Chapter 7
DRIFT
The next day, I was working in my office.
Pretending to, anyway.
The stack of numbers on the screen in front of me hadn’t moved in an hour.
The cursor on the laptop blinked against a half-read report of stats from the past few underground races that The Redliners and Redline Zero had raced in.
They were Kane’s underground teams that I managed.
I’d read the same sentence five times and couldn’t remember a word of it.
The office sat at the back of the clubhouse.
It was sparse—one window, a few pictures from races I’d won, and a sturdy metal desk.
The low hum of compressors and the occasional echo of a wrench hitting concrete bled through the walls, steady and familiar.
Normally, those sounds grounded me. Today, they grated on my nerves.
Because every time I tried to focus, all I could see was her.
The way Alanna had looked at me last night—wide-eyed, skin flushed pink, lips swollen, and hair tangled from my hands.
The sound she made when I pushed her over the edge was still ringing in my ears.
That soft, broken moan that hit right in the center of my fucking chest and tore something loose I didn’t even know I had.
I could still taste her on my tongue.
Fuck.
It didn’t matter how many times I blinked, she was still there. Pressed against that wall, breathing my name in her soft, husky voice. My real name. Chance.
I leaned back in the chair, the leather creaking under my weight. Dragging a hand down my face, my fingers brushed my jaw, rough with a day’s growth, then settled over my eyes like that might be enough to block the memory. It wasn’t.
Every detail hit me in flashes. The scent of her hair. The heat of her body when I lifted her. The way her pulse jumped against my tongue. The trust in her eyes right before I lost control.
That last one fucking wrecked me.
She’d looked at me like she believed I’d never hurt her. As though she didn’t know what I was truly capable of.
The rational part of me—the side that lived by the club’s code and had seen what losing control could cost—knew it had to stop. But the rest of me wanted to go back and do it again. And again.
Slower. Harder. Longer.
The craving for a cigarette clawed at me, raw and abrasive. I flipped my old lighter open and shut, the soft click echoing off the walls. Once. Twice. Each time, the flame hissed, flared, then died.
The smoke I didn’t have filled my head anyway, but the scent was different. It smelled like…her.
Shit!
I stood up fast, the chair rolling back until it hit the wall with a thud. My body felt too tight for my skin. I paced, running a hand through my hair and breathing harshly. The motion didn’t burn the urge off—it just stirred the fire higher.
Through the open door, I caught the faint sound of engines starting outside. Brothers coming in and out of the lot, laughter carrying under the low thrum. It brought me back to reality. Anchored me the way only family noise could and reminded me where I belonged. What I couldn’t fuck up.
But even that wasn’t enough to drown out her voice in my head.
“Thank you.”
Two words—sweet as sugar and soft as sin.
She’d smiled when she said it, not realizing that the smallest brush of her fingers on my arm had already undone me.
I should’ve walked out before the kiss. Should’ve never let it happen.
But I had.
And I wasn’t sure I’d ever stop tasting it.
Imagining what would have come next.
Big fucking mistake.
Because my brain filled in the blanks too easily—too vividly.
Her soft moan breaking against my mouth. The slow slide of her tongue against mine. The heat that would build if I’d kept going—lifting her, carrying her to the bed, and laying her out for me.
Dropping back into my chair, I leaned my elbows on my knees and braced my palms against my skull like I could squeeze the images out. It didn’t help. They kept coming, hot and real.
I could almost feel it—the scrape of fabric as I slowly undressed her. My eyes soaking in the exquisite curves of her naked body. Then the shock of skin meeting skin as I pressed my body to hers.
Every detail came alive—the curve of her hip under my palm, the warmth of her thigh brushing mine, and how her pulse would race when I pushed inside her.
Her body moving with mine, throbbing around my shaft as both of us got lost in the same rough rhythm until there was nothing left between us but heat and desperate need.
I could see her eyes on me, hazy and trusting, her lips parted on a sound that would undo every ounce of control I had left.
The fantasy hit so hard my pulse kicked against my ribs, the ache in my cock spreading through my body until every muscle felt wired. My skin was too damn tight, and my dick was painfully swollen. The air in the office felt thick, heavy enough to choke on.
The room stayed still, but my head was in chaos—flashes of her, the scent of vanilla and salt, and the trust in her eyes when I should’ve been the last man she trusted.
Fuck, I wanted her. I wanted every shiver, every sound, every look she’d give me when I finally stopped holding back.
But I couldn’t have her.
Didn’t matter that she was grown now, or that she’d looked at me like I was the only safe thing in her world. She was Jax’s little sister. And I’d seen him nearly burn the world down for less.
I needed distance.
I needed control.
But all I could think about was walking into her apartment again, closing that door, and finishing what we started. No interruptions. No fucking phone calls.
The thought hit like a punch, dragging a low growl from my chest.
I knew fucking better. I’d spent years mastering restraint—holding steady when the world went to hell, keeping my brothers alive, and not letting the line between right and wrong blur too far. But with Alanna? That line had disappeared.
Jax’s voice suddenly crept in with a memory. I gritted my teeth, forcing my breath to slow.
It had been years ago, when he had patched with the Redline Kings. Shortly after the last time I’d seen Alanna before she came to Crossbend.
He’d been cursing his parents to hell and back for forbidding his sister to see him. “Part of me understands, though,” he’d told me, sitting on the tailgate of his truck. “I want to have her in my life, but I don’t want her anywhere near this life.”
The club. The danger. The violence that came with our brand of justice.
At the time, I’d agreed with the sentiment. The sweet little girl I remembered didn’t belong in our world.
Not even if every fucked-up part of me wanted to pull her closer to it—and to me.
I’d seen too much to pretend otherwise. I wasn’t built for soft things—especially not her.
Growing up in the worst part of Gainesville, I was neck-deep in the kind of streets that ate kids alive.
Racing was my way out. At least, that was what I told myself.
But those tracks weren’t about trophies or glory.
They were run by a local dealer, Mace, who treated us like disposable entertainment—fast cars, high bets, and blood on the asphalt when someone didn’t make the turn.
He took most of my winnings and called it “protection money.”
I’d scoffed at first, insisting that I fought my own fucking battles. But Mace’s guys taught me a lesson really quick after that. It was protection from him. I was paying for my life.
By the time I was nineteen, I’d built a name as the kid who didn’t crash and didn’t talk.
That was when Kane showed up at one of the midnight races and stood out like a wolf among strays.
He saw me run, pulled me aside, and said he could give me something better.
Real teams. Money that didn’t reek of blood.
The races were still illegal, but they had rules, safety, and no one was gonna break my kneecaps if I came in second.
But I was too deep in by then and forced myself to say no.
Too many “debts.” Although what and why I owed the dealer had never been fully explained, and too many eyes were watching.
Kane looked at me for a long moment, like he already knew how it was going to end, and said, “You call me when you’re ready. ”
When, not if.
Didn’t take long.
A few months later, a girl I knew disappeared.
Shy thing who sold beer out of coolers at the finish line.
When I started asking questions, the wrong people noticed.
Eventually, I suspected the answer had something to do with trafficking, and like the hotheaded, overly confident asshole that I was, I confronted Mace.
After I got out of the hospital—where I’d almost died as a warning “not to be nosy” since I was too much of a cash cow for him to kill—I vowed to take him down.
One night, the dealer’s mansion went up in flames.
No one ever saw his crew again.
The cops said it looked professional—like someone had wired the place to blow. The kind of job that didn’t leave survivors or evidence. But there had been bullets in some of the charred bodies, and others showed evidence of physical violence.
People whispered that I’d gone in myself—that I’d tortured them, then locked the doors before I lit the fuse. Others swore I just disappeared for two days and came back with blood under my nails and eyes that didn’t look human anymore.
It seemed everyone was certain I’d done something, but no one’d ever been brave enough to ask which version was true.
Only Kane, Edge, and Jax knew what truly happened.
I hadn’t wanted to patch with the Redline Kings without being fully honest with the prez and VP.
And Jax…well, we knew the best and the worst about each other.
Mutual destruction, some might say. To us, it was friendship and loyalty.
We were brothers long before we wore our cuts.
After that, the street crowd gave me space. Fear has a way of clearing a room faster than fists. The scar across my brow didn’t help—split open by the fist of someone who knew they were about to die. But the silence did more damage than any blade could.
When I patched, Kane gave me the road name “Drift.” He said it was from the way I drove and the way I lived.
I didn't follow the line; I slid through it. On the track, I could drift a curve that would send most drivers into the wall. Off it, I’d slid out of hell and into the Kings, cutting loose from the past that tried to own me.
Now I drifted between light and shadow, law and outlaw, calm and carnage.
And when the formation rode, I was the last man you saw in your mirror—and the one you didn’t see after that.
That was who I was before the Kings and who I still was under the cut.
Controlled chaos, always on the edge of losing control, but I never gave in because I knew what happened when I did.
And Alanna Bishop…she was the last person on earth who should ever find out what that looked like.