Chapter Thirty
I shouldn’t have been so utterly mean to the man who’d looked after me the last few days. The man I barely knew, but felt like I’d known all my life. He was a conflict, a contradiction. A complication I did not need in my life. But twice today my words had hurt him, and that big, muscular man looked at me like a puppy I’d just kicked into the gutter.
I hadn’t seen it at first as I opened the door to the lounge, my mind buried in thoughts and feelings and confliction. But something crunched under my feet. A broken ornament. I looked up, the image racing at me. The hotel ornaments were shattered and scattered; my papers pulled out of the files I’d taken home. The place had been turned over and Christ knew if the perpetrator was still there.
Racing to the door of my suite, I yanked it open, calling out to the shadow of the big man that slunk away in the dark.
“Fury. My room. It’s ransacked.”
He turned slowly, and for a moment I thought he would turn away again. He should have done that, for the way I’d just treated him. For the way I expected him to come and save me. But he strode towards me anyway, in long, hurried steps, rushing to my side. Just like a loyal dog. And that’s what this man was. Loyal. To his bike club brothers and to me. It shouldn’t matter that we were opposites, or that I lived in London. This man was salt, and he deserved much better than I could give him.
Fury followed me inside.
“Shit,” he breathed. “They’ve made a right mess. Fuck me.”
“They had to be looking for something.”
“Yeah, if I was gambling man, I’d bet that someone was looking for any copies of what you found in that office. If they haven’t found what they were looking for here, they’ll be coming straight after you next.”
I swallowed, my heart leaping into a hammering pace, thumping in my chest.
“You think so?” I said faintly.
“It’s what I would do.”
“I don’t know what you would do, Fury.”
We moved to the bedroom, the bedsheets and pillows ripped off the bed and thrown onto the floor. A folder of documents was scattered across the floor. Fury picked one up, looking at it and placing it back down, and then another. Then he looked at me, a darkness creeping across his eyes.
“Why have you got a folder on all our dead Kings, Heidi?”
“I took it from the Byker office when I started. When I was looking for the missing money. I thought Dave had something to do with it. I thought you had a hold over him. So, I pulled up all your details. You’ve had so many dead members, Fury. I thought there was a connection.”
He walked toward me, that same darkness on his face.
“And do you still think that?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because there is no evidence. There was evidence for Gordon.”
“And you still let me fuck you, even though you thought I maybe had something to do with all of this?”
If I’d hurt him earlier, then now I had really dug the knife in.
“I liked the danger. The risk. You are both.”
“Fuck’s sake,” he cursed, lunging at me and kissing me hard, ferociously, his tongue diving into my mouth, his hands gripping my face, and then he stopped as quickly as he started.
“What was that, Fury?”
“I don’t fucking know. A reset or something. We need to get you somewhere safe. Somewhere where no one knows where you’ll be. At least until we can get this sorted.”
“And how long’s that going to be?”
“As long as it takes me to get a confession.”
“From Gordon?”
“Who else?”
“And how you going to do that?”
“I can be very persuasive. Come on, pack your stuff. I need you to check out.”
*****
“The Dog on the Tyne ?” I asked, looking at the signage again, and the mass of bikes still filling the carpark. “Have they not gone home yet?”
“Nah. They’ll still be drinking. Biker funerals, huh? They once used to take days. Day after day of all-night sessions and a few hours of sleep wherever we dropped. Now, though, we’ve either got jobs or families to get home to. Come on.”
Fury jumped out of the truck, moving round to my side of the vehicle and helping me out before grabbing the case I’d hurriedly jammed all my belongings into. The music still bounded out of the building, the disco ball hanging in the ceiling scattering neon lights everywhere, bodies jostling in the dark. We moved to the back of the pub, to the men hustled around the bar, and the man with the grey hair looked up at us.
“Indie, I need a room for a while.” Fury tipped his head towards me and then back at the club’s president.
“The big room is full of the usual reprobates, mate. You can take Ste’s old room.”
“That’ll do.”
Indie didn’t once ask why. Didn’t once look at me as if he judged me. It was just matter of fact. Fury asked for a room. Indie told him which to use. No questions asked.
“Come on.” Fury pulled at my arm. “Let’s get you settled.”
I let him tug me forward, through the door beside the bar, where they’d all burst from earlier, and up the stairs at the back. The decoration was old, the wallpaper faded by the sun, squares almost burnt into it where pictures had once hung. Fury pulled me to the right, pushing through a door just off the landing.
It was a big room, a king-sized bed. The décor was the same, dated and worn, liked we’d stepped back a few decades. But it didn’t matter. It hadn’t been ransacked. And downstairs, anyone who wanted me would need to get through a bar full of bikers. I was probably the safest I had ever been.
“I’m sorry. It’s not the Hamptons, or a suite like you’re used to. But you couldn’t be safer.”
“I know, Fury. Thank you.”
He stood in front of me, and I smiled, wanting to break some of the tension.
“We never got room service,” he shrugged. “Want to see if those fuckers left us anything to eat?”
I nodded, my stomach rumbling in answer.
“Don’t suppose I can get a drink too. I could really use a gin.”
We sat side beside each other on a steel work bench, picking at food we’d piled on a plate between us.
“This stuff’s really great.”
“My mam made it all. Best fucking cook in the north east that one is. She loves cooking for us all. Every single one of us are family to her. She would have been a wonderful grandmother.”
“There aren’t any grandchildren?”
Fury shook his head. “There’s only three of us left. My older and younger brothers died, along with my Da years ago. Jacob fucked off to join the police and wiped his hands of us. And Jazz, she’s a wildcard. I can’t ever see her settling down and having kids. She jumps from job to job, place to place, boyfriend to boyfriend. None of us know where she’ll pop up next. It was good to see her yesterday, but mam said she’s taken off again.”
“Yesterday?”
“Yeah, she called into the wake, gave me a hug, got the guys to buy her some drinks and fucked off again. The original wild child. Reckon the only way she’ll settle is if someone ties her down. And so, it just leaves me. Guess Mamma Dot ain’t getting any grand bairns anytime soon.”
“Mamma Dot?”
“Aye, that’s what the lads all call her. She’s the bike club mam, the most committed to the club of the lot of us.”
I smiled at his tales of family and brotherhood. It warmed my outsides, yet I was as empty as ever inside.
“Jacob is the one you said would help me? Isn’t it?”
“You’re not just a pretty face,” Fury laughed, deep and manly and perfect. “Yeah, Jacob will help you.”
“Why?”
“Because Jake has to follow the law, no matter what, even if in the scheme of things, it wouldn’t deliver justice. He can’t see past anything else. It’s follow the law, or nothing.”
“Your lifestyles bother him, huh?”
“Yeah. And the bike club. He blames it for the father he never got to meet. In his eyes, if we hadn’t been part of it, our Da, our brothers, none of them would have died. He’s probably right, maybe they wouldn’t have. But maybe fate had that in store for them, anyway. If they hadn’t been part of the club, there wouldn’t have been anyone to step in and take care of us. Of mam. And that’s the difference for me. I belong here. This is my family. Indie, Demon, Magnet, Reap, Twit and Twat. Everyone.”
Maybe I was starting to understand, because right now, they were looking after me too. But I didn’t have time to process it as Fury slid off the steel bench, moving himself between my legs.
I didn’t wait for the kiss to come. I wrapped my legs round his waist and pulled him to me, my mouth already open, waiting for his tongue. He didn’t disappoint, his tongue dipping and swirling, chasing mine, our lips duelling, his hands pushing under my jumper, lifting it off over my head.
“Fuck,” he breathed against my mouth. “If I’d known you were braless, this would have been off earlier.”
His hands cupped my breasts, his fingers twisting my nipples painfully, a tingling, quivering heat radiating outwards. And then he pulled his mouth from mine and pushed his head into the middle of my chest, his breath warm against me, slowly sliding across, leaving a hot, wet trail as he dragged his tongue to the right, covering my nipple and sucking hard.
“Fuck,” I groaned, tightening my legs around his waist.
Fury stood up, his lips and tongue still sucking and plucking at my nipple, his hands under my arse, lifting and turning and carrying me across the kitchen until he backed me up against the huge fridge opposite. He dropped me to my feet, his mouth trailing down my stomach, reaching the waistband of my trousers.
“Take them off,” he instructed.
“Fury. Someone might come in.”
“No one’s coming in. They’re all too busy out there getting pissed.”
His fingers tugged, peeling my trousers away, hooking in the top of my knickers and pulling them down my legs with them, until I kicked them clean off, sending them scattering over the floor with my shoes, the tiles cold against my feet. Then he kneeled, nudging my knees apart, looking up at me. Fury pulled something from his wrist. A little black bobble, and for a moment I wondered what he was going to do with it. Then he drove his hands into his hair, pulling his hair back, and securing into that messy man bun on the top of his head.
“I want that leg over my shoulder, doll,” he instructed, his voice gravelly, pulling at my ankle.
I glanced again at the doorway.
“Eyes on me, Heidi. I want you watching while I feast on this sweet pussy, doll.”
And then he pushed his face into me, his beard reaching me first, prickling at my pussy lips, sending me wriggling away, the fridge at my back holding me still, as his tongue, slid over my entire entrance. Each swipe sank deeper, each movement scratching at the sensitive area between my legs. The area that was supercharged with anxious nerves as I leaned back against the cold steel fridge.