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  “Shut up,” I growl and fuck her deep enough that whatever the hell she was going to say turns into this hushed whimper.

  She looks back at me over her shoulder and smiles.

  “I love it when you’re angry. Fuck me harder.”

  I grab her hair again and pull her head back. I know she’s trying to get in my head, but this isn’t anything more than a fuck. The only hold she’s going to have over me is when her pussy clamps around my cock. That’s it.

  I press my hips into her ass, letting the come that’s boiling inside me release into the tight, wet embrace of her pussy. She moans the second she feels it and brings her thighs together tight, cinching her grip on my cock.

  I shut my eyes.

  My heart is surging in my chest like a runaway train and everything I have is emptying into her.

  I come down to earth after what feels like ages.

  And I see her crooked grin shining back at me.

  “I love it when you’re angry. We should hate-fuck more often,” she says.

  Shaking my head to clear the cobwebs, I point to her clothes. “Get dressed. Let’s go.”

  “What? No cuddling? No enjoying the afterglow?”

  “Fuck that. You have thirty seconds or I’m leaving you,” I say, already pulling on my jeans.

  I start an audible count. Sharp, hard numbers with the same malicious intent that would make every one of my old drill sergeants proud.

  She makes it with two seconds to spare.

  It makes me smile to see her legs wobble as she moves around. No matter how tough she acts, she’s feeling it. And she’ll feel it again before I’m done with her.

  I start the bike to life and we roar down the road. Miles go by in a blink and we scream to a stop in the driveway of my beat-up bungalow, gravel and dust kicking up everywhere as my wheels chew up the earth.

  I don’t pause to help her off the bike I don’t offer her a hand. I motion for her to follow me to the house. She grabs her things and jogs to catch up to me.

  “Thank you,” she mumbles as I grab the duffel bag from her.

  I grunt in reply.

  I open the door and lead her inside.

  “There’s the bathroom,” I say, pointing across my small living room to the first door down the hallway leading to my bedroom. “Kitchen’s over there, and there’s a closet further down the hallway where you can unload your things.”

  “And where’s the bedroom?” she says, resting her hand on my shoulder.

  I look down at her hand, then toss her duffel bag onto my ripped leather sofa. “Your bed’s right there. Good night.”

  There’s a look of surprise on her face. She might even say something. But I don’t hear it. I head down the hallway and slam the door to my bedroom behind me.

  Fucking her might’ve calmed me down and soothed my raw nerves from Gunney’s bullshit assignment, but there’s no way in hell I’m letting her sleep with me.

  This is just sex. And that’s all it will ever be.

  Chapter Eight

  Selena

  The couch is a battered, tattered thing. A patched leather island in a sea of beer cans and liquor bottles that somehow manages to hold itself together despite looking like it was assembled by a blind man who was read the IKEA instructions through a busted walkie-talkie.

  No matter how heavy my eyes get, I hardly get any sleep. This couch is as uncomfortable as an awkward teenager watching a movie’s sex scene with their parents in the room.

  I spend the night with a steel bar massaging my back through a half-deflated cushion. Maybe I sleep an hour or two, thanks to Jarrett having fucked my brains out.

  At least an hour before the sun’s supposed to come up, Jarrett’s up and moving. There’s a commotion from his bedroom, a restless thump-thump-thump that stretches on for nearly twenty minutes. Working out, probably

  This isn’t how I pictured my night with him going. I didn’t expect — or want — a night holding each other, but I thought I’d earned something better than a shitty collection of leather cushions and steel bars for a bed.

  He comes out of his room, wearing only a pair of jogging shorts, with sweat on his brow and glistening on his chest. He seems in even better shape, physically, than when I last saw him.

  “Morning,” he grunts as he walks past me.

  A scent of whiskey wafts around him.

  “Are you still drunk?”

  There’s no answer except the slamming door behind him as he steps outside. Through the living room window, I watch him jog off into the woods.

  I start clearing some of the mess while he’s gone; tossing the cans and bottles into the recycling bin, taking out the garbage out to the bins at the end of his driveway, and digging through every single one of his kitchen cupboards to find some cleaning supplies so I can wipe down every shamefully messy surface I can reach.

  This isn’t how I envisioned his home. I didn’t expect much from him, but for a man who always made time to work out even when we were living together in Reno and raising hell, this place is a shambles.

  I get the kitchen and living room serviceably clean and have a cobbled-together breakfast on the stove by the time he gets back from his run.

  Two steps in the door, he stops and looks over the room.

  Sweat highlights every muscle on his chest, his six-pack abs and pecs standing in sharp, sweat-shiny contrast.

  How can someone who takes such good care of himself in that way, be so bad at taking care of his home?

  “What the hell did you do?” he says.

  “Cleaned up your mess. For a former military guy, you sure keep a messy house.”

  “I don’t need your help,” he says.

  Though he has no problem taking the plate of scrambled eggs and bacon that I put in front of him. It’s gone by the time I get back from the stove with my own plate.

  “You live in a shitheap. You’ve got no problem picking up a gun, but you can’t pick up a broom?” I say.

  “If you’re going to be so ungrateful, I can dump you right back in that motel you were staying at,” he says. “You can disappear again, I wouldn’t mind. Hell, you’d be doing me a favor. And this time, I wouldn’t have to take a bullet to get rid of you.”

  I come within an inch of throwing my plate of breakfast at him.

  “You had to get shot. You remember the plan. It had to look real. When Hard Drop and the other Devils went over the security footage, they had to see me actually hurt you when you broke in and robbed the place. I was the only one working that night — it was my job to clean up and lock up — and if they saw me helping you instead of fighting back, we’d both be fucked. They had to think it was just some lone lunatic who actually had the balls to rob the most dangerous club in town.”

  “You didn’t contact me. Not a single fucking word. It was fucking selfish. I dropped the cash off where you told me while I still had a bullet in my gut. I managed to get my ass to a fucking hospital two towns over and nearly died of blood loss. You just disappeared. I thought you were dead.”

  I breathe in. He’s not angry, though he’s doing a good job of projecting a front. The hurt in his words is plain as day to anyone who knows how to listen for it.

  “Jarrett, honestly, I couldn’t have expected everything to work out so shitty. I should’ve said something. I should’ve reached out. If it weren’t for you, I’d still be a fucking slave in Reno. I owe you more than you know,” I say. His hard eyes soften just a bit; just enough to tell me that my words have found their target. “I didn’t talk to you because it was too dangerous. I got Jake, I told the Devil’s Riders I needed some fucking space after what happened, and then I bought my fucking freedom and got out of town. I had to get somewhere safe.”

  Silence hangs between us for a second. Heavy silence. He looks at me with eyes full of hurt and anger.

  “Two years, Selena. Two fucking years. You have no idea just how deep I hate you for that. And you can’t even fucking say ‘thank you’.
I bled for you and then I lost you, just like that,” he says, snapping his fingers.

  I have to give him something. I swallow and force my voice to quiver. “I really need your help, Jarrett. This is serious.”

  The chair squeals across the floor as he abruptly stands up. Leaving the table, he heads to one of the kitchen drawers and throws it open. He rummages around until he withdraws a small set of keys. He tosses them to me. “One’s for the front door. The smaller one’s for a spare bike out back. Don’t fuck with my house again, or you’ll regret it.”

  I look at the keys in my hand, then back to him. He gives these away, just like that?

  “Are you serious?”

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself and thank me. The bike needs a lot of work — it’s a project — but it’s yours while you’re here. Don’t take it over 45 because the transmission acts up like a son of a bitch. And go easy around corners,” he says. “I have this thing in Tacoma I have to take care of. I’ll be back later.”

  Jarrett leaves me, standing there, gaping at the keys in my hand, unable to speak as he quickly grabs his things and slams the door behind him on the way out.

  He hates me. But he’s given me the keys to his house.

  “Thank you,” I say to the empty room.

  Everything is going exactly to plan.

  Chapter Nine

  Jarrett

  It’s a mistake to take her in. I should’ve known I wouldn’t get over my anger towards her with just a simple fuck. And for everything I’ve done for her, she can’t even say a simple fucking ‘thank you’.

  Selena Ambrose is a merciless bitch. And that’s one of her better qualities.

  Two options spin through my head on the ride into Tacoma to see the caterer at The Bellhaven: I can kick her out, or I can let her stay.

  One will give me the joy of seeing her ass as she walks away. But comes with the drawback of knowing that whatever trouble has her spooked could end up killing her. I don’t think I’d shed a tear for losing her, but it’d rip me up inside to know her son, Jake, would be without a mom.

  The other option is to suck it up and deal with her.

  Neither one of those is too appealing, but I don’t want to think of her kid growing up without a mom. He’s had a rough enough life as it is.

  The parking lot at The Bellhaven is near capacity, even though it’s a weekday morning. Though there are a couple spots open, I circle the block a few times.

  I hate coming into town like this. I hate crowds. Especially crowds of people I don’t know. And especially when I’m fucking sober. Or sober enough.

  There’s too many variables and too many potential threats to just barge in. So I pull up on the sidewalk adjacent to the parking lot and look things over. A little recon saves lives.

  It takes a while — looking over the vehicles in the lot, looking through the windows from my spot on the sidewalk — but fifteen minutes later I head inside.

  The restaurant is huge, modern, with shining tile floors, a large open kitchen battlefield filled with sweating staff and the cacophonous clamor of kitchen utensils clanging against each other in frenzy. Men shout rapid-fire orders at one another. Every so often, a burst of flame erupts from an open-air barbecue pit, over which rotate various meats and, hanging further up, a variety of fish — salmon, mostly — hang, soaking up the smoke.

  It’s a fucking nightmare. Just watching it makes me tense. My heart rate surges and my fists clench so hard my knuckles pop.

  I pull my eyes away from the kitchen and look over the rest of the restaurant.

  Against the far wall, there’s an old-fashioned bar, carved from a single piece of wood and, probably, stained to look aged. This place is packed to the gills. Civilians crowd in booths, mewling children scamper about, groups huddle near the exits and others meander through the restaurant going from table to bar and back again. All around my position at the front of the restaurant, families sit on benches, waiting for their turn to be called.

  From somewhere in the kitchen, an explosive metallic clamor bursts through the air as a pot clatters to the floor. Shouts erupt. It’s chaos. Noisy, grating chaos.

  “Can I help you?” says some barely-legal woman with her brown hair pulled back in a ponytail and an obnoxious piercing in her nose. “We’re pretty busy right now, so if you’re looking for a table, it’ll probably be at least half an hour. Unless you have a reservation. Then it’ll still be ten minutes or so.”

  “I wanted to see the chef about a catering job.”

  “You’ve got good timing. Chef Nick is on break right now, so he should be back in his office. It’s through the kitchen. There’s a marked pathway. Just don’t touch anything, all right?” she says, before she motions at a family and leads them away to their table.

  I nod and look back towards the kitchen.

  There’s no way I’m going through there.

  Another waitress — this one maybe in her mid-twenties — comes by my place at the front of the restaurant to fetch another family. I reach out and grab her by the sleeve.

  “Excuse me,” I say, doing my best to sound friendly. Though I’m pretty sure I sound like one of those ‘show me to the manager’ assholes. Which, in this case, I suppose I am. “Can you get the chef for me? I want to hire him for a catering job.”

  She deftly spins out of my grip and motions for her target family to follow her. “Sorry, sir,” she says. “If it’s a job thing, just go on back. It’s cool.”

  “You don’t understand. I need you to get the chef for me. Can you please do that?”

  I’m forced to beg. Saying ‘please’ to some ponytailed princess in a tight skirt.

  No answer.

  She leads the family away and I’m left up at the front door with six other families of gobshits gaping at me. I can feel their eyes on me; their judgment and their ridicule slither across my skin.

  It’s a small thing to walk back there. Any single one of the people sitting up here can do it, even the fucking four-year-old kid who seems enamored with the boogers he thinks he’s sneakily snatching from his nose and flicking at his justifiably-upset sister.

  But I can’t.

  I can walk the streets of a city intent on killing me. I can subject myself to years of training, honing myself into a lethal weapon. I can face gunfire without flinching.

  But I can’t walk down that fucking hallway. I can’t through that fucking crowded kitchen.

  My skin is crawling with disgust and revulsion. Rancorous and vile thoughts dig their claws into my heart and mind.

  This is beyond me.

  This simple task — something that should be so easy — makes me want to scream in anger.

  I don’t feel the door shut behind me. I don’t hear my bike rumble to life beneath me. I’m on auto-pilot, my consciousness not surfacing until I’m in the driveway to my home.

  Until the door to my garage closes behind me.

  Until I have a bottle in my hand.

  Whiskey turns to burning bile as it slithers down my gullet.

  I shut my eyes.

  Breathe.

  Another drink.

  Fucking breathe.

  Again.

  Shame and fear swell in my chest. My thoughts drift to the disappointment I’d see in my brothers' eyes if they knew even half the measure of weakness in my heart.

  Another drink.

  Fucking coward.

  Pathetic.

  Failure.

  I swallow every vile word. Gulp down every noxious sentiment.

  It’s a wicked thing to feel so powerless. To have these thoughts gnaw and consume you until you’re certain to your core that this shattered thing is exactly who you are and the best you can do is scream silently into the void inside you. To feel so mercilessly broken in the soul and that the only thing to bring any relief is to break yourself further.

  I’m going to drink myself into a hole.

  Another swallow of whiskey.

  “Jarrett?”

/>   I whirl and curse myself for fixing the hinge on my garage door.

  God damn WD-40 is too fucking good at too many things.

  The bottle leaves my hands unbidden. I hurl it through the air and it crashes into the wall next to her and shatters into a thousand pieces. Whiskey and droplets of her blood from a dozen little glass cuts drip onto the uneven concrete floor.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  It doesn’t sound like my voice leaving my throat. This voice is nasty, hateful; it’s a vicious, roiling, contemptuous thing that would have no problem strangling her.

  She doesn’t waver. She faces me unafraid. Not a sign of fear or pain evident on her face, though blood oozes from a cut in her shin.

  She keeps her hands by her sides, open.

  “You were gone an hour and I thought you were going to be gone longer. Then you came tearing back here. It sounded like something was wrong,” she says, her voice as calm as a placid lake on a breezeless day.

  I look down at the pool of liquor on the concrete floor.

  I wish I’d had the sense to empty the bottle before I’d thrown it.

  “I’m fine.”

  She cocks her head to the side. “You don’t look fine.”

  “Did I stutter? I said I’m fine.”

  “You can talk to me.”

  “Just get out. Take the bike, go into town, do whatever the fuck it is you need to do to get back on your feet,” I say, my eyes scouting the room for something else to throw, something else to scare her and get her to leave.

  “Don’t think for a fucking second that I judge you. Don’t think for a fucking second that I don’t understand. You saw me at my worst back in Reno — a single mother working every single day for the men who killed her brother, her friends. You think I didn’t hate myself? You think I didn’t feel so much shame whenever I had to face my son with bruises on my face, or the marks of some outlaws pawing hands on my body?” she says. Her eyes are deep hazel pools filled with understanding and compassion. Her voice washes over me, cooling my rage. “You saw how fucked up I was, yet you took my hand and you lifted me out of that shit. You don’t know how grateful I am for that. It is the kindest thing anyone has ever done for me.”