Page 20 of Cipher

His grin widened as he headed for the door. “Already planned on it.”

I finished by tying Bex’s emergency alert to my phone, Stryker’s office, the compound response system, and Black Castle’s staffed operations center. Her image from the gate camera was added to the access profile along with Raines’s SUV, her own vehicle, the new number, and a code that could open the compound’s emergency entrance if the ordinary gate failed. The profile marked her as protected family rather than a guest, which meant no brother on watch would delay her while trying to reach me for authorization.

Bex did not have a patch, access to club systems, or permission to wander through secure rooms simply because she belonged to me, but she had the full protection of every man wearing Black Crowns colors. No one outside the club needed to understand the distinction, and anyone who tested it would learn too late that protected family carried more consequences than a temporary client ever could.

I locked down the office, returned the temporary handset to storage, and headed for the kitchen with Bex’s new phone in my pocket. Her laugh reached me through the swinging door before I pushed it open, warm enough to pull my attention straight across the room. She sat beside Jacqueline with the remains of breakfast in front of her, while Mara tried to add another piece of bacon to her plate.

My cock thickened as Bex tipped her head back and laughed at something Dot said, the movement exposing the soft line of her throat above the loose collar of her shirt. After spending so long pretending distance qualified as control, I wanted her beneath my hands often enough that the separation of the past half hour had begun irritating me.

Halo entered through the other kitchen door carrying a mug, freshly returned from an overnight transport run and apparently unaware of who sat at the table until he looked up. His gaze touched Bex’s face with nothing more than recognition, but he changed direction to introduce himself, and my body moved before he came within arm’s reach. I stepped behind her chair, wrapped one hand around her waist, and drew her lightly against my front while placing myself between her and the approaching brother.

“Bex, Halo.” I let my thumb settle against the soft curve above her hip. “Halo, Rebecca Raines.”

He stopped a respectful distance away, looked at my hand spanning her waist, then met my eyes. “Thought you were keeping your distance.”

“That policy changed.”

He dipped his chin toward Bex and welcomed her to the compound before taking his coffee toward the far counter, leaving Jacqueline with amusement tucked into her expression and both older women pretending to be deeply interested in the eggs.

Bex turned her head enough to look up at me, and the faint pink spreading across her cheeks made the pressure behind my zipper considerably worse. She made no attempt to remove my hand, though, settling more fully into my hold. “Was that necessary?”

“Yeah.”

Bex’s lips twitched because she understood that logic had very little to do with why I’d moved so fast, but she let me keep the lie intact in front of everyone else. “Thank you for protecting me from a friendly introduction.”

“You’re welcome.”

Jacqueline covered a laugh with her glass, while Mara muttered something about men becoming impossible the second they decided a woman belonged to them. I ignored both, pulled the phone from my pocket, and held it out to her.

She accepted the new device and studied the arrangement on the screen. “You moved everything.”

“New number. Your father, Jacqueline, work, school, and the contacts you use regularly already have it. Anybody else reaches you after I clear them.”

“After you clear them?” she echoed.

“Yeah.”

“That’s not overbearing at all.”

“Wasn’t intended to be subtle, baby.” I tapped the edge of the phone. “Old number is still active inside an isolated monitor. Anyone who tries to threaten you through it reaches me instead.”

The teasing faded from her expression as she absorbed the reason behind the control. She looked up at me with the open trust that did dangerous things to my heart.

I stepped away before the old ladies got a clearer view of exactly how hard she made me. Jacqueline stood and hugged Bex again while Mara wrapped enough food for several meals. Dot added a container of cookies despite Bex’s assurance that I probably had food at the house.

We left the clubhouse a few minutes later, my hand returning to the base of her spine before the front door finished closing.

The drive from the compound to my house followed a narrow private road deeper into the Black Crowns acreage, winding through oak groves and rocky slopes where cameras disappeared into trees and sensors sat beneath ground that looked untouched. Bex watched the landscape through the passenger window while I kept one hand on the wheel and the other near her thigh, resisting the urge to close it over the soft denim every time the road curved.

She remained quiet until we passed the final controlled gate, then turned toward me when her new phone chimed to confirm that her access code had been accepted. “You already put me in your fancy system.”

“Wouldn’t have brought you out here without doing it.”

Her smile turned soft as she looked at the phone again. “Protected family?”

“That’s what you are.”

She rested her hand over mine. The simple contact sent a hot pulse through my cock and tightened something deeper beneath my ribs as I turned my palm and threaded our fingers together. Bex watched our joined hands for a moment before facing the road again with pleasure warming her cheeks.