Huck Read online

  But I couldn't shake the strange uneasiness in my stomach as I shot off the bed, rushing over to my computer, shaking the mouse to wake it up.

  Nothing seemed off, though. Everything was just as I had left it.

  "What's the matter?" Huck asked, making me jump.

  "What? Oh, nothing," I said, putting the screen to sleep, then reaching up to slide the camera guard over the lens before turning back to Huck.

  "Thought you were about to play your game." His smile was lazy as his gaze moved over my naked body. "Your version of having a cigarette," he added, moving over to the bed, pulling back the covers to climb in, patting the side next to me.

  "I usually play to relax," I told him, walking back to the bed, slipping under the covers. He reached out, yanking me to his side, his palm resting just above the triangle of my sex, an oddly possessive gesture I reveled in for a long second. "I'm already pretty relaxed," I added.

  Another sexy chuckle moved through him at that. "I'm crashing here tonight," he informed me, making no room for argument.

  "Well, it is your bed," I agreed.

  "Less about the bed, more about the company," he told me. Those words were hardly a sonnet, but they made my heart feel like it tripped in my chest, falling and skittering around.

  And, oh, I knew that feeling far too well.

  It was dangerous.

  It never seemed to lead anywhere good.

  And I knew the chances of it leading anywhere at all with Huck were slim to none, but I couldn't seem to talk any sense into myself as he shifted down on the bed, pulling me onto his chest, his arm draping possessively around me.

  I should have shifted away, moved to the far end of the bed, waited for him to fall asleep, then gotten up, moved away. Away from him, away from my growing feelings, just away. Because I knew what was in store for me if I stayed.

  Feelings.

  Then heartache when it all fell apart.

  "Learning to ride tomorrow," Huck told me, voice rough with the sleep that was gaining on him.

  "Yes," I agreed, smiling.

  It was useless to fight it.

  I knew me.

  My heart was going to get involved whether I liked it or not. And each time he gave me that smile, laughed at something I said, when he said my name, when he looked my way, when he touched my body, when he spent his time with me, it was all just going to compound the issue.

  Until I was in too deep to turn back.

  But, I reminded myself, those were problems for another day.

  Right now, I had this gorgeous, sexy, interesting, powerful, dangerous, and attentive man in bed with me. I had his strong arm wrapped possessively around me. I had his steady heartbeat beneath my ear.

  And it felt good.

  He felt good.

  I wasn't going to ruin the present moment by worrying about a potential future one that didn't' feel so good.

  Of course, in that moment, I had no idea just how bad things could get in just forty-eight short hours.

  So I slept deeply and soundly in the arms of a man I was beginning to really like, blissfully unaware of what was to come.

  Chapter Eleven

  Huck

  So, she wasn't the most elegant of riders.

  I was glad I'd decided to teach her on one of the pieces of crap we had stored in the shed, because the first time she revved the engine, she panicked and the bike flew forward without her on it.

  It took four more tumbles before she finally got brave enough to handle the thing, doing quick little surges forward then letting out shrieking noises and braking hard.

  "Is she getting worse?" McCoy asked, moving in at my side as Harmon took a few slow, deep breaths before dropping her ass onto the seat again.

  "She just might be," I admitted, wincing when she accelerated so hard she almost fell off the bike. "I know why you're here," I added, leaning back against the wall of the house. "And it's none of your business."

  "Not saying it is," McCoy said, leaning next to me.

  "Then what are you here to say?"

  "That I don't care who you fuck, date, or give a ring to. But you need to keep your head in the game," he told me, shrugging. "I've heard from Arty five times since yesterday morning because he couldn't get in touch with you."

  "Careful," I said, not liking his insinuation, even if he was right; I was getting distracted.

  I thought that once I fucked her, I would get her out of my system. That was usually how it worked for me.

  I'd woken up alone, feeling disoriented for a second, the mostly-unconscious part of me thinking it was just a good dream. But then my eyes moved around, finding her computer set up at the side of the room, her shoes scattered on the floor behind the door.

  Not a dream.

  And my first thought after that was one I was still trying to come to terms with.

  Thank fuck.

  I'd gotten up, taken a shower, finding it overtaken with girl shit. Her shampoo, conditioner, body wash, and shaving cream. There was even one of those fucking stone things chicks use on their feet up on the side.

  And, what's more, I didn't hate seeing all of it there.

  I didn't even mind the cluttered counter next to the sink as I brushed my teeth before grabbing something to throw on before heading downstairs to see where she was.

  Where did I find her?

  In the kitchen.

  Cooking breakfast.

  And I'm not talking about tossing an egg in a pan and giving me some burnt toast to go with it.

  No, this woman was pulling out all the stops. French toast, breakfast potatoes, omelets, and bacon.

  "Seeley is going to start resenting me being here," she told me when I walked up behind her, looking over her shoulder as she flipped a slice of French toast.

  "No, he won't."

  "I made him run out to the store again today to get all this," she said, sounding apologetic.

  "Well, he'll get to eat some, won't he?" I asked, leaning down to press my lips into the column of her neck.

  "Yeah, but..." she started to object before I shifted my hips forward, grinding my cock against her ass. Had you told me a month ago that watching a woman cook me breakfast would get me hard, I'd have laughed in your face. But here we were. "Huck..."

  "Mmm?" I asked, hand sliding down her hip, slipped between her thighs.

  "The others are all awake," she objected, voice getting breathless when I found her clit.

  "I don't give a fuck."

  "I'm... I'm cooking," she said, her head falling back on my shoulder.

  "That's an excuse I'll accept," I decided, my hand moving from between her legs, grabbing her around the throat instead, turning her just enough so my lips could claim hers for a minute, just long enough that her gaze was a little hazy when I pulled away. "Don't burn the French toast, babe," I'd said as I moved away. "And you don't need to feel guilty about having Seeley do things," I told her, going for the coffee pot. "That's his job. Do what we tell him."

  "Yeah, but I'm not one of you guys," she said, tossing the French toast into what looked like a big stack in the warm oven.

  "You're here because I want you here. That's just about the same thing. Don't worry about Seeley. We pay him for what he does."

  "Yeah, but he's been shot and gotten a head injury recently. He never gets a break."

  "He wants to work as hard as he does. You've never seen any of us cracking whips around here."

  "I know. I just hate piling on. But, I figure, I am repaying him with food. You guys seem to live on take-out and hamburgers."

  "You worried about me, babe?"

  She'd paused at that, trying to find a comeback to that. "Well, seeing as you guys are keeping me alive, I guess I have a vested interest in keeping you all well for the time being."

  Ten minutes later, we were all piling plates and sitting down to eat together. Like some ragtag family of sorts

  The food?

  Banging.

  It was the kind of t
hing a man could happily get used to having around.

  A beautiful woman in the kitchen making you food.

  I had never considered how good that could be until I had it.

  "I'm not challenging you," McCoy said, shaking his head, bringing me back to the present moment. "I'm just reminding you that there is other shit going on. You might be catching feelings, but it won't do you any good if we all end up with bullets," he told me, giving me a nod before moving off.

  "I think I am regressing," Harmon called, throwing up her arms.

  "Yeah, maybe time for a break, babe," I suggested, waving her over.

  McCoy had always been my right-hand, my second-in-command, and the bastard had a good head on his shoulders, so if he was stepping to me to tell me to get my head in the game, then it was out.

  Hell, we shouldn't have even been in the driveway at all.

  I was being careless.

  And I hadn't spoken a word to Arty in days, hadn't checked in on him, didn't know if he was sleeping or eating since the case was proving harder than we'd anticipated.

  I owed the kid more than that. He'd done a lot for me over the years.

  "I'm sorry I scratched up your bike," Harmon said a moment later, voice tentative, chewing on her lower lip, worried.

  "I don't give a fuck about the bike, babe. I just... I need to go handle some business today," I told her.

  "Oh. Okay. Yeah. I understand. Actually, I should probably record today too, if you are heading out anyway."

  "Sounds good. I will leave Remy here with you. He can keep his beasts quiet, so you can focus."

  "That would be great," she agreed, smiling.

  Twenty minutes later, McCoy, Che, and I were heading out, leaving Seeley and Remy to do some work on shoring up the basement for the coming shipment of guns we had coming in from Russia in a week.

  It wasn't ideal to have the guns on the premises in case of any police caught wind of what we were up to, but until we dealt with a couple of the standing threats in the area, we had to keep everything close.

  But if we were going to have them in the clubhouse, we wanted them locked up tight and maybe harder for prying cops to find.

  "Jesus Christ, Arty," I hissed when we moved into his place, finding it stale and airless, some festering old Indian food uneaten in a bag near the door.

  We were literally kicking cans of energy drinks out of the way as we moved inside.

  "Crack that fucking window," I demanded to Che who moved across the room to jack it open, parting the blinds to let some light in the dark space.

  The place was a wreck, but not as concerning as the state Arty himself was in.

  He'd never been overly put together, and was a terrible sleeper on his best of days.

  But his eyes were sunken, red, lined with bags and purple smudges. His hair looked limp and greasy. His beard—if you could call it that—was growing in. And he was still wearing the same outfit he'd been in when I'd first put him on the job.

  "Arty, man, what the fuck?" McCoy said, shaking his head.

  "I thought I had them. The white car with the plate. I thought I had them. But then, I lost them. I lost them around the corner of Gable. And I don't know where they went. Where could the car just disappear to?"

  "Alright, bud," I said, sighing. "I am going to need you to dial back the crazy about ten notches," I said as his eyes bulged, his fingers frantically tapping at the screen.

  Che moved in behind Arty's chair, head whipping to the side, breath catching, when he got a whiff of him.

  "Show me the video," Che demanded, trying to speak while holding his breath.

  "I've watched it a million times," Arty insisted.

  "Yeah, but have you ever been around that area?" Che asked, clearly onto something that the rest of us weren't in on.

  "I don't... I don't go far," Arty said, shaking his head.

  Arty's safe space was about five square miles, anywhere-he could walk by foot since he didn't have a car.

  "Yeah, here," Che said, stabbing a finger at the screen as Arty paused the frame. "I thought it sounded familiar. Right here, there is a small underground garage. Maybe big enough for three cars. Back when I used to race, when the cops would show up, it was always a spot everyone tried to snag, leave their cars, and take off on foot."

  "But why would they park there if they weren't racing? No one was chasing them in that video," I said, moving closer, regretting it immediately when all the various unwashed man smells hit my nose.

  "Paranoia," Che suggested. "Just did a drive-by, and if someone reported the white car, they could be pulled over. Better to lay low for a day, then come back and get the car before the stores in that strip mall open for business."

  "Fair enough," I agreed. "Alright. We are going to head over there and ask around, see if anyone will talk. It's not a bad area, so we might find some loose lips. Arty, I need your ass to take a shower and fucking burn those clothes and the bedsheets. And take out the garbage. And eat something. Maybe catch some sleep. And then, and I fucking mean this man, only then, get back on this and see if you can catch them leaving some other time."

  With that, we headed back out all of us taking greedy breaths.

  "You're going to trust him to do all that?"

  "No," I said, shaking my head. "Once we get back, I'll send Seeley over to babysit. He'll be useless if he keeps slipping."

  "Times like this, you gotta miss your crazy-ass sister," McCoy said as we got to our bikes.

  I missed Gus all the time, even though I knew she was happy in her new life with her biker and all her new friends. She created more chaos than she calmed, but she did come in handy for the softer shit that the rest of us weren't known for.

  We spent about an hour in the part of town where the car went missing, getting a lot of vague answers about there always being kids doing illegal shit, that most of it didn't stand out. And, I guess, that was fair enough. Especially seeing as the shooting hadn't taken place anywhere near that part of town.

  "Let's head back," I decided. "Get Seeley over to Arty, so we can get him lucid enough to give us straight answers. Then we can try again."

  There didn't seem to be a huge rush on it since no one had made another move in several days. We were getting more precautions put in place anyway.

  It felt strange still to be so flip about active threats. Had you told me back when we were chopping cars that we would shrug off a drive-by instead of going after the perpetrators with everything we had, I would have scoffed.

  But the fact of the matter was, we'd had a rough fucking year. And when you went up against actual organized crime and lived to tell the tale, the little nobodies didn't put the fear of God in you that they might have once upon a time.

  We'd get them.

  We just weren't going to run ourselves into the ground to do it.

  Sure, a part of my decision making—however misguided—clearly had something to do with Harmon. Even as we were wrapping up questioning around the neighborhood, my mind had already been on getting back home, seeing if Harmon was done with her recording, then tossing her on the bed, and getting some more of her.

  Then maybe seeing if she would be interested in throwing together some dinner. I was more than willing to trade orgasms for food.

  And, yeah, I knew that when we took out the new threat, that Harmon would be free to go back to her own place, put more distance between us.

  I should have been fine with that. That was what I liked best when it came to women. No distance at all for a night or two, and then all the distance I could get.

  Sure, there were the club bunnies who hung around, and I'd slept with one or two of them, but I never had any interest in another lay.

  Harmon, though, it seemed like I hadn't gotten my fill yet. And I wasn't too keen on her leaving the clubhouse until I did.

  I figured it was a couple more days at most before I got to that point.

  Or, you know, that was what I was trying to tell myself, even as
a larger part of me knew that there was some shit going on between Harmon and me that wasn't like anything in the past.

  I knew her story. Her fears. Her strengths and weaknesses. And I found myself wanting to know more, wanting to do shit like sit and listen to her talk.

  What the fuck was that?

  I'd made it through a light that the other two had gotten stuck at, leaving me pulling into the driveway alone.

  And all the things came to me at once.

  The open front door.

  The tire treads on the muddy part of the front lawn where the grass didn't want to grow.

  Two sets of treads.

  Not a bike.

  "Fuck," I hissed, flying off my bike, reaching for my gun.

  I was ripping off my helmet even as I rushed in the front door, hearing a slamming sound in the back toward the kitchen, and making a beeline for it, my heartbeat hammering in my chest, my mind racing to one awful scenario after the other.

  I found the source of the banging, the kitchen table overturned and wedged just right between the island and the basement door to prevent it from being opened.

  I kicked it out of the way, and a second later, Seeley and Remy were bursting out, guns at the ready.

  "Harmon!" The sound that came out of me was half-wild, something I wasn't sure I'd ever heard before.

  Usually, in dangerous situations, I had a sense of calm and focus wash over me.

  There was nothing calm or focused about me then as I stormed up the stairs, calling her name as I threw open the bedroom door.

  "Fuck. Fuck!" I yelled, grabbing the lamp, throwing it across the room, feeling no relief when it shattered against the wall. "What happened?" I demanded, turning to Remy and Seeley as I heard the other bikes rumbling into the drive.

  "We were working on the basement like you said," Seeley explained. "I heard shuffling up in the kitchen, but figured Harmon was getting something to eat. Or maybe cooking again. Then we heard a short shriek, a thud, and then nothing for a moment until we heard the sound on the stairs. Someone dragging Harmon," he clarified. "Thumping noises. We've been trying to get out. But the fucking windows are barred and too small anyway. The door wouldn't budge. And there was no way to shoot through it."