Lone Star (Dartmoor Book 7) Read online

  Her next breath shivered in her lungs. “Damn. How’s a girl supposed to resist that kind of talk?”

  He smiled, a slow, knife-sharp crescent bloom in the dimness. “Hopefully not at all.”

  “You’re horrible.”

  “C’mere.”

  She went. How could she not? She’d never been able to resist his charm, and the smug bastard knew it. But, oh…it was worth the concession when his big hands settled on her waist and he hauled her up higher in his lap like she weighed nothing. When he cupped her face and brought her mouth down to his with lowered lids, and a quick bite of his lip, and a look like she was the most desirable woman he’d ever seen.

  This was different from their hello kiss. This one started slow, gentle, like he was acquainting himself with the taste of her all over again. He cupped her cheek, thumb gliding along the line of her jaw, the pad of it rough with calluses, drawing a shiver from her. With the barest pressure, he tilted her head, angling the kiss and touching his tongue to her lips, asking, so sweetly, for entry. When she opened, his tongue slipped inside, and then the kiss went deep. Still unhurried, but lush, and wet, and hungry.

  His other hand slid up beneath her shirt again, fingers climbing her ribs like a ladder.

  “Mmm,” she hummed against his mouth. “Forward.”

  He chuckled, and closed his hand over her breast; the nipple pebbled against his palm, so tight it ached. “I’m not the one who’s not wearing a bra.”

  She put both hands on his pecs and squeezed. “Maybe you should.”

  “Ooh, gonna take that as a compliment, baby.” He stood, and scooped her up, her stomach swooping, a laugh bursting out of her mouth before she managed to clap a hand over her lips and choke it off.

  “Shh, don’t wake the kid,” he stage-whispered.

  “Don’t make me,” she hissed back, and nearly choked on a giggle.

  He carried her to their bedroom, heeling the door shut silently in a move they’d both perfected over the last two years. He set her down carefully on the foot of the bed; he’d been known to toss her down – even that carefully – so she bounced, and laughed, and then kissed the laugh right out of her mouth. But that had stopped when they’d learned she was pregnant again; he’d been treating her with nothing short of reverence since. It made her feel loved and cherished…even if she wished, a little, for some of the wilder nights.

  When he unbuckled his belt, his hands were at eye level for her, and the lamplight glimmered off his rings: the simple gold wedding band she’d slipped on his finger two years ago, and the chunky dog’s head ring on his right hand, its jaws open, fangs bared, ears back. His Lean Dog ring – her Uncle Walsh had one similar.

  Thought of the Dogs brought what she’d just seen on the TV back to the forefront of her mind. “What happened to Pacer?” she asked.

  The belt – tooled floral leather – hissed through the loops and landed over on the corduroy armchair with a muffled thump when he tossed it. “Blue and I took him back home. He rents his cabins at the compound to a couple of his younger guys, and they said they’d look after him tonight: make sure he ate something, and didn’t get too drunk. We offered to bring him back here with us, but he thought he needed to be with his own club.” A shadow crossed his face as he said it, and he shook his head, mouth turned down with obvious sadness.

  “Does he have a wife? A girlfriend? Anyone to lean on?” All the men in her life had one thing in common: the need of a soft place to land when shit got a little too real. For the first forty-five years of his life, Jenny had been that for Candy; a devoted, good-hearted sister. But there was only so far a sister’s love could go; some nights, even the biggest, meanest bikers needed a lap to lay their heads in, an ear to listen to the words that stood in place of tears they fought not to shed.

  “Nah. He had a girl back twenty years ago, but she wouldn’t marry him, and he doesn’t keep anybody steady.” He undid the buttons of his flannel and shrugged out of it, tossed it over with the belt, leaving him in an old white wifebeater worn soft from countless washings. The room was warm, but his nipples were peaked, stiff points visible through the fabric. He grabbed the hem and peeled it off over his head, muscles of his torso bunching and flexing with the motion.

  And, oh, there were muscles. Acres of them, the swells of pecs, and the chiseled definition of abs, throwing shadows in the low light. His Wranglers rode low enough to show off the sharp V of his Adonis line.

  When she finally lifted her gaze to his face – her own feeling fever-warm – he lifted his brows and said, “Still wanna talk about Pacer?” He fought a grin. “Or is there something else on your mind?”

  “Well,” she said, aiming for prim, unable to keep from wetting suddenly-dry lips; his eyes tracked the flicker of her tongue. “I was just thinking that you’re in remarkably good shape for a man of your advanced years.”

  He chuckled darkly, and pounced.

  Pounced carefully.

  He undressed her, and she got him out of his jeans, tight enough to make the process difficult, but worth it to watch him walk around in them. He laid her out and lay worship to her, from mouth to knees, with his lips, sucking almost delicately at each nipple in turn, her breasts already swollen and tender. He teased at her sex, little kitten licks, until she was tugging on his hair, and then he reared up above her, pulled her thighs around his waist, and entered her on a slow, breath-stealing stroke.

  He leaned down to kiss her as his hips started up a leisurely rhythm, his tongue mimicking the movement between her lips. “God, Mama, you’re perfect,” he murmured, one hand braced by her head, the other smoothing up and down her side, skating between them to touch her belly, the life growing inside it.

  The problem with marrying into the club was the body count: the dark moments when someone threatened them and theirs. When you had to look over your shoulder, and lock your doors, and treat paranoia like religion.

  But the thing that made it worthwhile? This, always this. She kissed him back, and lifted her hips to meet his, and resolved to worry about all the problems tomorrow.

  Knoxville

  Four

  Fox wasn’t restless. He wasn’t, he wasn’t, he wasn’t, he–

  Okay. He was restless.

  He wore a Tennessee bottom rocker these days, and he sat in on church around Ghost’s ornate, long dining table with the other Tennessee boys. He spent his days tinkering with bikes or cars, and he ate lunch with Mercy, and Aidan, and Tango, and Carter instead of Jinx, and Cowboy, and Gringo, and Talis. He told himself over and over that this life wasn’t any different from the life he’d been living in Texas. And, here, he was even training two proteges. Three, if you counted Evan, which he usually didn’t. He was still a Lean Dog, still a contributing member of the club, still himself, with all his accumulated skills and experiences.

  He’d even gained some things – like Eden, who wasn’t a thing, but a person; he liked making the distinction in his own head so he never slipped and said the wrong thing to her. And he had the opportunity, now, surprisingly, to watch perhaps his favorite brother floundering for the first time in memory. Albie’s face the day he’d shown up, sheepish and uncertain, had been priceless.

  He'd stayed for long periods in cities before; had even sprouted roots, sometimes against his will. But something about this move to Knoxville felt permanent in a way none of the other moves ever had, and for a lifelong nomad like him, there was something disturbing about that.

  He’d decided to throw himself full force into molding the next generation.

  “No, your feet are all wrong,” he called from his position atop a picnic table behind the clubhouse. “You’ll trip all over yourself that way.”

  In the cleared-out section of parking lot where he’d laid rubber and then sparring mats, the December sunlight beat down on the sweat-glazed skin of two very different fighters.

  There was Reese, Mercy’s little murder duckling. He was lean, and fit, nothing but stark, carved muscles
under his clinging tank top; not the hulking brute force of Mercy, no, but quicker, willowier; a striking snake rather than a rampaging bull. Efficient, heartless, robotic: Reese was a child soldier raised with a ruthless hand. The least human killer he’d ever encountered; not brutal and mean and delighted by the kill, like some of the two-dollar Yank sickos he’d encountered in the last few years. No, he didn’t know how to be a human. The boys were working on that, introducing him to pop culture, and booze, and, probably, as soon as he grasped the idea of it, women. But those things weren’t Fox’s worry. Fox’s job was to keep his skills fresh.

  And then there was Evan.

  Physically, the boys were well-matched. Evan was even a little taller; but he had no idea what to do with his long legs, and so, as usual, Reese was wiping the floor with him.

  “Hand up, hand up,” Fox reminded. “Protect your–”

  Reese cracked him across the jaw with the back of his hand.

  “–face.”

  Evan spun away from the match, hand pressed to his face where it was already reddening. “Shit! Dude!”

  “What part of ‘sparring’ did you not understand?” Fox asked, dryly.

  “I didn’t think he’d hit me for real!”

  “When you’re out there wearing a cut, and we get into a tight spot, do you think whoever we’re fighting isn’t going to hit you for real?”

  “I…” He made a face. “Fuck, I just…the other guys aren’t doing this.” He motioned toward the corner of the bike shop they could see from here, where Mercy, Aidan, Tango, and Carter were eating sandwiches at a picnic table of their own, the wind toying with the wrappers, Aidan gesticulating with his Coke can, saying something that had the others wincing and laughing at the same time.

  “The other guys,” Fox said, turning back to him, giving him his best deadpan stare – one helped by the Ray-Bans he wore. “Aren’t flunky prospects. They don’t have anything to prove. You do.”

  Evan muttered something petulant and stupid under his breath, and went to snag the water bottle he’d left sitting in the shade.

  Reese still stood at the ready, coiled like a spring, not even breathing hard.

  “Water break,” Fox told him, and the boy nodded, pushed his hair off his face, and went to get his own bottle.

  Behind him, the back door opened with a squeal – Ghost would be busting someone’s ass, probably Evan’s, about oiling the hinges – and light footfalls heralded the arrival of Fox’s youngest brother. Tenny climbed up to sit beside Fox, slouching down, forearms on his thighs, relaxed, unbothered.

  Seemingly so.

  Everything Reese had Tenny had, too – plus the social, cultural, and governmental training to make him twice as dangerous. Reese was a bare blade, glinting, outwardly frightening. Tenny was a vial of poison, and you had no idea your life was in danger until the first drop hit your tongue.

  Fox made a point of turning toward him slowly, like he didn’t care that he was an hour late to their scheduled session. Tenny wore fitted, dark jeans, harness boots, white t-shirt and a high-collar leather biker jacket so new it squeaked when he moved. His shades were aviators, his thick dark hair – the same glossy brown as Fox’s – artfully tousled, jaw shadowed with a few days’ worth of stubble.

  “You look like you’re trying to land a cologne add,” Fox drawled.

  Tenny shrugged and cracked his gum.

  “Did you steal that jacket?”

  “I bought it.”

  “Did you steal the money you bought it with?”

  Another shrug. He nodded toward Reese. “He’s too obvious.”

  Fox knew exactly what he meant, but he wasn’t going to agree with the asshole. “We can fix that.”

  The smirk that tweaked his mouth looked like the one Fox had been looking at in the mirror his whole life. It was eerie as hell.

  “And,” Fox continued, “unlike some shitheads, he actually shows up when it’s time to train.”

  Tenny turned toward him, just as slowly as Fox had, tucked his chin, and made eye contact over the gold rims of his shades. The absolute douchebag. “Train?” he asked, voice just as flat as Fox’s. But his eyes – the Devin Green blue they all shared – sparked with a challenge.

  Not the first time, Fox was struck by the notion that handling Ten was like riding a horse that was just waiting for the right moment to scrape him off on the fence, and go leaping off the track.

  And now he used racetrack references, apparently, because he’d spent way too much time with Walsh lately.

  “Why would I need to train?” Ten asked.

  “To keep sharp.”

  Tenny made a show of surveying their surroundings, the empty section of lot, the unremarkable, rambling backside of the clubhouse; the scrap yard, and the glint of the river at the far edge of the property, sliding slowly, darkly past. Then he turned back to Fox, and some of the showmanship dropped away, leaving him flinty-eyed, ruthless, and – most disturbingly – just as restless as Fox felt. “Keep sharp for what?”

  Keep sharp because I fucking told you to, Fox thought, and recoiled mentally like he’d been burned. God, he sounded like Phillip.

  He turned away.

  Reese was watching them, not at all coy, blatantly staring. Fox wondered how good his hearing was.

  “That’s not for you to know,” he said imperiously. At least now he sounded like Abe rather than his oldest brother. “Guys like us in this organization: we go where we’re told, kill who we’re supposed to, and we don’t question the higher authority.”

  “Higher authority,” Ten said flatly. “Ghost.” No mistaking that for anything but an insult.

  Fox sent him a sideways glare. “You could do – and have done – a lot worse than Ghost for a boss. Remember that.”

  Tenny stared back, silent, refusing to bend.

  One of these days, Fox thought, I’ll have to put him in his place for good.

  The worst part was: he didn’t know if he could.

  Five

  It was a big thing, a man moving across an ocean for you.

  Axelle kept telling herself that wasn’t what Albie had done. His move had been about learning the true origins of his father. About the crushing disappointment, and the upheaval in London, and the need for a change of venue.

  But the first thing he’d done, when he’d gotten to town, was have someone drop him off at the post office, where he’d learned she’d be, and he’d opened his arms, and it sure felt like this was for her – at least a little.

  She wasn’t sure what to do with that kind of pressure.

  “It’s not pressure,” Eden had assured. “He’s not that kind of guy. You don’t have to do anything. Or promise anything,” she’d added, eyes widening for emphasis. No doubt, in her book, promises were scarier than “doing anything.”

  Axelle passed a cloth over her already-spotless coffee table one more time and stood back to survey her apartment: the whole thing, save the bathroom, was visible from where she stood. The club – Maggie, specifically – had set her up with a list of available apartments. This one had been her favorite, namely because there was plenty of room to park her car, and a garage in which to work on it, but she’d thought it was charming, too. The converted attic space of an old, but well-kept Victorian house in a quiet part of town. It was an open loft space, with slanted ceilings, ledges in the dormer windows, creaky hardwood floors, and a deep claw-foot tub in the bathroom. It had come furnished, the oval coffee table and faded Persian rugs already here, but she’d added her own bedlinens, a chair she’d picked up at a secondhand shop, a newer model TV. There had been strands of Christmas lights taped up on the window frames, and they’d still worked, surprisingly, plugged in now and giving the space a cheerful air.

  Satisfied that everything was clean and orderly, she stowed the dusting cloth under the sink. Then went to the bathroom to triple-check her appearance.

  She’d braided her hair loosely, its dark blonde length pulled over one shoulder. She di
dn’t really do dresses, as a general rule, but she’d found a nice navy sweater, and her jeans were new, still stiff. She’d used eyeliner, and dug a pair of dangly, silver earrings from the depths of the small chest of valuables she’d shipped to London, and then back again.

  “This is fine,” she said aloud to her reflection, tweaking the hem of her sweater. “Right? It’s fine.”

  Out in the main room, the buzzer sounded, and she jumped.

  “Shit!”

  She took a sequence of deep breaths as she crossed the apartment and pressed the button on the intercom. She didn’t bother to say “come in,” too afraid the nerves would show in her voice. It would be easier face-to-face, she reasoned, when she could gauge how he felt about all this and respond accordingly.

  It took him a while to come up the two flights of stairs. Axelle had just decided that her kindly – but meddlesome – landlady must have waylaid him to ask what business he had here tonight, when a knock sounded on the door. Three quick strikes, soft…but sure. Polite, but not, she thought with a fraction of relief, hesitant.

  One more breath – and an aborted attempt to smooth her hair, because she was being stupid – and she opened the door.

  And was met with a mass of pink roses.

  He’d brought her flowers.

  Oh.

  The bouquet was, honestly, obscene, at least two dozen roses, that frilly white filler stuff – she’d look it up later, on her phone, and find that it was called baby’s breath – and some green waxy leaves on long stems – eucalyptus – that smelled fresh and sweet in a way florists’ greens didn’t usually.