Damaged & Dangerous: The Sacred Hearts MC Book VI (8 page)

Dani had just sealed her fate with that kiss
because she was going to be mine. Oh yes, she would be mine, and I would be
doing it the right way. I wasn’t about to go all caveman on her sweet ass, no.
No, no, no and no. I was going to take this damaged girl and do everything in
my power to restore her. The only problem was, I still had to do what needed
doing for my club, my
real
club, The Sacred Hearts. I was fortunate that
the two paths I was on ran parallel to each other, that there was no conflict.
I didn’t know what the fuck I was going to do if those paths ever
crossed,
but I guess I would just have to cross that particular bridge when I came to
it.

“I… I’m sorry.” Her hands started shaking when
I’d been quiet too long, my thoughts caught up in a hurricane of machination. I
took her hands between mine. They were slightly cool and I did what I could to
warm them.

“Don’t be sorry,” I told her sharply and she
flinched. I raised her hands to my lips and gently kissed her fingertips.

“You’re fine,” I soothed. She nodded and I was
acutely aware that I couldn’t make this last beyond tonight and tomorrow. That
her reprieve was finite and coming to an end. I swallowed hard and even though
I didn’t want to, I stood up.

“Come on, let’s get you some sleep.” She
scooted down in her bed and I tucked her in, pulling the blankets to her chin.

“I’ll be right out in the living room.” It
pained me to say it but I needed some distance from her if I was going to
manage to keep a clear head.

“You call me if you need anything.” She nodded
and I switched out the light on her side table and went out, shutting the
bedroom door behind me, leaving it open just enough so that if she called I
would hear her.

I checked all my phones and there was a text
that I’d missed by only a couple of minutes on my SHMC burner.

How’s my patient?

I smiled a little to myself. Seemed Dani may
have made an impression on more than just me.
 

Dani…

I don’t know what was going on and I’m not sure
how he’d done it but Thirteen, the prospect, had bought me an additional week
of peace with which to recover. I’d spent it getting better along with taking
apart and melting down the pieces he’d brought me, refashioning them into
something saleable, and taking the odd stones I had nothing to make with and
spiriting them into my secret stash, which was my bottle of Sensual Amber
perfume that I carried in my purse. The bottle was, as the name of the perfume
implied, a rich, deep amber color almost as dark as a beer bottle. It only held
smaller gems which was just fine, take something too big, or more than just one
or two at a time, it was bound to be noticed.

I know it was damned foolish stealing from the
MC, spiriting these odd little bits away, but I had to do something. The money
I had from my grandfather was dwindling little by little on rent, food, you
name it – just the general cost of living. Pig-Pen and the MC sure as Hell
didn’t provide for me to keep a roof over my head and clothes on my back. I
still marveled that it had never occurred to any of them how I managed to pay
rent or keep gas in my car or food in my pantry or fridge. The odd crumpled
twenty or two that Pig-Pen tossed at me certainly didn’t cover any of it.

I had also spent my week of blessed solitude
thinking about my curious exchanges with Thirteen. I didn’t know what I’d been
thinking, kissing him like that. Truthfully, I don’t really think I
had
been
thinking, I had simply been feeling when I’d done it. A multitude of emotions
really, gratitude paramount among them, but also, upon reflection, maybe a
little desire. I was a woman after all and he was a damned fine specimen of a
man, and not just in a physical sense either.  There had been nothing but
gentle kindness in his eyes in the time he cared for me in my apartment.

He’d been there, later in the night that
Pig-Pen had come, gently shaking me awake, snapping the nightmare I’d been
trapped in. It’d been another bad one. The blankets and sheets twisted around
my legs, the tee shirt I’d been in sticking to my skin with sweat. I’d showered
and by the time I’d returned to my room, wrapped in a great big towel, my bed
had been freshly made with clean sheets, the others running through the wash,
and he’d lain a fresh tee out for me. It had not gone unnoticed by me that he
didn’t go through my things, that the tee he laid out for me was one of his.

We didn’t speak. We didn’t need to, both of us
simply moved around each other, instinctively knowing what the other needed or
wanted. He didn’t go back to the couch right away.  Rather, instead, he
stretched out on top of the covers beside me. Not touching, just lying on his
side, facing me, one arm tucked under his head. I lay on my side mirroring him,
my hands tucked beneath my cheek, simply watching him across the short expanse
of mattress between us.

“When I first showed up, you were really out
of it,” he’d said gently, some time later.

“Yeah?”

“You were speaking French. I didn’t know you
could, your English is perfect.” He smiled.

I’d frowned, “What did I say?”

Thirteen had smiled and laughed a little and
said, “Hell if I know, I don’t speak anything other than English!” which had
elicited a tiny smile from me.

“Sound it out?” I implored.

He tried and the words had broken my heart. I
knew I’d been delirious; I mean, I was running a high fever and I had
pneumonia, the doctor had told me so. But still… tears had sprung to my eyes
and I felt as if I’d been cut, deeply, on an emotional level, except instead of
blood, despair had welled up .

Thirteen had asked me what I’d said, his free
hand tracing long strands of my hair gently behind my ear and out of my face. I
didn’t tell him. How could I? It was just so weak and pathetic. He let me cry, and
didn’t push, didn’t pry at all, for which I was so incredibly grateful. I just
didn’t have it in me to tell him just how hard I’d been begging him to let me
die in the tongue I had learned as a child from my grandfather, that I’d been
begging him to let me go and be with the man who’d raised me.

A hand closed around my upper arm with
bruising force and jerked me right out of the memory. I looked up, startled,
into Pig-Pen’s face. He’d said something to me but I’d completely missed what
it was. His hand came down across my face in a brutal backhanded slap and he
shook me. Tears sprang to my eyes with the stinging pain.

“I said get me a fucking beer! Jesus Christ!
You aren’t here to stand around fucking day dreaming all goddamned day!” he
shook me by my arm savagely one last time and thrust me away from him. I
stumbled into the bar, my hip checking painfully in to it.

“I’m sorry!” I cried swallowing hard. I got
him one of his favorites out of the cooler, and popped the top off of it with
the bottle opener mounted into the wood under the bar top. I handed it to him
and he snatched it out of my hand so violently that foam boiled out of the
long, narrow neck and ran over the backs of his fingers.

“Awww fuck! Look what you made me do, you
stupid –“ he raised his hand to strike me again and I cowered back, but he was
behind the bar with me and there was nowhere for me to go! I closed my eyes and
braced for the blow to land but he was stopped by Griz’s angry bark.

“Pen! Knock it off. We got problems bigger ’n this
right now.”

I panted, chest heaving, and opened my eyes to
stare straight into Thirteen’s. He was seated in his usual spot on the couch,
his face shut down, his eyes the color of a storm-swept Atlantic ocean. I’d
seen it once, when I was a girl, off the South Carolina coast when my
grandfather and I had travelled there for a gem show. His face gave nothing
away but his posture was tense and I begged him with my eyes:
No, just stay
there, be safe; please don’t intercede.

His posture lost none of its rigidity but he
blinked once, slowly. Message received. Pig-Pen’s looming presence backed away,
his shadow leaving me, and I slowly eased back to standing from my cowering. He
stalked off after Griz and Pipes. Gordy gave me a dirty look before falling in
behind them. Skid sighed from where he was seated at the opposite end of the
bar from where I stood.

“Girl, why do you
do
this to yourself?”
Skid asked me, leveling me with a pitying gaze. I smoothed my sweating palms
over the tops of the thighs of my jeans.

“Glutton for punishment I guess,” I said,
voice low and shaky with fading adrenaline. He huffed a sardonic laugh.

“Yeah. Can’t argue with you there,” he
returned.

“Everybody good on drinks?” I asked and Skid
nodded, so did Thirteen, and Flyer, who was playing around on his phone in one
of the recliners.

I gathered the trash from behind the bar, even
though it was only half full. I wanted out of there, to get some air for a
moment, and taking out the trash was the perfect excuse. I slipped out the fire
exit and down the metal steps of the back lot, to the dumpster up against the
building, and heaved the sack into it.

“I think about you, too. But you gotta stay
sharp in there, Rocket,” his voice came gentle and low from behind me, but I
hadn’t heard him follow me. I jumped and startled hard, my heart leaping clean
out of my chest before slamming back in, painfully. I pressed a hand to my
breast and his hands fell on my shoulders, a firm, even pressure that held me
together.

“I’m sorry,” I uttered and he turned me around
to face him.

“Don’t, not with me, not ever,” he whispered.

“Someone might see us,” I hissed. He dropped
his hands from my shoulders and started to take a step back but at the last
second held his ground.

“Some things are worth the risk,” he muttered
harshly and before I knew it I was in his arms, his lips pressed, warm and
inviting, against my own. I faltered for a moment, melting against his chest,
his heart thudding solidly through his soft tee beneath my fingertips. I moaned
softly and opened to him and he deepened the kiss, his tongue, hot and velvet
soft, sweeping past my lips.

He tasted so much better than I imagined he
would, masculine and crisp with an overlay of hops from the beer he’d drunk
inside. I pushed back suddenly and pressed my fingertips to my lips where the
feel of his kiss still lingered. He let me go immediately, didn’t force
anything, simply let me go, standing a pace away, arms loose at his sides,
chest heaving, a match for my own.

“Go inside,” he said gently.  I nodded and,
with legs shaking, climbed the stairs. I took a second, breath fogging in the
cool spring night, and tried to regain my composure before opening the door.
Sticking to the shadows I resumed my place behind the bar, my back to the club
and my hair hiding my face, which felt flushed.

The door opened behind me a few minutes later
and I heard Skid turn on his stool before he said, “You find it?”

Thirteen answered him, “Naw man, it was a
sweet ride though, the picture must be back in my stuff at the cabin. If I find
it, I’ll bring it in. I thought for sure it was in my saddlebag…” The two men
launched into a furtherance of a conversation on restoration projects and
classic bikes and I continued doing what I was doing as more guys arrived.
Still, I kept my head down and my eyes resolutely off of Thirteen even though I
could feel his eyes on me.

Not for the first time, I thought to myself
that he was a dangerous man. This time, though, it was for a whole different
reason.

Red-XIII…

I had to watch myself around her at the club.
She’d been absolutely right. Someone could have seen us and that could have
been bad. Really bad. Shit was seriously starting to fall apart for the Suicide
Kings this week, the week after my stolen kiss with Dani. I got a text on the
SHMC burner that, once deciphered, meant only one thing. They’d caught their
rat. I had to wait a day or two before I could dial in and get the 411.

I was at my cabin and Dragon picked up on the
second ring, “I figured you’d be calling in any day now,” he said by way of
greeting.

“Yeah, I figured something was going down when
their council started having more closed-door meetings. With everyone present
and accounted for, I figured you must have caught the mole.”

Dragon grunted, “Shelly did, actually. She
found some inconsistencies in ORG’s books. Darlene, the office girl, was skimming
off the top. She’s got a sick kid, somehow the Suicide Cunts found out about it
and offered her enough green to keep her kid breathing. Stupid bitch should
have just come to me or Dray, we woulda kept her straight and flyin’ right,” he
sighed and it was a sound that held the weight of the whole damned world in it.

“Shit, a woman and her kid?”

“Yep.”

“Do I even want to know how we handled this
one?” I asked. I knew how it would be handled in the old days, it wasn’t a
situation that I wanted to think about too much. Didn’t matter your gender in
the old days, you ratted and got caught the end result was the same. You got
yourself perished.

“We brainstormed, took a vote… Lucky, Zeb and
Doc took her and the kid, they’re relocating them as we speak. Doc will be back
middle of the week, next week. Lucky and Zeb are gonna stay with her ‘til we
see this thing through.”

“After that?” I asked.

“She’s on her own. Far away from here. She
darkens our door again, we got a spot all picked out for her with a nice view
from Cicada Woods. Up to her on which way it goes,” he said. I nodded, more to
myself than anything. Not like he could see me.

“We can spare Luck and Zeb?”

“Yeah, no problem. Duracell has Lucky’s special
capabilities with a lot less of the luck part factored into it, so we should be
good.”

“Good.”

“You still got eyes on you?”

“Nope. Ain’t seen the van since Tuesday two
weeks back,” I said, speaking of the cops who’d been surveilling the Kings
since the attack on my club… “You?” I asked.

“Nope. Moving into phase two the end of next
week,” he said, then, “How’s that girl? You ever figure out what’s doin’ with
her?”

I explained about Dani’s special skillset, how
she’d gotten in with the Kings in the first place and that she was most
certainly not aligned with their way of thinking. I felt guilty as sin spilling
all her closely guarded secrets to my Pres., but at the same time I had to if I
had any hope of getting her out of there.

“Sounds like one of the most fucked up
situations I’ve ever heard of,” Dragon said disgustedly, “You think she’s got a
clue about you or Doc?”

I answered him truthfully, “D, she’s fucking
smart as hell. I don’t think she knows where we come from but she definitely
knows something ain’t right about me. She’s keeping her mouth shut, though.”

“You think she’ll sell you out to save her own
skin?” he asked. I hoped so, but I wasn’t about to tell him that.

“Honestly? I don’t know. I’m hoping it doesn’t
come to that.”

“You see it headed that way, you gotta choose
between her and maintaining your cover? You make the right choice, Thirteen. I
do
not
wanna lose another brother to these assclowns. You get me?”

I nodded, realized he couldn’t see it, and
answered him, “I hear you loud and clear.” I answered.

“Good. When do you think you can get me names
and locations of these guys?” he asked.

“Thought you was never gonna fuckin’ ask!” I
felt a grim sort of satisfaction knowing that we were
finally
going on
the offensive with this. I was getting tired of the game and I wanted to get
Dani
out
of the life she was stuck in with these animals. Out from under
Pig-Pen. Unfortunately I knew how these kinds of things played out. The more
members my club shaved off the Suicide Kings’ roster, the more riled and hungry
these guys were going to become, the angrier and more savage, and by default, the
trickier the game would become to play. I hung up with Dragon feeling a mixture
of marginally better and marginally worse. Better because things were finally
in motion, worse because I was beginning to realize I was developing some
serious feelings for Dani, and that those feelings
could
compromise me.

I thrust those worries aside. There was no
sense in wondering and worrying about shit that hadn’t happened yet. Focusing
on what-if’s was a good way to get distracted from what was right in front of
your face, which was a good way to get dead. I had no intentions of doing
either of those things.

None whatsoever.