Chapter Four
By the time we land in the brush on the side of the road, my only concern is checking on my woman.
She held tight to me the entire time, and I can feel her body trembling around mine.
“We need to move, little mama,” I groan when I hear the bikes shut off.
“Okay,” she whimpers, slowly uncurling from around me. “The guys are on the way.”
“Gonna need your help moving the bike. My shoulder is fucked.”
I roll my eyes over her, checking for any visible injuries. Thankfully, her leather and helmet protected her from most of the damage she would have sustained.
“You good?”
“A lot of fucking pain, beast, but I’m alive and breathing. Let’s do this before they get over here.”
The strain in her voice makes me wonder whether she’s lying to me, but I don’t have time to question it right now. If I don’t get this bike off us, we’re going to be too easy to pick off.
She snaps the gun she’s still holding back in my holster. “On three.”
I hear the Steel Slayers closing in on us, so I don’t even wait to count that shit. I start lifting, and adrenaline pulses through me as I raise the bike off us, mourning the damage to it as I do.
As soon as we’re free, I yank the gun from my holster again and shove Birdie behind me. Running my hand along my side, relief settles in when I feel the knife still there. I slide it out and pass it to her. “Need you to find a place to hide, little mama. Not gonna be able to do what I need if I’m worried about you. I trust you to hold steady until I get to you. Anyone but me or one of the brothers come at you, take them out. Understand?”
“I know what to do, Pope.” She yanks on my hair that’s come loose and pulls me around to her for a quick kiss. “Keep yourself safe.”
I watch as she takes off running to find a place to hide just as the Steel Slayers come crashing through the dense brush.
If this was any other time, I’d take the time to let them come at me first, but I don’t have that luxury with Birdie around. I put a bullet between the eyes of the middle one since he was the only one that had his weapon out.
Two down, three more to go.
The others stop in their tracks. They raise their hands, but it’s bullshit because there’s no way a fucking Steel Slayer surrenders. It puts me on fucking edge.
“You’ve got five seconds to turn the fuck back around and get out of here before you end up like your brothers,” I warn, my aim drifting between them.
“Clink wants your little birdie.”
I shrug nonchalantly. “Clink’s got a death wish. If he wants her so badly, he needs to grow a set of balls and come at me himself. It’s sad that he’s too pussy to do it and he’d rather risk y’all’s lives.” I tilt my head. “Tell me, does it feel good knowing your President cares so little about you that he hides like a little bitch while you all do the dirty work?”
“Watch yourself,” one of the others growls.
“You gonna make me, little boy?” I taunt, keeping their attention on me and away from searching for my woman. “Or is your dick not big enough? We can whip them out and measure to see who has the bigger one. Guarantee I’ll win.”
His body trembles with anger, and he keeps glaring at the other Steel Slayer, which tells me who the leader of this small group is.
I cluck my tongue and aim at the one I was taunting. “Seems you won’t have anything I need,” I tell him before pulling the trigger.
The other two stand stoically, staring at me as if they can wait me out. The only thing that tells me is they probably have help on the way same as I do.
A noise from behind me has my body tightening because I know exactly who the hell it is and I’m going to tan her goddamn ass when we get home.
Both Steel Slayers grin, their eyes falling behind me.
Well . . . that just won’t do.
I shoot one in his stupid eye that doesn’t belong on my birdie, and the other guy just cackles about it.
Crazy fucker.
“Such a pretty little bird, she is,” he croons.
“Suggest you remove your eyes from her or I’ll gladly pluck them from their sockets and have them for dinner,” I tell him calmly.
“Clink is gonna have so much fun with her,” he tells me with a wide smile. “You really should’ve been nicer to him.”
The familiar pipes of my brothers’ bikes ring through the breeze, and I smile back at him. “I really should have, but being nice isn’t my nature.”
I go along with him as if I have any fucking idea what the hell he’s talking about. I never had any run-ins with Clink until he started his shit with the club.
This fucker is so focused on me that he somehow misses my woman making her way around us to come up behind him, but when he feels that kiss of the blade she rests against his neck, he freezes.
The flash of surprise in his eyes has me chuckling. “My woman, she doesn’t like being threatened much. She really doesn’t like when her man is.”
“You can kill me, but we won’t stop coming for her or your club. Clink wants it all. Every single thing that belongs to you.”
“See, now, that just won’t do. He can’t have things that belong to me,” I growl, walking close enough that the barrel of my gun rests against his forehead.
He smiles, not fearing the death coming his way. “As long as it belongs to you, he’ll covet it.”
The confirmation is a punch to the fucking gut, and I don’t like the way it’s got my mind racing.
As soon as the laugh passes the Steel Slayer’s mouth, I squeeze the trigger, watching as his life quickly fades from his eyes before he falls to join his brothers.
Birdie steps away and drops to the ground. She’s been running on adrenaline, we both have, and now the last one is no longer a threat to us, we’re going to crash.
Malice, Cyanide, Savior, and Tomcat march toward us. Their expressions are grim as they take in the bodies lying around Birdie.
“You couldn’t leave just one of them alive?” Malice asks, quirking his brow.
I shrug with a smile. “He said something I didn’t like. They weren’t gonna give us any information anyway.”
“That’s not true,” Birdie says weakly. “You know now that it’s you, personally, Clink has an issue with.”
Her face has gone ashen as I shove my gun in the holster and drop down beside her. My hands are rushing to push the leather jacket from her, but they’re trembling so hard that it takes a few tries to get the fucking stupid thing unzipped.
She cries out when I try to remove it from her, and I yank my hand back.
“Let me look at her, Prez,” Tomcat says, squatting beside us.
Together, we work the jacket off her. I let out a roar when I spot the blood slowly leaking from the wound on her side.
She was shot. They shot my woman. My Birdie. My little mama.
My body rocks as I fight against the rage flooding my system. I need to tear someone apart, but I’ve already killed the ones here who dared hurt her. I jump to my feet and step closer to the body of the last Steel Slayer I killed. With an anguished howl, I shoot his fucking dick then his ugly damn face. Hopefully, he’ll feel that all the way in hell. Let one of those demons down there kiss his goddamn boo-boos all better.
Anger still pulses through my veins, so I unzip my jeans, whip my dick out, and piss all over him. I sigh once I’ve relieved my bladder, and when I turn around, they’re all staring at me with varying degrees of glee.
I tuck myself back in with a shrug. “When you gotta go, you gotta go.”
“I love your crazy ass,” Birdie says quietly, her pain-filled eyes roaming over my face in a gentle caress.
Leaning down, I cup my hand around her throat and tilt her colorless face so I can brush my lips softly across hers. “Love you too, little mama.”
“She’ll be okay. It’s just a deep-ass graze. She got lucky. Still should go see the doc,” Tomcat says.
“A graze?” I mutter, shoving my fingers through my long hair, wishing I still had my hair tie.
Birdie pulls one from her wrist and holds it up to me with a weak laugh. “Just a graze. Your dramatic temper tantrum with the bodies was for nothing.”
I take it from her with a pout, pulling my hair out of my face. “My dramatics were necessary. You got hurt.”
Her eyes soften. “And I’ll live. Now, help me up, you beast.”
“No. Not until Vortex gets here with the cage.”
“Then come sit with me while we wait.”
“Go ahead, Prez. We’ve got your back. I need to take a look at that shoulder of yours,” Tomcat tells me.
I glance down at the arm I’ve been unconsciously holding against me. “Huh. I forgot about that.”
“Adrenaline is weird like that,” Savior says, walking over and helping me to the ground behind Birdie. “You two just rest ‘til your ride gets here.” He peers over at my bike with a grimace. “Your bike is gonna need a ride too, Prez.”
“Fuckers,” I mutter. “Piss on the rest of them for me, would you?”
“Sure thing,” he answers, whipping his dick out to do just that.
“Thanks.” I sigh, resting my chin on Birdie’s head and closing my eyes, listening to the trickle of my brother pissing on the corpse of our enemy.
This was too fucking close. All it would have taken was another angle and I wouldn’t be feeling my little mama’s breaths rising and falling against my chest.
As long as it belongs to you, he’ll covet it.
Those words haunt me because every-fucking-body knows I’ll do what’s needed to ensure my woman keeps breathing.
Even if that means tearing away the very existence of our love.