Page 13 of Tank's Temptation

I remove my rings and set them on the bench, and his sneer fades.

His name is Wade Larkin. Cash found it before Gray finished dragging him through the trees. I ask when Harlan plans to move, and Wade tells me to go fuck myself. One punch splits his lip and rocks the chair onto two legs. I set it flat again, take his right hand and bend the smallest finger backward until the joint gives.

Wade screams. I wait for him to finish, then ask the question again.

“Harlan’s clearing out tonight,” he gasps. “The hotel goes up at midnight. Morrow’s still in the lower service room, and the fire takes the body, the office, everything. He intended it to look like Morrow just got caught up in the fire. Harlan crosses into Arkansas before dawn.”

That gives us the deadline. I ask how many men will be at the Rivermark, which entrances they’re using and where Harlan keeps the financial records Morrow tried to take. Wade answers in pieces, trying to save something each time until I show him the next finger.

By the time he gives up the maintenance entrance and the four-man burn crew, blood runs from his mouth onto his shirt.

Then he looks past me toward the garage door and makes his final mistake. “Won’t matter. Harlan says he’s going to get the photographer back, he’s going to take his time before he kills her. Said she cost him enough to earn it.”

I hit him once more.

The chair goes over, and Wade lands hard on the concrete. I put my boot beside his throat, not on it, because Kane wants him breathing when we send him back. The distance between restraint and death is less than an inch.

“You’ll carry a message,” I tell him. “The next man who even thinks about putting a hand on Tessa dies before he gets the chance to pull it away. If Harlan touches her himself, there won’t be enough left of him to leave the state.”

Wade believes me. Men always do by this point.

Gray hauls him upright while Cash opens the side door. They’ll hold him until Kane decides when to send him back. I turn toward the sink and find Tessa standing just inside the main garage entrance. She saw everything.

She has my black shirt tucked into her jeans, her camera bag strapped across her chest and her gaze fixed on the blood across my knuckles. The sight of her in my clothes hits me almost as hard as it did the first time, except now I know how she feels beneath them.

I expected fear when she finally saw the work instead of the patch. What I get is a careful look at Wade as Gray takes him away, then a direct path across the concrete toward me.

“I said I didn’t think you were bad,” she says. “I never said I thought you were harmless.”

“You shouldn’t have been in here.”

“Kane said you were around somewhere, and I heard voices in here. Nobody told me the garage had become a private torture suite.” Her fingers close around my wrist before I can move away. She turns my hand beneath the fluorescent light, examining the split skin without flinching. “Is any of this blood yours?”

When I tell her no, she takes a clean shop towel from the bench and presses it into my palm. “Good. Hold that.”

I obey because her hand remains over mine. Before I can ask, she says, “I heard what he said, and you know safety isn’t pretending dangerous men don’t exist. It’s knowing exactly where they’re pointing the danger. Harlan wants me dead. You broke a man’s finger to find out when he plans to try.” Herthumb brushes the inside of my wrist, where there’s no blood. “I know which one of you scares me more.”

The words settle deeper than they should. I’ve spent my life being the thing other people fear so the club doesn’t have to explain itself. Tessa sees all of it and stays close enough that the front of her shirt touches my cut.

I put my uninjured hand at the back of her neck and kiss her. Not the hard loss of control from last night. This is slower, still hungry, and no less possessive. She rises onto her toes and opens for me, one hand sliding beneath my cut before Kane’s cough cuts across the garage to get our attention.

Tessa’s mouth curves against mine. “Your president has terrible timing.”

“People have a habit of interrupting us.”

That gets the brief laugh she almost gave me in the room, and I feel it against my chest before she steps away.

The Rivermark floor plan covers a table. Tessa marks the upper gallery stair, the service corridor and the lower room where Morrow fell. Cash adds Wade’s maintenance entrance, while Judge works out where to place men without showing the club before Harlan commits.

I give them the simplest lie. “I call Harlan and tell him Kane went soft. I say I still have Tessa under my hand, and I’ll bring her and the original card to the Rivermark for double the payment and a clean road out.”

Tessa’s head comes up. “Then I have to look like you took me. I can’t walk in beside you carrying my own evidence like I’m part of the deal.”

Everything in me rejects the picture, but she is right. Harlan expects King’s enforcer to drag an unwilling witness out from under Kane’s protection. If Tessa stands beside me like a partner, the lie dies before he enters the room.

“I’ll keep hold of your arm and the camera,” I tell her. “You can make it look real, but you don’t try to break away once his men have guns out.”

“I know the difference between selling it and ruining the plan.” She taps the gallery on the floor plan. “I still need to be there. I know the blind spots, the damaged railing and the route his men used when they chased me. You know how to hurt people; I know that building.”