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Tears run down her cheeks. She shoves them away angrily, missing at least half, leaving shiny smudges all over her face. She was working in her parents’ flower gardens again, probably all day and giving it her all. I didn’t realize that her face was dirt streaked until the tears made a mess of it.
“Gray,” she whispers.Myname. Not Tyrant. I let out a sigh of relief that cuts me in half. “I handed you the secret heart of me,” I say quietly. She sits down hard on the bench of the picnic table. It jumps, even from her small body. Her eyes beg me.Please, stop. Don’t do this. I can’t take anymore.
I don’t stop. I wish I could, but she needs to hear this. Worse, I need to say it. Never believed in church or any god to speak of other than our own church at the club, the gospel of the road and the wind, and the brotherhood of bikers. But I feel like I’m one of those confessional booths, pouring out my soul to some aloof priest, waiting for him to grant me absolution.
“You promised to guard my soul and then you tore it from my body. I’ve been soulless for five years. I was so angry. I wanted to drive straight to Seattle and demand a real explanation. Worse, I wanted to get on my knees and beg you.” Shame accosts me, hot and uncomfortable. I don’t like being vulnerable, being vulnerable in my world gets a man killed.
“But?” She leans forward like it hurts too much to even say that one word.
“But I made a promise to Raiden to leave you alone and that was worth more than my own pain. Help me understand,because I’m floundering here. I might be a criminal, but I’ve been one for a long time. Patched in when you were still basically a kid. You didn’t judge me then, but you did after. I could have protected you, but you didn’t even give me a chance.”
I shouldn’t touch her. It’s too dangerous. Too explosive. We’re poison to each other now, but I stride over in my shitkickers and hook a finger under her chin anyway. I can’t stop. I need more. She’s like that first taste of freedom when I got a dirt bike at eight years old and was immediately an addict.
I see the heartbreak on her face, and I feel it down from my chest to the tips of my fingers and the bottom of my feet. The tears spill down her cheeks, silver trickles, but I don’t wipe them away. I can’t make her tell me shit. I can’t make her do anything. No one can own this woman. She’s like the bird she was named for. Free. Put her in a cage and she’ll only wither and die slowly.
“You made a decision,” I continue, though it’s a struggle. “Even though you have no real idea what club life is like or how it works.”
She wrenches her chin away from me and brings up an arm between us to swat me away. “Really?” The wrath inside of her is immediately renewed. She brings her knees up and hugs them tight in the strangest position for a picnic table bench, but her glare is so potent it could turn me to stone. “I know all about your clubhouse. You all have rooms there and some live there permanently. It’s impenetrable, or so you’d like to think, but going around saying you’re invincible, sounds like famous last words. You have your poor prospects guarding the chain link fence and the entrances. Your sergeant-at-arms has to be good at security, even with the real law in your pocket.” She stops, waiting to see how much shit she’s going to get into. She’s pricked my interest in a big way.
“Continue,” I encourage, my tone lethal.
She notes it, but obeys. “If anyone ever came with a real warrant, probably at the federal level, they’d find nothing. You’re careful about where you put your product. Probably in some old warehouse or factory, or at farms not even close to Hart. Maybe even underground. You need a way to funnel all the criminal cash you get from drug sales and god knows what else, so you have a ton of legit businesses, some seedy, some not.” She points at the bar. “Places like this, for example. Clubs, strippers, pubs, this bar right here, the garages where you work on vehicles and bikes, tattoo shops, probably even the fucking gift stores and laundromats.”
She’s not wrong, but all of Hart knows this shit. “What else?”
“You all have your designated little positions which you think makes you sound professional. Your council with the President and the VP, the sergeant-at-arms and treasurer. You want to be all badass, but you still structure yourself like any other nine to five Fortune 500.” She rolls her eyes, so damn critical. She’s turning my life into a joke, but I take it. I asked for this.
“You do your little church sessions and make your decisions. You’re the mother chapter because you’re original, though there are no other chapters, so technically you’re the mother of nothing. You party so hard the whole of Hart can probably hear it, you’ve got your club women on tap who are happy to be treated like whores. You live hard and live free, or that’s what you like to tell yourselves because it gives you an excuse to act without morals. The living fast thing? It usually doesn’t come with a side serving of longevity.”
When she finally stops for a breath and stays stopped, I clap my hands. “Bravo. I’m impressed. You can use the internet and read books. You have the basics, I’ll give you that, but it’s nothing more than a rough outline. That’s like looking at a skeleton and calling it a body. You’ve reduced us to the bare bones. You’ve left out the skin and the muscle and the heart of it. Where did this sudden disdain come from? You never used to have a problem with the MC. Why now? Why five years ago? Why… unless you had something monumental change your mind? Something you never could have planned for? Something you needed to protect.”
She looks away quickly. I’m not going to keep at this all night. I’m not nearly at the end of my patience, but time is a precious commodity. Neither of us have enough of it.
“The thing about bikers is that we aren’t lawless. You know that. We do have a code. We have our own honor. We would never hurt any of our women, and we’d defend our kids to the death. Some of the brothers might live each day like it’s their last, but living hard is their prerogative and it’s their right, especially after the lives some of them have led. But to think that I wouldn’t have protected you after I spent years doing just that? That’s unfair. That’s so vastly unfair that it makes me want to say unkind things.”
She blinks, not the least taken aback by my honesty. It reminds me that she’s studied me. She was watching me when I wasn’t aware. For years.
“I need you to be honest. Blame and anger and everything else aside. Did we make a child that night? And if we did, then I need you to help me figure out where we go from here. We need a plan. If you don’t want me to turn into a possessive asshole who won’t let you leave and has to resort to threats because I’mcornered and dangerous, I need you to help me. I’m not telling you this to scare you. I’m not trying to control or manipulate you. I’mbeggingyou for the truth.”
“Begging?” she snorts, pissed off at everything I just said that wasn’t meant to piss her off. She rises to face me down, drawing herself into her five foot four, petite frame. Size doesn’t have anything to do with power and vengeance. She looks like she could fly at me and claw the life out of me with a single swipe. “A man like you doesn’t know how to beg. You just said as much. Hart is your empire, and everything here is under your control. Emperor, dictator, tyrant. How fitting.”
I’ll show her I mean it. I’ll prove it to her. I’ll get on my knees for her, even if I’d never do it for any other person alive. Not just for her, but for the child I know is mine. My daughter. For her, I’d do anything.
I don’t do it with grace.
I let my knees unfold and crumple right there onto the asphalt, where the hard stones can dig into me as penance. I’ll stay down here, my head bowed before the woman I wanted to make my queen until I’m bruised and bleeding.
Until she believes.
Chapter 10
Lark
“Gray! What the fuck. Get up!” I’m shocked for all of two point five seconds and then I try to yank him up. My hands circle around his shoulder, brushing up against his hair. I move lower, my fingers searching for somewhere safe, but there is nowhere. Just his skin and leather, muscles and heat. “No one is going to take you seriously if they see you like this.” I try and tug again, grasping a fistful of leather, but he doesn’t budge.
“Anyone who saw me would see that I have every right to worship the woman I wanted to make my queen. Still do.”
“Still do, what?”
