“Hope you’re right,” he muttered, his eyes moving to her mole.
“Oh, I’m right.”
His eyes cut back.
Fuck.
Now that...
That felt great.
Great enough he did what he should have done the minute he got a hand on her.
He slid his fingers into her hair, brought her down to him, and took her mouth. He also took his time. Only when she’d melted deep into him did he break it off.
“You have a good day?” he asked.
Her eyes were hazy, something he liked, and her words were breathy, something he also liked.
“Yeah. Got a lot done.”
He wanted her where she was now. He wanted to do a variety of things to her like she was now.
But they had other shit they had to get out of the way.
It sucked but it wouldn’t suck, having it out of the way.
So he set about doing that so they could move on.
“You served up some serious spunk when I showed this mornin’,” he noted.
Some of the haze left but she stayed relaxed into his body as she replied, “You served up some serious meanie when you showed up, so spunk was my only resort.”
Meanie?
He felt his body shaking as he shook his head on the pillow that was resting on the arm of the couch, doing this grinning.
He felt his grin die and twisted his hand in her hair.
“Wouldn’t admit this at the time, but lookin’ back, it’s good you didn’t take my shit.”
It was better than good.
She’d been fragile. He knew he had to handle her with care.
But he’d lost his mind when he’d heard Valenzuela had targeted her and done something about it. He’d been blinded by fury at Valenzuela at the same time blinded by fear that psychopath got to his girl.
With no choice other than to fuck the work it was taking way too much time to do to take down Valenzuela, he took it out on Millie.
She shoved it back.
That was the old Millie. She fought her corner. She didn’t take shit.
There was once a crew within Chaos who liked their women docile and obedient. That crew ran alongside the crew who wanted women who could roll with the changes, get off on the life, not be beaten down by it and exist through it.
That first crew was gone.
Only the rest remained.
And High had always been a member of that first crew.
Even if he’d allied with the other side.
This thought brought him back to the current subject.
“Tack says Valenzuela said nudge to you. He say anything else?”
She nodded. “His visit was short but he said a lot of things.”
“What kind of things?”
She studied him.
He didn’t like that because it meant she wasn’t answering him and more, she was assessing him and what his reaction might be to what she’d say.
“I’m not in that,” he told her.
Her head twitched. “Not in what?”
“Too dangerous,” he replied. “I’d want that, what you’re worried I’d do to Valenzuela. Was a day no way I’d agree to being forced out of dealin’ personally with a man who did what he did to you. But we’re close to takin’ down this guy. Not gonna be me who fucks it up. I think about him fuckin’ with you, just that could make me fuck it up. So I got one job. Keep a lid on it and trust my brothers to get the job done. I can do the last. Keepin’ a lid on it’s not gonna be easy. But I gotta dig deep so I can do that too.”
After he was done talking, she broke into a smile.
“Somethin’ make you happy?” he asked.
“He said he had to find the hothead,” she answered. “The weak link. The nudge was about using me to set you off, as he put it, to set things in motion.”
As she spoke, High felt his body string tight.
She had to feel it.
But she was still smiling.
“And here you are,” she whispered, dipping closer to him. “Looking after me and trusting your brothers. Proving that jackass wrong.”
“Was that,” he grunted.
Again her head jerked.
“Sorry?”
“Was that,” he repeated. “The guy who’d use any excuse to set anything off just to ride the edge, see if I’d fall off, not carin’ if I took my brothers with me.”
Her smile gone, her expression shifted to troubled.
“Logan—”
He cut her off, twisting his hand gently in her hair, doing it automatically to keep her close, hoping his words didn’t make her want to pull away. “Lost the woman I loved, didn’t give a shit about anything. Fuck, in the beginning, wanted to fall off the edge just to end the pain.”
Her troubled expression turned pained.
“Logan.”
That Logan was a breath. A wounded one.
“This ain’t gonna work unless we lay it out. So I’m layin’ it out,” he announced. “You’ve never been stupid. I know you knew. Chaos was into some shady shit back when we were together. And gotta admit, I got off on it then, mostly ’cause it made a shit ton of money and I wanted to give us a lot of things and to do it, I needed money. But it was more. It was a high and I liked to get high.”
He quit talking, letting that sink in.
It sunk in.
“Right,” she whispered.
He kept going.
“After I lost you, Chaos descended. Got in deeper everywhere. Lookin’ back, this was solely Crank’s fuck-you to Tack, who had other ideas about the Club and was puttin’ ’em into action, quiet-like. Crank was full-on paranoid that Tack wanted the gavel from the early days and he set about tying us up so tight in shit it was impossible to get loose from knowin’ it would tie Tack’s hands. Don’t think Tack gave a shit about the gavel until Crank started fuckin’ with the Club. Then Tack was all about wrestin’ that gavel from Crank. Crank underestimated him. Lotsa folks underestimated Tack back then. Tack proved that’s a mistake. Only Valenzuela does it now.”