Page 14 of Diesel’s Desire

Penny on her knees for me. Penny under me. Her badge coming off with everything else, tossed somewhere I can’t see it because right now none of that matters. Not the uniform. Not the years between us. Nothing except the sound she makes when I finally get my hands on her the way I’ve wanted to since I was eighteen years old and too stupid to know how to keep her.

My grip tightens. My hips work, fucking up into my fist, chasing the relief I haven’t found anywhere else tonight.

Penny arching under me, saying my name like a question, except this time I’ve got an answer for her. This time I follow her out of the reception and drive her somewhere private.

I’m close now, breath coming faster, jaw clenched tight enough to ache. I let myself picture the last thing—her face right before she comes, that stillness she wears like armor finally cracking open for me and nobody else, those blue-gray eyes locked on mine because there’s nowhere else either of us wants to look.

“Penny,” I breathe, and then I’m gone, my body seizing in pure pleasure, spilling hot over my fist and the front of my slacks. The good ones Sasha picked out weeks ago because she said I needed to look sharp standing up there next to Havoc.

Sasha’s going to kill me if I don’t get these cleaned. Right now, I can’t bring myself to care.

I lie there after, heart still slamming, dick softening, hand sticky, slacks stuck to my thigh, staring at the ceiling, and stop pretending this will pass if I wait long enough.

Nothing’s ever going to feel like that. Not Honey, not any of the blondes I fucked. Not the club, not the runs, not the money or the violence or any of the things I’ve built a life out of instead of the one I actually wanted.

Just her. Penelope Carpenter, cop, standing ten feet away from me tonight like she’d walked straight out of every fantasy I’ve been too much of a coward to let myself have.

I’m done fucking around.

Seventeen years is long enough to spend circling something I should’ve fought harder for the first time. Doesn’t matter what she does for a living now, doesn’t matter that she built a career on the opposite side of a line I’ve stood behind my whole adult life. I’ll figure out how to make it work, same way I figure out how to make anything work once I decide it’s worth having.

I’m getting that woman back.

Her career. My club. I’ll have to face both if she gives me the chance. I’ve spent seventeen years assuming she won’t.

Time I asked her.

10

PENNY

The pencil taps a steady rhythm against my desk, and I’m surprised no one has told me to knock it off yet. Two files sit side by side in front of me, close enough that their edges touch. The Halvorsen murder. The county evidence robbery. Two cases a few months apart that shouldn’t have anything to do with each other, and yet I keep laying them out like this, looking for a connection I haven’t established.

The account in Erik Halvorsen’s file puts the killer in a Forsaken Kings patch, but when I called over to Ashford asking about it, their club president told me, calm as anything, that any patch seen that night had to be a fake. Somebody playing at being a King who wasn’t one.

I tap the pencil twice more against the desk, staring at the second file—robbery, weapons, professional execution, not a single loose thread except one small, dull ring bagged and tagged and sitting in an evidence locker two floors down from where I’m sitting. I keep coming back to it. Small stone. Simple band.

It doesn’t mean anything.

It’s a ring. Rings look alike. My brain’s supplying memories and slapping them onto a piece of evidence because I haven’t slept right in two weeks and every road in this county apparently leads back to a man I’ve spent seventeen years trying to forget.

My phone rings before I can talk myself any further down that road, and I don’t recognize the number until I answer and hear her voice.

“Penny?” Sasha, bright and a little breathless, like she’s walking fast somewhere. “It’s Sasha Halvorsen. Well, Sasha Slade, I guess I should say now.”

“Hi, Sasha.” I close both files, one on top of the other, and lean back in my chair. “How was the honeymoon?”

“So good. I’ll tell you everything. Actually, that’s kind of why I’m calling.” A pause, some rustling, a voice in the background I don’t catch. “I’m in town shopping and I remembered you said lunch, so. If you’re free. I don’t want to spring it on you, but I also didn’t want to plan too far ahead and lose my nerve.”

I glance at the clock. I glance at the files. “I’m free.”

“Really?” The relief in her voice makes something in my chest go soft despite myself. “There’s a place on Main with tables outside. I’m already there, actually. I got here early and panicked and ordered a sweet tea I don’t even want.”

“Give me fifteen minutes.”

She’s exactly where she said she’d be, at a little wrought-iron table under a green awning, both hands wrapped around a glass of tea she hasn’t touched, watching the street like she’s waiting for someone to jump out at her. The moment she spots me, she relaxes, and she waves like I might not see her otherwise, like there’s any chance of missing that much blonde hair and that wide of a smile in the middle of a Friday lunch crowd.

“You came.” She says it like she still can’t quite believe it.