hours,” I told him.

“Should be able to fit two or three meals into that,” Dezi said. “I’m gonna need Zaddy Bootcamp after all this is over,” he added.

“Why? So you can quit after two days again?” I asked, already heading down the hall.

Was a part of me worried about leaving her alone? Yeah, of course. But the fact of the matter was, if there was anyone she would be safe with, it was Dezi.

Any of the princesses who’d seen him get into a fight swore the man didn’t feel pain.

I thought it was worse than that. It was almost like he enjoyed the pain. He took punches with a smile. It was some shit to behold.

I couldn’t even begin to unpack the kind of baggage that quirk must have come with.

See, the thing with Dezi—and to an extent, Voss and even Brooks—was that most of us had no idea what their stories were. Chances were that Reign and Fallon knew just because they made sure all brothers got vetted before they could even prospect. But the rest of us were in the dark about what kinds of skeletons were in their closets, what kind of ugly lives they’d lived before they found themselves in Navesink Bank.

What made Dezi so violent, yet such a puppy?

Why was Brooks so fucking anal about everyone following the rules?

Why was Voss so tight-lipped and impenetrable?

I didn’t know.

Maybe time would tell.

Until then, I was happy to call them brothers. And to be able to lean on them when I needed help.

“What?” I asked when I got off my bike and saw Seth and Finn standing out front, barely able to contain their delight—judging by the wicked light in their eyes, it was probably delight at someone else’s problem. “Is Hope here to scream at Fallon again?” I asked.

“Didn’t hear that one,” Seth said, brows raising.

“But no,” Finn said, smirking. “It’s way better than that.”

“Does it have something to do with that car over there?” I asked, pointing toward the black Mustang toward the front of the lot.

“It does,” Seth confirmed.

“Why are you out here?”

“Waiting for a couple of the guys to get here.”

“Are we having Church?” I asked, thinking of Dezi and how I needed him at the hotel to watch Abigail.

“Not officially. But we called most of us next-generation guys in,” Finn said. “My brother included.”

“Is there a problem?”

“Yeah,” Seth said.

“And no,” Finn agreed.

“Depends on how this all plays out,” Seth clarified.

“Is that why I was called back here?” I asked.

“No,” Brooks said, appearing out of nowhere. “We have a lot of guys off on a run for a couple days. I needed some extra hands around here,” he said, shrugging. “And, honestly, Dezi was fucking useless, so he’s better off covering for you with your girl for a while, so we can get some shit done. There’s a new shipment we need to sort through.”

“Alright.”

“It can wait until after,” Finn insisted.

When my gaze slid to Brooks, I saw a rare light in his eyes.

And, quite frankly, if it was something that had Brooks looking amused, then I sure as hell had my curiosity piqued.

We all stayed outside, waiting for Voss and Fallon who got there pretty quickly.

“Valen is a few behind me,” Voss said as we all moved inside.

And as soon as we did, I saw the owner of the Mustang.

I had no idea who to expect, but I found myself surprised to see a woman standing there.

She was average height and thick of thigh with curves in her hips and breasts as well. Thick in a fit way.

She was standing in the middle of the living space with her arms crossed over her brown tank top. Her jeans were skinny and black, ripped in places. But if I had to put money on it, I would say they didn’t come that way, that this woman had damaged them in a more interesting way. There were stories in those rips.

She was gorgeous with her wavy black hair, her sharp features, and her keen, dark eyes.

I couldn’t tell if her lashes were naturally so thick, or if she’d piled on mascara, but there was no mistaking her bright red lipstick.

Tough and strong, but also feminine.

That was the vibe I was getting.

I had no idea who she was, or why she was causing so much amusement among my brothers.

But before anyone could tell me anything, the door was opening, and walking in was Valen.

Who did not look quite so delighted at the sight of our little visitor.

No.

In fact, he looked absolutely horrified.

“Louana.” Valen breathed out her name, like all his air had been kicked out of him.

Louana.

I had to dig a bit to bring up what I knew about her.

Daughter of a vigilante serial killer.

Former girlfriend of Jase Mallick.

Who Valen stole her from.

And then he’d skipped town on her without saying a word to her about leaving.

I was starting to understand everyone’s interest in her presence at the clubhouse.

“What are you doing here?” Valen asked as he looked at the woman. He’d wronged in a way that had all of us bracing for whatever she was about to say, sure words were about to fly like shrapnel, and we were all going to get some damage.

But it was right then, right that moment, as I watched a wicked smile start to tug at Louana’s lips, as I saw her eyes fill with dark delight as she formed the words that I finally got it.

“I’m prospecting.”

“The fuck you are,” Valen said, looking like he’d been slapped. “The fuck she is,” he added, gaze going toward Fallon who was trying hard to keep his lips from twitching. “We don’t have female members,” he insisted. “Aunt Maze is proof of that,” he said, and I remembered the story about Maze once prospecting to the club, but ultimately not being allowed to join, despite being just as capable as the men she’d prospected with.

“Yeah, man, but that was a long time ago,” Seth, Maze’s son, insisted. “Things have changed. I mean, Fallon is with a former MC president. Equality and all that shit.”

“You’re not going to allow this,” Valen insisted, refusing to even look at Louana.

“You know what?” Fallon said, and I could tell from the light in his eyes that he’d already made up his mind. “I think I am. Just because it’s going to amuse the shit out of me,” he added, finally letting that smile break free. “Valen, Voss, meet our new prospect—and your new roommate—Louana,” Fallon said, waving toward her. “I trust you’ll make her feel real welcome.”

Oh, it was going to be an interesting few months.

In more ways than one.

CHAPTER NINE

Abigail

Maybe it was kind of pathetic of me, but having three days in the hotel with Cary had been like heaven on Earth to me.

It was the first time in my entire life that I got to make all my own decisions, when I didn’t have to worry about some man being angry with me for staying in my pajamas, or eating unhealthy food.

In fact, Cary kept encouraging me to order food. I knew for certain that he was lying when he claimed he “could eat” each time too.

I was even more sure of that when Dezi spent fifteen minutes telling me about how healthfully Cary ate in his daily life. So he was shoveling grease and processed crap into his “temple”—Dezi’s words, I suspected, not Cary’s—because he wanted me to feel comfortable eating whatever I wanted.

I’d only spent three days with the man, but I felt pretty confident saying he was very likely the best man I’d ever met.

I didn’t care what he did, you know, for work. That didn’t define him.

Maybe he did bad things, but he wasn’t a bad man.

I would know. I’d met many bad men in my life.

He wasn’t one of them.

And as odd as Dezi was, I was pretty sure he might have been one of the good ones too. Even if he did, apparently, have a violent streak.

“Oh, that thing is hopeless,” I told Dezi he grabbed the loom and started messing with it.

“Hm,” he said, flipping it around for a second, then dropping off the edge of the bed and starting to wrap the yarn around the spokes.

And, I kid you not, within five minutes, he’d calmly made more of a scarf coming through the bottom of a loom than I had in hours of frustrated trying.

“You are a man of unusual talents,” I declared, shaking my head at him.

“Never did crafty shit growing up,” he admitted. “Maybe if I had, I’d have been a fucking seamster or some shit.”

“That’s an interesting mental image,” I said, getting a smirk from him.

“But I imagine they’d frown on me decking rude customers.”

“Wouldn’t be great for your reviews,” I agreed, getting a smirk out of him.

“Guess I’m stuck being a biker then, huh?” he asked, sending me a devilish look.

“Were you always a biker? I mean, you know, like Cary?”

“Nah. Just since I came to this area.”

“Do you like it?”

“It’s different than I thought,” he admitted, shrugging.

“In a good or a bad way?”

“Mostly good. It’s like a family. I like having the guys around to hit the bars with. And I like tagging along with the girls.”

“The princesses?” I clarified.

“Yeah. The daughters of the OG members.”

“Are they, you know, bikers too?”

“Nah. No chick bikers yet. They all got their own shit going. Hope does private investigation. Violet chases skips. Layna is a professional gambler. Oh, and then there’s Billie who does all the hippie, new age shit.”

“Do any of them have, you know, normal jobs?”

“Luna is a librarian. Willa is doing the boss bitch shit, making bank. Andi’s a vet. Got a mix.”

“And what about you guys?” I asked, not having really pestered Cary with any questions about being a biker. I mean, I had back in the day. But it seemed like these Navesink Bank bikers were a different kind of breed altogether.

I was sure he would answer, but I didn’t want to be annoying. And, hey, Dezi was in a talking mood. I might as well pick his brain, right?

“What about us?”

“Are you all just… you know… bikers? Or are there other jobs you do too?”

“The club and some of the brothers in the club have side hustles. Make shit look legit for the law, y’know? There’s a shop. Fallon and Malc have the diner. When Fallon locks down his woman, he will have a bar too. Fallon is always on the lookout for new legit businesses to invest in.”

“That makes sense,” I said, nodding.

I knew Raúl didn’t have anything legitimate going on, but I also knew how deep his pockets had been, and how willing he was to corrupt even the highest local officials to turn the other way and ignore his illegal business practices, so he didn’t have to worry about taxes and things like that.

I figured the American IRS was a whole other beast to deal with. If you had a nice house and fancy cars, they were going to look for where that money came from.

“Have you ever thought of getting your own business started?”

“Me? I’m not what you would call entrepreneurial. Sounds like a headache, and the only headaches I want is from too many shots at the bar. Why? You thinking about opening something up?”

“Honestly? I don’t know. I have no idea what to do with my life now. Before now I… I had no real choices. Now that I do, they’re kind of overwhelming.”

“Makes sense,” Dezi said, continuing to work the yarn around the spokes of the loom, doing so without really even needing to look. “Dunno. Figure the best way to go about that kind of shit is to figure out what you like. Seth’s dad, Repo, he always liked cars. So he opened the shop. Seth, he likes ‘em, but not that much. Think I heard him say something about opening a shooting range. He’s a good shot,” he added.

“And Fallon and Malcolm like cooking?” I asked.

“What? Fuck no. Nah. Malc’s girl, when he met her, worked at the diner. He and Fallon bought it and she does the bakery.”

“Ah, hence all the donuts,” I said, gesturing toward the box we’d already finished.

“She makes the best. But yeah, what do you like doing?”

“I… I don’t know,” I admitted, voice small, just a whisper of a sound, as the embarrassment flooded my system.

I mean, who the hell got to my age without knowing what they liked? Without at least having some hobbies?

“Shit happens,” Dezi said, shrugging. “Life happens. Gets in the way of shit like that,” he added, brushing away my insecurities. “Life is on pause right now,” he went on. “Seems like a good time to suss that shit out, yeah?”

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re very wise?” I asked, meaning it.

But when he glanced over at me, a giant smile was on his face, and a chuckle escaped him. “Nah, babe, can’t say anyone’s ever accused me of being that.”

“Well, I think you are. Maybe you just hide it from those people,” I suggested.

“Maybe it’s not something everyone needs to know about me, yeah?” he said. But it was also a question, like he was asking me not to share it with anyone else.

And, well, I was in no place to share anyone’s secrets, not when I was asking so much from them.

“Just a heavy-drinking biker with rocks rolling around in his head then,” I agreed.

“Now you’re getting it. What do you think?” he asked, holding up his several inches of scarf beside his face. “Does this go with my coloring?”

“I can just see it now… your tee, a leather jacket thing, and a big, chunky winter scarf.”

“Chicks would be intrigued.”

“I bet they would,” I agreed.

“Cut,” he said.

“Hmm?”

“It’s not a leather jacket. It’s called a cut. Figure if you’re gonna be a biker old lady, you might want to get some of the lingo down.”

“I’m not… it’s not…”

“Yeah yeah yeah. Heard that shit already. But me? I got eyes. Sexy, smoldering fucking eyes, mind you, but eyes. And they see shit. I’m seeing shit with you and Cary.”

“He’s just helping me.”

“Mmhm, heard this song more than a few times. All the remixes too,” he went on. “You want to order Mexican?” he asked.

“We just had burgers,” I reminded him.

“Yeah, but burgers aren’t tacos.”

“I mean, we—“ I started, when I heard a knock at the door that had me stiffening and sucking in my breath hard.

“Prolly just Zaddy,” Dezi said, and the nickname surprised me enough that a wobbly smile toyed at my lips as Dezi got off the bed. He reached for his gun, though. “But it never hurts to be prepared,” he added when he saw my gaze move to it.

Less than twenty seconds later, though, Cary was coming into the room, barely able to keep a smile off his face.

“What’d I miss? Place has been a fucking tomb for weeks, I leave for a couple hours, and it looks like something went down,” Dezi complained as he tucked his gun away.

“Do you remember Louana?”

“The chick Valen skipped town on, yeah? Daughter of that vigilante guy.”

“Yeah. That one.”

“What about her?”

“She just became a prospect,” Cary said, sharing a smile with Dezi that I was jealous of not fully understanding.

“Aw, man. It’s gonna be a shitshow. I gotta go get my front-row seats,” Dezi said, giving me a nod. “Figure out your happy, yeah?” he asked, and then before I could even thank him, he was gone.

“What was that?”

“Oh, nothing. He just helped me realize I have time to figure out what I want to do with my life.”

To that, Cary nodded as he moved toward his bed, picking up the loom Dezi had abandoned, and looking at the progress. “Hey, look, you figured it out.”

“Actually, no, I didn’t. Dezi,” I confirmed at his raised brow.

“I wish I could say I was surprised, but that guy is an enigma. If someone told me he was a world-class pianist, I wouldn’t be shocked. He plays his cards close to his vest.”

“He’s a good guy,” I insisted.

“He is. He can be like having a pain-in-the-ass, grown son at times. But underneath all the scuffling and bullshit, he’s a good man. It’s why I trust him here. I wouldn’t leave you with someone if I didn’t trust them implicitly.”

“I know that,” I agreed, nodding.

“I got a text from the apartment owner. He said things moved faster than he planned, so if we are ready, we can head out of the hotel and over there tomorrow. We don’t have to move in,” he rushed to add. “But maybe do some cleaning. If we have time and it needs it, painting. And figuring out dimensions so furniture can be ordered. And don’t,” he started, cutting me off when I started to open my mouth, “start giving me shit about buying furniture. Way I see it, this is my small way of paying you back.”

“Paying me back,” I repeated.

“For all the letters. For dragging me out of the drudgery that was my miserable life back then. This is the least I can do. Help you get set up in your own place. I mean, you don’t have to stay there after the… situation is handled. But while you figure shit out.”

“I kind of like it here,” I admitted. “I mean, I haven’t seen a whole lot of the area, but I felt this sort of, I don’t know, community here. I don’t know what the future holds, but if I can find a job here, I think I would like it.” A part of me didn’t want to go on, to be anything even resembling vulnerable with a man, but the other part of me wanted him to know how I felt. “And, um, you’re… you’re like the only person I know anymore. It would be nice to have a… friend, ah, nearby.”

To that, Cary’s eyes went soft. “I’d like that too. It’s important to have a support system. Especially when you are starting your life over.”

And he would know better than most. He had needed to start over again after he got out of prison. Having his club had been that support system for him.

Now, in a way, it would be that for me.

I mean, at least with Cary and Dezi anyway.

That was enough.

It was way more than I’d ever had before.

“Now I just need to figure out how I’m going to make a living.”

“Don’t worry about that.”

“I have to worry about that.”

“No, you don’t,” Cary insisted.

“You can’t keep paying for me.”

“Sure, I can.”

“You’ve already—“

“Done the bare minimum to help out an… old friend.”

“Bare minimum?” I scoffed, waving around the luxury hotel room full of things he’d bought for me.

“Listen to me, love,” Cary said, getting up, but only to drop down to a squat in front of me, keeping intense eye contact. “I don’t have a bunch of bills. I don’t have a mortgage to pay, or college tuition to handle. I have plenty of money, okay? This is barely a drop of it. So while, in the grand scheme of things, this might be more than the bare minimum to others, to me, that is exactly what it is. So stop sweating it, okay?”

He reached up at the end, closing his big hands over my much smaller ones, giving them a reassuring squeeze.

“Okay,” I agreed, finding it suddenly impossible to look away from his unfairly handsome face.

“Okay,” he repeated in this low, sexy rumble that sent a shiver through my insides. Only, it wasn’t just my insides. My whole body did a quick tremble.

Before I could even think to say I was cold or some other excuse for the involuntary motion, Cary was suddenly getting to his feet, and walking over toward the window. Like he couldn’t wait to get away from me. Like he knew what that shiver meant, and that it wasn’t that I was chilly.

And, worse yet, that he wanted absolutely nothing to do with that thing.

That was, well, that was completely and utterly humiliating.

I mean, it wasn’t like I meant for it to happen.

I didn’t even think my body could react to someone like that.

Ugh.

“I’m, ah, I’m going to take a bath,” I said, popping up so fast that I knocked two of my books onto the floor.

I didn’t even pause to pick them up, just grabbed some pajamas, and rushed into the bathroom. Where I could emotionally spiral in peace.

By the time my bath had cooled, then gotten redrawn the third time, I figured I’d more or less managed to pull myself together.

It was fine.

Just a moment of insanity.

It had been so long since a man reached for me in a kind way, and my body just overreacted. That was it. No big deal.

At least that was the story I told myself as I got dressed and finally made my way back out of the bathroom.

“You okay?” Cary asked, sitting on the desk chair that he’d moved as close to the windows as possible.

“Yeah, ah, I just… I have a headache,” I lied. I’d like to claim that it was difficult to come up with a lie. But the fact of the matter was, I’d needed to do a lot of lying in my life. And if you practiced it enough, when things like beatings could be on the other side of getting it wrong, you learned pretty quickly to be convincing. “I thought the bath would help, but it didn’t,” I continued as I climbed under the covers. “I think I just need to sleep it off,” I finished, rolling onto my side to face away from him.

“Okay. I’ll keep it down,” Cary said, lowering his voice as I curled up on my side, like if I pulled my knees tightly enough to my chest, it might ease the swirling ache in my stomach at lying to the only man who’d ever been kind to me.

I stayed that way—stubbornly staring at the back of my eyelids—for what had to have been hours as Cary quietly moved around me.

I was so attune to him that I could feel his movements, could conjure up images as he quietly moved around, tidying up the space, flipping through his recipe book, texting on his phone, turning on the TV to a news station that I knew he could barely hear.

Then, finally, as he grabbed some clothes and moved into the bathroom. The water turned on a second later.

Try as I might—though, admittedly, I didn’t try all that hard—I couldn’t stop visions from playing across my mind.

Of him pulling off his cut, his tee, his jeans, of seeing that body he so carefully cultivated day in and day out on full display.

I would barely let myself even think it, always careful to push thoughts like that about Cary away, but I wanted to know what the rest of his tattoos looked like. I’d made a study of all the visible ones since we’d been in the hotel room together. I’d asked him the stories of several. But I knew there were more. Dozens more. Over his back, chest, his sides, and maybe even his thighs.

I wanted to see them.

I wanted to know why they existed.

And, yes, fine, I wanted to trace them with my fingertips.

God, I wanted to trace them with my tongue.

But that was so insane that I pushed the thought immediately away whenever it popped up.

Especially because he seemed really put off at the idea of me having any level of attraction to him.

Ugh.

My poor, beaten ego didn’t need that.

But there was no denying it, either.

I needed to get my head on right. I had to lock away any growing feelings I might have toward him. Especially since they were so clearly one-sided.

The sadness set in too quickly even to try to fight it off, leaving annoyingly persistent tears to creep out from under my lashes, wetting my cheeks and pillows until I heard the water shut off, and knew that he would see if I didn’t pull it together.

Eventually, at some point, I must have passed out from sheer boredom.

And that was when the nightmares started.

I’d been getting them since I left Raúl’s compound, to varying degrees of awfulness. The themes were always the same. Either I was still back there, still getting abused by him, or I was free, but he found me and was punishing me for getting away in the first place.

While the themes may have been the same, the length of the dreams, the clarity, and the perspective of them changed. The nights where I was more of a fly on the wall of it all weren’t so bad. The nights where I felt like I was inside my body, where I was experiencing the abuse, those were the worst nights.

The dreams that didn’t feel like dreams dragged on and on. I felt like I was choking on the fear, like I was feeling every punch, kick, lash, like my actual bones were cracking when Raúl threw me against the wall. Like I could feel his fingertips as he started to rip off my clothes.

It never went beyond that point before.

But this dream kept going. Until my clothes were gone. Until his hands were on me. Until his body was coming over mine.

No.

No.

I was screaming it in my head. It was coming out of dream-me’s mouth.

But it must have been coming out of my mouth as well, too trapped in my own head to know.

Because the next thing I knew, hands were grabbing me for real.

I didn’t recognize them for what they were at first, though.

All I knew was that hands were on me and that I didn’t want anymore of the torment I was experiencing.

So I writhed, lashed out, hit, yelled.

“Hey, hey. It’s okay,” a voice called, thick and unrecognizable while still half inside my dream state. “Abigail, it’s me,” he continued. “It’s Cary, love. You’re dreaming. Nothing is happening to you,” he cooed, pulling me closer, pinning my arms between our bodies as he crushed me to his strong chest.

The warmth was what broke through first.

The warm feel of bare skin against the side of my face.

The scent was next. Like the body wash in the shower. The same body wash in the shower that I sniffed when I was in there, that I barely managed to resist using just so I could have that scent with me all day.

The body wash.

In the shower.

At the hotel.

That I was sharing with Cary.

Because I was free.

Because Raúl hadn’t found me.

Even as I seemed to start to wrap my head around the fact that it was okay, that I was safe, a sort of hysterical cry caught in my throat.

“Shh, it’s okay,” Cary murmured as his one arm held me more tightly. The other moved up, stroking through the hair that was losing more and more dye each time I washed it, letting streaks of my strawberry blonde start to peek through. I knew the darker color was meant to keep me safe, but there was no denying I felt a sort of relief at seeing more of myself come through each time I looked in the mirror.

I might have been able to pull myself together right then. If I had been alone. If I’d been able to process and tuck away the trauma myself.

But something about having someone there, having them be calm and sweet and understanding seemed to make it impossible to fight through the lingering feelings of fear and pain and despair.

So what did they do?

Bubble up and burst out.

All over Cary.

When I tried to pull away, intent on rushing off into the bathroom and getting a grip, he only pulled me closer, held me tighter, murmured more soft and sweet words about being okay, about him being there for me, about him making sure nothing ever happened to me again.

All that kindness, well, it just made the tears keep coming. Until my cheeks felt raw. Until my eyelids felt puffy. Until I was sniffling pathetically in an attempt not to leak all over him.

“You needed that, huh?” Cary murmured after I finally started to be able to pull myself together. “Lot of survival, not a lot of processing,” he went on. “Seems like we need to convince that subconscious of yours that you are safe now,” he added. “Then maybe you can kick those bad dreams once and for all.”

“Sometimes they’re not so bad,” I admitted. “Tonight was really bad,” I told him.

“I guessed so since you jolted like I’d jabbed you with a hot poker when I touched you. He’s not going to get a chance to do that again,” he told me, voice a solemn vow. “Not while I’m here,” he finished as he shifted me up on his lap, letting his arm loosen around my back just enough to lean me back so he could look down at me. “Okay?” he asked as his free hand lifted, wiping the lingering wetness from my cheeks.

“Okay.” I barely recognized the sound of my own voice even as it came out from between my lips. It sounded as breathless as I felt as I looked up into those dark blue eyes of his.

“He won’t touch you again so long as I’m around to make sure of it,” he went on as his finger moved over the apple of my cheek, down to my jaw, then over. The pad of his thumb traced across the outline of my lower lip.

It sounded crazy, but I swore electricity sparked from his barely-there touch.

I wasn’t even aware of lifting my hand. But I felt it as my palm grazed up the strong, corded muscles of his forearm, then his bicep. It didn’t stop there, though. No, it kept moving over his shoulder, up the side of his neck, then finally, moving behind, sinking in a little.

I realized my intention a moment too late.

I was trying to draw him down toward me, toward the lips his gaze was focused on.

There had to be some sort of other reason for him to be looking at them like that, though. Because he’d made it pretty clear that he had no interest in me that way.

Even so, though, there was no talking to my arm. It had a life of its own at that moment as my hand applied pressure to the back of his neck until I started to pull it down.

I was sure he was going to pull away, that he was going to toss me off of his lap and onto the mattress, then storm away from me while mumbling about how he was just helping me because of an old connection, not because he wanted a new one.

But then his deep gaze slipped from my lips to my eyes, making my breath catch in my throat. Because, while no one would consider me a professional on such matters, there seemed to be no mistaking the heat in his gaze, the intensity of his stare as he kept letting himself be drawn down closer to me.

At the last possible moment, some form of insecurity or self-preservation had my hand loosening the pressure on the back of his neck.

I’d brought him ninety.

And I sat there immobilized by both desire and the fear of rejection, as Cary took one long, slow breath.

Before closing the last ten.

His lips sealed over mine.

I guess I’d been expecting soft and sweet and careful, since that was the way Cary had handled me since I’d shown back up in his life. With kid gloves. Very aware of my trauma, and not wanting to trigger me in any way.

But this wasn’t that kind of kiss.

No.

Oddly enough, it seemed to have the same uncontrolled passion as a man who’d just gotten out of prison, who’d been denied human contact for far too many years, who was desperate for the feel and taste of a woman.

His lips bruised into mine, creating this sort of aching need that started at the contact then ballooned outward until it filled me completely.

It became this tightness in my chest, this pressure on my lower stomach, this throbbing sensation between my thighs.

Cary’s teeth nipped my lower lip, seeking entrance that I immediately gave him. I was too consumed in the sensations assaulting my body all at once to even begin to overthink it.

I just wanted to feel it.

I wanted to know more of it.

I wanted him to show me.

I’d been almost painfully aware of the fact that something had always been “missing” for me when it came to intimacy. There was something my body hinted at, but never fully experienced.

Years.

I’d been in my marriage for years without any of it.

I’d been happy with Raúl for a long time without getting more than a hint of it.

But with Cary? Within seconds of contact, my body seemed to ignite with this new sort of knowledge, this acute sort of need I’d never known before.

His tongue moved inside to claim mine as I pressed my thighs tightly together in an attempt to ease the ache growing there.

Cary’s arms grabbed me, shifting me until I was straddling his waist. Both his hands moved, framing the sides of my face as he deepend the kiss.

I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt as fully, I don’t know, ‘claimed’ as I felt right an that moment.

Even if it was just for that moment, I decided nothing had ever felt quite as good as being his.

My arms lifted, slipping around the back of his neck, and folding there as I pressed into his chest.

A low, mewling noise escaped me as my breasts—heavier than usual and overly sensitive—pressed to his firm chest.

I barely resisted the urge to reach up and rip off my top, wanting more than anything to feel my bare breasts against his heated skin, to feel his hands roaming over me without any barrier.

Cary’s hands had just moved from my neck and down to my shoulders when there was a sudden pounding on the door that had us both jolting and flying apart.

Panic gripped my system as Cary seemed to struggle for a second to shift from kissing to action.

He’d just turned to reach for the gun on his nightstand when a voice called through the door.

“Let me in. I brought donuts. They’re kind of stale, but, y’know, edible.”

“Dezi?” I whispered.

“The fuck are you doing here?” Cary growled.

It was the first time I’d ever heard him be anything other than kind and patient. It made no sense, but the fierceness in his voice only made the throbbing between my thighs intensify.

“Welp. It appears I’m a little drunk,” Dezi called through the door even as we heard him stumble and slam into the door. “And the clubhouse is far, far away,” he added, slurring a bit.

Cary’s gaze slid to mine like he was looking for permission.

“You have to let him in,” I whispered, even as I worried that the desire flooding my system would be too clearly etched on my face.

“What’s the matter?” Cary asked after letting out a sigh and making his way to the door. “Couldn’t find a woman to go home with?” he asked, pulling it open to reveal a wobbly Dezi who was holding a crushed donut box to his chest.

“I’d hardly be doing my best work in this condition,” Dezi declared, giving Cary a bleary-eyed smile. “I couldn’t do that to a lady. I have a reputation to uphold, you know,” he added, nodding slowly, and I swear he almost fell asleep on the downward motion of said nod.

“Christ, how much did you drink?” Cary asked, trying to wrestle the donut box out of Dezi’s hold, but he was clutching it like a security blanket.

“Hey, not my fault there was a divorce party,” he said, shaking his head solemnly. “No one drinks as hard as a newly single woman and her pack of chicks who never liked the asshole she’d married in the first place. We did a crawl.”

“Crawl being the operative word,” Cary agreed, wrapping an arm around his stumbling friend and pulling him into the room. “Sit,” he demanded, pushing him onto his bed.

“Bed. Good,” Dezi agreed, kicking out of his shoes, then climbing up fully, still holding his box of donuts.

Cary’s gaze slid to mine, showing both amusement and resignation.

Then there was a crash that had us both whipping our heads over to see Dezi had fallen off the bed.

“Floor’s good too,” he murmured as he rolled onto his side, tucked his donut box under his face like a pillow, and promptly passed out.

And, well, that was that, wasn’t it?

It wasn’t like we could continue on with Dezi right there a couple feet away.

Maybe it was for the best, anyway.

It was only going to muddy things between us.

At least, that was what I was trying to tell myself as I tried to fall back to sleep.

My body, still aching with unmet need, had other things to say, though.

CHAPTER TEN

Cary

Fucking Dezi.

I normally looked at his antics with the resigned acceptance of an older brother with an irresponsible younger one who constantly needed to be watched.

Normally, I was happy enough to put up with his shit.

Just this once, though, I wanted to grab him by the back of the cut, haul him up, and toss him out into the hall.

I even considered calling some of the guys at the club to come get him. But the fact of the matter was, the moment was gone.

And, for fuck’s sake, the moment never should have happened in the first place.

The woman had just woken up from a nightmare so terrible that she’d struggled to separate it from reality for a long moment, a nightmare where I suspected she was being assaulted in some form or another by her ex.

The last fucking thing she needed at that moment was for me to take advantage of her vulnerability.

Sure, yes, she’d made the first move. But that was likely just in response to being offered some kindness after reliving some of her trauma.

I shouldn’t have closed the distance when she’d paused.

“Fuck,” I hissed, staring at my reflection in the mirror.

It had been a sleepless night, to say the least. And I’d been dealing with a raging hard-on for a fair chunk of it.

Abigail had tossed and turned as well for a long time. And I tried to convince myself it had nothing to do with the unmet need I’d stoked in her.

Eventually, even she managed to pass out.

And Dezi, well, he slept like the fucking dead. The bastard.

Someday in the future, I was going to find the exact right moment, and cockblock his ass in revenge.

Even if, logically, I knew him showing up when he did—before things got too out of hand—was probably the best possible thing to happen.

With a sigh, I quickly brushed my teeth then moved back into the room, finding Abigail slow-blinking out the window as she woke up.

“Too bright?” I asked, regretting opening the blinds so early. “I was opening them to torture Dezi when he gets up,” I told her, getting a smirk out of Abs as she looked down at him.

“I don’t think he moved an inch all night.”

“Dezi is a pretty heavy drinker when he goes out. So him getting that shit-faced is rare,” I told her. “I hope those women got home okay,” I added, suddenly worried about them. I mean, if Dezi was that wasted, I couldn’t imagine what those women were like.

“Party bus,” Dezi mumbled, making me look down at him.

“Is he talking in his sleep?” Abigail asked.

“Nah, pretty lady,” Dezi said, his eyes slitting open to look at Abigail. “Those ladies had a party bus. Someone’s brother was hanging around like a chaperone. I wouldn’t have left ‘em if it wasn’t safe,” he added, pulling up to lean back against my bed as he reached inside his crushed box for a powdered donut, looking at its smushed appearance for a second before shrugging and taking a big bite.

“You’re not hungover?” Abigail asked, shaking her head at him as she sat up in bed.

“Me? Not since I was thirteen,” Dezi said, winking at her.

“You’ve been drinking since you were thirteen?” Abs asked, eyes widening.

“Only a couple times a week. So, a place this fancy has to have a breakfast spread, right?” Dezi asked, shoving the rest of the donut into his mouth, then jumping to his feet.

“Yes,” I confirmed, shaking my head at him as he reached for another stale donut.

“I’m gonna hit it before I get back to the clubhouse. You guys want anything?” he asked, pointing between us a couple of times, fully energized and ready to go, despite the crazy night he’d just had.

Oh, to be young with the liquor tolerance of a fucking troll.

“I’m not even awake yet,” Abigail said, shaking her head.

“We will grab something on our way out,” I told him.

“Alright. Suit yourselves,” Dezi said, making his way toward the door. “I hope they have those little boxes of cereal,” he said, mostly to himself, as he made his way out.

“How does he get up and moving so fast?” Abigail asked, sighing hard as she put her feet on the floor. “I didn’t even drink last night and my head isn’t even working properly yet.”

“Dezi’s an enigma,” I said, shrugging. “What time do you want to head over to the apartment today?”

At that, her eyes brightened.

“Like five minutes ago,” she declared, hopping up, and rushing over toward the closet to grab an outfit. “Give me ten minutes,” she added, going over to the bathroom.

“Take your time. We have all day,” I reminded her as I reached for my phone to text the landlord.

Those words fell on deaf ears, though, because Abigail rushed through getting dressed so fast that she stumbled twice and dropped a bunch of shit off the counter and onto the floor in her haste.

I couldn’t help but smile at her excitement, though, as I grabbed my charger and cut.

She emerged less than five minutes later, fresh-faced with her hair pulled back in a ponytail, and bright, happy eyes.

It took a lot of fucking self-preservation not to reach for her again right then. To take her back to the bed now that Dezi would be distracted, and we wouldn’t have any interruptions.

But I couldn’t.

It wasn’t right.

She needed space.

And I needed to fucking respect that.

“Ready?” I asked, tucking my wallet into my pocket.

“For a ride on your death machine? Not quite. But to check out the apartment? Totally.”

Fuck.

The bike.

Her arms holding on tight. Her breasts crushed to my back. Her thighs wrapped around mine.

Christ.

I should have taken an ice-cold shower. I should have taken matters into my own hand. Maybe then I would be able to think fucking straight.

As it was, I braced myself for the discomfort, and tried to have my head wander anywhere but to the woman nestled behind me on the bike on the short ride over to the apartment.

“Any rules about fixing shit up in there?” I asked the landlord as we stood on the street out front of the boarded-up shop his father used to run.

“Nah, man. Do whatever you want. Anything would be an improvement,” he added, wincing a bit at the admission. “Got the month left on the dumpster out back too if you need it. And, ah, shit. What else are landlords supposed to say?” he asked, clearly out of his element. “Oh, yeah. Pets,” he said, looking over at the pet store. “I don’t give a shit,” he added, shrugging. “I mean, if it wrecks the joint, you just lose your security deposit, right?”

“Right,” I agreed, nodding.

“Alright. Good. Yeah. That’s it then, right? Unless you want a tour.”

“I think we can manage,” I said, taking the key.

“Alright. Good. Good. Enjoy,” he said, giving Abigail a tight smile as she bounced on her heels, wanting to get the technical shit over so she could go and check out the place.

“Do the honors,” I invited as we went in the side entrance that had a small foyer and a staircase leading up.

I was pleased to notice the steps creaked up a fucking storm as we went up them. There was no way anyone could come up on them without making a racket. We’d hear anyone coming.

The door would need some better locks. Maybe a security system, depending on how shit went.

As for the apartment itself, it wasn’t a whole lot to write home about. There was a living space that led right into the kitchen with a small space to the side where a dining table was likely supposed to go. The appliances were dated, but not so dated that they wouldn’t work.

The short hallway had a linen closet, a full bathroom with some truly heinous green tile on the floors and walls, then one bedroom that would maybe fit a queen bed if you were willing to sacrifice one nightstand for the bigger sleep space.

“It’s amazing,” Abigail declared when we finished the short walkthrough.

I didn’t realize I’d been holding my breath for her opinion until it rushed out of me, sounding a lot like relief. Because, quite frankly, I wouldn’t have been surprised or offended if she declared it was hideous. Since it pretty much was.

“Yeah?” I asked, brows knitting. “Are we looking at the same apartment, love?” I added, smirking at her.

“No. I like that it’s kind of ugly, y’know? The uglier it is, the prettier it can be made, right?”

“That’s a very glass-half-full way of looking at it,” I said, nodding.

“I’ve never had a space I could decorate before,” she told me. “I mean, of course, your opinion counts more, but—“

“Nope. I’m gonna stop you right there,” I cut her off. “Your opinion is all that matters when it comes to fixing this place up.”

“No, that’s ridiculous. You’re the one paying for everything.”

“It’s your apartment. I don’t give a fuck if you want to paint it all Pepto fucking pink, love. Let your imagination run wild with it.”

“Cary…” she said, shaking her head.

“Hey,” I said, reaching out, snagging her chin, and jerking it up. “We’ve been over this, haven’t we? Don’t worry about what I think. And, while you’re at it, don’t go worrying about the cost of fixing it up either. I want to do this.”

“I’m going to pay you back.”

“If it makes you feel better to think that, go ahead. But that isn’t happening,” I added, smiling when she let out a long-suffering sigh, like I was being a pain in her ass.

I figured that was a good thing.

Because she’d never been around a man she could show her annoyance with. She felt comfortable enough with me to make it clear she was frustrated with me.

“So, what do you want to do first? Hardware store for paint? Furniture store?”

“Ah, wherever we can get cleaning supplies, maybe? Everything has a fine coat of dust,” she added, swiping a finger across the molding on the door, wincing at the dirt on her finger. “And maybe we can pick up a couple design magazines?”

“Sure, sounds like a plan,” I agreed, nodding. “But you might want to check out Pinterest for design too.”

“I, ah, I don’t have a phone or computer,” she reminded me, making me realize I needed to remedy that. I needed to be able to get in touch with her if I wasn’t around. And she damn sure needed to be able to call me. As for the computer, well, I figured it might be a good way for her to continue to figure out what she wanted the rest of her life to look like, so I made a mental note to get that shit handled later too.

Several hours later, the apartment smelled like a mixture of lemon and bleach, despite all the windows jacked open to let in fresh air.

“Shit,” I grumbled down at my phone.

“What? Is something wrong?” she asked, tensing immediately, making me realize I needed to be more careful about shit like that. She was always going to jump to worse-case scenarios when she thought something was the matter.

“Nothing, love. I have church.”

“Church?” she repeated. “I, um, I didn’t realize you were, you know, religious.”

Surprised, a laugh bubbled up and burst out. It had been so long since I’d been around someone who wasn’t in the biker lifestyle, that I forgot not everyone knew the lingo.

“‘Church’ is just another way to say a meeting for us. It’s mandatory for all members.”

“All,” she repeated, frowning. “Dezi too,” she added.

I could practically hear her racing thoughts. If I had to go, and Dezi had to go, and all the other guys had to go, and she wasn’t supposed to be at the clubhouse, then who was going to keep an eye on her?

“I’ll be okay,” she said immediately, forcing a smile that looked painful.

“I’m not leaving you alone, Abs,” I said, shaking my head. “I just need to figure out which of the girls is around to come hang.”

“The girls.”

“Princesses. Don’t worry, each and every one of them can whoop our asses on a good day. They’re highly trained and capable, even though I don’t think you have the need for that right now.”

That said, I was leaning toward one of the “would kick someone’s ass just for looking at them wrong” princesses. I felt more comfortable with that.

Which left me with who?

Ferryn, but she was always busy.

Hope, but she was married to her job most days.

Maybe Layna or Violet if they were in town.

I went ahead and shot of texts to all of them with a short rundown of the situation, and my need for some coverage just for a couple of hours.

“Do you have to go now?” Abigail asked, voice tight, when my phone beeped a couple of minutes later.

“I’m not going anywhere until someone else is here with you,” I told her.

As I figured, Ferryn was out of town.

But, to my surprise, Hope, Layna, and Vi were all around and ready to head over. In fact, I found myself in the middle of their back-and-forth conversation about who was bringing what and speculation about Abigail and me.

“Alright. You’re about to be invaded,” I told her, wincing a little. “I fucked up and texted everyone at once, so three of the girls are heading over. Hope, Layna, and Violet.”

“Hope is the private investigator,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“And Violet is a, ah, skip-chaser?” she half-asked.

“Yeah,” I said, nodding, not remembering telling her that.

“And Layna is a gambler.”

“Among other things,” I agreed. “Did we talk about them?”

“Dezi did,” she told me.

“I know they might sound intimidating,” I told her, “but they’re all nice. You don’t have to worry about that. You okay?” I asked when her gaze seemed far off.

“Yeah. I just… I’ve never really been around a lot of women,” she admitted. “I mean, aside from when I was young. The women at church. But other than that…”

“I think you’re going to like it. And they’ll probably be more helpful about decorating than I am,” I told her.

But that was a bald-faced lie.

Because Hope wasn’t home long enough to decorate her own place. Violet was never in one place very long, so she preferred to crash at family members’ houses instead of having her own place. And Layna, well, I wasn’t sure what her living situation was, but she didn’t seem to keep a place all the time either.

But they would be a fun distraction for Abigail. Whenever the princesses got together, there was always a lot of laughing and fun to be had. I wanted that for Abigail. Especially since her life had been so full of men for so long. And she’d scarcely ever had a friend in sight.

The princesses were good with just… pulling the new girls into the fold. You got wrapped up in the whirlwind of them. And, soon enough, you were one of them.

Abigail could use some badass, strong women in her life. I figured that maybe it would help her slowly start to realize her own worth and her own strength.

Not half an hour later, there was a clatter on the floor below, sets of shoes on the creaky stairs.

Across from me, Abs tensed a bit, clearly feeling a little out of her element, not sure what to expect from these strange women.

It was Layna who burst in first, carrying two boxes of pizza and a six-pack of soda.

Layna was willowy like her mom—Lenny—with these big, gorgeous chocolate-brown eyes that were surrounded by long, lush lashes that most people could only have if they got fake ones glued on. Her face was soft and round, very hyper-feminine. She offset that hyper-femininity with almost masculine clothing—jeans that were neither loose nor tight, a cream-colored tank, a brown leather jacket that was creased with age, and matching brown combat boots.

“How’d you get pizza that fast?” I asked, shaking my head.

To that, Layna’s lips twitched.

“It helps when you take a mafia dude to the cleaners at a poker game. And that said mafia dude owns a string of pizza places.”

“You’d think Lucky would put your order to the back of the list for taking all his money.”

“I gave him his watch back with the agreement that I get priority when I place a pizza order. So, you’re my protection detail,” she said, glancing over at Abigail who seemed to actively be trying to make herself appear smaller.

“You’re in good hands. I am armed and very, very sick of the male species, so I would be quite happy to stick a bullet—or fifty—in one should they show up with bad intentions. Honestly, even if they just say hello the wrong way. That’s the point I’m at with his kind,” she said, shooting small eyes at me. “I’m Layna,” she said as she put the pizza and soda down on the stove and counter.

“Abigail,” Abs said, giving her a wobbly smile.

“Shit’s about to get loud and weird in here,” Layna warned. “That’s Vi,” she said as we heard more footsteps on the stairs.

“How do you know?” Abigail asked.

“Vi takes her time. Hope charges. You get used to shit like that when you grew up with them. Hey, bitch. Nice eye,” she added when Vi walked in sporting a shiner around her honey-brown eye.

Vi, like Layna, was tall and long-legged. She had a soft face with a cleft chin and strong brows.

“Can you believe this shit?” Vi grumbled, waving up at her face. “I’ve taken down mountain-sized men without a scratch. But some scrawny-ass nineteen-year-old with a mullet and a pathetic excuse for a mustache did this?”

“Did his face accidentally collide with the doorjamb of the car when you hauled him in?” Layna asked.

“No, but the ground must have reached up and grabbed him, sending him face-first into a gravel driveway.”

“Good girl. Alright, go,” Layna said, shooing me. “We have it from here.”

And, well, they did.

I noticed on my way out that not only was Layna strapped, but Vi had a gun under her jacket as well as one in an ankle holster.

Hope, when she arrived, would be armed as well.

“Don’t leave, okay?” I asked, looking at Vi, trying to get her to see how serious I was about it.

“Yeah yeah yeah. Get.”

So, yeah, I got going.

I was pulling away from the curb when I saw Hope’s car pull up and park.

She was in good hands.

Great ones, even.

Still, I was uncharacteristically anxious as I sat through the church meeting, listening to everyone’s assignments, getting the details about a new, valuable shipment coming into the port in a couple days.

Luckily for me, Brooks—whoever had likely worked out the schedule—only put me on a guard shift for a few hours near the end of the week.

Brooks wasn’t known for being accommodating. He was strict about the rules, about everyone needing to pull their own weight. So I felt like it said something about his opinion of me that he let me have a bit of a break to spend my time on Abigail’s issue.

Which, admittedly, I’d barely given any thought to. I’d been too wrapped up with her general wellbeing, with getting her settled, with trying to work through my increasingly complicated feelings toward her.

“Hey, yo, Cary,” Niro called, making me turn back to face him.

“Yeah? What’s up?”

“Fallon was telling me about your situation with your girl. That still going on?”

“I’ve barely had a chance to get her settled, let alone figure out how to fix the problem,” I admitted with a shrug.

“I might have a suggestion for that,” Niro said, leading me over to the bar. “So, don’t remember if you were around for it, or if you remember it. I swear to fuck, it is a new disaster every couple months around here. But, yeah, back when Andi first came home, she’d accidentally gotten herself wrapped up with a new cartel that moved into town,” he told me, recapping what had been a complicated situation a while back.

“Yeah. A, right? Andres, I think?”

“Yeah. But the way I hear it, A is from the general area that your girl was in Mexico. The way I’m thinking, maybe A could help you figure out how to handle that shit.”

“Why would he do that?” I asked, shaking my head.

A was a major player in the area who also happened to be an almost complete enigma to most of our organizations. But what mattered to most of us was that he minded his own business, and his problems didn’t spill over onto our turf. Which had been the way of things since he’d come into town.

“He’s inclined to help sometimes. I mean, he helped Fallon and Danny hide a body a while back. For no reason and without any expectation. Think maybe you could get him to at least give you some information that might be valuable. Doesn’t hurt to try,” he added, shrugging. “You got nothing to go on now, right?”

“Right,” I agreed, nodding. “I’ll call him for a meeting.”

“Bring dog treats,” Niro suggested before clamping a hand on my shoulder and moving away.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about involving one cartel leader to try to take down another. But Niro was right. I had nothing else to go on.

It was worth a try.

So I added a trip to the pet store to my list of shit I needed to pick up before heading back to the apartment to talk it over with Abigail.

Who would probably be dazed from her little get together with some of the club princesses…

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Abigail

I felt a little dizzy.

That was the best way to describe it.

It was like these women came in and knocked the world a little off-kilter.

Maybe it just felt that way because it had been so long since I’d been around any women, let alone a group of them. And I wasn’t sure I’d ever been around a trio like Layna, Violet, and Hope. All of whom were strong and opinionated, who were connected in a way I wasn’t sure I’d ever actually connected with another woman before.

I was instantly jealous of their bond.

“So, wait,” I said, interrupting Vi. “You’re not actually related?”

“No,” Layna said. “Well, I mean, some of the cousins are related. Like Andi is actually related to Luna because their fathers are blood brothers. But most of us are just honorary cousins. Club cousins, if you will. We all grew up together.”

“One giant, loud, badass family,” Layna agreed as she grabbed another slice of pizza.

“So, Hope,” Vi said, and something in her tone made Hope immediately tense. “Care to tell us why you were suddenly available to come hang out with us when none of us have been able to see you in over a month?”

“She did take the time out to scream at Fallon,” Layna interjected.

“I mean he needs to get his cocky ass scolded from time to time, so that doesn’t count,” Vi said, shrugging.

“I’m just not busy right now,” Hope said, and even I could see that something was off with her, and I’d barely known the woman for half an hour.

The three women were very similar in their style choices. They were almost utilitarian with their clothing that neither clung nor hung too loosely. You could tell they had womanly curves—including Layna’s enviable ass and Vi’s impressive chest—but didn’t overly advertise any of it.

Hope was a little more petite than Layna and Violet with black hair that, oddly enough, almost seemed to have little highlights of red in it somehow.

Where Violet and Layna seemed a little more extroverted, more open, Hope seemed to like to play her cards close to her vest, and didn’t go out of her way to share too much personal detail. It was possible that was just because I was an outsider, but I got the feeling it was just how she was.

The way she looked away from a direct question like that further confirmed my suspicions.

“Come on, Hope,” Vi said, head cocking to the side. “You can tell us. We won’t tell anyone else.”

“I’m on suspension,” Hope admitted, a muscle ticking in her jaw from clenching so hard.

I didn’t know Hope, but I knew from what Dezi said about her that she was a workaholic, and that she was trying really hard to prove her worth at her job. It must have been gutting to be put on suspension.

“What?” Vi snapped.

“Alright, whose balls am I chopping off?” Layna offered.

“It’s my fault. I couldn’t get the information we needed. The case went cold. We lost a big contract.”

Layna and Violet shared a long look before Layna looked back at Hope. “Is that actually the case, or is it that your asshole boss gave you an impossible job just so that he could shove it in your face that you couldn’t do it?”

“No job is impossible,” Hope insisted. “I could have done it. I should have done it.”

“Your boss is a fucking asshole. I don’t understand why you are trying to stick it out there. You’re good. You could open your own agency,” Vi insisted.

“They’re going to respect me,” Hope said, her voice so fierce that it was almost uncomfortable to hear. “But we’re done talking about me. I want to know more about your problem,” Hope said, looking at me.

“Zaddy said not to grill her,” Layna said, shaking her head.

“Zaddy knows better than to expect us not to,” Hope said, shrugging.

“I, ah, I was sort of, I guess… held prisoner by my ex for years. God, that sounds so insane,” I said, wincing.

“Babe, this is Navesink Bank,” Layna said, shooting me a smirk. “You’re going to learn real quickly that we have a different definition of insane than the rest of the country does. I got my pizza from a member of the New Jersey mafia,” she reminded me.

“Our favorite bar is run by a family of loan sharks,” Violet piped in.

“There’s an actual paramilitary survivalist camp on the hill,” Hope added. “Shit is a different shade of crazy around here. So, you have an asshole ex.”

“He’s, ah… he’s a cartel—“

“Oh, Jesus,” Hope cut me off.

“Let her tell her story,” Layna said, kicking her cousin with her heavy combat boot. “And you got away?”

“Yes. Just barely.”

“And you came here because?” Hope asked.

“Because I know Cary from a long time ago,” I admitted.

“Bated breath over here, babe,” Layna said. “How did you know him?”

“I was sort of his, ah, pen-pal while he was in prison.”

“No way,” Vi said, looking confused. “People actually do that? I always thought it was kind of bullshit. Aside from the crazy chicks who fall in love with serial killers, anyway.”

“I was part of a church at the time. And it was a sort of community outreach.”

“Trying to save the sinners,” Hope said.

“Yeah, sort of. But we corresponded for years. Until I went down to Mexico on a mission.”

“And met your future tormentor,” Hope said, sighing. “The cartel,” she said, shaking her head. “That’s not good news.”

“The woman is already in hiding and clearly scared,” Layna said. “No need to freak her out more. Don’t worry,” she went on. “You’re super safe with us. And Cary, for that matter.”

“But, I mean, is he actually doing anything for you?” Hope asked. “Aside from hiding you out? Which isn’t a long-term solution.”

“You’ll excuse Hope,” Vi said, rolling her eyes. “She’s always in work-mode. Maybe they’re too busy banging to get a plan in motion right now.”

“No!” I squeaked. “I mean, no. It’s not… you know… it’s not like that.”

“Oh, bullshit,” Layna said, smile knowing. “What? You don’t see the way that man looks at you?”

“You saw them for like five minutes, how do you know how he looks at her?”

“Well, firstly, because I saw it. Secondly, Dezi texted me with the scoop.”

“Dezi?” I asked.

“Oh, Dezi is practically an honorary member of the girls club,” Vi said, shaking her head.

“What did Dezi say?” I asked, heart pounding in my chest.

“That you two were clearly into each other, but too stubborn to say anything,” Layna said, shrugging. “Seems pretty accurate to me.”

“No, it’s… it’s not.” Except, of course, it was, wasn’t it? At least a little bit. Before Dezi had interrupted, things had definitely started to take a turn in the romantic direction.

“Is it because he’s old?” Vi asked.

“He’s not old,” Layna insisted. “He’s older. And fine as freaking hell. Who cares if there is a little age difference?”

“He’s a good man,” Hope said, seeming to surprise all of us. When my gaze slid to her, she shrugged. “In case you were worried about your taste in men,” she clarified. “You don’t have to worry about Cary. He’s one of the good ones. All the Henchmen are,” she added.

“Well, the jury is out on the grumpy one,” Layna said.

“Voss,” I said, knowing instantly who they were talking about.

“Yeah, him,” Layna agreed. “I’m not saying I wouldn’t fuck that man through a wall, but I don’t know if I’d want to hang around afterward, if you get what I mean.”

“You can’t fuck the prospects,” Hope insisted.

“I believe the rule is that they can’t fuck me,” Layna clarified.

“Same end result,” Hope said.

“Where is Billie when you need her? She would fully support me and Mr. Grumpypants going a round or ten,” Layna said.

“Maybe Billie’s judgment when it comes to sex isn’t the one to trust,” Hope said.

“Whose should I trust? Yours? When’s the last time you had a cock in your henhouse, babe? A year? More? I think it’s probably more at this point.”

“I’m busy,” Hope insisted.

“We should cancel her birthday party and just hire her a male escort for some stress relief,” Layna suggested.

“When has a man ever been stress relief?” Vi said, snorting.

“Well, you've got me there,” Layna agreed, shaking her head.

“Weren’t we supposed to be trying to help Abs decorate?” Hope asked, clearly wanting to change the topic.

“Right. Yeah,” Layna said. “Two chicks without their own apartments, and another whose apartment is still eighty-percent in boxes. We’re a real crack team when it comes to home decorating.”

“Well, experts we might not be. But even I can see that a couch and a bed might be in order,” Vi said, shrugging. “We can start there.”

“Right, right. Fucking surfaces would be good. I mean, the kitchen counter would work in a pinch.” At the shared looks of amusement on her cousins, Layna let out an airy chuckle and threw out a hand. “What can I say? I need to get laid. It’s all I can think about. Hand me that damn catalog. I’ll try to keep my head out of the gutter.”

I don’t know if she genuinely tried or not, but she was wholly unsuccessful either way. But as the hours dragged on, all three women started to get almost a little giddy, egging one another on, then breaking off in fits of laughter as they each shared stories.

I couldn’t help but get swept up in their little world right alongside them.

Suddenly it didn’t matter that they’d literally known each other since they were babies, and that I was a complete outsider to their world. I felt like I belonged, that they wanted me there, that they were happy to bring me into their fold.

I’d been pretty sure when I’d told Cary that I wanted to stay in Navesink Bank after everything calmed down. After meeting the girls, though, I was even more certain that this was going to be my place, that these were going to be my people.

Maybe it was presumptuous of me to think that, but they made me feel like I was one of them. And while we looked through magazines and on Layna’s phone at Pinterest, they kept talking about their future events, and inviting me along.

The girls, apparently, went to karaoke most weeks.

They went out to eat together, to the bars, or hung out at one another’s houses.

And, apparently, Vi had extended herself an invitation to crash on my couch whenever she was in town and in need.

What’s more… I was excited at the prospect.

It also helped me pick the right couch. Before that comment, it wouldn’t have occurred to me that I needed space for guests.

By the time we heard Cary’s bike making its way toward the building, the four of us managed to get a general idea of how I wanted to decorate the place in a way that could make it feel bright and spacious without resorting to all white or beige color schemes.

“Are you guys going back to the hotel tonight then?” Hope asked when Cary made his way up with a couple of bags in his hands.

I glanced around at the space that was empty save for our pizza boxes, soda bottles, and a couple design magazines.

I really didn’t want to go back to the hotel.

But, clearly, there was no way we could stay at the apartment. We didn’t even have an air mattress or even sleeping bags. And, quite frankly, after sleeping on buses and benches for the trip from Mexico to Navesink Bank, I really didn’t want to have to sleep on anything other than a mattress again if it could be helped.

“Just one more night,” Cary assured me, reading my face. “We could get a mattress here tomorrow. And a frame. You can worry about the headboard and shit later.”

“Okay,” I agreed, looking at his hands, seeing the bag for an electronics store there as well as, for reasons that I couldn’t fathom, a pet store. “You better not have bought me anything else,” I warned him, trying to use a serious voice even if a part of me was thrilled at the idea of getting more surprises.

“Girl, you just take the shit the handsome men give you,” Layna said, clicking her tongue at me.

“Like you took that Russian mafia dude’s diamond-encrusted ring at your last poker game?” Vi asked.

“What? Like it’s my fault the man didn’t bring enough cash to the table? That ring is going to fund my next trip out to California. First-class, all the way,” she added, smiling, clearly proud of her score.

“They’re essentials,” Cary insisted, putting down the bags, then pulling out a small rectangular box. “A cell phone,” he told me. “We need to be able to get in contact with each other. And the girls or Dezi if you want too,” he added, handing me the box, then going back into the bag. “And a laptop. Because you just need one. Especially if you want to buy any shit for the apartment online. The rest is just accessories for both. No big deal.”

It was a big deal, though. To me. A phone seemed so silly in the grand scheme of things, but a phone meant freedom to someone who hadn’t had her own one in years.

“Thank you,” I said, pressing the phone box to my chest.

“You’ll give her all our numbers, yeah?” Vi asked, slipping her jacket back on.

“Of course.”

“We have plans for her when she’s allowed out of hiding,” Layna added.

“I’m happy to hear it,” Cary said, nodding.

“If you need us so you can do some shit with the club,” Hope started, “you know you can call us.”

“I appreciate it,” Cary said, giving her a nod.

Within minutes, all the goodbyes were said, and we were alone again.

“That was fun,” I admitted. “I really like them.”

“They’re hard not to like,” he agreed. “And that’s only three of them. Wait until they drag you out with all the rest.”

“It sounds overwhelming. In the best way. How did everything go with church?” I asked, tripping over the word that had always had a very different meaning to me.

“Good. I lucked out. Brooks didn’t put me on the schedule much, so I have time to help with painting and furniture putting-together-ing. And to start moving forward on a possible plan to handle the situation.”

“You have a plan?” I asked, stomach immediately tensing.

It got easier as the days went on to sort of almost forget about that part. I mean, not entirely. Of course it was always there in my mind. But I could focus past it enough that it felt almost “far away” instead of a very real part of my present reality.

“A possible one,” Cary said. “One of my brothers suggested I get in contact with a guy named Andres. He’s somewhat new to the area, but has been friendly in the past. He’s in a cartel. Niro thought I might be able to, if nothing else, get some information out of him.”

“That wouldn’t be, you know, more dangerous?” I asked. “To give a cartel member information?”

“I would never put you in danger, love. I wasn’t even going to mention the details of why I need to take out Raúl, just that it needs done.”

“Oh, okay,” I said, still not convinced.

“That’s the reason for this,” Cary said, grabbing the bag from the pet store. “A has a shitton of dogs that he loves like his children. Figure a little bribe never hurt in a situation like this. Hey,” he said, reading the tension in my face.

Dropping the bag, he reached out to frame one side of my face. “I promise you that I am going to do everything I can to make sure there is no way A is going to connect you to this. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

I don’t know if it was the apartment, the girls encouraging me to “get it,” the night before of unmet need, our long, intense history, or a combination of all of that.

But whatever it was had me reaching out toward him, grabbing the wrist of his arm hanging at his side, and pulling him closer.

My gaze slid to his, watching as confusion turned into understanding when his chest met my own.

“Abs, that’s not… I’m not doing any of this because I expect anything,” he said, shaking his head.

It was clearly just him giving me an out if I thought I had to “pay him back” for his kindness. But to me, who’d never had a lot of experience with men, and who had certainly never started to initiate something with one before, it felt a whole lot like rejection.

“It’s fine,” I said, wrenching away, feeling the heat rise in my cheeks and a strange, swirling discomfort spread across my stomach.

“Hey, Abs,” he tried again, his hand started to brush my shoulder, but I shrugged it away, circling back away from him.

“Let’s get back to the hotel,” I said, voice tight.

I didn’t give him a chance to respond. Because I charged right down that staircase and onto the street, leaving him to follow behind.

I took the laptop and treat bags from him, looping them around my arm, then waiting for him to climb on before I did as well. But this time, I didn’t wrap my arms around him. I didn’t rest my head on his back. I barely even touched him, holding my body as far back as possible, using my thighs to hold me in place, then just grabbing a couple handfuls of his leather cut for extra stability.

I could have sworn he let out a deep sigh before turning the bike over, but pretty soon the grumbling of the machine drowned anything out.

And we were off.

I was getting used to the bike. Was it my favorite thing ever? No. It was better when I got to hold onto Cary. But those days were behind us. I had to put some space between us. I was getting things mixed up in my head. Clearly, confusing his kindness for interest.

I mean, yes, we’d kissed.

But sometimes things like that just… happened. Right?

God, I was so freaking naive.

The sooner I got to be an actual free woman, the better. Because I clearly still had so much to learn not only about the world as a whole and myself as a person, but about relations between normal men and women.

My heart was firmly lodged up in my throat as we made our way across the lobby, knowing we were about to be trapped alone together for hours on end with this uncomfortable silence between us.

We climbed into the elevator and I pressed the button for our floor before moving to the corner away from him, keeping my gaze lowered because the mirrored wall in front of me would only show me the face of the man who hadn’t wanted to kiss me again, and my own reddened cheeks and embarrassed eyes.

“Fuck it,” Cary hissed under his breath.

My head snapped up in time to see him stab a finger into the stop button before he was suddenly turning and charging at me.

One hand went behind my head to soften the impact as he slammed me back into the wall.

His lips were on mine before I could even wrap my head around what was happening.

The other hand moved, grabbing the bags out of my hand, and dropping them down on the floor before that hand went down, grabbing my leg behind the knee, and hauling it up, wrapping it around his hip as he ground his pelvis into me, making me all-too-aware of his hardness pressing against the juncture of my thighs.

There was no reasoning with my body at that moment.

My arms lifted, wrapping around the back of his neck, crushing our bodies together even as my hips started to do these small, rolling motions against his hardness. The sensation had need coursing through my body, that same throbbing pressure in my lower stomach, the tightness in my chest, the almost uncomfortable awareness of the emptiness between my thighs.

I’d felt hints of this before. In the early days of a budding relationship.

But nothing quite as intense as what I was feeling with Cary.

It was like my mind had become mush and my body was controlling everything.

My fingertips dug into the skin at the back of Cary’s neck as his fingers slipped into my hair at the nape of my neck, curling, then twisting just to the point of the pain, making my head turn to ease the sting.

His lips slid from mine, going down my cheek, my jaw, then my neck. The softness of his lips and the scratchiness of his beard created this foreign, intense sensation that sent a shiver through my body.

But this time, instead of making him turn away from me, Cary let out a low, growling sound that made my sex clench hard.

His hands started to roam then, sliding up my sides, over my ribs, then closing around the swells of my breasts, making me immediately regret the thick material of my sweater I’d put on.

His lips sealed over mine again, though, as his hands slipped back down, creeping up under the hem of my shirt, then gently snaking upward. His fingertips teased over the skin of my belly before his palms closed over my breasts again, this time without the barrier.

My nipples hardened against his palms as his tongue toyed with mine, as his hips pressed against me again.

My body felt completely overwhelmed, unable to process all the sensations at once, bouncing instead between each pleasure point at a breakneck pace.

Cary’s thumbs and forefingers found my nipples, rolling them between, each time gaining in pressure until my back was arching, pressing my breasts against his touch as a low moan escaped me, the sound muffled by his lips.

He pulled back at it, though, looking down at me with heavy-lidded eyes, then doing another roll with a bit more pressure, watching me as my lips fell open and my breath caught.

I was too wrapped up in sensations for things like uncertainty, like insecurity, to set in.

All I knew was the desire pinging off of every nerve ending. And the fact that I needed more.

“More,” I whispered, arching deeper into his touch.

At that, Cary’s eyes shut for one long second, almost like he was looking for strength.

Then, suddenly, his hands left me to hold my shirt up as he bent down, sucking one of my nipples into his warm mouth, making a whimper escape me as my hand grabbed the back of his head, holding him against me as his tongue started to work circles around the hardened bud.

Warmth washed over my system as I let my head fall back against the wall, my eyes slitting shut so I could fully focus on the sensations as his tongue circled, his lips sucked, his teeth nipped. Over and over until my skin felt too sensitive for more, then knowing to move across my chest to continue the torment with my other breast.

It wasn’t until I felt his lips shift between my breasts and start moving downward that my eyes flew open, watching as his hands left my shirt and drifted down to the front of my pants, working my button and zipper free.

I don’t think I was even fully putting the pieces together as I watched Cary go down on his knees in front of me as his hands started to draw my pants and panties downward. I was just lost in the moment, completely at his mercy.

But then I was stepping out of my pants, and Cary was grabbing my leg and draping it over his shoulder.

Just a second before I felt his mouth between my thighs.

The shock of the sensation had my entire body jolting hard, a movement that had Cary’s eyes opening as he looked up at me, maybe trying to gauge my reaction even as his tongue found my clit and started to circle it.

I’d been touched, sure, but this, well, this was something entirely new for me. Because this was pure selflessness, and I’d never known that in a supposed “partner” before.

There was a moment of uncertainty, of stunned disbelief. But it wasn’t long before the sensations took over, flooding me with this sense of urgency, this need that had to be fulfilled or I was sure I was going to burst.

My hips rocked against him, seeking more of the sensation, trying to get closer to that edge I felt like I was teetering on.

Cary’s hand slid between us, two of his fingers tapping at the entrance of my body for a long moment before slowly sliding inside, and thrusting lazily as his mouth continued to work my clit.

Inside me, his fingers turned, then started to stroke against my top wall, creating a new sensation, something just as needy, just as overwhelming.

“Cary…” I whimpered as my hands grabbed at him, dug in, feeling like I was being swept away, and not entirely sure that felt safe.

But then his lips sucked hard and his fingers stroked, and the pleasure slammed through my system, stealing my voice, leaving me gasping for breath as the waves kept crashing and crashing, making me feel completely out of control of my body as my thighs shook, as I half-folded forward over him.

His tongue and fingers kept working me through the orgasm, dragging it out until my body was spent.

Only then did Cary move to stand, pressing me back against the wall again, his lips sealing over mine as his fingers started to thrust inside me once more.

It seemed impossible but the desire started to spark again, making my thighs clench, and my walls tighten around him.

“We can stop,” he murmured against my lips, even as his hardness told me just how difficult it was for him to say that.

“No,” I murmured back, feeling brave as my hands slipped down his chest, feeling the defined muscles twitch under my touch as I sought the front of his jeans, pressing my hand against the head of his cock through the thick material.

A low, groaning sound muffled against my lips as I touched him.

Gaining confidence, my hand moved inward, working his button and zipper free, then slipping inside, finding the long, warm, hardness of him and closing my hand around him. His body stiffened as his breath caught as my fingers shifted upward, as my thumb moved over the head of his cock.

My sex clenched hard around his fingers as I imagined him slipping inside of me, stretching me, making me his.

“Fuck,” Cary hissed, his forehead pressing to mine as he started to thrust harder and faster inside me.

My hand found the same rhythm on his cock, both of us driving each other up.

“Cary, please,” I whimpered, desperate to feel him inside of me. “Please,” I tried again as he pulled back to look down on me, like he needed more confirmation than my desperate pleas.

On a growl, his fingers left me as he reached behind him, finding his wallet and pulling out a condom.

He gently pushed my hand away from him so he could protect us before he grabbed my leg again, dragging it up around his hip.

His cock slid against my cleft, thick and hard, just sliding up and down against me, driving me up again.

“Cary,” I cried, my hands sinking into his upper arms.

His hips shifted and his head pressed against me for one long second before he surged inside me, filling me completely.

A surprised moan escaped me as I adjusted to him.

“Fuck,” Cary hissed, sucking in a deep, steadying breath, trying to hold himself together.

But I didn’t want him to hold it together. I wanted for both of us to fall apart.

I held onto him to steady myself as I lifted my other leg, wrapping around him, my ankles crossing behind his back.

Then my gaze held his as I started to use the leverage of his body to lift upward, then sliding down on him again, feeling him rock inside of me.

Cary let me lead for a long couple of minutes before he was too far gone to let me set the pace.

He slammed me back against the wall of the car and started to take over—a little careful at first, but getting harder and faster with each passing second.

“Look at me,” Cary demanded, voice tight.

He stilled inside me until I complied, then started to fuck me again.

Harder.

Faster.

Driving me right to that edge.

Then, before I could even suck in a breath, he was throwing me off of it, leaving me falling, crashing, crying out as the orgasm crashed through me.

“Fuck, baby,” Cary hissed, pumping into me faster and faster, dragging it out, then slamming deep and hissing out my name as he came.

I clung to him after, too overwhelmed to think, let alone move.

That, I realized, that was what everyone else loved so much about sex. The orgasm, yes, but also the connection, that level of intimacy that was unparalleled outside of that particular act.

“We gotta get back to the room, love,” Cary murmured before his lips pressed into my temple.

I’m not sure what to call the weird sound I made then, but Cary took it as agreement, moving away, tucking himself away, then helping me drag my pants back up my legs.

He grabbed the bags, then hauled me into his side, half supporting my weight, then pushing the stop button again to disengage it.

The next thing I knew, we were in the room.

Cary excused himself to the bathroom for a moment as I numbly kicked back out of my pants and sweater, slipping into a soft, lightweight shorts set pajamas, then sliding into my bed.

I figured I would think about it, then overthink about it, but I found my mind oddly blank. My body was fuzzy and satisfied as I curled up under the covers.

Not two minutes later, Cary was walking out of the bathroom, still fully dressed.

Stopping at the foot of my bed, he pointed between the two beds, as if asking me where I wanted him.

Scooting to the side, I patted the spot beside me, a movement that made Cary shoot me a sweet, eye-crinkly smile.

Then he reached up, pulling off his shirt, giving me a good, long look at him.

Off came his pants next, leaving him just in his boxer briefs as he came to the bed, then climbed in with me, sliding in behind me—legs cocked under mine, his chest to my back, and his arm draped over me.

I never felt anything close to the peace that I felt at that moment.

“You know how many nights I’ve thought about this?” he asked, voice soft in my ear. “All those times in that fucking hellhole. Didn’t even know what you looked like. But there was always a connection there. I felt it. And I imagined a world where I might get out and get to meet you, get to show you what it is like when you’re with a real man, not that shithead you had that didn’t appreciate you.”

“Stop,” I begged, feeling the sting in my eyes. “You’re being too nice,” I added, not wanting him to think I didn’t like what he was saying. It was more that it felt like too much for someone who never got any kind of kindness from men, who’d never had one validate me, tell me how much they thought of me.

“Not nice. Just honest,” he countered, pressing a kiss to the top of my head.

“Well, honesty is nice then. Coming from you at least.”

Or so I thought.

Until the next afternoon.

When we somehow managed to get into our first fight.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Cary

“Absolutely fucking not,” I said, folding my arms over my chest. Like that was going to dissuade her.

Maybe, objectively, I was a scary guy.

But, at this point, she knew me.

And she damn sure knew that she had nothing to fear from me.

Abigail had never been someone who put her foot down about something, to dig her heels in. She’d never been in a world where that would be allowed.

I guess it was testament to how different she felt already, how much safer she knew she was, that she was willing to do both those things.

I was in a tough spot.

Because, on the one hand, I was proud of her. For using her voice, for standing up for herself, for not kowtowing to me even when I was being stern about something.

On the other, though, there was absolutely no fucking way I was giving in on this.

“I thought I was free here,” Abigail said, chin raising, a small act of defiance I found way too fucking appealing. So appealing, in fact, that it took a lot of effort not to grab her, toss her onto the bed, and get another taste of her.

But there wasn’t time for that.

The shit for the bed was getting delivered to the apartment in a little bit. Then I had a meeting later.

I did.

Not her.

No matter how much her pretty eyes shot daggers at me.

I didn’t understand why she’d suddenly decided she needed to go. It was very clear that I wanted to do the meeting alone, that I didn’t want her involved at all.

Sure, I knew of A. And pretty much all the stories came back saying the man was pretty fucking trustworthy, that he didn’t want beef with any of the already established organizations in Navesink Bank. That said, I didn’t have any personal, one-on-one experience with the man. I didn’t know how much I could trust him.

I damn sure wasn’t going to bring Abigail onto his turf when I didn’t know where his loyalties were, if he was possibly on Raúl’s payroll somehow.

“Baby, you’re free. To live your life and make all your life decisions. But you’re not free to walk into a cartel leader’s compound when you don’t know if you can trust him.”

“You don’t know if you can trust him, and you’re walking in there.”

“Right. But I’m not someone who is wanted by a fellow cartel member, love. It’s not risky like that for me.”

“This is my problem,” she insisted.

“Think we are at a point now where we can call it our problem.”

“Fine. Our problem. But our means me too. And I want to be there.”

“Abs, no.”

“Then you’re not going either.”

“I have to go. If there’s a chance A has some information that could make it easier to make this problem disappear, I need to talk to him about it.”

“I’m part of the problem.”

“Abs…”

“We can bring Dezi if you’re so worried about it not being safe.”

“It’s more than you not being safe. It’s the fact that if he is working with Raúl, then he will know you are associated with me. And that I am with the club. It could make everything worse.”

“Or maybe hearing the story from me will help him decide he wants to help,” Abigail suggested. “If your friend is right about him being a decent guy, anyway.”

Niro didn’t recommend someone if he didn’t have faith in them. Hell, Niro had tapped A’s shoulder to be a part of his and Andi’s wedding. That wasn’t something you did if you didn’t know someone was a good guy underneath it all.

I could call Niro. I could ask him to come with.

I still didn’t like it, but if Abs wasn’t going to let it go, that was the only way I felt comfortable with it.

“Let me make a phone call,” I said, sighing, and moving out into the hall.

“Yellow?” a feminine voice answered on the fourth ring.

“Andi, hey, is Niro there?”

“He’s letting the dogs out. Is this about Andres?” she asked.

Of course he’d shared that with her. Before they became an item, Niro and Andi had been the closest of friends. I doubted Niro kept anything from her.

“Ah, yes, actually.”

“Maybe I can help. What’s going on?”

“Abigail is suddenly insisting on going with me to the meeting.”

“Ah, I see. And you’re doing the ‘big, strong, man’ thing to her.”

“She… might agree with that,” I said, letting out a dry laugh.

“Why can’t she come? This is her situation, right?”

“Right. But I don’t know what A’s loyalties are,” I told her, shaking my head.

“Hm. Well, I guess I understand that. But I can vouch for Andres. If you want, I will come with.”

“Come where?” I could hear Niro ask in the background.

“To the meeting with Andres. Abigail wants to go,” Andi told him.

“Here, let me,” Niro said, taking the phone. “We will come,” he said. “If you’re worried about it, we’ll go with.”

“My worry is that A might be connected with Raúl in some way.”

“Can’t claim I know a whole fuckuva lot about how the cartel operates, but it seems to be that different organizations aren’t exactly friendly. That’s why there is so much bloodshed. Everyone wants what the other has. I doubt A would be friendly with another leader. At most, he would refrain from starting a war, but I don’t think they’re drinking buddies.”

He made a good point.

The Henchmen didn’t rub shoulders with other gun runners. The Mallick family didn’t play poker with other loan sharks. The Grassis didn’t shoot the shit with the Irish or Russian mafias.

It didn’t make sense to befriend your competition. You could never fully trust them.

So maybe Niro was right.

A might know Raúl, but the chances of him having any sort of loyalty to him were low.

“Okay,” I said, nodding. “Yeah, I would appreciate that.”

“It’s nothing,” Niro said. “Andi dragged me to a doggy shower there once.”

“A doggy shower,” I repeated.

“One of A’s dogs got knocked up. We brought a goody basket full of toys and treats. And Andi spent an hour scolding him about getting his dogs spayed on time, so he didn’t have any future accidents.”

I was having a hard time picturing sweet Andi scolding a fucking cartel leader, but if she were going to do something like that, I could see it being about the right way to raise your pets.

“If you’re worried, we don’t have to bring Andi.”

“Worried?” Niro scoffed. “Nah, man. Andi is as safe there as she is at the clubhouse. The two of them have become friends since all that shit went down a while back. He texts her in the middle of the night if one of the dogs is throwing up or looks like they hurt something. Trust me, A wouldn’t do anything to fuck up his twenty-four-hour vet services.”

“Hey, he happens to just like me too,” Andi grumbled.

“Who doesn’t?” Niro shot back, and I could hear a little squeal from Andi as Niro must have grabbed or tickled her. “So what time?”

“Seven?”

“Want us to meet you there?”

“That works,” I agreed.

“Alright. It’s a plan.”

Before I could even thank him, he ended the call.

“So?” Abigail asked as I walked back into the room.

She was standing at the sink in the bathroom. She must have stretched out the neck of her top while sleeping, because it had slipped down to expose her shoulder.

I didn’t even pretend to resist the urge to walk up behind her and press my lips there, feeling the way she almost immediately melted at the soft touch.

“So, we have more company tonight than planned.”

“We?” she asked, and I watched as her reflection brightened.

“Yep, we. And you get to meet another princess. Niro’s woman.”

“Andi,” Abigail recalled. “The vet.”

“Right,” I agreed. “Long story short, a while back, A kidnapped Andi off the street because he thought she was a doctor. She was wearing scrubs,” I explained when her brows pinched. “And he made her pull the bullet out of one of his men. There was some other shit that went down, but at the end of it all, Andi and A kind of walked away with a friendship of sorts. Niro said that if I was worried—and I am—,” I added, giving her a firm look in the mirror that had her head falling back on my shoulder as a small smile toyed at her lips, “that they would come with.”

“Thank you,” she said, reaching down to grab my arm, wrapping it around her stomach, then giving said arm a squeeze with both of hers.

“Are you always going to be stubborn about this kind of shit?” I teased.

“Maybe,” she said, smiling at my reflection. “You’re just going to have to grow to like that about me.”

“Love, can’t think of a fucking thing I don’t like about you,” I told her.

At that, her gaze fell from mine.

“Hey, what?” I asked.

“It’s just… I’m not the same girl,” she told me, talking to her feet. “I know that you really liked the version of me that wrote you. But she was very different from who I am now. And I don’t want you to go into… this… expecting me to be exactly like that.”

“Listen to me, that girl was sweet and kind and loving and giving. From what I’m seeing, you’re still all those things. Maybe time and life has given you some scars, some bruises that I need to be careful not to press, but who you are at your core? That’s the same woman, Abs. Don’t let that fucker win by making you think you have somehow become less than that.”

“He’s not going to win,” Abigail insisted, her determined gaze meeting mine.

“No,” I agreed. “He’s not.”

“How long do we have until the delivery people get to the apartment?” Abigail asked as my fingers found the sliver of skin between where her shorts and her shirt met, teasing across it, feeling the shiver that moved through her at the barely-there touch.

“Long enough,” I said, smirking at her in the mirror as my hand suddenly plunged down into her shorts and panties, stroking up her pussy that was already getting wet for me.

I wasn’t lying when I said I fantasized about her all those long, lonely nights when I was locked up.

That said, a part of me didn’t think I would ever get to act out on those feelings.

Hell, I didn’t even fully understand how I could have those feelings when I hadn’t even seen the woman I’d been corresponding with for so long. I didn’t understand the concept of having a sort of physical attraction to someone I’d never physically seen. It didn’t make sense.

And after a while of being out, I just chalked it up to being so long without a woman.

But getting to finally meet her, realizing she was even more beautiful than I’d have let myself dream, and that she not only wanted to be around me, but wanted me too?

It seemed too good to be true.

Hell, it felt too good to be true.

I’d never not enjoyed myself with a woman before. What was the point of the act if the two of you didn’t have a good time?

But it had always just been that.

Just something to do, a way to temporarily feel good.

I’d never had it mean anything.

Being with Abigail, though, that meant something.

If it was going to happen, my intention for it had been for it to be something soft and sweet, a way to show her that not all men just took and took from her, that some—the right ones—wanted them to have a great experience too.

Whatever control I’d been holding onto snapped when we’d been in that elevator, though.

And the end result hadn’t been as slow and sweet and romantic as I’d meant it to be.

But it had still managed to be better than I’d ever dreamed.

And, apparently, good enough to make Abigail want more, get wet from just the brush of a fingertip across her stomach.

My thumb moved up, stroking over her clit as my fingers drifted down, making circles around the entrance to her pussy for a moment before slipping inside, feeling her walls tighten around them, wanting more.

“Take your shirt off for me, love,” I demanded, voice soft, rubbing my beard against the sensitive skin of her neck, a sensation that made another shiver move through her.

Her hands lifted, grabbing the hem of her shirt, and drawing it up.

I stepped back just far enough for her to pull it off and toss it as my gaze took in her bare skin.

She’d already started to fill back in a little bit. Her bones didn’t stick out of her skin grotesquely, speaking of all the times she’d needed sustenance but had been denied it. She had a long way to go to fill back in completely, but with my—and let’s face it, Dezi’s—help, she would get there.

My other hand slid up her stomach, teasing over the hardening buds of her nipples, working them until they were tight points as my fingers started to fuck her, slowly at first, but getting faster as her hips started to rock against me, as her eyes drifted half closed, and as her little whimpers started to get louder and louder.

“You want my cock, don’t you?” I asked with my lips touching her ear.

“Yes,” she moaned, her pussy squeezing my fingers in agreement.

“You want it like this?” I asked, rubbing my cock against her ass. “From behind? Watching me in the mirror as I fuck you?” A low chuckle escaped me before she could answer. “Your pussy wants that,” I told her as she squeezed me tighter still.

“Yes,” she said, rocking her hips harder against my touch. “Just like this,” she agreed.

I didn’t need more than that.

My free hand yanked her pants and panties down before fishing in my wallet for a condom.

“Touch your pussy for me,” I demanded softly as I withdrew my fingers. “Like this,” I added when she hesitated, grabbing her hand, and pressing her fingers against her clit.

I wasn’t an idiot.

No one had taught her about her pleasure when she’d been growing up. That dick of an ex-husband of hers only saw her as a womb to be filled. And I didn’t think a man who kept her captive like a toy gave a shit about teaching her how to make herself feel good.

So it didn’t surprise me that she needed a little direction, a little encouragement.

I made short work of getting the condom on, but made myself hold off, watching her as she figured out how she liked her clit to be worked.

Her little mewling noises went straight to my balls, making me feel damn near ready to burst as I watched her drive herself up.

“Cary?” she whimpered, eyes opening to meet mine in the mirror. “I need you,” she added, making desire kick me in the core. “Please,” she added, wiggling her ass against my erection.

“You can have my cock,” I agreed, grabbing it so I could tease it up her pussy. “But you have to keep touching your clit for me,” I told her. “Can you do that?” I added, pressing my cock against the entrance to her pussy, but refusing to slip inside until she agreed. “Can you?”

“Y-yes,” she agreed, wiggling her hips.

I got to watch the surprise and pleasure mingle across her features as I slammed inside, as I took her deep, feeling her walls clench around my cock, wanting more of the feel of me.

I didn’t have a whole hell of a lot of control then.

I placed a hand in the center of her back, pushing her forward until she braced herself with one hand on the counter. The other stayed between her thighs like I’d told her.

One of my hands grabbed the shoulder of her occupied hand, keeping that side of her from slamming forward as I started to fuck her.

Deep, slow strokes, making her feel each inch of me sliding in and out of her tightness, leaving her writhing and moaning, wanting more than I was giving her—an end to the chaos building inside.

I felt a similar need as well, making me start to fuck her. Faster, harder, making her hips slam against the side of the counter with each thrust. But she didn’t complain. She just moaned for more, begged for release.

I could feel her pussy tightening around me, getting right to that edge.

“Press harder on your clit, love,” I demanded as I fucked her.

Then she did.

And then she came.

Taking me along with her.

I held her against me afterward, watching in the mirror as her brows drew together as her body shook gently.

“Aftershocks,” I told her, pressing a kiss to her temple.

“That’s a good term,” she decided, snuggling her face into my neck as she let them run their course.

After that, we rushed to get dressed and collect our shit, so we could make it back to the apartment.

No one said anything, but it was pretty clear that neither of us wanted to spend another night in the hotel, even if it did have more furniture than the apartment did.

It felt like we were beyond that, like it was time to move forward. Even if we were going to have to sit and eat and sleep all in one spot until she decided on the furniture and we could get it all delivered.

So I called Dezi to bring over the SUV, and we loaded it up, leaving nothing behind at the hotel.

“What? I’m just asking. If, you know, the room was going to be vacant for the night,” Dezi said, shooting me a smirk as we unloaded the SUV at the apartment.

“Have at it,” I said, handing him the keycards I still had in my pocket.

“Chicks like a good view,” he declared, looking over at Abs for confirmation.

“I mean, I don’t speak for all women, but I was impressed by it.”

“See?” Dezi asked, nodding. “Know what this street needs?” he asked, looking up and down it. “Somewhere to eat.”

“You’re not happy unless there is somewhere to eat every fifteen feet.”

“It’s not too much to ask. A man has needs,” he said, grabbing the last of the suitcases and hauling them up the stairs with us. “So I hear we’re having a little party at A’s house tonight,” he added, sounding pleased at the prospect. “You know, I heard that A set up camp in that place Jstorm blew up.”

“Blew up?” Abigail asked, turning toward him with wide eyes, making it clear that while I’d given her a decent rundown of a lot of the major players in town, that she still had a long way to go.

“Which place?” I asked. “Janie likes her bombs,” I added, shrugging at Abigail’s shock. “Usually for a good reason,” I assured her.

“Lex Keith, I think was his name? He was into everything, legend goes. Drugs, extortion, prostitution. But the fucked up thing was he used to grab girls off the street, hold them hostage, and… well…” Dezi said, trailing off, realizing who his audience was.

“And this Janie woman, she blew his place up?” Abigail asked.

“Yeah.”

“Good for her,” Abs said, nodding. “He died?”

“Yeah,” Dezi said, voice odd.

“But?” Abigail asked.

“But the bomb didn’t do him in. Legend goes, that fucker met his end when Janie’s man—Wolf, an OG member of our club—broke open his ribcage, and ripped his heart out of his chest.”

I guess I expected outrage.

But Abigail was right. There were parts of her that were no longer the naive, sheltered girl who used to write to me.

This Abigail had seen and endured a fuck of a lot of violence.

She wasn’t outraged.

She was pleased.

“Sounds like a fitting end to someone like that.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, nodding.

I wasn’t sure I had what it took to bust someone’s ribcage open—Wolf was a mountain of a man, after all—but I hoped to get some form of bloody vengeance on the man who’d put Abigail through hell for years.

“Weird place to set up, though, isn’t it? A place that had been bombed?” Abigail asked.

“Yeah, but he got it on a song with all that damage,” Dezi said, shrugging. “Big piece of property. Had a lot of security features in place already. All he had to do was drop a couple hundred grand, move in, and open shop.”

“And A… he sells drugs?”

“Yeah,” I agreed, nodding.

“I’m sorry, but, this town has drug dealers, outlaw bikers, loansharks, the mafia, and who knows what else. How? How do the cops not shut it all down?”

“Most of them are in someone’s pocket,” I explained, shrugging. “They look the other way when we handle our own business. But are still the good guys for the usual shit. Break-ins, domestic violence, emergencies.

“After all this time, even the good, clean cops have just kind of accepted that the organizations around here aren’t going anywhere. So they don’t hassle us too much unless something happens right in front of their faces. Or something goes down that they can’t ignore. Like shootings or something.”

“Do shootings happen here often?”

“Define often,” Dezi said, getting a stern look from me that had him holding up his hands in apology.

“No,” I told her, shaking my head. “And I don’t remember the last time someone innocent got hurt even if there was one. Everyone pretty much tries to keep the shit on the down-low. No one wants the Feds having to come in because they realize the local cops are dirty.”

“Last shootout on the street was A, wasn’t it?” Dezi asked, rocking on his heels.

“Not helping,” I hissed at him.

“Uh-oh. I pissed off Zaddy,” Dezi said, smiling at Abigail.

“It was,” I said, looking over at Abs. “But it was between rivals. That was when they snatched Andi up. Things have been relatively calm with them since. They keep to themselves. And occasionally even offer help to us if they happen upon a situation.”

“I don’t want to know what situation that was happened upon, do I?” Abigail asked, giving me a bemused smile.

“Not unless you want to be an accessory after the fact,” Dezi said, nodding. “So, are we ordering food, or what?”

Normally, I would laugh at him. But Abigail definitely still needed the extra calories.

So we ordered pizza while we waited for the delivery guys.

Then we set to putting together the bed.

Well, I put the bed together.

Abigail read me the directions.

And Dezi, well, Dezi made helpful suggestions.

Like, “You know, they make these stopper things to put between the bed and the wall. To stop the knocking. You know… from all the fucking.”

Or, “Good you went with a wood frame. Those metal ones creak up a fucking storm when you fuck.”

Food and fucking, that was Dezi. Sprinkle in some fighting here and there for good measure.

Pretty soon, the bed was made, the food was eaten. And it was time.

“It’s going to be fine,” Abigail assured me, giving me a reassuring nod.

“I’m supposed to be the one telling you that,” I told her, pressing a hand to her lower back as we followed Dezi to the door.

“Yeah, but you’re the one who is anxious about the meeting. I’m going to put my faith to rest in what Niro and Andi had to say about this guy. I think he is going to help us.”

As it turned out, she would be right.

And wrong.

But that would come later.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Abigail

I didn’t know what to expect from an American cartel leader’s home.

I guess a part of me figured it would have the same sort of garish style that Raúl’s home sported.

Which was, of course, ridiculous.

Everyone’s style was different.

And this A guy, well, he seemed to prefer a classic Colonial style. Lots of windows, lots of shutters, clean lines. It had classic brick on the front and a balcony overhanging the front door, held up with understated black pillars that matched the shutters.

The grounds were impeccably maintained.

It wasn’t quite fully spring yet, so there was no way to tell if the long, winding flowerbeds that flanked the front path would have more than the shapely little boxwoods, but even if that was it, it was nice-looking in an understated way.

The front path itself matched the brick on the house, as did the driveway, and I couldn’t imagine the maintenance on something like that.

“Are we going in, or just eye-fucking the place?” Niro, a handsome, rough-around-the-edges kind of guy, asked as he dropped an arm across the shoulders of a pretty, petite blonde.

With that, Cary reached for my hand, and we all started up the driveway at once.

We got maybe five feet onto it when dogs appeared out of nowhere. A lot of them. Like eight of them, from what I could see.

“Oh, shit. I’m not fighting no dogs for her, man. Throw her over your shoulder and run,” Dezi declared, taking a couple of careful steps back.

“Oh, they’re love bugs,” Andi declared as one of them showed its teeth to us.

“Yeah, super fucking cuddly,” Dezi said. “Go kiss it,” he added, getting an eye roll out of Andi.

“They’re protecting their home. That’s what they’re supposed to do. Hey, sweet baby. Do you remember me?” Andi asked to the dog who was still wiggling his jaws, giving us a view of his full mouth of teeth. “The last time I saw you, well, I neutered you.”

“Yep. Great. Tell the beast you stole his balls,” Dezi said. “That’ll work.”

“Baby, be a good boy,” Andi said, inching forward until Niro grabbed the back of her pants, holding her in place.

“I know you think they’re all good eggs, baby, but remember the one who took a bite out of your arm last month?”

“That was a lab,” Andi insisted.

“It was a strange dog,” Niro shot back.

“He’s not a strange dog. I know him.”

“Don’t seem like he has fond memories of you, doll face,” Dezi interjected. “Not that I blame him.”

“Quit it,” a voice called, appearing from behind the dogs. And the dog immediately tucked his teeth away. The rest of the dogs relaxed in unison as a man made his way halfway down the path. “Henchmen?” he asked, brows furrowing.

“And me,” Andi said, smiling. “The vet,” she added to his blank look. “Andres knows me,” she insisted.

“Aight. One second,” the man said, going back a few steps as he reached for his phone. He absentmindedly pet one of the dogs’ heads as he made his call to, I imagine, A. “Yep. Okay. He’s expecting you. Go on in. He’s in the kitchen.”

“Do not ask for food,” Cary said under his breath to Dezi as we all moved forward.

Andi charged in first, followed by her man, then Cary and I, and followed by Dezi.

The inside of the house was very, well, understated. Classic, even. Lots of natural wood grains, neutral colors, and pops of art and sculpture that drew your attention, but didn’t overwhelm the space.

Whoever this Andres was, I could use some of his design tips.

We moved down the center hall toward the back of the house to find the kitchen.

It was a window-filled space with white top cabinets that reached the ceilings, white countertops, and light honey wood stained lower cabinets. The appliances were oversized and pricy-looking, and I couldn’t help but wonder if it was for appearances, or if this A guy cooked.

But before I could think too much about anything else, the man himself.

A.

Andres Alcazar.

He was tall and fit, wearing black slacks and a black button-up that made his tan skin pop. His face was all sharp angles. The inky black hair on his head matched the stubble on his jaw and the dark lashes framing his brown eyes.

I didn’t know him from Adam, but a chill coursed through me as I looked at him, like something deep inside me recognized just how dangerous he could be.

“My favorite vet,” A said, giving Andi a slight smile. “And the man who just barely deserves her,” he added, nodding at Niro. “And who else do we—“ he started, looking over at Cary, then catching sight of me. “Shit, lil’ mama, the fuck’d you do?” he asked, shaking his head.

My stomach fell to my feet as I realized he knew who I was. It wasn’t that he was just guessing that I was the reason everyone was requesting a meeting with him. Oh, no. He recognized me.

“Shit,” Cary hissed, immediately taking a step forward.

A just sidestepped a bit to keep looking at me. His hand raised, motioning toward his shoulder. “Miss the long hair,” he said, shrugging. “But, hey, that’s me, yeah? I like something to hold onto. You fucks ever get involved with a chick without strings attached to her?” he asked, looking at Cary again.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I whispered to Cary, whose hand tightened on mine, a reassuring squeeze even though it felt like everything was falling down around us.

“For what? Leaving that fuck?” A asked, shrugging. “He was going to starve you to death sooner or later,” he added, leaning back against the wall and crossing his arms over his chest. “Or beat you to death,” he added, and there was a complete lack of inflection in his tone, so I had no idea how he felt about that idea.

“Okay, they get it,” Andi said, drawing his attention. “You’re a big, scary guy. You can stop now.”

“Stop being me, mama? Can’t imagine how I’d do that.”

“Shit, hey dude,” Dezi’s voice said, drawing all of our attention to the side where he’d stepped down into the family room, and nearly stepped on a tiny little dog in a bed. “I like ones like this,” he decided, picking up the dog that was no bigger than a football, and draping it over his arm as he walked back into the kitchen. “Hey, are those tamales?” he asked, pointing toward the stove as he jiggled the dog the way you might do with a fussy newborn.

“Dezi,” Cary snapped.

“Sorry, Zaddy,” Dezi said, rolling his eyes. “Huh. Air is thick as fuck in here,” he declared, getting a surprised laugh out of me, one that made A look toward me again.

“Saw you once,” A said, nodding. “Took a little trip down to that neck of the woods. Saw you walking around in this low-cut number. Had bruises all over you. Coulda cut glass with your collarbone,” he added, face twisting up at that. “Like me a woman with padding,” he finished, shrugging.

“He didn’t starve me because he liked me skinny,” I snapped, surprising not only myself, but I think everyone else there. “He just wanted to hurt me.”

“Had a neighbor once when I was a kid,” A said, waving toward his knee height. “Had this dog chained out. Day, night, blistering heat. Didn’t fucking matter. And when he got wasted, he’d take a bat to it. And the dog took it and took it and took it until one day, that chain didn’t work so good. And the fuck came out with a bat again. And got his throat torn out. Watched that shit from my bedroom window like it was the best show on TV,” he added. “Those screams sounded a fuckuva lot like justice to me, yeah?” he said.

“So, what I’m saying here is, you being here, this is you breaking off the chain. And you,” he went on, looking at Cary. “You’re the one going to tear out Raúl’s throat.”

“He’s not wrong,” Dezi said, moving behind Andi to look at the tamales on the stove, despite the warnings.

“I’m just here for any information you might be able to give me,” Cary said. “I’m not asking for your help in handling it. But I’ve heard it from several sources now,” he said, nodding over toward Andi and Niro, “that you’re a man who isn’t opposed to assisting our organization.”

“Don’t want a fucking thing to do with your organization, man,” A said, making my stomach drop once again. “That gets into who has a marker over who shit. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t have time for that. But here’s what I’m thinking. I saw some shit I didn’t like a couple years back,” he went on, looking over at me. “Shit I didn’t handle because that wasn’t the situation I was in at the time. Now? My situation has changed. I’m not helping you Henchmen fuckers. I’m helping lil’ mama over there,” he said, jerking his head toward me as he looked at Cary.

“Okay,” Cary said, tentatively. “You’ll understand if I’m a little suspicious, though. You and Raúl—“

“Deal drugs?” A cut him off. “Yep. And see, I’m doing a little math in my head. And I’m thinking if I subtract Raúl, I somehow end up adding his distributors to my books. And that, well, that sounds like a win-win to me, don’t you think?” he asked, smirking devilishly.

“You’ll help us?” I asked, my voice tight as I absentmindedly became aware of Dezi offering the dog some cheese from his tamale. Like we weren’t in the middle of the most important meeting of my life.

“Yeah, guess I will. But if the word gets out, I did it for selfish reasons, yeah? Can’t let it get around that I’m some sort of good guy,” he said, shooting me a smirk.

“Heaven forbid anyone knows you aren’t a monster,” Andi said, shaking her head at him.

“If you think I’m not, mama, that’s you looking through rose-colored glasses,” A said, moving toward his kitchen table and sitting down, waving a hand out. “So, what do you want to know?”

“Everything that would help me take the fucker out,” Cary said, moving over toward the table, pulling me with him.

“You know the insides of the place, yeah?” A asked, looking at me. “Figure that’s how you managed to get away.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “I studied everything for a long time.”

“So you got that covered. What I can offer is the structure of his organization, the major players, how you can get in and out of the country without someone sniffing you out. Can maybe even hook you up with someone down there so you have someplace safe to stay.”

It almost seemed too good to be true.

But the next thing I knew, A had papers spread over the top of the table with really intricate drawings he’d come up with on the spot. There were notes in the margins—names of people, addresses, passwords to use so those people would know A sent Cary.

By the time everyone stood up again, it all seemed so, well, foolproof. So… possible.

And I finally, truly started to believe that there was a future for me without fear, without having to look over my shoulder, without worries that someone might drag me back to my own personal hell again.

“Thank you,” I said to A after Cary said his own thanks. “Really. Thank you.”

“Just sorry I couldn’t help sooner, mama. Men who do shit like that…”

“Deserve to get their throats ripped out,” I finished for him.

“Exactly,” he said, eyes twinkling at the idea, giving me a hint of the monster Andi said he wasn’t but he clearly could be. “That one,” he said, voice low, jerking his chin toward Cary who was talking to Niro in low voices. “He treat you right?”

“Yes,” I said, nodding.

“He don’t, you know where to find me,” A said before turning around and disappearing out the back door, whistling for his dogs.

“Jesus Christ, Dezi, you can’t steal his fucking dog,” Niro snapped as we started down the front path and we all became aware of the dog still happily draped over Dezi’s arm.

“I want him,” Dezi said, shrugging.

“Her,” Andi piped in.

“For fuck’s sake. I want his car over there but you don’t see me stealing the goddamn thing.”

“She likes me,” Dezi insisted. And, to be fair, that dog looked up at him with her heart in her eyes.

“What do you want? You gave her table scraps within moments of meeting her.”

“Handle this,” Niro said, sighing, as he looked at his woman.

“Hey, Andres!” Andi called, walking toward the side of the house to meet the man when he appeared, and having a short conversation with him before he disappeared again, and she made her way back toward us.

“He said he stole it out of someone’s backyard because it was left out in the yard when the family left town for vacation,” Andi said, angry for the little thing, as, I think, we all were. “And she doesn’t get along with most of his dogs. He said you can keep her if you treat her right. And, Dezi,” Andi said, eyes serious, “he will be checking. As will I.”

“Listen to these fools,” Dezi said, hiking the dog up on his chest, and the dog immediately started licking at his beard. “Thinking I’d treat my girl as anything other than a princess. She’s not a baby cow,” he said, glancing over at me, “but I think the chicks will dig her too.”

“Especially if you get her a cute puppy cut,” Andi agreed. “You need to bring her in to see me this week, okay?”

“She’s gonna stab things in your butt,” Dezi told the dog. “Won’t even buy you dinner first or nothing.”

“And you need to get her supplies at the pet store. Savea has little pamphlets when you walk in the door. Grab the So, you just got a puppy… one. It lists literally everything you need for a dog. Then get all of it.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Dezi agreed. “You hear that? We’ll get you all the treats.”

“Dezi,” Andi snapped, using a teacher voice at him. “She can not eat like you eat. She’s little. Treats are an occasional thing, not an all the time thing.”

“Don’t listen to her and her mean words,” Dezi cooed at the dog as he climbed into the back of the SUV. “I know what you need,” he said as he closed the door.

“You need to keep an eye on that dog,” Andi demanded, looking at Niro. “She won’t be able to walk, she’ll get so tubby.”

I could hear Niro promising to do just that as he led her over toward his bike.

“Ready?” Cary asked, opening the door behind me.

“I feel a little off-kilter,” I admitted. “That just all went so seamlessly.”

“Guess Andi, Niro, Fallon, and Danny were right about A,” Cary said, slamming my door, then getting in his side. “But don’t get it confused, he is absolutely a terrifying guy. And no one fully knows where his loyalties lie in this town. It’s not like with the Mallick or the Grassi Family.”

“Don’t get too friendly with the nice, cartel leader. Got it,” I said, letting out a laugh when Cary playfully tugged a bit of my hair.

It was a couple hours later, after we both supervised Dezi in the pet store because Andi sent Cary a frantic text to make sure he got the right things, not just food, Cary and I both dropped down onto the bed fully clothed, exhausted more mentally and emotionally than physically.

“What do you think about a gray for the living room?” I asked. “Not all the way up. I was thinking maybe like board and batten? The whole wall would make it too dark, I think.”

“Whatever you want, love,” Cary said, slipping an arm under my head.

“But I want… I want you to feel comfortable here too,” I said. Because it was as close to the whole truth as I was willing to get.

That I wanted him around.

That I could see a future with him.

That I wanted him to see himself in the apartment too.

Under me, Cary’s arm curled, pulling me up and onto his chest so he could lean down to press a kiss to the top of my head.

“I like gray,” he said as his arm gave me a tight squeeze.

Unfortunately, the gray would only be up for a few days before it needed to be changed.

On the account of all the blood.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Abigail

The apartment was really coming together.

It had been three days since the meeting with A. Too soon for Cary or his friends to work out a concrete plan, but long enough that things were starting to get in motion.

That was a fact that had this permanent knot in my stomach. Which I tried to ignore by throwing myself into sprucing up our new home.

See, the problem was, spackling and sanding and washing and painting, it was all long, tedious work. Work that didn’t really require a whole lot of brainpower. So my mind wandered as I worked, imagining Cary and Dezi and whoever else they might bring along, going down to Raúl’s neck of the woods, of them possibly trusting the wrong people, or making the wrong move.

What then?

They all died?

Because of me?

And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, then Raúl would know that Henchmen had been a part of the assassination attempt. They would come up to Navesink Bank, then wipe out the whole club.

All those lives lost.

For little old me.

All the wives and children left to mourn.

Because I hadn’t just kept running, because I’d gotten them and their families involved in my mess.

“I’m no expert,” a voice said from my side. “But I don’t think you’re supposed to water down the paint,” he added, making me aware that a couple helpless tears had fallen down my cheeks.

It wasn’t Cary or even Dezi.

This was a new guard for me.

Seth, he’d been introduced as.

If I flipped through my little mental Rolodex, he was one of the Legacy members. The one who could shoot really well. Like his father.

“Sorry,” I said, shaking my head.

“I’m supposed to get an apology when a girl cries in front of me? I gotta tell all my cousins they owe me then.”

“Yeah,” another voice said. “Do that. But give me a heads up first, so I can film them whopping your ass.”

That was Finn, another Legacy. If I had the family tree straight, he was the brother of Fallon, the current president, and son of the former president, Reign.

They’d shown up as a pair since it was the one day that both Cary and Dezi were needed at the club.

“Ha-ha,” Seth said, shaking his head. “You’re just pissy because you’re thinking about all those women you’ve left tearfully unsatisfied after taking them home.”

“As much as I would love to see you two go a couple rounds,” Louana, the new prospect, someone who’d been dragged along for manual labor because—apparently—that was part of the prospecting process, said as she stood up from lining the window in painters’ tape, “the walls are wet, and I don’t think Abigail wants your ugly mugs pressed into the final product.”

Seth’s hand flew to his chest, mock hurt, as Finn let out a laugh.

“You talk a lot of shit for someone who is beneath us in rank,” Finn said.

“Oh, what are you going to do? Tell Brooks on me?” she asked, smirking at them.

“Maybe we could tell Valen that we caught you peeking in on him when he was in the shower,” Seth said, clearly trying to be teasing, but overstepping a line.

Because Louana went from laid-back and playful to dark and scary in a single blink.

“Listen here, you fuck,” she said, charging at Seth, and grabbing the front of his shirt. “My dad might be retired from the family business, but make no mistake. He taught me the skills. I know where the tools are. And nobody would find a single strand of your fucking DNA. Remember that when you think about telling lies about me.”

Seth’s hands raised. “Was just fucking with you, Louie,” he said, shrugging. “That’s what we do around here.”

“I hate being called that,” Louana said, releasing him, and making her way back toward the window.

“Well, we can’t call you Lou. We have an aunt with that name already. And Ana doesn’t seem to fit you.”

“How about just using my name?”

“It doesn’t have a, you know, biker ring to it,” Seth insisted.

“Right. Because ‘Seth’ is such a hardcore name. Or ‘Finn’ for that matter. There’s a guy in the club that goes by the name Virgin for fuck’s sake.”

“It’s his street name. Because he doesn’t give a fuck. Maybe that’s what you need. A street name,” Seth mused.

“Or, what was it that I heard Valen call you?” Finn asked, and I could tell from the way Louana was stiffening that Finn really needed to shut the hell up. But, of course, he didn’t. “Lulu, I think it was.”

“Call me that again and you’ll be eating through a straw,” Louana said, dropping the tape, then making her way to the door. “I’m going to get coffee,” she declared before disappearing.

“Might want to ease up,” Seth said, looking contrite. “She’s a fucking lunatic. You’re gonna wake up on fire some night.”

Finn must have agreed with that assessment because he quieted down for the next hour or so while we all worked on our respective projects.

I’d insisted several times that they didn’t have to work, but they’d been just as insistent that they’d be too bored just sitting around and watching me work. And, honestly, I was thankful for the hands. Because painting board and batten was even more tedious than painting a plain wall.

And by the time all our arms had started to feel like Jell-O, the whole main living space had a fresh coat of paint on it.

It was starting to feel just a little bit more like home than a vacant apartment.

“That’s probably the couch,” I said, shooting them all a guilty look because the delivery company had been very clear. They would only bring the couch into the living space if it was on the first level. If it wasn’t, they would drop it on the curb. I figured it would be me, Cary, and Dezi who would be doing it, so I hadn’t felt bad about it at the time.

But I barely knew these three.

It was asking a lot to have them help me bring a couch up a pretty steep set of stairs.

“You owe us pizza for this,” Seth forewarned as he rolled his neck as he made his way toward the door.

“Done,” I agreed. I’d been planning on that anyway.

I followed behind the guys as we went down the stairs, figuring that Louana would have already seen them since she went downstairs to take a phone call.

And it was all just so… normal.

A moving van.

With a door that started to open as soon as we got near it.

It wasn’t until I saw Louana stiffen out of the corner of my eye that I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

“Run!” she yelled.

But it was too late.

Because the truck door lifted.

And arms reached out to grab me, yanking me forward before Seth and Finn even had a chance to draw their weapons.

Then there was the heart-stopping sound of gunshots ringing out, and it was impossible for me to tell if Finn and Seth scrambled and dropped low because they were hiding from bullets, or because they’d been hit.

The truck lurched into drive as the hands grabbed me tighter, making it impossible to breathe, let alone try to get away.

But as we moved forward, I saw that Louana had taken the opportunity to reach for her own gun.

Her arms were raised, but lowered when she saw she couldn’t shoot the guy holding me without risking shooting me, so she aimed toward the tire as she started to run to try to keep up.

I watched in horrified helplessness as the man holding me released one arm to raise his gun, aim, and shoot.

She fell to the pavement, hit.

Where, I had no idea.

If she was even still alive was up in the air.

A scream bubbled up and escaped me, but was muffled by the sound of the back door of the truck slamming shut, blanketing us in complete and utter darkness.

Fear was a live wire sparking through my system, making me feel overly aware of every inch of me, the way the man’s hands were gripping me, the lines of his body behind me, the way the hair on my arms and neck were standing on edge.

Because even if Seth, Finn, and Louana were alive, and they could get in touch with Cary, it would be too late.

It was too late.

They’d found me.

He’d found me.

And my worst nightmare was about to come true.

The man behind me squeezed me tighter, past the point of pressure, and becoming acutely painful.

He leaned down low near my ear and hissed at me in Spanish.

I almost wished I hadn’t picked up a good chunk of the language over the years. Some part of me thought it would be better if I didn’t understand what he was saying.

“What? You think you can leave him? No one can leave him. You’re his. Forever. But, maybe forever won’t be as long for you anymore,” he added, making my stomach twist.

Because I got the distinct feeling that he was right about that.

Raúl had never been a man with any sort of control over his anger.

As soon as he got his hands on me again, all I would know was the most brutal kind of pain imaginable before oblivion. Which, honestly, would likely be welcome. There was only so much a human being could endure. Raúl would get off trying to figure out where that line was, teeter on it for a while, then plunge me over it.

I’d known a lot of pain in my life. Mostly at his hands. I knew the feeling of dread well. And the sort of resigned acceptance of knowing there was nothing I could do but endure it.

Somehow, though, everything felt worse now, intensified.

I guess because, while I’d been with Raúl, that was all I knew. It became, to an extent, normal for me. He’d shrunk the world so much that it was all there was for me. Him. And his whims.

Now, though, I’d managed to experience the world. I’d gotten to know security and peace and joy and kindness. I’d learned what friendship meant.

And, what’s more, I’d experienced what it was supposed to be like between a man and a woman. I’d become acquainted with male hands that offered me something other than pain, ones that gave me pure, undiluted bliss, in fact.

I’d felt safe and comfortable in masculine arms.

Yet here I was, trapped in them once again, as far from safe and comfortable as you could get.

Maybe if I’d never gone to Cary, if I’d never begged for his help, if he hadn’t been so gracious as to offer it, this wouldn’t feel as hopeless, as intolerable as it did right then.

It had been selfish of me to go to him, to wrap him and his people up in this.

If I hadn’t done that, he and his friends would all be going on with their lives like nothing had happened. Because nothing would have.

For them, anyway.

And maybe if I’d gone with the original plan—to run and keep running until I was so far away that no one could find me—I wouldn’t be on my way back to Raúl.

Did I really want that, though?

To sacrifice everything I’d gotten to experience with Cary?

No.

I knew the answer without even considering it for a second.

Absolutely not.

The short time I’d gotten to spend with Cary was the best thing that ever happened to me. I’d never felt more myself, more free, or more cared for than I did when I was around him.

If nothing else, at least I would have some warm memories to cling to while I had to endure whatever was ahead of me.

Maybe if I focused really hard, I could escape back into my memories, insulate myself from anything happening to me physically while I dive deeper and deeper into my mind.

I’d never really been into meditation. Growing up, that was sort of frowned upon as something practiced by other religions. We were supposed to pray.

And, hell, maybe I would pray.

It had been a long time.

I’d absolutely had a crisis of faith sometime in the years I was with Raúl. It was hard to believe in a benevolent god who would let you endure so much, who refused to answer your prayers.

But everyone prayed in the end, didn’t they? At least when the end was bloody and violent and you just wanted a way out.

The trunk took a sudden, hard turn, catching not only me, but my abductor off-guard, sending us flying into the side wall.

He’d endured most of the impact. The sensation of it must have surprised him because, suddenly, his hands released me.

I couldn’t claim that I was being brave at that moment. Hell, I couldn’t even claim to be thinking at all.

It was pure instinct as I wrenched away, as I became hyper-aware of a metallic clattering to the ground in the far, dark corner.

The truck had been empty.

Save for him.

And me.

And the gun.

The gun.

It had to be the gun.

Granted, I would never claim to have any experience with a gun. Yes, objectively, I’d been around them a lot. But only because the men I’d been around had them and used them.

I’d never even been allowed to hold one before.

Cary said that, eventually, he wanted to show me how to use one. He said it was an important part of self-defense, just as important as me taking lessons at the local boxing gym so I could learn how to fight off an attacker.

I suddenly wished the princesses had invited me to join them sooner than we’d originally agreed on.

But it was too late for that.

I didn’t know a single thing about self-defense.

But I did understand the basic mechanics of a gun.

Aim.

Pull trigger.

Anyone could do it.

You just had to be desperate enough.

At that moment, I wasn’t sure a single person on Earth had ever been as desperate as I was.

I flew toward that corner, feeling around on the ground for the metal, my fingertips getting caked in dust and some sort of oily grime that I was trying not to think about.

Behind me, I heard a curse and shuffling as my kidnapper recovered and realized he’d lost his weapon.

He was coming.

Just as that thought formed, though, my hands closed around the gun, still warm from his hand.

I fumbled with it for a second, needing to make sure I was holding it the right way.

It was heavier than I thought.

Though I wasn’t sure if it was actually, physically heavy, or if it felt heavy with the implications of what I was willing to do right then.

Aim.

Shoot.

Maim.

Kill.

But at the end of the day, if it was him or me, I was going to choose me. I was going to choose the future I had started to really fantasize about. I was going to choose the man I was seriously starting to fall for. I was going to choose hope and promise.

And he could rot in hell for all I cared.

I scrambled around, putting my back to the wall for stability, crouching low so I was harder to grab.

Then waiting as I heard him getting closer.

His footsteps moved in tandem with my heartbeat that I could feel in my chest, my temples, and my neck.

“Stupid bitch. You think you can hide from—“

I wasn’t trying to hide.

I was trying to wait until he was close enough that I didn’t miss.

And when he was, I didn’t even hesitate.

My finger curled, the trigger pulled, and the bullet sailed into his body, sending him flying backward.

I didn’t think.

I popped up.

I moved forward.

I stood over the shadow of him on the ground.

And I pulled the trigger again.

Just to make sure he wasn’t going to be able to get up and grab me again.

I was moving again before I fully understood my intention.

Before I realized what I was doing, I was crouching down at the door, grabbing the little pull thing, and dragging it upward.

I had the good sense at the last second to grab for the pull bar, just barely managing to wrap a couple of fingertips around it since I was still holding the gun. But it was enough of a grip that I didn’t immediately fly out the back of the moving truck as the door went up.

A town flashed before my eyes, just splashes of colors. Stores, apartment buildings.

Nothing was familiar.

It could have been a town anywhere.

I didn’t think we’d been driving for long, but long enough, it seemed, to be out of Navesink Bank.

I had to get out.

Which meant I was going to need to jump from a moving vehicle.

My stomach twisted hard at the idea of how hard the impact could be, how much damage could be done.

Ultimately, though, less than would be done to me if I didn’t jump, if the truck slowed, and the driver came back to grab me.

Decision made, I sucked in a deep breath and tossed the gun, figuring if I survived the fall, I could find and grab it, use it to defend myself until I could get help from Cary.

Then, before I could psych myself out of it, I threw my arms up over my head, protecting my face with my forearms, bent downward to tuck my fragile ribs in a bit more, and threw myself out.

I swear time slowed down as I hovered in the air for one horrifying moment before I crashed and rolled.

The impact stole my breath from me, an all-over sort of sensation that made it impossible to tell if anything was genuinely hurt, if something was broken.

And before I could even think past that pain, there was the burn of the pavement raking over my exposed skin.

It felt like I was being flayed, like my skin was being ripped off all at once.

It seemed like I rolled for forever before I suddenly stopped, flopping onto my back, staring up at the sky.

I needed to get up.

It didn’t matter if something was broken or if parts of me were hanging off. I needed to get up. I could assess the damage later.

When I was safe.

Survival mode re-engaged, I rolled onto my side and sat up, pushing back any of the pain that assaulted me at once, turning in the direction the truck had been driving away from, and moving forward.

To be honest, it was a pathetic hobble at first.

It got faster and faster with each couple of steps as my brain started to kick back in again, as I realized I needed to get as far as fast as I possibly could.

That didn’t mean I did it quietly, though.

Oh, no.

I whimpered as I forced my body into a jog, then was actively crying—tears streaming down my face—as I pushed myself to a run.

I came across the gun what felt like too quickly.

I grabbed it and tucked it in my arm, not wanting anyone who saw me to see it.

The last thing I needed was to be traced back to a murder, even if it had been in self-defense.

Think, I demanded, finding my brain oddly sluggish and uncooperative. Think. What do I need to do?

The voice in my head, when it spoke, wasn’t in my usual, familiar tone.

No.

It was Cary’s voice that spoke in my head.

You need to get off the street.

Right. Yes. Of course.

If the truck circled back, there were sure to see me as I ran down the street, practically begging them to pick me up again.

Decision made, I rushed down the next street, finding myself flanked by tall buildings in various stages of disrepair. Some were just old and unkempt. Others were actively falling apart, and likely hadn’t been inhabited by anything other than rats and raccoons in decades.

They would be the easiest places to get into.

But they would also likely be the first place someone would come looking for me.

Another pathetic whimper escaped me as I cursed myself for leaving my damn phone charging on the kitchen counter back at the apartment.

If I had it, I could make one phone call, and everything would be better. Someone else would come and take over. I could just fall into a bed and cry.

But it was useless to think about that.

It wasn’t the reality I was living in.

I had to save myself this one last time.

No matter what it took.

Trying to suck in a deep breath, I got nearly to the next block when I decided to charge up the front steps of an apartment building where the last person to enter hadn’t pulled the door closed, so it could latch. It kept kicking back in the breeze, giving me a chance to run up and slip inside before it slammed shut.

But I went ahead and latched it, hoping the buzzer might be some form of protection to me.

I didn’t know where I was, but it didn’t seem like the best of areas. And it was highly unlikely that anyone would come to answer the door to someone slamming on it and asking for help.

Because, of course, if someone at your doorstep was in trouble, they were going to bring that trouble into your life.

I couldn’t even be mad about it.

I turned instead, going to the elevator that looked like it had been installed before my parents—hell, my grandparents—were born, and pressed the button for the basement.

It wasn’t perfect.

But it was a place to hide.

To let some time pass.

To maybe give me a chance to find a way to call Cary.

I held my breath the chugging trip downward, then poked my head out, paranoid about some angry-faced super might be hanging around, demanding I get the hell out of his building.

But there was nothing but the groans of the building and the scattering sound I was trying to tell myself wasn’t rats.

The basement was drafty and damp, but I took a certain kind of comfort in how packed it was with random crap. It seemed like a mix of old, outdated vacuums and various tools I didn’t even begin to claim to know the names of or uses for. There was scattered, stained, moth-eaten furniture likely from when tenants moved out and left them behind.

I wandered around the space until I saw a small utility room in the back corner.

It was the most hidden I could get.

I absentmindedly snatched a dusty cushion off a chair as I passed, trying not to think about what kind of filth or creepy crawlers might be on it.

The utility room held a series of mops and buckets, rusted and useless, and a metal shelf with a series of different parts of, I imagined, appliances.

Taking a deep breath, I moved behind the door, tossing down the cushion, then carefully lowering myself down onto it, using the wall to hold myself up.

I probably should have kept moving.

Because the second I stopped, the adrenaline that had kept me numb to all the various pains in my body vanished, and everything burst to life at once.

The throbbing pain on my shoulder, elbows, hips, and knees. From the impact of the fall. Then the burning feeling on my hands, arms, chin, and the side of my forehead where my arm must not have been covering.

Alone, in pain, a little too stunned by the events to think straight, a sort of hysterical cry bubbled up and burst out.

There was no stopping the tears or the way my whole body shook as I was finally able to start to process the fear and uncertainty, the reality of what I’d just been through.

I felt like I cried for hours, for days.

And by the time the tears dried, my face felt raw and my eyes were almost swollen shut.

It was right about then that I heard something. Something that had my stomach tensing, that had my heartbeat slamming in my chest.

The elevator moving downward.

Someone was coming.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Cary

I was in the middle of laughing at some asinine shit that Dezi had just said when the call came in.

I didn’t think much of it when I saw Seth’s name on the screen. He was hanging with Abigail. I figured maybe they had a question about the apartment, or when I might be back.

I was still chuckling when I slid to accept then raised the phone to my ear.

“What—“

“They took Abigail,” Seth snapped, cutting me off, making my heart drop to my fucking feet.

“What?” I barked. And it must have been louder than it sounded to me because every conversation around me silenced at once.

“They took Abigail. In a moving truck. Finn and Louana are down. Breathing, but down.”

“Finn and Louana are shot,” I called to the room, already rushing out the front doors, hearing Dezi at my heels, barking out the address to the apartment to the others who hadn’t been there yet. “Where? Where did they go?” I demanded.

“Took a left out of the street. I have nothing else to give you. I’m sorry. But it was a plain white moving truck with a red triangle on the side. That’s it.”

I hung up as I turned over my bike, peeling out of the lot as the others got on their own bikes to head toward the apartment.

My priority probably should have been Finn and Louana, club members. That was always where my loyalty had been in the past. It was where it likely should have been right then too.

But all I could think about was Abigail.

Who I’d promised was safe.

Who I’d told I would never let anything happen to her.

Fuck.

Fuck.

I flew through Navesink Bank, going in the general direction that Seth had told me about, even though, logically, I knew there was no way I was going to find them. They had too much of a head start. They could be in any direction. They could be moving or hiding out somewhere.

I had no fucking idea.

I’d never felt quite as helpless as I did as I circled around the town again. Not even when I’d had all my rights and freedoms stripped away.

This was worse.

Leagues worse.

Because I knew exactly what was in store for Abigail once Raúl got his hands on her again.

I needed to stop wasting time.

I needed to go back, regroup, think, get some other people involved.

Hailstorm, they had surveillance all over town. They could find the van, they could trace it.

I needed to talk to Chris or Lo.

Decision made, I circled back, heading toward the apartment, finding the street lined with bikes. But no cops. No ambulances.

What the hell?

Didn’t Seth say Finn and Louana were hit?

Even as I thought that, I could see bloodstains on the cement.

I rushed off my bike, flying up into my apartment to find Fallon bent over his little brother’s shoulder, digging in his flesh for a bullet that had seemed to luckily avoid hitting anything vital.

Thank fuck.

“Louana?” I choked out, surprised I could even think of another woman’s name when Abigail was out there, being held by the same people who’d kept her captive for years.

“Bathroom. She’s fine,” Seth said as I fell back against the wall, cradling my head in my hands.

“We thought it was the delivery people with the couch,” Finn explained, then broke off on a curse as Fallon finally got the bullet, yanking it out, then dropping it with a pinging noise in the sink.

“I’m not blaming you,” I said, shaking my head.

For fuck’s sake, there was three of them. If it happened with three of them there to try to protect her, the chances of me having been able to protect her were slim to none.

“That mother fucker,” I hissed, helplessness filling my body, making me turn and lash out, slamming my fist into the wall, feeling it go right through the drywall.

“Whoa, Zaddy, might need those fists,” Dezi said, shaking his head at me. “Don’t go breaking your fucking fingers before you can wrap ‘em around that fucker’s throat.”

He was right.

I wasn’t a lashing out in anger sort of person.

Then again, I’d never been someone who had someone who meant so much to them before.

“I’ve got Chris on the cameras,” Fallon said, giving me a nod as he slapped—yes, literally slapped, because brothers were assholes to each other—the bandage on Finn’s shoulder. “We will find something.”

Yes, we would.

We always did.

But would it be too late by then?

Eventually, Fallon and Valen brought Finn and Louana back to the clubhouse to recover, leaving me, Dezi, Seth, and Voss standing around feeling completely fucking useless.

Until there was the sound of car doors on the ground below, making us all stiffen and draw our weapons.

“Couldn’t see who it was,” Seth said, shaking his head as he looked out the window. “Black SUV. That’s all I got.”

Footsteps sounded on the stairs. Two sets, maybe three. Not in any kind of rush, and definitely not trying to be quiet.

“Knock knock,” A’s voice sounded a second before he pushed open the door, coming in behind a bloodied man he was holding by the back of his collar.

“The fuck is this?” I asked, eyeing the other man who stayed back in the hall, face expressionless.

“Heard there was some trouble ‘round here. Kind of trouble that had lil’ mama getting snatched up, yeah?”

“Yeah,” I said, stomach tensing.

A nodded his head a couple times as he pursed his lips in an expression that, for him, seemed like anger.

“Tell ‘em,” A demanded, yanking back the collar of the man in front of him. “Said fucking tell ‘em,” Andres barked in a cold, alarmingly calm tone just a second before he slammed his foot into the back of the man’s leg, making him go down on one knee.

“Oh, that’s right. You can’t,” A said, smirking in such an evil way that I felt a chill move through me. “Cut that wagging fucking tongue out back at home,” he added, looking over at us. “See, me, I don’t like it when my men start talking shit about my fucking business, you know what I mean?” A asked.

“A…” I said, shaking my head.

“Well, I heard the news,” A said, looking at me. “And it got me thinking about the timing. Which got me thinking about our little meeting. Not all these fucks,” he said, waving toward his two men, “have been with me from the jump. Some came on board more recently. Seems like I put a little too much trust in ‘em. But, see, I got eyes and ears everywhere. So all I had to do was roll back some footage. And guess who I heard talking my shit—and your shit—to Raúl’s cousin?”

“You mother fucker,” I hissed.

“So, me and Al here, we had a little talk,” A said. “And in that talking, heard the plan to snatch lil’ mama in a truck that would meet up at a private landing strip where Raúl would be waiting.”

“Which one?” I asked, reaching for my phone.

“That one over behind the middle school,” Andres said.

It happened before I could even wrap my head around it.

One second, A was just standing there.

The next, he had a gun against the temple of his man.

Then he pulled the trigger.

And blood and brain matter splattered against the wall just a second before the man’s dead body hit the floor.

“Shit, man,” A said, wincing as he ran a hand up the blood on the wall. “Sorry about the mess. It was looking real nice in here. Well, no worries. I’ll have my crew in to clean up and take out the trash,” he told me, actually stepping on the body of the dead man on his way back toward the door. “Go get lil’ mama, yeah?” he said.

And then he was gone.

“I like him,” Dezi declared, getting a snort out of Voss who usually hated him.

I barely waited long enough for A and his men to get out of the way before I was charging down the steps.

Everyone else fell in behind me.

No one stopped to formulate a plan.

We didn’t even stop to ask Fallon if we could handle this.

Dezi and I were motivated by our affection for Abigail, Seth likely by guilt, and Voss, well, he was probably just excited for some action.

The airstrip wasn’t far, maybe ten minutes outside of Navesink Bank.

We probably should have pulled off somewhere and snuck up, taken them by surprise. We had Seth, after all. He could take a shot from damn near everywhere. But I wasn’t thinking clearly enough for that.

All I could think about was Abigail.

And the promises I’d given her.

Ones that I hadn’t been able to keep.

I couldn’t imagine the fear that must have been coursing through her as hands reached out to grab her, as she watched her guards get picked off.

And I knew Abigail. She would worry just as much about them as she did about herself. She would blame herself for putting them in that situation.

I just hoped to hell she didn’t let her mind go too dark, that she somehow convinced herself that she deserved whatever was coming to her because of the innocent people who’d gotten hurt along the way.

She needed to fight.

She needed to hold on just until I could get to her.

“Fuck!” I screamed as I jumped off my bike at the landing strip, finding the plane that was supposed to be there gone.

Along with Raúl.

And, likely, Abigail.

I wasn’t an idiot.

I knew that if I didn’t catch her before she got back to Mexico, that there was no way to protect her from the violence and pain that would come from that man’s hands.

“Hey, yo,” Voss called, letting out a whistle that had me turning to the side to find him pointing toward the line of trees. “Moving truck,” he added as we all started over. “Explain that,” he added, pulling the door up more to reveal the body in the back.

He was shot twice. Once in the abdomen, and then once in his chest.

“That’s the one who took her,” Seth confirmed, nodding.

“Yeah, but then why’s he dead?” Voss asked, moving around toward the front of the truck. “Eh, maybe he was cleaning house,” he declared, grabbing the driver’s side door, and pulling it open.

Another body spilled out.

“If he was contracting out and didn’t want shit tracing back to him,” Dezi said, shrugging.

“Fuck,” I hissed, turning on my heel away from the truck, walking down the tarmac, my hands raking through my hair, trying to think of a single way this didn’t end with all of us—including Abigail—dead.

It would have been one thing if I’d needed to go down to Mexico without him knowing I was even after him. But now? Now, that would not be possible. Eyes would be everywhere, looking for someone like me. If not me in particular. I didn’t know exactly how much information A’s guy had offered over.

If he’d given names, though…

Shit.

Andi and Niro.

Dezi likely already knew he had to be on the lookout, but I had to make sure Niro was keeping Andi safe.

With that in mind, I picked up to call.

“Fallon called,” Niro said.

“If he pointed us out…” I started.

“Yeah,” Niro said with a sigh.

“Sorry I dragged you into this.”

“Don’t apologize. I’d have dragged you in if this situation was reversed. You got a plan?”

“Not yet,” I admitted.

“It would be a death mission to go down there right now.”

It would.

“What other choice do I have?” I asked, exhaling hard.

“You could have Hailstorm set up a mission.”

That could take days.

I had no idea what kind of damage could be getting done to Abigail for days.

That wasn’t an option.

“I know,” Niro said, reading my thoughts. “Keep us posted,” he added, then ended the call.

“Fuck,” I hissed. “I need to get to an airport,” I said, hearing someone coming up behind me.

“You can’t fly with guns. And you’re never going to get a gun down there if Raúl has his men looking for you,” Seth reasoned.

He was right. Of course he was.

“I can’t just stand here and do fucking nothing.”

“I’m not—“ Seth started, trailing off when my phone rang.

“It’s Chris,” she said, cutting to the chase. “I found some chatter online,” she told me.

“Saying what?”

“That someone saw a woman jump out the back of a moving truck.”

“What?” I hissed, heart constricting at the possibility.

That she wasn’t on a plane.

That she wasn’t with Raúl.

That she maybe, possibly, got away.

“Yeah, I mean it’s the social media account to some teenager. And I see nothing else. But who would lie about that?”

“Does it say anything else?”

“Just a lot of ‘no fucking way, man,’ type comments,” she said. “But five minutes on his account said it was either over around Bank Street where he lives, or that basketball court over on Hamilton where he posts videos and selfies all the time. Not much to go on, but if you get feet down in the area, you might be able to get more.”

“Chris, thank you,” I said, voice a little thick with relief and hope.

“Bring her home,” Chris said, hanging up.

“What is it?” Seth asked.

“Some kid saw a woman jump out of a moving truck somewhere between Bank Street and Hamilton.”

Voss’s gaze slid back to the truck.

“Punishment?” he said, shrugging.

“Hear me out, Zaddy,” Dezi said, wiggling his shoulders. “Our girl took out the fucker in the back. Raúl took out the driver for not realizing shit went down.”

“You think Abigail shot him?” I couldn’t picture that. This woman had been beaten down year in and year out. But she’d never once tried to steal a gun and shoot her way out. She’d bided her time instead and took a chance on a risky escape instead.

“Think she’d do anything not to go back,” he said, shrugging. “Let’s go find your girl.”

“Fall out of a moving truck,” Voss mumbled, since all he did was mumble and grumble. “Gotta be banged up.”

“She left her phone at the apartment,” Seth said as we got to our bikes. “She’s probably bunkering down somewhere to make sure no one is looking for her. She can’t call. Safest thing to do is hide.”

That sounded right.

Problem was, the area between Bank Street and Hamilton was full of businesses, apartment buildings, and abandoned buildings.

She could be anywhere.

And it wasn’t likely we were going to get a hell of a lot of cooperation from the locals who knew how shit went in the area, and didn’t want to get involved in some sort of possible street war.

I didn’t give a fuck if I had to burst into every fucking apartment in the area to look for her. No one was going to get in the way of getting her safe, of making sure no one touched a goddamn hair on her head again.

I had no idea what safe was going to mean at this point. Especially now that Raúl likely knew the club was involved. But that was shit I could work out after I had her in my arms again.

It only took us maybe twenty minutes to get back to the right area, and we all parked in the lot of the park, deciding this was best done on foot.

“Blood on the street,” Voss rumbled, jerking his head toward the pavement.

My heart flew into my throat, fearing the worst, before I saw just a couple of red streaks. I didn’t even know how he saw them, let alone decided immediately it was blood.

Then again, I didn’t know much of anything about the man.

“Would run for a bit,” he declared, moving forward to stop at the next cross street. Lifting an arm, he waved down it, asking a silent question.

“Yeah. We’ll start here,” I called to the others.

We didn’t get anything to go on there, so we moved onto the next street.

I was just about to head into a pretty fucking unsafe-looking abandoned building when I heard Dezi call me.

“This miniature human said he saw a bloody woman going into his apartment building today,” he said with his arm draped over the shoulder of a kid of maybe nine or ten who looked equally fascinated by and terrified of the man at his side.

“Hey, bud. Which apartment building?” I asked, waving at the two of them I could see from where I was standing.

“That one,” he said, pointing.

“Thanks, little man,” I said, barely able to keep myself from running in that direction.

“Do you guys have motorcycles?” the kid asked.

“Sure do,” Seth said, nodding.

“Can I see them?”

“Tell you what, if we find our friend, I will bring my bike right here and let you check it out, okay?” Seth asked, waving toward the curb.

“Can I tell my friends?”

“Sure. But you have to promise to wait until we find our friend, okay?”

“Fine,” the kid grumbled, likely used to adults making promises that they didn’t keep.

“I’ll sit here and wait with you to see if they find her,” Seth said, waving toward the front steps of the apartment building as Dezi, Voss, and I moved inside.

I gave him a nod as I moved into the foyer, looking around as if I would find her just sitting there and waiting for me.

“I’ll go up,” Voss said, going toward the stairs without waiting for a response.

“What are you doing? She wouldn’t be in the elevator,” I said when Dezi moved inside it, keeping his foot in the way of the doors so they didn’t close.

“No. But she did use it,” he said, looking up at me, waiting for me to move into the car to see what he was pointing to.

The floor buttons.

Well, one in particular.

With blood on it.

The basement.

Yeah, that made sense, didn’t it?

The upstairs floors risked her being seen by someone who might give her up if the guys came looking for her.

But the basement was likely abandoned and private. It would give her time and space to lick her wounds, to try to figure out her next move.

Dezi moved back to let the doors close as he punched the basement button again.

“At least if we plummet,” he said when the elevator creaked and groaned, which explained why the floor was so damn dusty, like no one had stepped inside it for ages, “we would probably survive.”

The car stopped, the bell chimed, and the doors slid open.

The two of us moved out in unison.

And we both froze in unison too when we heard the hollow click of a gun with an empty chamber.

It was half of a second later that I found the source.

Abigail, standing in the doorway of a small room, her whole body shaking.

But still making her last stand.

“Hey, love,” I murmured, voice soft, not entirely sure she was fully comprehending that it was us standing there. “You’re okay. Put the gun down,” I said. “You’re okay. You’re safe now.”

That last part seemed to penetrate because her arms dropped to her sides as her whole body slumped down, curling into itself as the sobs started to rack her system.

“Shit, man. Tears. That’s your thing. I’ll go find the asshole,” he said, walking backward into the elevator and hitting the close door button a bit frantically, like he was worried Abigail might try to cling to him and cry on his shoulder.

I rushed forward, dropping down in front of her.

The fall and roll afterward had done some damage, but she must have lucked out and jumped when the truck wasn’t moving too fast.

The pavement had torn through her pants, skinning the knees beneath. It had done the same to the arms of her shirt and the skin beneath. And there was a pretty decent gash on her forehead and road burn on her chin.

There were likely going to be bruises everywhere and a lot of soreness.

But she was okay.

Alive.

Away from Raúl.

That was what mattered.

Everything else we could handle.

“Okay, baby, it’s okay,” I said, carefully closing my arms around her, pulling her against my chest.

“Are they okay?” she sobbed, her voice a high-pitched, hysterical sound. “Did they die?”

I went ahead and assumed she wanted to know about Seth, Finn, and Louana, not Raúl’s men.

“Seth is right out front waiting for us. He wasn’t hurt at all.”

“But… but…”

“They got shot, but they’re okay,” I told her, carefully running my hand over her hair.

“It’s my fault.”

“Hey,” I said, voice a little firmer than usual. “Listen to me. Not a fucking thing that happened today was your fault. This was Raúl’s fault. No one else’s.”

“I had to… to… shoot.”

“I know. You did what you had to do to survive, that’s all.”

“Did he die?”

I could have sugarcoated it. But that wasn’t my style. She needed to know the full truth of what was going on.

“Yes. And it looks like Raúl shot the driver.”

“Is he…”

“I’m assuming he’s on a plane back to Mexico. That was where the truck was. At an independent airstrip.”

Though, I very much doubted he was going to stay away.

Especially now that he had more information. He was probably going to go back to let the heat die down, then make another move when he thought we wouldn’t have our guards up.

But I didn’t need to give Abigail all that information. At least not until I got her somewhere safe, got her cleaned up, made sure she was okay.

“Can I take you out of here, love?” I asked. “I really want to check you over, clean you up.”

“Okay,” she said. “Where are we going?”

That was a good question.

The apartment was not an option. First, because of possible fresh bad memories. Second, because there was a body on the floor and blood all over the walls.

I could take her to the clubhouse.

But I got the feeling that she would feel on-display there, and even more guilty when she saw Finn and Louana recovering from their injuries.

“Wanna go back to the hotel?” I asked. “We will bring Dezi and Voss to hang out in the lobby to keep an eye. But, for now, I think we’re safe enough to go there.”

“Okay,” she said, sniffling hard, trying to pull it back together.

We rode the creaky elevator back up to the lobby where we could see Seth out front with a crowd of kids checking out his bike while Dezi and Voss stood back looking a little green at the idea of the kids maybe wanting to ask them questions.

“Thank fuck,” Voss rumbled as we emerged.

“We took a couple trips to get the bikes while we waited,” Dezi said, waving toward mine.

“Appreciate it. We are going to head to the hotel if you two want to come and hang for a bit, just until we’re sure shit has blown over.”

“Got nothing to do,” Voss said, shrugging.

He’d been used to long, tedious work. Because, apparently, he’d been a human junkyard dog at his last job. Just walking around to make sure no one jumped the fence and stole shit.

“I’ll stop and get donuts,” Dezi offered. “You want donuts, don’t you?” he asked, nodding at Abigail.

“I think you want donuts,” she said, finding a small smile, despite the shit day she’d had. “But I’ll have one.”

“Probably want some late dinner too,” Dezi said as we moved toward my bike.

We managed to get a room at the hotel with a river view, but a floor higher than the last one. With one king-sized bed.

“Come on, love,” I murmured, pulling her with me into the bathroom.

I had nothing to change her into, but she had to get out of the torn clothes, so I could clean her up. The robe would have to do until I could get someone to come by and drop off some fresh clothes.

“Sorry, baby,” I said when she hissed and winced when I started to pull off her clothes, leaving her standing there in nothing but a pair of panties.

“Everything hurts,” she admitted, giving me a tired look through her heavy-lidded eyes.

“Yeah, I bet. These bruises are just started to come in,” I said, looking at her arms and knees, then turning her to find some bruises on her shoulders and hips as well. Leaning forward, I pressed a kiss to one of the ones on her shoulder. “I’m so fucking sorry, Abigail.”

“It’s not your fault,” she insisted, voice small, tired.

I imagine after all the adrenaline wore off, she was dead tired from it and all the fear and uncertainty and pain.

“Sh, it’s okay,” I said when there was a knock at the door that had her damn near jumping out of her skin. “It’s probably Dezi,” I added. “Sit. I’ll see what he wants,” I told her, moving out and closing the door behind me.

“She okay?” he asked, handing me a box from the Italian place, packed with what looked like four separate meals in their little aluminum containers. Along with two drinks and a bakery box. The donuts, I imagined.

“Banged up and tired, but yeah.”

“Got this,” he said, holding out a bag. “Creams and bandages, ibuprofen, that kinda shit,” he added, shrugging.

“Thanks, man. I really appreciate it. You and Voss going to be able to get along down there tonight?”

“If we keep the whole lobby between us,” he said, smirking.

“I will figure out a plan after I clean her up, so we can get you guys some relief. Or move the whole thing somewhere else.”

“The night shift girl is cute. I’m good where I am,” he said, eyes dancing as he moved off.

“Dezi brought us some food and stuff to clean you up with,” I told her, grabbing a washcloth and running it under the hot water with one hand as I laid out the other supplies. “This isn’t going to be pleasant,” I added, seeing all the bits of gravel and dirt in the cuts on her arms and legs.

“It will be better than what could have happened tonight,” she said, shrugging.

She was a trooper through my ministrations, only starting to jump and hiss when I’d been working on her for a solid fifteen minutes.

“I think this is good enough,” I told her, giving her thigh a squeeze as I grabbed the triple antibiotic to start smearing it over her liberally before wrapping her with the gauze. “He even grabbed some crackable ice packs if you want them for your bruises,” I said as I helped her into her robe.

“I’m okay,” Abigail said, wincing at her reflection as she followed me out into the room.

“Ibuprofen then,” I insisted, knowing the ache was only going to grow through the night. “Baby,” I called when she took her pills, then accepted one of the meals, sitting off the side of the bed with her plastic fork in her hand, staring off at the wall. “You okay?”

“It’s not over,” she said, her sad gaze slipping to me. “Two people were shot today, two others were killed, and it’s still not over.”

There were actually three bodies, but it was hardly the time to pile on.

“No,” I agreed, squatting down in front of her. “I don’t think it is.”

“He’s not going to give up.”

“Probably not. Until I force him to. And as soon as we get some sleep, love, I’m going to work out a plan to make that happen. This needs to be done. We need to be able to move forward.”

“You’ve done enough already.”

“No.”

“It’s too much.”

“Okay, listen to me. We’re not doing this,” I told her, watching as her gaze found mine.

“Doing what?”

“The whole ‘I can’t ask you to do this, I’m too much of a burden’ bullshit. So I’m shutting that shit down right now. This is not too much. You’re not asking me to do anything, I’m offering. There is a difference. And, yes, you are worth it. Case closed.”

“Cary…”

“It’s not open for discussion, love. That is just how it is. I get that you’ve been beaten down for so long—your whole fucking life, really—and it is hard for you to accept that someone will not only do this for you, but believe you are worthy of all of this and more. But I’m not the kind of man who blows smoke. I’m not saying it just because you’re hurt and scared and need comfort. I mean it.”

“I don’t want anything to happen to you,” she told me, voice cracking.

I wanted to promise her that it wouldn’t. But that wasn’t the kind of life I lived. My job was risky. Handling her situation was risky.

“I’ve been in this life for a long fucking time, love. Longer than you’ve been alive, in fact. And I’ve managed that because I’m careful. I can’t promise you nothing is ever going to happen to me. But I can promise I will do fucking everything in my power to come home to you.”

“Hey, Cary?”

“Yeah?”

“I know this might be too much or too soon. But I think today really… it showed me how easily I could lose this. And you. And I don’t want anything to happen without saying it. Because I need you to know,” she said, her voice gaining strength as she went on. She reached out, placing her gauze-covered hand gently over mine. “I love you. And I think a part of me always has. All the way back to our letter writing days.”

“You know what, baby? I think I fell for you after your third letter. Just took me this long to realize it.”

Leaning up, I pressed my lips to hers. Soft. No expectation. Because she needed food and rest, not sex.

“But we are going to have plenty of opportunities to say that to each other in the future, okay?”

“Okay,” she agreed, but sounded dubious.

She wasn’t wrong to have her doubts.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Abigail

Okay.

I loved Cary.

And I truly, genuinely appreciated the way he was determined to take care of me.

But I swear the man was treating me like I was on death’s door instead of a little banged and scratched up.

I mean, did I totally lean into it for a day or two? Absolutely. I felt crummy. He seemed to truly enjoy making me feel better.

Once all the cuts scabbed over and the bruises stopped being so tender, though, it was starting to drive me a little crazy.

The man wouldn’t even let me get up to get my own socks when my feet got cold.

To be fair, it probably wasn’t just the obsessive caretaking. It was a bit of cabin fever from being locked in the hotel room again.

You’d think that, after being locked in Raúl’s home for ninety-percent of my time the past several years that I would be used to having my world be very small, very enclosed, and more than a little suffocating.

Maybe it was simply because we’d moved on from the hotel already, and that forward motion had felt good, so being back felt like steps in the wrong direction.

It was temporary.

Cary promised me that several times a day.

For the time being, though, everyone thought the hotel with guards on the lower floor was the safest bet.

There was a reason you didn’t see people get kidnapped from a crowded restaurant or event. There were too many witnesses, too many possible Good Samaritans, too big of a chance of getting stopped.

Cary had floated the idea of Hailstorm to me. Which was, apparently, some paramilitary camp with electric fences, dogs, tons of ex-military people with guns, and an entire building made of shipping containers.

Objectively, it was probably the best bet. But it sounded loud and crowded and completely lacking any privacy.

So we’d gone with the hotel.

A choice I was regretting more and more as each hour passed. And then I went ahead and felt super guilty for feeling that way since it was a nice thing Cary was doing, and all the guards who didn’t have to go out of their way to help protect me.

“We’re going to get out of here, love,” Cary said, coming back in from the hallway where he’d gone to take a call. “I just want to make sure we do it right this time,” he said, coming up behind me, and running his hands down my arms.

It was a chaste touch.

But my body started to heat up regardless.

See, Cary was firmly stuck in the “she’s too fragile to touch” mindset. So there had been a lot of snuggling and light caresses, but nothing that went even remotely sexual.

But my body hadn’t felt fragile in a couple of days, so the lack of contact was making me hypersensitive to even the slightest of touches.

I leaned back into him, turning my head upward toward his chin, making him lean down and press a kiss to my forehead.

My hand shifted to slip on top of his, grabbing it, and sliding it up my thigh.

A deep, sexy rumble moved through him as he realized my intention just a second before I pressed his hand between my thighs.

“It’s been too long,” I told him, pressing his fingers inward to make contact with my clit.

“You’ve been too hurt,” he replied, his fingers taking over, rubbing at my clit through the material of my pants and panties.

“Not anymore,” I said, feeling his cock getting hard against my ass as I reached for his other hand, slipping it under my shirt, then sliding it up to cover my bare breast.

Need sparked through my system, flickers of a flame fanned by each swipe of his fingers.

On a growl, his hand slipped up to grab the waistbands of my pants and panties, drawing them down until they fell by themselves to the floor, leaving me bare from the waist down standing in front of the giant window overlooking the river.

There was barely a pause before my shirt was being dragged off as well, leaving me completely naked and him fully clothed.

Which wouldn’t do.

Before he could reach for me again—and it became impossible for me to think clearly—I turned around to face him, reaching up to slide his leather cut off his shoulders, then removing his shirt as well.

It never failed to amaze me just how toned he was, how I could literally sink a fingertip between his muscles, then watch them twitch at my touch.

I’d spent countless hours tracing my fingers over the tattoos covering his skin, learning the stories to the ones that had them, and just hearing the reasons why he’d gotten the others. Still, they fascinated me, begged for me to reach out and touch them.

So I did, tracing one of my favorites. Not because I was attached to the art itself, per se, but because of where it was situated. Over his ribs, but stretching so low down by his hip that it disappeared into the waistband of his pants. Which meant you had to undo them and draw them down to keep exploring.

Cary’s hands curled into fists at his sides as I yanked down his pants and boxer briefs, his body going ramrod straight as my fingers traced back up his thigh and over the tattoo.

Slow.

Borderline torturous.

Completely ignoring the fact that his cock was straining already, that he was as needy as I felt.

Then slowly, I lowered myself down in front of him as I bent my head back, watching his face as my hand closed around his thick length, stroking it to the hilt, then slowly opening my mouth in invitation, waiting for him to make the next move.

On a low, sexy rumble, his hand grabbed the back of my head, pulling me closer, letting his cock slip into my mouth inch by inch. My lips tightened around him, sucking hard as he settled deep.

A muscle ticked in his jaw when I didn’t immediately take over, as he realized what I wanted him to do.

Sucking in a deep breath, his other hand sank into my hair as well, using it to move my mouth up and down on him, letting him set the pace, letting him find what felt best.

It wasn’t long until the slow exploration got harder and faster, until he went from exploring my mouth to fucking it.

“Up, get up,” he demanded, voice tight, hand yanking at my hair, helping me back onto my feet so he could turn me to face out the window.

There was a short pause for protection before he was slamming inside me, taking every last inch of me with one hard thrust.

There was no control then, not for either of us. We were too far gone. It had been too long.

Cary’s hands grabbed my hips, using them to slam me back into him as he thrust forward.

Fast.

Not giving my body a second for the desire to ebb, forcing me up and through the first orgasm so quickly that it caught me off-guard, damn near stealing all the strength in my legs with its intensity.

Cary fucked me through the orgasm before grabbing me as he moved us toward the bed, sitting down off the side with me in his lap, still facing away from him.

“Ride, love,” he demanded as his hand slipped between my thighs, engaging my clit, making desire spark through my system once again as I moved my hips up and down, then around, finding the movement that felt best, then sticking with it as the pressure between my thighs grew to a fever pitch much faster than seemed possible.

“Fuck, yeah, squeeze my cock,” Cary growled as the second orgasm racked my system.

He waited until that orgasm passed through me, leaving me leaning back against him, trying to catch my breath. But then he was grabbing me again, turning me, pressing me back against the mattress, then kneeling in front of me.

Reaching down, he grabbed both of my legs, yanking them upward, and pressing them against his shoulder as he slammed back inside me.

His hand pushed down on my lower belly, the pressure creating a new feeling, a more acute sensation of the fullness inside of me.

And then he started to fuck me.

Not as fast, but hard, making me finally understand why the hotel room’s headboards were mounted on the wall and not actually attached to the bed, because if it was, we would have been seriously disturbing whoever was on the other side of the wall as Cary drove me up one final time, as my whimpers became loud moans, then gasps for air as the third orgasm worked its way through my system, somehow even more intense than the two before.

“Fuck, baby,” Cary groaned as he slammed deep, coming on the tail-end of my orgasm, then collapsing down at my side.

“I missed that,” I admitted, turning on my side to press a kiss to his upper arm.

“Me too, love.”

“Let’s never go that long without it again,” I said, feeling playful in the aftermath of all the oxytocin.

“You’re the boss,” he agreed, shooting me a sleepy-eyed, but satisfied smile. “Maybe we should switch to the clubhouse for a while,” he suggested, reaching out to run his thumb down my jaw. “A change of scenery.”

“I thought Fallon didn’t want me in the clubhouse.”

“That was before his brother got shot. And Louana. He’s invested now. Stop,” he demanded, reading my face. “You don’t need to feel guilty. The club, they understand this shit. Did I ever tell you about how Fallon met Danny?”

“No, actually.”

“Danny had Reign, Fallon’s dad, our president at the time, kidnapped.”

“No way.”

“Yeah way. And Roderick, he met his girl Liv when she stole a shipment right out from under him when he was trying to do a drop. Roan’s girl tried to sneak into the compound to kill him. Trust me, love, everyone there has a different kind of acceptance for the women and the wild shit they tend to bring around the club. No one is going to think twice about your history.”

Well, when he put it that way, it did sort of seem like my issues kind of paled in comparison to the others. And that was only a couple examples. The club, apparently, was full of stories like that.

I probably had nothing to worry about.

“Besides, you’re a part of my life now. You’re going to be around them a lot. The quicker you get to know everyone, the easier it will be to feel like a part of the group.”

That made sense.

The club and all the wives and kids and such, that was a family to Cary. It was important that I stopped avoiding them, and got to know them instead.

I mean, everyone I’d already met had been nothing but nice and understanding.

“Okay. Let’s do it,” I decided. “Now,” I added as I sat up.

“Give a man a minute to recover,” he grumbled.

“Nope. I am going stir crazy here. Let’s get a move on,” I told him, already getting up to collect my clothes off the ground and climb back in them.

With a loud grumble, Cary got off the bed, grabbing his clothes, and making his way toward the bathroom as I started to tidy up the room, putting our clothes in our bags, moving all the garbage to the pail, then sitting and waiting for Cary.

I could hear him on the phone, saying something about bringing the SUV, then something else that was too low to make out.

“In a rush now, are you?” he asked when he reemerged from the bathroom, giving me a soft smile when he saw the bags lined up and ready to go.

“Alright, this is a couple trips,” he said, rolling his neck. “You hang tight, and I’ll be right back.”

“Okey doke,” I agreed, making my way back over toward the view that suddenly looked a lot brighter and prettier now that I knew it wasn’t the only thing I was going to get to see, day in and day out.

Hearing the beep of the keycard and the turn of the handle, I started to turn back.

“Did you forget som—“ I started before the words got caught, strangled, in my throat.

Because it wasn’t Cary.

No.

It was my worst nightmare come to life.

It was Raúl.

Coming into my hotel room.

With a gun aimed at me.

And I was trapped with no way to escape.

Sure, Cary would be coming back. But he had to load the bags into the SUV, if the SUV was even here yet. And, knowing the guys, he was going to stop to talk to them for a minute or two.

Not long. But long enough. Long enough for Raúl to grab me. Or simply kill me.

I was pretty sure I would pick the latter of the two if given a choice.

It was funny, though, how different Raúl looked when I was seeing him through my free, much more worldly eyes.

He wasn’t as handsome as I’d once thought he was. He wasn’t as big or strong or intimidating either. You know, if it wasn’t for the gun.

I guess that was a perk to being around these biker guys. The kind of men you knew could rip you limb from limb when you caught sight of them from across the street.

If you stood a Raúl next to a Cary or a Dezi or a Voss, or any of the others I’d seen, and you were asked who would win in a fight, you wouldn’t even hesitate in picking any of them over him.

I guess when stripped of his fortress and his crew of bodyguards that were willing to do his bidding at any time, he was just an average man.

“You think you can leave me?” he hissed, and I wasn’t so immune to him that the coldness in his voice didn’t send a shiver through my system.

But I didn’t shrink.

The me I’d been just a few weeks ago, she would have curled into herself at the sound of his voice when he was angry.

This me, though, she just felt the shiver and lifted her chin in defiance.

“I did leave you,” I said, proud that my voice didn’t sound shaky.

I didn’t want to talk to him, but I had a feeling that I needed to bide my time, to have a chance of Cary coming back before anything terrible happened.

“Where did that mouth come from?” he hissed. “I thought I beat that out of you.”

“You thought a lot of things about me that were wrong,” I told him, digging my fingernails into my palms because the pain seemed to distract me enough to keep me from freaking out.

“You always believed you had a lot more power than you did. Did you get the gift I sent to you?” I asked, even though my stomach turned over at the memory of actually killing someone.

Raúl’s face went red at that, at realizing he didn’t have the power over me that he used to.

The hand holding the gun was shaking in his fury as he took a step forward.

“A minor inconvenience,” he insisted, trying to calm himself down, wanting to come across as cool and collected, but I knew him too well at this point. I could see right through him. “It has not stopped me,” he added.

“How did you get in here?” I asked.

“You mean because of those dirty bikers stationed here to look for me?” he scoffed. “You’d be amazed how easy it is to sneak in the employee entrance. And to charm some information out of the maids, even sneak one of their room cards off their carts. You thought you’d be safe here. But there is nowhere in the world you can be safe from me.

“I wanted to bring you home,” he went on. “I wanted a few weeks to punish you for what you’ve done to me,” he said, taking another step forward. “To make an example of you to my men. I don’t think I will have enough time for that, regrettably,” he said, inching closer still, and his arm holding the gun had gotten a lot more steady, a lot less likely to miss if he decided to take a shot. “I’m afraid I will just have to kill you here. Maybe I will take a souvenir back home to show my people.”

“You always did like the sound of your own voice,” I said, mainly to enrage him, to distract him, because he’d somehow managed to miss the beep of the door lock disengaging, but I didn’t want him to hear the handle turning.

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” Raúl snapped, taking a threatening step forward, face and neck going red again. “You stupid fucking bitch, I—“

“Care to call me a stupid fucking bitch too?” Hope asked, pressing the muzzle of her gun into the back of Raúl’s head.

Hope.

How was it Hope?

I hadn’t seen her since the night the princesses had hung out with me at the apartment.

“Or are you not feeling so tough now that you’re not the only one with a gun?” she asked, and I maybe had a little girl crush on her right then. She was so cool, calm, collected, and badass.

“You could try,” she said when Raúl’s hand slipped to the trigger. “But you will miss. And I sure as shit won’t.”

“You won’t shoot me,” Raúl said, but he didn’t sound as confident as he usually did.

“Oh, you have no idea what I am willing to do right now,” Hope said, though it was clear to me she was stalling for time. Why, I didn’t know. She had the upper hand. But maybe she just wasn’t willing to kill someone? I had no idea. “I’m pretty sick of your entire fucking gender right now and I’m three hours late on my Midol, so you could say I’m feeling pretty fucking murderous. Alas,” she said, clearly hearing something that I couldn’t as she suddenly moved to the side as Cary charged into the room with Dezi.

The latter rushed forward to grab Raúl’s wrist, twisting it savagely. Even across the room, I could hear the crunch of bones breaking as he grabbed Raúl’s gun just before Cary grabbed a hold of Raúl and shoved him into the bathroom.

Dezi slammed the door shut, but kept himself on the bedroom side of it, acting as a sentry, as if one of us might try to rush in there.

“Took you long enough,” Hope grumbled, waving her gun at Dezi. “I didn’t have a silencer,” she explained.

That was why she hadn’t just handled it herself. Not because she had any actual reservations about doing it. She just didn’t want to create a panic among the other hotel guests, and possibly get herself caught.

“You okay?” Hope asked, moving over toward me with her cool, confident, unaffected gate. Like she wasn’t hearing the slamming noises I was hearing coming from the bathroom.

“I… ah… yes. Cary—“

“Can handle himself,” Hope said, shrugging.

“How did you…”

“I’m still on suspension,” she explained, rolling her eyes. “And I’m going a little fucking stir crazy. So I decided to think of your situation as a case. I had a hunch that he maybe never left.”

“You should—“ I started.

“I did. I did tell everyone.”

But they hadn’t told me.

I knew I had every right to feel angry about that. But I also knew that Cary had been doing everything in his power to protect me. Which, in his mind, meant keeping me from getting stressed out about the possibility of Raúl still being in the country.

“But they were hearing some chatter about him in Mexico. It just didn’t sit right with me. So I have just been keeping an eye. I’ve never seen the schmuck before, but when I saw that guy charming the maids and stealing the key, I had a hunch. I only took so long because I was having trouble getting my own damn key.”

“Thank you, Hope.”

“Psh,” she said, waving a hand. “I should be thanking you. It’s the first time in weeks that I’ve felt like myself. I hate not working.”

There was a low knock, making me turn to find Dezi tapping on the bathroom door, then opening it up, handing Raúl’s gun to, I imagined, Cary.

Then there was a distinctive pew pew pew sound that must have been the silenced gun, before there was complete silence.

“You and me,” Hope said, charging across the room, grabbing Dezi, and dragging him out into the hall, where I could hear her yelling at him like they were a couple having an argument. “You’re always so fucking drunk!” she hollered. “Stumbling all around. Breaking shit. There are other people staying in this hotel, you fuckhead. You’re disturbing the peace. I’m so done with you.”

“Aw, baby,” Dezi slurred. “I love you.”

“You don’t love anyone but yourself,” Hope insisted.

“Where are you going?” Dezi asked.

“To the front desk to apologize for you fucking up the room, asshole. As usual, cleaning up your damn mess!”

God, these people were too freaking cool.

I mean, I was trying to wrap my head around what was going on. Meanwhile Hope and Dezi were creating a cover story for the noises Cary and Raúl had been making in the bathroom, so no one would call the front desk or the police.

On oddly numb legs, I moved across the room, going to the bathroom door, and tapping gently on it the same way Dezi had a moment ago.

“Cary?” I called.

“Baby, you need to go,” Cary said back, a little winded. “It’s safe. Go down to the lobby. Voss will take you back to the clubhouse.”

“No.”

“Abigail…”

I wasn’t sure I was fully prepared for whatever I was about to walk into. But I did know that I needed Cary to know that I was okay with whatever he’d needed to do.

He couldn’t hide that part of his life from me.

It was a part of him.

And if I wanted to be with him in a permanent way, I needed to show him that I could handle it.

Besides, who was I to judge?

I had a body on my conscience too.

Taking a deep breath and steeling my stomach as best I could, I pushed open the door.

Red was what I saw first.

Blood.

On the walls. On the floor. Across the toilet and the bath towels.

Second was the body of Raúl, his upper half inside the tub where his blood was steadily dripping down the drain from the hole in his head.

His eyes were open but lifeless.

There was blood coming from his nose and his mouth and one of his eyes was almost completely red.

I knew what I was supposed to feel.

Shock.

Revulsion.

But the overwhelming sensation that flooded my body was relief. Peace, even.

Because it was over.

Raúl could never come for me again.

I would never have to look over my shoulder anymore.

I was free.

I could live without fear.

I could build a future.

With Cary.

“Love, don’t look,” Cary begged, drawing my attention over to the other side of the bathroom. Where he was leaning against the sink vanity, blood splattered across his shirt, his neck, his face, and even flecked in his salt and pepper hair.

His lip was split and his knuckles were broken open, but otherwise, he seemed to be the one doing most of the damage, not receiving it.

Taking a deep breath, smelling the metallic tang of the blood all around, I moved toward him, reaching out to place my hands on his elbows as I gazed up at him.

“Thank you,” I said, offering him a soft smile.

“Anything for you, love,” he said. “I’m just sorry I—“

I didn’t let him finish that.

I didn’t want his apology.

“I’m finally free,” I said. “We’re free,” I added.

“Almost,” he agreed, nodding.

“Almost?”

Just as he was about to explain, the room door opened again, and a second later, Voss was walking into the bathroom with a backpack in his hand. His gaze moved around the room until he settled on Raúl’s body.

Then he nodded before walking in that direction, reaching inside his backpack to pull out gloves that he slipped on while we stood there in silence and watched. Next out came a giant black bag that he shook open, then started to slide up Raúl’s legs.

“Love, I need you to carefully walk back to the doorway, slip out of your socks, and then step back into the room, okay?” Cary asked, nudging me when I kept watching Voss load Raúl into a garbage bag. “Abigail?”

“Okay,” I agreed, sensing this was important. I mean, if they didn’t clean up the scene properly, there was a chance we could all go to jail, right? I had to do what he said. “Now what?” I asked when I was in the room without my socks.

“Did you get anything on your hands?”

“No.”

“Okay. Then I need you to start packing everything up.”

“I can do that,” I agreed, glad to have something to focus on.

It wasn’t long before Dezi came back.

He went right to work scrubbing down the room itself with a pack of bleach wipes he pulled out of his back pocket.

“Isn’t Cary’s name on the room?” I asked, not understanding why he was wiping everything like the actual room wouldn’t trace right back to us.

“Nah. Different ID,” he said, scrubbing away at the walls, the nightstands, the light switches.

“Come on,” Hope said, stopping in the doorway. “I’ll take you out of here so you don’t touch anything by accident. Is that good with you?” she called toward the bathroom.

“I appreciate it,” Cary called back. “It’s okay. Go with her. We are going to be a while.”

“Okay,” I agreed, nodding, handing half the bags to Hope, and taking the rest with me.

“You alright?” she asked as we got in the elevator.

“I, ah, I think I’m a little numb right now actually.”

“Good.”

“What?”

“I mean, not good-good, but you know, good for me. Big, over-the-top emotional displays… that’s not for me. I’m not good with that.”

“I’m not going to get over-the-top,” I promised her. “Where are we going?” I asked as we walked through the lobby and out to the lot.

“Wherever you want, babe. You’re officially a free woman.”

In that case, I knew where I wanted to go.

“I want to go to the apartment then.”

“You sure? You don’t have bad memories there?”

“I have more good ones than bad,” I said, shrugging. “What?” I asked when I caught her sending me a sideways look.

“Um. Well… let’s just see the place first, okay?” she asked, stubbornly keeping her gaze out the windshield so I couldn’t try to read her.

It wasn’t a long ride anyway.

And before I knew it, we were pulling up front.

“Um… what’s going on?” I asked.

“That’s Andres and his crew,” Hope said, nodding.

“Okay. But why are they at my apartment? Does Cary know about this?” I asked, tensing.

“He does. Look, I don’t know how much of this I am supposed to tell you. So the gist of it is that the last time A was at your apartment, he sort of made a mess. He told Cary he would clean it up. And I guess he’s not done yet.”

“But it’s been days,” I insisted as Hope promptly ignored me and jumped out of the car.

Deciding I had no choice but to follow her lead, I climbed out a bit less enthusiastically, not exactly thrilled about my apartment being filled with men that I hadn’t approved of.

“Oh, shit,” Hope said, having reached the top of the stairs before me, and moving inside the apartment.

I didn’t quite know Hope well enough to tell if that was a good “oh, shit” or a bad one.

Taking a steadying breath, not sure how much more surprise my system could handle, I moved in through the doorway.

To a completely different apartment.

“Oh, my God,” I hissed, looking around.

The board and batten that I’d put up with help from the others had been pulled down and replaced with a slightly higher version and painted so perfectly that it had to have been done with a spray gun, not brushes and rollers like I’d done.

The kitchen had been, well, gutted.

And in its place was the dream kitchen I’d pinned images of.

Even the floor looked different. Like it had been sanded and refinished.

I couldn’t be sure, but the windows seemed replaced.

“Hey, lil’ mama. Ruined my surprise showing up like this,” A said, coming out from the bathroom that, I suspected, looked nothing like the one I’d left behind.

“What… why…”

“Biker boy didn’t tell you?” A asked, brows pinching before he promptly shrugged it right off. “Seems it was my fault that ex-hole of yours found you. I handled that situation. But it felt like I owed you. Besides, when that man of yours handles that situation, I’m gonna be doubling my profits,” he said, shrugging. “Figured dropping some fixing this place up would be good for my karma,” he informed me.

“I… I don’t know what to say,” I admitted, shaking my head.

I needed to sit down.

It felt like someone had just grabbed a hold of the world and given it a good shake.

“She’s had a day,” Hope said, giving A a look that he seemed to have no problem interpreting.

“Know what always helps a day?” A asked as I went ahead and sank down on my couch. That, at least, was the same one I’d ordered, but hadn’t arrived before I’d been taken.

My hands roamed over the fabric, and I found the motion grounding despite the world still spinning.

“What is it with you guys?” Hope scoffed.

I didn’t bother turning around, because not ten seconds later, Andres was moving in front of me holding a little black, square-headed pitbull puppy. With one blue eye.

“You can say no,” Hope insisted, moving in at my side. “I don’t know what it is about the men in this town. An animal is a huge commitment. It’s not a gift.”

“She’s just mad I didn’t bring her one, yeah?” A said, smirking at me as he dropped the puppy onto my lap.

I’d never had a dog.

My parents had considered them pointless.

And Raúl didn’t want me to have any soft, happy spot in my entire freaking life.

So, really, I’d never much considered having a pet for myself.

Sure, I liked dogs and cats and everything else as an abstract, but I’d never factored one into my life.

That said, the second the puppy climbed up my chest to plant frantic kisses across my face, I was a goner.

I didn’t even consider consulting Cary about it.

This was my dog, case closed.

“Is it a boy or a girl?”

“Boy. He has a solid daddy, too. Good guard dog. Listens. Good instincts. If you were mine, I’d want you to have a dog like this,” he added, shrugging.

“A gun is a great protection too. And less slobbery,” Hope insisted.

“Don’t know what you’re doing with your gun, mama, but that thing isn’t gonna keep you warm at night.”

The two of them bickered in a weird, cold, indifferent, snippy way for the next five minutes before Hope demanded A and his guys get going so I could relax after a long day.

I didn’t feel tired, though.

If anything, I felt oddly wired.

“You need to get him food and bowls and stuff,” Hope said. “Andi would have my head if I didn’t remind you of that.”

“Oh, right. Well, maybe when Cary…”

“Babe,” she cut me off. “You’re a free woman now. You don’t need a protection detail. Take some of the cash that has got to be stashed in Cary’s bag, and go spoil your dog.”

“Really?” I asked, finding myself a mix of elated and completely terrified.

I mean, I hadn’t gone anywhere by myself since I was still married. And even then, I’d never really felt free to buy anything I wanted. I always needed to run it by my ex-husband first.

“Yes, really. I mean, I’ll be hanging here, so you don’t need to be worried or anything. But go shop. Get a taste of real freedom.”

I didn’t really need much more encouragement than that.

I grabbed the cash, then the puppy, and made my way down the stairs, and over to the pet store on the same street.

That was where Cary found me what had to be almost two hours later.

What can I say? It was so novel to me. To shop in general, but also to check out all the dog items. I mean there were hundreds of different collar options, rows and rows of treats, special bowls to slow down eating, crates and beds of every shape and size, and, well, I maybe picked up almost every single toy that the puppy showed any sort of interest in.

“I know I should have asked first,” I said, wincing at him when he stopped at the end of the aisle, looking at me.

He’d changed into an all-black outfit that made him look even sexier than usual, and his hair was still wet from the shower.

What he didn’t look, though, was angry in any way.

“Do you want him?”

“I think I might die inside if you said you don’t like dogs,” I admitted, getting a smile out of him as he moved toward us.

His arm went around me automatically, curling me into his side, and pressing a kiss to my temple.

“We can’t have that, can we?” he asked. “I like dogs. I’ve just always lived at a clubhouse, so it wasn’t in the cards for me. He looks like he’s gonna be big,” Cary said, reaching into the cart to touch the puppy’s big paws with their little white spots. Like freckles on his otherwise all black coat.

“He’s afraid of birds,” I informed him. “He jumped and cried when we went past the parakeets.”

“Quite the guard dog, huh, bud?” Cary asked, rubbing his big head.

I knew I would always be child-free in my life. And I’d never really had that little uterus squeeze thing when I saw a cute baby. But when Cary was loving on the puppy? Yeah, all the squeezes.

“Do you have any name ideas?” I asked, watching as Cary mused that for a minute before turning to look down at me.

“What about Kent?” he asked. “Like…”

“Like Kentwood Penitentiary,” I said, feeling the smile pull at my lips.

“Where we first, for lack of a better term, met.”

It was perfect.

He was perfect.

Life, it seemed, might just end up perfect too.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Cary - 2 weeks

“Baby, he’s not mad at you,” I said, trying like hell not to laugh.

Because Abigail was absolutely fucking hysterical, curled up in a ball on the couch next to the dog, stroking his little snout and begging him to forgive her.

“You don’t know that! He doesn’t understand that it was an accident. I can’t tell him I’m sorry,” she added, sniffling.

She’d tossed her phone toward the couch, not realizing Kent was sleeping there, and whacked him on the head with it.

He’d let out a little whimper.

And that was all it took to make Abigail completely lose her shit.

I didn’t want to tell her that there were sure to be many situations in the future when she accidentally stepped on him, bumped him, or hit him with phones or remotes. I was pretty sure that wasn’t going to help the situation.

“I know. You had a hard day, and then you come home and mommy hits you in the head. I’m so sorry. I’m gonna get you a treat. Do you want a treat?”

Kent’s hard day involved his first puppy training class where he was barked at and charged by a chihuahua with a Napoleon Complex. And then a walk home where a seagull flew off a bench post and startled him.

I was starting to question A’s judgment if this puppy supposedly came from great guard dog genes.

Not that we needed a guard dog.

There was nothing left to fear from the cartels.

Once word got out that Raúl was dead, A swept right in to take over this operation, which, in turn, made Abigail even safer than before. If anyone had been left who had continued loyalty to Raúl was… dealt with.

It almost felt surreal that it was all over, that there was nothing else to worry about.

Not that we hadn’t been through enough, but I guess since the original plan that involved going down to Mexico had been so complicated and risky that not having to do any of that but having the situation handled was hard to come to grips with.

To be honest, I’d wanted more time with Raúl.

I wanted to get him somewhere quiet.

And then I wanted to spend hours, or days, giving him a taste of the terror and pain he’d inflicted on Abigail for years.

Granted, I’d gotten some good damage in thanks to a tiled bathroom full of hard surfaces, but I’d been too aware of being not only in a semi-public place where strangers could overhear, but only a room away from Abigail who didn’t need to overhear that kind of violence either.

It may not have been as satisfying as I’d wanted, but it was done. That was the most important part.

It was done and she was free.

To cry about accidentally tossing her phone on the dog.

To have nothing else to worry about in her day than that.

“Okay, you can have two. But don’t go telling your Aunt Andi on me, okay? It’s our little secret.”

Abigail - 8 months

It was strange how easily things just… fell into place.

It seemed like there should have been a lot more drama following the demise of Raúl and his empire.

I mean, to be fair, it could have been an all-out war going on in Mexico for all I knew, but that was Andres’s problem, and no longer had anything to do with us.

It was all just… over.

Six and a half years of my life. All that fear, pain, uncertainty, and hopelessness that seemed never-ending.

It was all over.

All because of one man.

One man I’d gotten a wild hair to write while he was in prison many years before.

I’d had a crisis of faith for many years. But as the weeks stretched on, it seemed like the whole thing was less and less like happenstance, and more and more like pieces in a big design.

What were the chances that I ended up writing to the one man who would have the ability and connections to save me from the man who’d tormented me for years?

And it wasn’t just Cary, either.

It was the perfect combination of Cary and Chris from Hailstorm and Andres and Hope. And, really, all the others who’d been involved, who’d helped.

And all those pieces that brought those people together to this one town, to make connections with one another before I even came into the picture, well, I don’t know, it just seemed too perfect to be anything other than by design.

Maybe all the terrible things in the world were due to the evil so many people harbor in their hearts. But the good? Maybe that was some divine way of trying to make everything better.

I mean, I wasn’t saying I was going to fall back on all my old beliefs. I never wanted to put my faith to rest in a system that was built on shame and fear.

But it felt good to have some faith in the universe again, in something possibly bigger than myself.

Even if it never became more than that. Just a little faith.

It was the way Cary approached it too. He believed in “something” and tried not to do anything to deliberately hurt someone who hadn’t hurt him first. Other than that, he said it brought more stress than peace to his life.

I liked that.

That said, there was very little about Cary that I didn’t like.

Okay, his penchant for putting spinach in literally anything he cooked? That could get a bit absurd. Just let me enjoy my plain pasta sauce in peace. But I also had to appreciate why he was doing it. He took his health seriously. And because I was important to him, he took mine seriously too. So while he encouraged me to eat two pounds of pasta by myself because he knew I was still trying to put on weight, he wanted to make sure I got some vitamins in me as well.

It was sweet.

“I know, buddy,” I said, listening to Kent whine at the window because I’d put up window boxes in the spring and a small family of nuthatches had moved in to nest.

I, of course, thought it was sweet.

But Kent saw it as an enemy invasion.

“They’ll be gone in a few weeks,” I assured him, patting his giant head. He was growing too fast. I suddenly understood why Andres had so many dogs. The puppy stage was so cute, yet fleeting. “Do you want to go see Uncle Dezi and Lola?” I asked, watching as he flew off the couch to zoomie around the room for a minute before landing at the front door, paws down, tail-end up, waiting for me to get the leash.

Because he was in love with Dezi’s little Lola.

Who wanted absolutely nothing to do with his big, clumsy self.

That didn’t deter him, though. He was sure that one day, he might sway her.

It wasn’t a short walk to the clubhouse, but it was a nice day, and the novelty of just being allowed to walk out the front door and head wherever I wanted hadn’t quite worn out yet.

A part of me hoped it never would, that I would always appreciate such a little thing because it made it all the more enjoyable to me.

Navesink Bank had, slowly but surely, become home. It had opened its arms wide and pulled me in, asking me where the hell I had been, begging me never to leave.

I had the distinct feeling that I never would.

I mean, maybe for little vacations here and there.

But always to come back.

To get embraced by this crazy, wild, vast, yet close-knit place.

“Get the fuck out of my face,” Voss growled as soon as I walked in the front doors of the clubhouse.

“Not my fault you’re in my way, fucker,” Dezi said back with a lot less heat.

Just another day in the clubhouse.

The two of them, I concluded, were like brothers who could never get along, but knew they could count on each other if they needed help.

“Boys,” I scolded, letting Kent off his leash to barrel into the room, making a bee-line for Lola in her little baby pink circle bed, getting so excited that he slid in to her side, then immediately rolled onto his back, showing her his belly while she stared at him with dead eyes like she was wholly unimpressed by his display. “Be nice,” I added, smiling when Voss scoffed and immediately walked out of the room. “Kent wanted to come see the ice queen,” I told Dezi.

“She’s keeping her options open,” Dezi declared. “Kent doesn’t even have a job. And he’s afraid of birds. He’s not quite the alpha she sees herself with in the future.”

You had to love Dezi.

“He will win her over eventually,” I told him as Kent snuck a little lick in.

“So did you sign up for all your classes?” Dezi asked, dropping down onto one of the bar stools.

“I did,” I agreed, smiling.

It was terrifying. Especially for someone who hadn’t even attended a typical public school growing up.

College was different, I assured myself.

It was more casual.

Still, I had to admit, I was a mix of excited and absolutely terrified. Maybe especially so since I was going to go so much older than the typical student.

And I had so far to go.

But I had more than half my life ahead of me.

“You going to try to head-shrink me now?” Dezi asked, smirking at me.

“Oh, Dezi, I don’t think I will ever be skilled enough to untangle that web you have going on up there,” I said, patting the top of his head.

“At least you recognize that about yourself,” he said, shooting me a wink.

Yes, I’d decided to go to school to become a therapist.

I had Lo and her daughter Chris to thank for that. They were the ones who had first brought me with them to drop off supplies at the women’s shelter.

I’d spent the entire day there, getting to know some of the women and children, learning their stories, seeing so much of myself in their trauma.

It was then that I decided to start seeking therapy myself. Sure, I had to leave out key details, but I was able to start talking about it enough to begin the work of healing.

It was my therapist who had first encouraged me to pursue my degree if I felt so “pulled” to do so, to try to help other women who had been through something similar.

I hadn’t said anything for weeks.

Until it became the dominant thought in my head when I woke up, and what I was thinking about before I went to sleep.

That was when I floated the idea to Cary who couldn’t have been more encouraging.

Because, well, that was just how Cary was.

He’d been very clear from the beginning that I didn’t need to work. That if I wanted to be a stay-at-home dog mom, then he was perfectly happy with that situation. But that if I found something that lit a fire under me, that I was passionate about, then that was what I should pursue. Not for the money, but for the fulfillment.

That was what I truly believed working with survivors of domestic violence would be for me.

Fulfilling.

So I was charging forward. With all my fear and all my doubts, but a lot of hope as well.

Maybe one day, I could help other women like the women in the “girls club” had helped me, several of whom had come from terrible situations as well.

Because while a lot of people could empathize with what you’ve been through—and that was lovely—it was something very different to have someone who relates to what you endured, who had struggled to find themselves and their way up after getting free.

I wanted to be that person for other women. But also with an education toolbox to whip out when the situation called for it, full of insights and the right things to say.

Sure, it was going to be a good six years of my life before I got there. But until then, I was volunteering at the women’s shelter.

And, well, enjoying my life.

Getting used to the town.

Hanging out with the princesses.

Going to self-defense classes.

Learning to become a part of the Henchmen family

And, of course, loving and being loved by Cary.

“Hey, love,” Cary said, coming in from the basement, eyes widening to see me. “I didn’t know you were dropping by.”

“Kent needed to see his girlfriend,” I told him, waving over to where Kent had stubbornly placed his giant head on Lola’s tiny foot, and promptly pretended to act like he was asleep so he didn’t have to move. “And I’m always happy to see you,” I added as he came up to me, wrapping his arms around me, and drawing me close.

“It has been a whole five hours,” he agreed, voice grave.

“I practically forgot what you looked like,” I agreed, getting a low chuckle out of him before he sealed his lips over mine.

“Well, we can’t have that, can we?” Cary asked, nipping my lower lip. “Want to get the full picture?” he murmured, voice velvet.

“Always,” I agreed, letting him take my hand and drag me down the hall to his bedroom.

“You’re just going to trust me with your child?” Dezi asked. “Interesting choice,” he added as we disappeared into the bedroom.

We barely got the door closed before Cary’s hands were yanking at my clothes, dragging my pants and panties down my legs, then dropping down in front of me. He reached for my leg, drawing it over his shoulder, then closing his mouth over my sex.

He was always enthusiastic when he went down on me, like he was a starving man, and I was the best feast he could imagine.

My hands slammed down on the top of his head, holding on as he expertly drove me up with his tongue and lips then, as I got closer and closer, his fingers inside me.

“No!” I cried when, at the last possible second, he yanked away, looking up at me with self-satisfied eyes, knowing how close I had been.

He’d never made me wait before. He hadn’t ever been a man to tease and deny. If anything, he seemed to enjoy seeing how many orgasms he could give me during a session.

A low chuckle moved through him as he got back to his feet, reaching down to draw my shirt up, then reaching around me to work my bra free.

His hands reached for mine, pulling me with him as he walked backward toward the bed.

He lowered himself down, but held me at arm’s length, his hungry gaze moving over me.

He did this a lot. Especially since the many months of being fed high-calorie and high-fat meals had finally packed on my missing pounds. And then some.

I constantly caught him looking at me, like he couldn’t get enough of me since my bones sank down below some healthy padding.

He was always running his hands over me too, getting to know the new curves, letting me know how much he appreciated them.

I’d always been shy about my nudity during my marriage. Then, with Raúl, my nakedness had become a source of shame and humiliation.

It was unexpectedly comfortable to be bare with Cary, to be exposed and vulnerable, because I knew he would appreciate it and show me how much he loved it.

There was so much empowerment in that.

So much, in fact, that I dropped one of his hands, but used the other to do a slow, sexy spin. My sex clenched hard as a low growl of approval moved through him before I finished the turn.

The heat in his gaze intensified as I lowered myself down in front of him, running my hands up his thighs, then working his pants free, and pulling out his straining cock, and closing my mouth around him.

He let me work him for a long time before he grabbed a handful of my hair that was slowly but surely growing in, and yanked me up.

A savage curse escaped him as my gaze found his.

He said nothing else, just dragged me up onto his lap, and slipped his cock up and down my cleft before pressing it against the entrance to my body, waiting for me to slide down his thick length.

“Faster, baby,” he demanded, voice rough, after I started to ride him slow and tentative because I knew it would drive him crazy, would give him a hint of the unmet need he’d given me a moment before.

When I didn’t immediately comply, he let out a grumble as he dropped flat on the mattress, grabbed my hips to hold them into place, and started to thrust up into me.

Fast.

So freaking fast that the orgasm built and built then exploded through my system before I could even brace myself for it, leaving me crying out his name as I fell apart.

He followed with me, slamming deep, and coming with my name on his lips.

“Never get sick of that,” he mumbled a while later, his hands running through my hair.

“Me either. But I’m still going to make you pay for that eventually.”

“Love, I’m fucking looking forward to it,” he told me, making a giggle escape me. “You got anything going on tomorrow?” he asked.

“Ah, nope, not that I can think of. Why?”

“Because I have a surprise for you.”

“What kind of surprise?”

“If I told you that, it wouldn’t be a surprise,” he said, rolling his eyes at me when I pushed up to look down at him. “It’s a good surprise, I promise,” he told me. “But you will have to wear a blindfold,” he warned me, knowing that was the kind of detail I would need ahead of time.

“Ah… okay.”

“Just for a couple minutes,” he assured me.

“Okay,” I agreed, nodding.

I had no reason to be worried.

I trusted him.

Literally with my life.

I could trust him with a blindfolded me if it meant some kind of fun surprise.

“Okay,” he agreed, eyes soft.

Cary - 8 months and 1 day

I knew the blindfold was making her anxious.

In general, surprises put her a little on edge. Which was understandable after all she’d been through.

But I knew this would be worth it.

So many pieces had just fallen into place at once.

First, I was going through some of my old shit, and I found it.

The letter.

And it lined up with a very specific date.

And then I saw the ring.

It was like the universe was pushing me to do it now.

Sure, I could have waited another year for the next anniversary of the day.

But it felt right.

I had no doubts about us.

She hadn’t shown me any either.

It was now or never.

So I got the plan into motion.

I reserved the hotel.

I got the blindfold, with some help from Billie.

“Not too much further,” I assured her, giving her hand a squeeze as we moved through the eerily silent lobby.

I’d reached out to them before and asked them to not spoil the surprise. They’d been all-too-happy to agree. Everyone wanted to be a part of a big, romantic event.

We’d moved into the elevator.

“Don’t be nervous,” I urged, even if my own nerves were a little raw.

I’d never been a nervous person. I didn’t stress about shit.

But if there was one thing a man could worry about, it was the love of his whole damn life turning down a future with him.

“I’m only a little nervous,” she admitted as the doors opened, and we made our way across the hall.

It was the first room we’d stayed in.

Not the one I’d killed Raúl in.

Both were significant to us, but I didn’t think the place I murdered someone in screamed romance.

I slipped the keycard into the door, praying she didn’t know the secret yet.

Pushing the door open, I saw something unexpected.

Hope.

In the middle of spreading pink rose petals—Abigail’s favorite—not only over the bed, but the nightstands and the desk. And that was on top of the dozen or more vases of flowers spread around everywhere. And the bucket of champagne and flutes.

Hope.

The woman who claimed not to believe in love. And yet always found herself wrapped up in everyone else’s love stories.

Her finger rose to her lips as she silently grabbed her keys and tiptoed toward the door.

Thank you I mouthed to her as she passed.

She completely ignored that. And, I imagined, would pretend like she had no part in this big event if I ever brought it up again.

The door closed, prompting me to move Abigail into place as I moved around her.

Reaching into my pocket, I drew out the ring, then got down on my knee.

“Okay, love, take off the blindfold,” I encouraged.

Abigail took a slow, deep breath, then reached up to pull it off.

Her eyes fluttered open a second after the blindfold moved away. And I got to watch the surprise and disbelief as her eyes moved around the hotel room. And then, finally, fell on me.

“It’s November tenth,” I told her. “This is the date of the first letter you sent to me,” I said, watching as her lower lip trembled a little as I flipped open the box. “And this is the ring,” I added as she moved closer to look in the box.

She’d told me once, a year or so into writing, about this ring she’d found at a store, one she talked about with so much longing. Because she knew she wouldn’t be allowed to buy herself something like it.

I imagined the one she saw was fake, but the one I’d come across was genuine. A simple round diamond on a band made of rose gold vines with little pink diamond side stones dotted on the vine like flowers.

“Oh my God,” she hissed, dropping down onto her knees in front of me, both hands reaching toward the box. “How did you…” she started, looking up at me with tears in those gorgeous gray eyes of hers.

“Fate,” I said, shrugging. Because there was nothing else I could have called it.

I’d never seen a ring like it in my life before.

And what were the chances of me coming across the exact replica of the one she’d once wanted so badly just at the right time?

It seemed a hell of a lot like a grand design to me.

“Fate,” she agreed as the first tear slid down her cheek. “Yes,” she said, nodding. “Yes, it was fate. And just… yes. A thousand times yes.”

I slipped the ring on her finger before sealing my lips over hers.

Only to move back when she, unexpectedly, let out a laugh.

“What?” I asked, smiling when she struggled to compose her face.

“It’s just… I’m really, really glad you went to prison,” she said, smiling.

“I never thought I would say this, love, but so am I.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

IF YOU LIKED this book, check out these other series and titles in the NAVESINK BANK UNIVERSE:

The Henchmen MC

Reign

Cash

Wolf

Repo

Duke

Renny

Lazarus

Pagan

Cyrus

Edison

Reeve

Sugar

The Fall of V

Adler

Roderick

Virgin

Roan

Camden

West

Colson

Henchmen MC Next Gen

Niro

Malcolm

Fallon

Rowe

The Savages

Monster

Killer

Savior

Mallick Brothers

For A Good Time, Call

Shane

Ryan

Mark

Eli

Charlie & Helen: Back to the Beginning

Investigators

367 Days

14 Weeks

4 Months

Dark

Dark Mysteries

Dark Secrets

Dark Horse

Professionals

The Fixer

The Ghost

The Messenger

The General

The Babysitter

The Middle Man

The Negotiator

The Client

The Cleaner

The Executioner

Rivers Brothers

Lift You Up

Lock You Down

Pull You In

Grassi Family

The Woman at the Docks

The Women in the Scope

The Woman in the Wrong Place

Golden Glades Henchmen MC

Huck

Che

McCoy

STANDALONES WITHIN NAVESINK BANK:

Vigilante

Grudge Match

NAVESINK BANK LEGACY SERIES:

The Rise of Ferryn

Counterfeit Love

OTHER SERIES AND STANDALONES:

Stars Landing

What The Heart Needs

What The Heart Wants

What The Heart Finds

What The Heart Knows

The Stars Landing Deviant

What The Heart Learns

Surrogate

The Sex Surrogate

Dr. Chase Hudson

The Green Series

Into the Green

Escape from the Green

Seven Sins MC

The Sacrifice

The Healer

The Thrall

Costa Family

The Woman in the Trunk

The Woman in the Back Room

DEBT

Dissent

Stuffed: A Thanksgiving Romance

Unwrapped

Peace, Love, & Macarons

A Navesink Bank Christmas

Don’t Come

Fix It Up

N.Y.E.

faire l’amour

Revenge

There Better Be Pie

Ugly Sweater Weather

I Like Being Watched

The Woman with the Ring

CHAPTER NINETEEN

JESSICA GADZIALA IS a full-time writer, parrot enthusiast, and coffee drinker who has an unhealthy obsession with acquiring houseplants. She enjoys short rides to the book store, sad songs, and cold weather. She lives in New Jersey with her parrots, dogs, bunnies, and a whole flock of chickens.

She is very active on Goodreads, Facebook, as well as her personal groups on those sites. Join in. She’s friendly.

CHAPTER TWENTY

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Table of Contents

Title

Rights

Family Tree

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty