Chapter Ten
Rules of Engagement
There were so many reasons to fight this major shift in my relationship with Tyr. First and foremost, I didn’t trust it. I didn’t trust it, because I didn’t trust him . Month after month, year after year, Hades had convinced me through pain and torture that Tyr didn’t care enough about me to keep me from being punished for whatever misdeeds he pulled. There was a time when I’d hated Tyr with a mad and glorious passion. Once or twice there had even been a moment where I’d actively wished him dead, just so my torment would come to an end.
That was some heavy-duty brainwashing to overcome, to say the least.
And, of course, there was the knowledge that Tyr had come to resent how Hades had used me as a weapon to bludgeon him time and again. I had no doubt that he’d come to hate me just as much, because I had been forced to become a constant source of pain for him for years.
So I didn’t trust him. I couldn’t help but keep wondering what his true motives were when it came to trying to seduce me. Logically I knew I shouldn’t encourage this… this whatever-it-was with Tyr. My life was complicated enough. He was a headache I didn’t need.
Except…
I did need him.
On some primitive level, I needed him. To hold me. To kiss me. To fill me. To rip me apart in the most carnal way, then put me back together in a shape of his liking. God, I needed him so much I couldn’t hold back a small moan of yearning when he deepened his kiss.
The fiery heat of his lips wasn’t startling anymore. Only addicting. I had a real fear of addiction of any sort, thanks to my mother, but in that moment I didn’t care. I let my eyes close so I could sink into the searing embrace of it, reveling in what I believed deep down was our first real kiss rather than something he took before I was prepared to give.
He seemed to recognize the difference as well, if the rough groan that rumbled from him was any indication. I leaned into him, deepening the pressure and savoring the sweep of his tongue against mine.
Delicious .
The feel of him made me crave more, so I turned my torso so that it pressed fully against his chest. God, how I wished I had the power to make clothes magically disappear. I tried to memorize all the intriguing ridges and hollows of his body through feel alone, and a shiver tore through me at the sensation of my breasts flattening against his chest. He was as solid as a brick wall and hot as a furnace. He seemed to have the ability to shift and absorb my weight so that not even a breath of space existed between us, and I loved that. As satisfying as a puzzle piece fitting into its rightful place, that was how I fit into Tyr’s arms, and I could only hope he felt the rightness of it, too.
The rightness.
Was that what this was?
Kissing Tyr was hot and exhilarating, and as much as the two of us getting together made no sense, there was no denying my underwear had become uncomfortably wet in the time that I’d been sitting on his lap. Like, time-to-freaking-change kind of wet. But as soon as he stopped touching me, stopped kissing me, the reality of my world would be waiting to smack me right in the face. A reality where I didn’t trust him. A reality where he wanted the world to think he hated me. That we hated each other.
What the hell am I doing?
I leaned back, breaking the kiss, while my hand had found its way to his chest to push him away without my realizing it. Boiling over with frustrated need and conflicted confusion, I looked into his eyes only to find him watching me with such absolute focus I could almost believe nothing else on earth mattered to him more than me.
“I know you’re at war with your uncle.” Hades was the last thing I wanted to talk about, God knew. Doing so left a bad taste in my mouth, like I’d just licked the bottom of a trash can. But I needed to know where I stood. “I know you’re always looking for a chink in his armor.”
I couldn’t blame him for the epic slow-blink he bestowed on me. “Are you serious? You want to talk about that cocksucker now ?”
“I just want you to know that I’m not a chink in his armor, Tyr. I can’t be used that way if… if that’s what you’re wanting to do with me.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means I can’t be used in your war against Hades. Not only will I not stand for it, the fact is I have nothing to do with that monster anymore. I haven’t for years. You know this.”
“Damn right I know it. I’m the one who got you out of his house and sheltered you until you were old enough and strong enough to move out on your own. If you never lay eyes on that shitbird again it’ll be too soon.”
Something vital loosened in my chest, and I sighed at the relief of it even as I tried to get to the bottom of our new reality. “Okay, so you’re saying that you know I can’t be used in any strategy.”
“Exactly.”
“And you know I want nothing to do with any of your stupid wars.”
“I wouldn’t let you get anywhere near it even if you wanted to jam a stick of dynamite up H’s ass and light it yourself.”
“Good,” I said faintly, still frowning as I sifted through every possible angle. “For what it’s worth, I personally believe that bastard will die soon enough, and the Chicago Gravediggers will die with him, leaving you a clear field to take over the entirety of Chicago.”
“Are you going somewhere with this?”
“I’m just trying to make sure we both understand how things are. The change in your attitude toward me… It doesn’t seem like it has anything to do with Hades or your war with him.” I looked up at him warily. “Right?”
“You’re having real trouble figuring me out, aren’t you?”
“Just answer the damn question.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” he said, while his scowl dissolved into a grin that clearly showed he was laughing at me. “And good for you, digging up those answers all by yourself. It’s like you’re a detective or something.”
“And you’re a comedian.” I tried not to huff, but when the man was laughing at me, a little huffage was required. “You can’t blame me for questioning your motives. For most of our lives we’ve hated each other.”
“Not when we were little.” His hand came up to cup my chin, and my heart stuttered at the tenderness in his touch. “And I wasn’t kidding when I said I won’t let you hate me. I know there’s a lot of shit in our past, but that wasn’t generated by us. If you can fight your way through all that and let it just be us—just us and nothing else—then you’ll get why I’m doing what I’m doing.”
“Can’t you at least give me a hint?”
“Sure.” He shifted me on his lap, and all at once I felt the hardness of his cock pressing against my thigh. My eyes widened even as he deliberately moved against me, just in case he thought I had somehow become dead from the waist down and was missing his point—literally. “You got any more questions for me, Snap?”
I could barely find the breath to answer, though whether it was from shock or arousal I couldn’t say. “No.”
“Then let me leave you with a couple statements that might help clear the situation up even more. When I touch you, I don’t want to stop touching you. When I kiss you, I wish I could make time stop so that I could have your mouth under mine for the rest of my forever. When we fuck—and make no mistake, that’s the next step—it’ll be because that’s what we were made to do.”
At some point during his speech, I forgot how to breathe. “If you feel that way, why keep it—keep us —a secret?” If he were ashamed of me, it would be so much easier to reject him.
The look he gave me told me he doubted my sanity. “I’m at war with my ultraviolent psycho uncle. Knowing our history, are you really asking me why?” When I shook my head, he tightened his arms around me in a hold that was borderline painful and clearly meant as punishment for my words. “Feel free to keep trying to attach ulterior motives or hidden agendas to me, but it’s all bullshit, and deep down you know it. So be the brave ball of fire I know you are and face the damn fact that you and I are inevitable.”
That brought my chin up. “I think I have some say in that.”
“Oh, baby girl, no,” he corrected, his arms tightening even more until I had to squeak in protest. That was when he smiled so wickedly the Devil himself would have been shaken by it. “You really, really don’t.”
*
Tyr
The relentless beat of Disturbed’s “Bad Man” pulsed through the marble-covered front room of the Clubhouse. Over the bar —a curved counter that had once been where the bank’s tellers were stationed—a flatscreen TV showed a typical “Delivery Man” porn flick, the sound so low the enthusiastic moans could barely be heard above the rock beat coming from the jukebox in the corner.
That was okay. No one watched for the scintillating dialogue.
The scent of spicy food lingered in the air even though the three large pans of chicken and cheese enchiladas the little mamas had brought in had been sucked up. Absently I kept track of how many brothers were currently within the Gravedigger compound—about forty or so—with more coming in every day. That usually happened this time of year, thanks to the rally the Chicago Gravediggers threw to finish off the season. To a casual observer, that was the logical explanation behind the increase in our population.
The reality was a helluva lot darker. The low but persistent hum of tension in the air told the tale well enough. Every Gravedigger under this roof was primed and ready for war, and the Gravedigger generals—the leaders and high-ranking officers of the tri-state regional chapters—streamed in for what would be the ultimate roll-call.
I didn’t fool myself into thinking Hades wasn’t doing the same thing. Consolidating his power at his compound across town had to be the only reason H was throwing the rally in the first place. In years past he’d barely had his people advertise it, but this year you couldn’t open an email or text without seeing notifications about it. He either wanted cover for bringing in ringers, or he wanted a captive audience to see whatever it was he had planned for us. Hell, it was probably both.
That was why we weren’t going to wait. No point in pretending to be a sitting duck when you were a hunter loaded for bear.
“Hey there, Mr. President.”
I’d been wondering when she’d work her way up to me. For the past five minutes she’d been moving toward me like a shark circling a wounded seal. About time she got this party started.
I turned my head to let her know I knew she was there. To be fair, she’d catch the attention of any man with a pulse. Barely legal college-aged kid, dressed in thigh-high black boots, a black mini skirt so small it showed her ass cheeks and ruffled thong if she moved just the right way. Her halter top was white, seemed to be made of tissue paper, and way too small to contain the massive tits she had going on. They had that bolted-on, anti-gravity look that screamed boob job , but that never bothered me any. Her thick fake eyelashes and purple-tinted contacts didn’t bother me either. Easy-lays were exactly that, and didn’t require too much brain power to figure out what they wanted.
Even if this one wasn’t an easy-lay.
“Question.” Scooting herself in between where I sat and the empty stool next to me, she walked her fingers along the bar the way a little kid would do to where my arm was. “Do you remember me?”
“Kinda hard to forget the bitch I thought was jailbait trying to suck my cock clean off my body.” I turned to her more completely to show her she’d snared my attention. “How’re you doing, Yoyo?”
“Oh, you do remember me.” She made a sound of girlie delight and clapped her hands together. “I haven’t been able to forget about you, Mr. President. Like, at all.”
“Like, really?” I couldn’t help it. Sometimes I just had to be a smartass. “Do tell.”
She leaned in confidentially, making her enormous tits flatten against my arm. I locked my muscles to keep from moving away. “I’ve been thinking about your… you know… piercing.”
I waited a beat. “What about it?”
“I’ve never given a blowjob to someone pierced before, so I was wondering what it would feel like, you know… inside me. Like, would this thing hurt, or feel good?” With her purple-tinted eyes clinging to mine, she reached down between us before I knew what she was going to do, and cupped my junk.
In a flash I caught her wrist, the move nearly yanking her off her high heeled boots. She gasped, eyes widening in alarm as I stood up and glowered down at her. “No one,” I growled, packing as much menace as I could into my tone, “touches me without permission. Got that?”
She licked her lips, then peeked up at me from beneath those false eyelashes. “Permission to touch, Mr. President?”
Man, this bitch was something. I sent a covert glance around the room, clocked that my sudden move had garnered a few interested looks, and got hit with inspiration. “Stay where you are and don’t move.” I dropped her wrist and reached for my phone, not at all surprised when she docilely folded her hands in front of herself while I opened the text app.
“Romeo, we’ve got eyes inside the Situation Room, yeah?”
The return text was almost immediate. “Eyes and ears. Problem?”
“R U onsite?”
“Yeah, over at Ride Or Die, talking baby names with my Shy girl, Mabel and Ashtray. Ash wants us to name it Ashtray Junior because he thinks he’s the one who got us together.”
He kind of did, but that was beside the point. “First, don’t ever name your kid Ashtray Junior. Second, I need you to burst into the Situation Room in 5 minutes and get me out of there on ‘urgent business.’ No matter what you see, come in and get me out in 5.”
“Starting the clock now.”
I put my phone away and grabbed her by the arm. “I just clocked out for half an hour.” I bent low so I could put my mouth close to her ear. Shit, she was short. “You wanna know what it feels like to have good ol’ Prince Albert tearing you up inside, I’ve got no problems with that. Come with me.”
“Okie-dokie, artichokie.” Her breathless giggle sounded like a laugh track as I guided her behind the bar and through the guarded wood-paneled door, which led to the heart and nerve center of the Gravediggers MC. The stairs and service elevator that greeted us were guarded by prospects. Their bored expressions snapped to keen attention as we passed to take the stairs down to the vaults. Casually I glanced down at the bitch I had in tow. Her eyes were wide, looking everywhere at once in a way that could easily have been excitement at being in a forbidden place she’d never imagined she’d be privileged enough to see.
Keep looking, Yoyo. Not that it’ll help you any.
When we hit the Situation Room, with its long conference table, two computer terminals and walls lined with monitors, she actually gasped out loud.
“Wow,” she breathed, while I closed the heavy door almost completely behind us. “This is so insane, like right out of the movies.” She stopped suddenly and gave me a look sparkling with unholy glee. “Have you ordered people to die in here? And then do you, like, watch it happen on all these screens?”
“If I want someone dead, I do it myself. No way would I ever watch something like that as if it’s a TV show.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess it would be better to be there in person, wouldn’t it? That way, you can watch the life drain out of their eyes up close and, like, super personal. I get that.” The smile she gave me was as perfectly happy as a fallen angel’s. “In fact, just the thought of it gets me wet. Show me your Prince Albert, Mr. President. I want to give him a warm, wet welcome.”
“So that’s what gets your motor going.” I snagged the nearest chair and sat down, keeping her in front of me where I could see her. “Do you get all hot and bothered over thoughts of killing someone, Yoyo?”
“That’s not a problem, is it?” Her eyes were sultry, lit up from within by something akin to hellfire. “There are some people who deserve a painful, terrifying death. Not good people, of course. Just the baddies.”
Uh-huh. “And you decide who’s good and bad?”
“I decide who I like and who I don’t like.”
“You must not like me, because you’re not on your knees in front of me sucking on my dick like it’s your favorite brand of candy.”
She moved to immediately comply, a childlike pout in place. “But I wanted you to fuck me, Mr. President.”
Jesus fuck, if she called me that one more time… “Trust me, Yoyo. You’re not leaving this room without being thoroughly fucked.”
“Goodie.”
“But first you’ve got to put in the work. As I recall, you don’t have much of a gag reflex, yeah?”
“Good memory. I’ve been working on that since I was just a newborn club girl doing her first blowie. Guess how old I was.”
I didn’t even want to know. “You talk too much, Yoyo.”
“Just like my dear old daddy. Being a blabbermouth runs in the fam, I guess.” She giggled and reached for my belt buckle. I took my time helping her with the fastenings of my jeans, and as I did I took a surreptitious glance at the wall clock. Come on, Romeo …
“There he is, His Majesty himself.” Like a little kid unwrapping a Christmas present, Yoyo gasped with delight when she reached past my clothes and pulled out my cock, her eyes on the titanium jewelry decorating the head. “Ooh, but we’re all soft and unhappy. That won’t do. Let’s see what I can do to make him perk up.”
She wet her lips with a catlike sweep of her pink tongue, and I couldn’t stop myself from glancing at the clock once more as she leaned in. Romeo, goddamn it, get your fucking ass in gear —
The steel-plated door to the Situation Room swung open.
Thank fuck.
“Boss.” I had to hand it to my vice president. He barely even glanced at Yoyo before speeding into the room. “You’re needed. It’s urgent.”
“It damn well better be. Don’t go anywhere,” I told Yoyo, stuffing my dick back in where it belonged, pushed to my feet, and fastened my jeans in quick succession. “Like I said, you’re not leaving this room until you’re thoroughly fucked.”
“Okay.” With another high-pitched giggle, she bounced into my vacated chair. “Do I get a kiss goodbye?”
“Ever seen the movie Pretty Woman ?”
“No. Are you calling me pretty?”
Jesus . “What you are is unbelievable. It’s about a whore who refuses to kiss anyone until she falls in love. I’ve always remembered that part, because I get it. I don’t kiss just anyone.”
She let loose a scoff that sounded like the real thing, unlike all her other annoying little-girl laugh-track giggles. “Don’t tell me you believe in love.”
“Don’t tell me you want to put that mouth of yours on mine. I don’t know where the fuck it’s been, and I doubt you know either.” Ignoring Romeo’s eyes screaming red-alerts at me, I glanced back at Yoyo, who began to spin the desk chair around in never-ending circles, before shutting the steel door firmly behind us. “Records, now.”
“You are playing one helluva dangerous game.” Romeo pitched his voice low as if fearing Yoyo had bionic senses and could hear us through the steel door, when he knew better than anyone she was now locked in a room where nothing could escape, not even sound or a cell phone signal. “You know who that is.”
“’Course I do.” I stepped up my pace and pushed into the Records room, a converted supply closet that now held our onsite servers. Every nook and cranny of the Gravedigger compound was recorded around the clock, and all of that could be accessed in either the Situation Room, or here in Records, with its single terminal. The system ran automatically with weekly maintenance from Romeo, so this room was empty when we entered. “I want to make sure we’re recording.”
“It’s recording. It’s always recording.” Romeo took the vacant chair in front of the terminal and began typing. In a heartbeat, the Situation Room popped up on the screen. There was Yoyo, spinning aimlessly in the chair before coming to a stop and going so still I thought the feed had frozen. “Yolanda Thibideaux, AKA Yoyo, nineteen years old. Daughter of Sheila Ingersol and Bruce Thibideaux, AKA Radar. Radar is now Hades’s VP after Hades’s only son and heir, Marvel, treated himself to a permanent dirt nap.”
“At the end of your blade,” I couldn’t help but add. “I know Marvel was my cousin, but damn, thinking about how he got his ass dispatched from this world always brings a smile to my face.”
“Good riddance is all I have to say about that piece of trash.” My VP’s mouth curled in grim satisfaction as he worked the mouse, his eyes on the screen. “As for Yoyo, she was a Chicago Gravedigger princess until about three years ago, when she aggressively turned herself into the ultimate queen of easy-fucks long before she was officially of age.”
“Parents are proud, I’m sure,” I muttered, watching her swivel the chair toward the door and cocking her head in a weirdly owl-like move. Listening for any hint of movement. “Either she’s living a life that was taught to her at home, which is equal parts sad and sick as fuck, or she’s sending her folks the ultimate middle finger and having the time of her twisted-up life doing it.”
“Why can’t it be both?” Romeo zoomed in as she slowly reached inside her thigh-high boot for her cell phone. “Fuck, if she gets a signal—”
“Chill, Romeo. You set that room up yourself to be a SCIF-level secure bunker. You know better than anyone that she’s not going to get a signal in there.” Romeo’s inherent paranoia made him the perfect security chief, but there were times when I had to step in just to keep his damn feet on the ground.
He took a slow breath. “By all the reports we’ve been getting from our guy on the inside, Yoyo has become Radar’s biggest embarrassment. Apparently every brother in the Chicago Gravediggers has fucked Radar’s daughter, a fact she crows about, usually in the middle of the Clubhouse itself. He’s become a laughingstock over the past year or so, so for him to become Hades’s vice president—”
“Means Hades doesn’t have that deep of a bench.”
“Exactly. Putting a shamefaced cuck that no one respects into a position of power isn’t exactly a flex for your uncle.”
“No, it’s not.” I smiled. “Not even a little.”
“This also might give us a glimpse into what Hades’s power structure is like. Since you’ve been running your own chapter for well over half a decade now, you know better than anyone that to be a successful club, you’ve got to have quality people at the top who know their shit. You know, like me.”
“Damn straight. Though I still think you cheated on that race the first day we met.”
“Have I ever told you that there are sloths faster than you?” He leaned forward as the crafty little spy on the screen stood up and slowly executed a circle with her phone held high. Good luck in finding a signal, bitch . “She’ll go for the computers next.”
“Good. Let her.”
He spared me a glance. “You are so fucking weird.”
“We’re being attacked, dude.” I sent him a mild glance. “Rules of engagement, yeah? Things between the Chicago Gravediggers and the Gravediggers have calmed down for a while—they killed one of ours, then broke into our territory and we had no choice but to kill one of theirs, which happened to be Hades’s son Marvel. Marvel’s death was his own damn fault because he was in our territory trying to kill you, your woman and her brother. He failed, got planted six feet under for it, and that should’ve been the end of it, because everybody in our world understands one thing—an eye for an eye and a death for a death should have put it to rest.”
“But Hades is a fucking madman, and we knew he’d never stop trying to destroy us after Marvel’s death. I mean, he fucking told us as much at Arthur’s funeral.”
I nodded. “I know that and you know that, but many of our brothers who now call our chapter of the Gravediggers home used to belong to Hades. Dozens of them have come to us over the years, and while I trust them, I also know a lot of them are still reluctant to declare outright war on their old club. What we need is proof of aggression from Hades, because according to our bylaws, we can’t launch an all-out attack on our mother club unless they attack us first. And that bitch right there is proof that we’re being attacked.”
Realization dawned in his eyes. “Fuck.”
“Once we show this to our brothers, anyone still on the fence about attacking our mother club is going to see that our enemy thinks we’re so goddamn limp they sent in a baby-faced easy-fuck to slit our throats. If we don’t defend our turf, and our goddamn honor, that makes us the weak-ass bitches Hades obviously believes we are.”
“And if they can’t see that we now have an obligation to defend ourselves, they don’t deserve to wear our patch. That’s fucking brilliant .” Then his attention sharpened as Yoyo did as predicted and went for the computers. “How much longer should I let this play out?”
“Long enough to clearly prove what her intentions are. I want every Gravedigger to see her. Then I want them to feel the fire in their blood when they understand that Hades sent this fucking insult into our territory, because he thought her cunt was so powerful it would somehow cripple us.”
Romeo snorted. “Yeah, that is insulting.”
“After our brothers see this spy in action, feel free to give her over to Ajax and his crew so they can show her just how crippled we are not.” Furious at the slap in the face my uncle sent our way, I headed for the door. “Just make sure Ajax knows I need her to be kept alive and capable of talking. I’ve got questions for her, but they can wait until tomorrow.”
“Got it. Where are you headed?”
“Gotta shower off the taint of a skank who’d like nothing more than to see us all dead by Hades’s hand.” No way would I ever allow Ginger to put hands on a body that had been touched by that bitch. “Oh, that reminds me—the cameras in Ginger’s loft are going offline until tomorrow morning. Call only in case of emergency.”
There was only a sliver of hesitation before he nodded. “Understood.”