27. 27
27
R estless movements jarred Savage from a deep sleep. He blinked, wondering where he was for just a moment before the movements came again and he realized it was Donna. She lay curled up, her back to him, and seemed to be curled in on herself, flinching every few seconds.
It wasn’t until she whimpered that he realized what must be going on. She was dreaming and it obviously wasn’t anything pleasant. He knew better than to shake her awake. He’d done that to Maverick one day and barely missed getting a fist to the face. Remembering that, it only took a moment for him to decide what to do.
He rolled onto his side and curled around her, enclosing her with his body and his arms. After a moment or two she seemed to calm. Her breathing eased back into a soft, steady rhythm that eased him back to sleep.
W hen he woke again, Savage found he was still curled around Donna. She’d moved and relaxed. Now her head rested on one of his arms and she’d woven her fingers into the ones on his other hand. He couldn’t help but wonder if she’d woken at some point. Not that it mattered. He lay there for a few minutes, wondering what she would have thought when she woke up to find him wrapped around her.
He wasn’t sure he’d ever felt anything quite like waking with Donna in his arms like this. As he took it in, he placed a gentle kiss on top of her head and decided he wouldn’t mind waking like this every day, but a decent bed would be nice. The mat beneath them made it a little better but the ground was still hard. He wondered how she must be feeling when she woke. She wasn’t any more used to sleeping on the ground than he was, at least not anymore.
Once upon a time he could have slept anywhere, and been grateful for a chance to get more than a couple hours in a stretch, and he could still sleep at the drop of hat if he needed to. But it was harder than it used to be, and he couldn’t imagine that getting better as he got older.
Donna’s breathing changed, letting him know she’d woken up.
“How are you this morning?” he asked, not moving. He didn’t want to let her go before he had to. He liked the feeling of her there in his arms.
“Good. I slept so hard.” She stared moving and he loosened his hold to let her shift and stretch. Once she was done, and lay beside him, looking up at him, Savage found himself unable to look away.
Her hair was a mess and stood in all directions but somehow it, along with the slightly puffy look to her face and the lines on her cheek where it had rested on his arm, made him want to do things to her that her stomach probably wasn’t up to this morning.
“Good. I’m glad.” He wouldn’t mention her dreaming if she didn’t. She might not even remember it. He hoped for that. He hated the thought that she had nightmares and that memories of them haunted her. But what was worse was that maybe her memories of what had happened to her causing the nightmares. Neither thought left him in a charitable mood. But he didn’t want her to see that, so he pushed his thoughts aside and focused on the woman in his arms.
“What’s the plan for today?” she asked, seemingly at ease to be lying against him.
He hoped so. He liked having her there, and even after such a short amount of time, he knew he’d miss her when she wasn’t there. Not that he thought she was leaving but even after going back to Tucson, if she moved in with him and things continued the way they seemed to be going. And he hoped they would, then there would still be the occasion when he needed to be away for a night, or even several on club business. They all had club business that had to be dealt with, even the president.
Hell, that’s why they were here. Tuck had needed to spend a year up here and while it hadn’t been club business to start with it had soon become it when he’d brought some of the brothers up, then recruited more and started the new chapter.
The weight of Donna’s head on his chest reminded him she’d asked him something. That’s when he remembered he had to get up and get moving. He was quickly running out of time if he wanted to get something to eat before the brothers took their ride out on to the ranch. They were going to discuss operations and possibilities.
Not of the ranch, but club enterprises.
“There’s the usual morning thing that I’m not going to name. Then the brothers are taking a ride out on the ranch to take a look around and have a little brother bonding time. We should be back about midday.” He deliberately didn’t name the meals, or mention food because he was afraid her stomach would rebel, and she’d go running again. “I’m not sure if there’s anything formal planned for the afternoon. Is there something you want to do?” He hadn’t heard back from Kinard about horseback riding yet and didn’t want to offer her a ride if it wouldn’t be safe.
She watched him for a moment then replied, “No, not that I can think of. How soon do you need to leave for this brothers thing?”
He checked his watch. “In about five minutes if I don’t want to be late.” He looked down at her and debated how much trouble he’d be in if he didn’t show up and stayed with Donna instead.
No.
Better not to do that. because he knew his brothers and Sadist, Mac or even Lurch would come drag his ass out, not caring that he might be buck ass naked or that Donna might not be ready to be seen either.
He let his head fall back for just a moment. “I’ve got to get up and get moving because if I’m late, they’ll come looking for me and that won’t be pleasant for you or me.” He lifted his head, gave her one long, slow kiss that took ten times longer than it should have. Once he was able to break away, he forced himself up and out of the bag.
Donna sat up and reached for her bag as if she was going to get up because he was.
“You stay here. Go back to sleep, sleep as late as you want. There’s no reason you have to get up just because I am.”
“You sure? You really don’t mind?” She watched him. A crease formed between her brows as she frowned at him, uncertain. It took everything he had to turn back to his bag and finish pulling out his things. If he touched her, even to kiss away the crease, he’d end up late and then he’d have to beat someone’s ass for upsetting Donna. Not a good way to spend the trip.
“Not at all. In fact, most of the women will probably be staying in bed. There’s no reason they need to get up with us.” He tugged his shirt over his head before standing and stepping into his jeans. That done, he put his socks on, then gave her a quick hard kiss on the mouth before going to the tent door while she slid back down and settled into the warm bedding. “Sleep. Relax. You have your phone?” He waited until she’d assured him that she did by patting the pocket on her backpack where she kept it while they slept. “Call if you need me. Or I’ll find you when we get back. Okay?”
It took her a moment to realize he was waiting for an answer.
“Oh, yeah. Okay.”
Now that he had her reply, he opened the tent door and stepped into his boots on his way out.
“Have a good day!” she called as he rezipped the door, her voice sounding like she’d already started drifting back to sleep.
As Savage walked away, headed for food and coffee, hopefully at least two cups before they had to head out across the ranch, he couldn’t help the grin he wore. Especially as he’d remembered the night before and how amazing Donna had felt in his arms.
“Damn,” Sackett’s voice pulled him from his thoughts as he stepped up to the large commercial size coffee pot and helped himself to a cup.
“What?” Savage asked with a frown.
“You made it on time. The closer we got to go time and you weren’t here, I thought you weren’t going to make it in time. I was kind of looking forward to Sadist dragging your naked ass out of your tent. I figured you were so lost in that little piece of ass you picked up in Casper we’d get to have a bit of a show this morning.”
Savage set his cup on the board that made the makeshift counter and turned to face the man he’d called his brother for the last year or more. He advanced on the man, closing the distance between them, speaking through a clenched jaw and only vaguely aware that his right hand was balling into a fist and out again as if preparing to make an impact.
“If I ever hear you or anyone else refer to Donna as a piece of ass again, you’re going to have a hard time saying anything else for a long, long time. And that won’t be the least of your problems because you’ll be eating your meals with a straw for a while because I’ll break your jaw.”
“Whoa, whoa.” Sackett held both hands up in front of himself, as if showing someone he was unarmed. Savage knew that was shit, none of them were unarmed, but that wasn’t the point now. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“What’s going on over here?” Mac asked as he approached, looking back and forth between them.
Savage glanced in the direction Mac had come from and spotted Steele and Talon a few feet away. Had they sent Mac to deal with them because he was from the same chapter and knew them better? It didn’t matter. He turned his attention back to the brothers in front of him.
“Not much. Just setting someone right on how to talk about the women of the club,” Savage said.
“You say something about one of the women?” Mac turned to Sackett, one brow lifted. “I thought you had better sense than that.”
“I do. I didn’t say anything about any of the ol’ ladies. I just mentioned his—”
“Don’t say it,” Savage cut him off before Sackett had a chance to say it again, “or you’ll find out that I wasn’t kidding.” He took a threatening step toward the man who’d prospected with him.
“I wasn’t. I was going to say his girl.” Sackett still held his hands out in front of him. As if he could ward off or block a blow coming his way with them.
Mac’s gaze flicked back and forth from Savage to Sackett and back again, the single brow never dropping as if he was seeing something interesting. After a moment, he turned to Sackett.
“I don’t know what you said,” Mac lifted one hand to stop the younger man from speaking when it was apparent he was ready to defend himself. “I don’t care what it was, and I don’t need to hear it. But I suggest you are careful about letting any of the women of this club hear you say it, or anything like it. First, they’re likely to rip you a new one, then they’ll tell their men, and we will all make you regret the day you were born. Got me?”
Sackett looked like he was going to argue, but only for a moment then he took a deep breath. “Yes, sir.”
“Good. Now knock off the sir shit and clean up your mess. It’s almost time to gather up.” Mac turned and walked away leaving the two men staring at each other.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disrespect her. I thought she was a fling for the trip. I won’t make that mistake again,” Sackett said, he slowly lowered his hands, though his eyes never left Savage. “We okay?”
Savage gave him one last glare, then nodded once and turned away, going back to the coffee he’d just poured. He picked it up and took a sip, then deciding it wasn’t too hot to drink, a longer pull from the cup. He went to where the food was laid out, found some hotcakes, eggs, sausage and more. He picked up a napkin, added a hot cake then several pieces of sausage on top of it. At the end of the line, he set his coffee down. He glanced around, but didn’t see any hot sauce or salsa, so he used both hands to roll the sausage up in the hotcake, then wrapped one end in the napkin before picking up his coffee again thinking that it was his own breakfast burrito, if not a traditional one. He took a bite as he headed toward the horse barn where they’d been told to gather this morning.
S avage pulled the four-wheeler he’d been riding for the last hour to a stop behind several others as the rest of his brothers pulled to a stop. He killed the engine, following Lurch’s lead.
Since the foreman and local chapter president had been the one to lead the group out here, a group that consisted mostly of the men who’d come up from Arizona. They were about evenly split on dirt bikes and four-wheelers. Most of the locals were taking care of the ranch chores this morning. Savage assumed that was because they already knew what they were about to be shown. He didn’t know what it was but from what had been said, he knew it was club business.
“All right.” Lurch stood at the front of the group; he’d stepped up on the seat of the four-wheeler he’d been driving. Now he looked out over the group of men, all of whom still sat astride whatever they’d been riding. “I wanted to get you out here so you can see some of the challenges we are facing. As you can tell, the land is mostly flat, though there are some exceptions. There are only a few scatterings of cover, either from the surrounding area or aerial surveillance. If we’re going to use this place as a distribution center, for lack of a better term, then we need to figure out how to make these challenges work for us instead of against us. I’m asking all of you, as well as the local brothers, because we have all served all over the world. We’ve all encountered different terrain and challenges and one of you might have come across something or have an idea about how to set up storage for both live and inanimate cargo.”
Savage scanned the group, all of the men who had come up from Arizona, except the two prospects. Demon and Boomer had been assigned ranch work with the locals who weren’t here. The men with them who hadn’t ridden up were Lurch, Ghost and to Savage’s surprise, Malice. Savage didn’t know much about that one, except that he’d been recruited up here, that Ghost had known him during his service and that he’d been patched in after a six-month prospect period.
Savage had been a little jealous, especially when the other man had been patched in before he had. Sure, it had stung a little, but the Tucson chapter had been around for more than twenty years, they weren’t hurting for members. And as far as Savage had understood the referral system and shortened prospect period had been decided on by the entire club. And had been so short-lived that it was over now. And now that Savage had his colors it was less of an issue to him.
“The upside is that once we get our storage and distribution problem solved, we’ll be able to resume product movement back to what it was before we had to scale back. We may look at expanding, depending on need, risk and a few other factors.” Lurch paused and scanned the group. “Questions?”
Murmuring spread through the men, reminding Savage of a big flock of birds.
“What’s the risk of someone not associated with the Souls would be out here and run across what we’ve got out here?” Maverick asked from where he still sat astride the dirt bike he’d ridden out.
“Risk is low. This isn’t like the border country where people go off wandering through ranches. For the most part, unless it’s neighbors coming together to help each other with something like branding, or a search of some kind, people are too busy with their own concerns to go wandering across neighboring ranchland,” Lurch said.
Once more Savage was thankful they’d had enough vehicles that they hadn’t had to double up. While he didn’t mind having someone on the back of his bike, it needed to be the right person, and none of his brothers were that person.
There was more talk about the ranch, club business and how the two would intersect, but Savage’s mind had turned back to the soft, willing woman waiting for him in his bed, or what served for it while they were here.
He couldn’t help but think about how he’d only known her a few days, but he couldn’t wait to find out more to see her in his place in Tucson. The roar of an engine, then another pulled his mind back to the present. A quick glance around told him the meeting was over, and from the way the others were turning around, it looked like they were headed back to the ranch. He didn’t bother to fight back the grin that spread across his face as he started his four-wheeler and followed.