“So, you got divorced, too?”
Chuckling, he fills his glass and raises it to tap against mine. “Hell yeah. Just as messy, just as acrimonious, though thankfully without all the paperwork, just a bunch of insults the likes of which still have my head spinning, and a kind of sinking feeling of loss deep in my chest. It hurts. And what makes it hurt less is focusing on the people and things that I love: the club and the work I do for them.”
“Is that all?”
“No. It hurts a lot less when I’m around you, too.”
We look at each other for a moment; two formerly heartbroken strangers, two workaholics who find solace in the things they build and in providing for their friends and families, and, strangely, in each other’s company.
I take in a breath, my stomach fluttering with butterflies. I’ve just fucked this man — hours ago, on a table not over twenty feet from this spot — and yet I’m about to propose something that scares me. Scares me not only because it’s something that I haven’t done with any man in years, even before my divorce from my asshole ex-husband, but also because it involves getting close to a man who finds purpose in the criminal work he does for his outlaw club.
It’s scary, but it also feels so right.
“My place isn’t far from here. Do you want to come home with me?”
“I’m up for another round, yeah.”
I shake my head, and he gets a confused look on his face. “Not just that. I mean, yeah, I want to have sex with you again. But I want you to spend the night. I want you to sleep with me.”
God, I hope I’m not making an enormous mistake. Taking a criminal to bed? What am I thinking?
It’s almost embarrassing how hard it is for me to say that, even though we’re both adults and we’ve just fucked each other’s brains out, but it is hard. And it’s almost embarrassing how unable I am to hide my smile when he nods his head.
“Yeah, I’d like that.”
Chapter Ten
Crash
Even content beyond reason and exhausted from hours of fucking a woman better than I have any right to lie beside, I’m a light sleeper. In the dead of night, I pry my ass out of bed and shuffle downstairs to the kitchen to get a beer from the fridge.
What the hell am I doing here? I think. I know I shouldn’t be getting tangled up with a woman like Violet. Not that I shouldn’t have a good time, but getting close to a woman like her is dangerous. She comes with a whole mess of entanglements, small town drama, and a feud with the local MC, and every single one of those entanglements is a danger to my mission for the club. And to the lives of all of us.
But even knowing all that, it feels so damn good to be with her; she’s got a businesslike attitude that I just get on an intrinsic level and she’s got a ferocity about her — in fighting and in sex — that makes my blood hotter than it’s ever been. Violet Cassidy doesn’t just kick ass in a street fight, she’s a fuck that puts every other woman to shame.
I’m two beers in and still searching for contentment when I hear a noise at the front door. It’s quiet, just barely loud enough to hear — a metallic click and slide — the sound of pins in a lock sliding into place and a door handle slowly turning.
I finish my beer and grab the first weapon I see: a big chef’s knife from the kitchen knife block, and I find myself a hiding spot in the hallway closet that still affords me a decent view of the front door.
Naked as the day I was born, smelling like sex and carrying a knife, what a way to be just as I’m about to get into a fight.
The door opens, sliding silently on its hinges, and two men wearing Death’s Disciples cuts enter the house. They pause for only a moment inside the front door, each looking left and right through the living room of Violet’s house and seeing nothing more than the remains of the blanket fort that Snake and Josie built while watching Dead Snow. Satisfied, they head deeper into the house, heading my way, and I know that if they make it further and up the stairs, they’ll be able to ambush Violet, Josie, and everyone else while they’re sleeping. I can’t let that happen.
I need to kill them here and now.
Silent, I wait until they’re flush with the part-open closet I’m hiding in. And the second they’re in reach, I attack.
My foot hits the door, hard, sending it flying open and crashing into the first Death’s Disciple, knocking him off balance and into the hallway wall.
I charge forward. Knife ready.
Slashing, I catch the other Death’s Disciple right across the face and I keep coming forward, grabbing him around the mouth with one hand and shoving the knife deep into his chest with the other. He surges in my grip, eyes bugging wide, and his blood sprays all over my hand and forearm.
I pull the knife free and ram it in again, feeling the solid steel slide between the junction of his ribs. He jerks once, then slumps to the ground as his heart bleeds out inside him. Dead.
Thud.
A heavy punch hits the back of my head, sending the knife flying from my grip and pushing me forward. I catch myself against the wall and barely have time to turn and dodge another punch from the other Death’s Disciple.
