23. Stryker #3
I keep working her, my cock moving in and out of her, my thumb circling her clit, until she’s a writhing mess beneath me, her hands clutching at the sheets, her head thrown back in ecstasy.
“Please, Stryker,” she begs, her voice hoarse with need. “Please let me come.”
“Not yet,” I growl, my own control starting to slip. “Almost there, babygirl. Just a little longer.”
I increase the pressure on her clit, my thrusts becoming faster, harder. Nora cries out, her body tensing as her orgasm builds.
“Now,” I command. “Come for me now.”
Nora shatters around me, her body convulsing as waves of pleasure wash over her. I follow her over the edge with a groan, my own release pulsing deep inside her.
I collapse on top of her, my body covering hers, my face buried in her hair as we both struggle to catch our breath. For a long moment, we just lie there, our bodies tangled together, the room silent except for the sound of our breathing.
Finally, I push myself up, my arms trembling slightly as I roll off her, pulling her into my arms. Nora comes willingly, her body curling against mine, her head resting on my chest.
“Stryker,” she whispers, her voice soft and drowsy.
“Yeah, babygirl?”
“That was…” She trails off, and I can feel her cheeks flush against my skin.
I chuckle, my chest rumbling beneath her ear. “Yeah,” I agree. “It was.”
We lie there in silence for a while longer, my hand stroking her hair, her fingers tracing patterns on my chest. I can feel her starting to drift off, her breathing becoming more even, her body relaxing completely against mine.
“Don’t fall asleep on me yet,” I murmur, pressing a kiss to the top of her head.
“Mmm,” she mumbles, snuggling closer. “Just for a minute.”
I smile, my heart swelling with an emotion I’m not ready to name yet. “Okay,” I say. “Just for a minute.”
I let her rest, my body still thrumming with the aftershocks of the night, my mind replaying the sound of her crying out my name.
I wake up the next morning before the sun fully comes up because I’m not used to sleeping this deeply anymore.
For a few seconds I don’t move at all. Nora is curled against my side under the blankets wearing one of my shirts from last night, blonde hair spread across the pillow while the house stays completely quiet except for old pipes shifting softly somewhere in the walls and the steady sound of her breathing against my ribs.
It feels normal, and that’s the problem.
I spent too many years learning how quickly normal gets ripped away to trust the feeling now, but lying here with Nora asleep beside me and both kids down the hall together, my body reacts before my brain does.
My shoulders are loose for the first time in weeks.
My head is quiet. I can almost pretend none of the rest of it exists outside this house.
Nora shifts slightly in her sleep then, pressing closer unconsciously before going still again.
The movement hits harder than it should.
Six years ago I barely got one night with her before she disappeared into the fucking wind.
Now I’m asleep in her bed like this is something we’re allowed to have.
My hand is spread low against her back underneath the shirt she stole from me sometime during the night. Possessiveness settles low in my chest instantly, calm and ugly and permanent. I don’t move my hand.
My phone starts vibrating against the nightstand.
The second I see Blade’s name something cold slides down my spine. Blade was not supposed to call until later that afternoon.
I’m already reaching for the phone before my brain fully catches up. “What happened?”
Nora stirs slightly beside me but doesn’t fully wake.
Blade doesn’t waste time. “We hit the shipment.”
I’m already moving out of bed quietly, keeping my voice low while I pull my pants on one-handed. “And?”
There’s a pause on the other end.
Then Blade says, “It wasn’t weapons.”
Everything inside me sharpens instantly. I step into the hallway and shut the bedroom door behind me before speaking again.
“Talk.”
“It was women,” Blade says flatly. “Holding site outside LA. Temporary transfer point before redistribution.”
I close my eyes briefly.
Jesus Christ.
“How many?” I ask.
“Fourteen alive,” Blade answers. “Three in bad shape. Maddox is stabilizing one now.”
The hallway suddenly feels too narrow. I brace one hand against the wall while Blade keeps talking.
“Warehouse was tied into the same auction routes we’ve been tracking. Bratva oversight. Private transfers. We found ledgers.”
My stomach turns hard.
“Names?” I ask.
Blade exhales slowly. “One of the circles listed matches the same organization from the masquerade six years ago.”
I already know what that means before he says it out loud. This is the same fucking network. Not connected. Not inspired by. The same one. All these years and we still haven’t cut the head off it.
“Authorities?” I ask.
“Compromised,” Blade says immediately. “At least some of them. We can’t leave the women here long enough to risk processing.”
He’s right. If local law enforcement’s dirty and these women disappear back into the system, we’ll never find them again.
I’m fully awake now, already shifting pieces around mentally. Housing. Transport. Security. Rotation schedules. Medical support. We don’t have enough room in Black Rock anymore with the women already at the clubhouse from previous raids and the prospects still split between motel sites.
“Get them moving,” I say immediately. “Use burners only. No digital trail. I’ll call Calder.”
“Bishop thinks we’re being monitored heavier now,” Blade warns. “Banking, travel, maybe comms too.”
“Then stay off anything traceable.”
“We’ve got one alive too,” Blade adds. “Connected high enough to matter.”
That gets my attention. “Who?”
“Mateo Escarra.”
I mutter, “Fuck.”
Escarra isn’t random muscle. He’s Denali’s right hand. If they pulled him alive, this situation just escalated again.
“Keep him breathing,” I say. “I want everything he knows.”
Blade’s voice stays steady despite the exhaustion underneath it. “Working on it.”
“I’ll coordinate transport with Calder. You focus on getting everybody here alive.”
“Understood.”
I end the call already dialing Calder before the screen even goes dark.
The next twenty minutes blur together into logistics and violence.
Calder immediately wakes Moreno and Max, while I start coordinating routes between California, Nevada, and Miami.
The Coyotes have more physical space than we do right now, enough room to safely house survivors temporarily while we sort longer-term placement and security.
By the time we finish planning transport chains, rotating drivers, medical teams, and safe locations, my brain already feels three days ahead of the present.
We’re preparing for retaliation too, because this isn’t isolated anymore.
The Bratva, Joaquín, Denali’s Vegas operations — they’re overlapping now, cooperating and building something bigger underneath us while we chase separate fires thinking they’re unrelated.
I hang up with Calder and immediately start another call to Reyes while mentally reorganizing club operations for the week.
That’s when I realize I’m not alone anymore.
Nora is standing halfway down the hallway wearing my shirt from last night. Her face has gone completely pale.
Fuck.
I don’t know how long she’s been standing there. Long enough apparently. Her arms are folded tightly across herself, while her eyes move between me and the phone still in my hand.
Nobody speaks for half a second.
Then Nora says very quietly, “What exactly do you do?”
Nora looks at me directly. “You said women. Survivors. Safe houses. You’re coordinating armed transport routes.” Her voice shakes harder now, anger covering something worse underneath. “Shipping companies do not do that.”
I don’t answer fast enough. That’s mistake number one because now she already knows the answer before I say it.
“Tell me the truth,” she says. “Right now.”
The house suddenly feels too quiet around us. Somewhere down the hall one of the kids shifts in bed, springs creaking softly before silence settles again.
“No,” she says sharply before I can speak. “You either explain what the fuck is actually happening or you get out of my house.”
There’s betrayal all over her face now. And we both know at the same time there’s no fixing this with another lie. So I tell her the truth.
“We’re not shipping company owners,” I say evenly.
Nora goes completely still.
“We run a motorcycle club. Savage Wolves. I’m President. Blade’s our medic.”
“A biker gang,” she repeats faintly.
“Yeah.”
Her eyes close briefly. Jesus Christ.
“We’re tied into organized crime,” I continue, because there’s no point softening any of it now. “Weapons movement. Protection contracts. Smuggling routes sometimes. Ongoing conflict with Vegas remnants, cartel operations, Bratva networks.”
The more I explain, the worse her expression gets.
“Six years ago we went to that masquerade trying to build political connections for the club. We didn’t know what it really was until later.”
Nora looks at me sharply. “But you stayed.”
“Because of you,” I say immediately. “And because once we realized women were disappearing, we started digging.”
She laughs once under her breath. Hurt, not amused.
“That is not comforting.”
“It’s the truth.”
I keep talking before emotion derails any of this. “After the raid went bad and the place collapsed into chaos, you disappeared. We searched for months.”
“Years,” I correct quietly.
Nora looks at me slowly like she’s trying to reconcile two entirely different versions of reality. The man she’s spent weeks building breakfast routines with. And the man coordinating trafficking survivor extractions before sunrise.
Both are real. That’s the problem.
“We’ve been tracking the network ever since,” I tell her. “Joaquín. Bratva involvement. Auction routes. Missing women. Everything keeps circling back.”
“And tonight?” she asks quietly.
“Blade intercepted another transfer site in Los Angeles.”
“With guns?”
“Yes.”
“With violence?”
“Yes.”
“With torture probably too.”
I don’t answer that one. I don’t have to. Nora sees enough in my face anyway.
Her shoulders fold inward slightly, then before she straightens again as if she caught herself doing it. “Jesus Christ.”
“I know why you’re upset,” I say carefully. “But the women we found tonight?—”
“I know why you do it,” she cuts in sharply. “That doesn’t erase what you are.”
The words land hard enough that the hallway feels colder afterward.
I watch her starting to shut down in real time now. Emotional withdrawal. Controlled breathing. Arms tighter across herself. Nora always retreats into practicality when she’s overwhelmed.
That’s exactly what she’s doing now.
She looks at me directly again. “Are you safe for my son?”
I answer honestly. “I’d die before letting anything happen to him.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
To her we’re dangerous now. Violence follows us whether we want it to or not. Enemies. Retaliation. Blood. Nora spent six years building a stable life away from exactly this kind of world and now she’s standing in the middle of it again, because of me.
I suddenly understand something ugly and immediate. She could disappear again. Take Paxton and vanish before I even realize she’s planning it. The possibility hits hard enough my entire body goes rigid.
“I need you to leave,” she says quietly.
“Nora—”
“I need to think.”
I step back before either of us make this worse. “Okay.”
Nora nods once, tightly, relief and pain crossing her face at the same time. “Thank you.”
The rest of the morning becomes one of the worst kinds of situations. Normalcy for the kids while everything underneath it fractures.
I grab my undershirt off the bedroom floor, not bothering to ask Nora for my shirt back that she’s already wearing. Then I go to wake Lena carefully. She blinks sleepily up at me from the trundle bed while Paxton stays sprawled upside down across the top mattress still completely unconscious.
Daddy? Why are we leaving early? She signs.
I force calm into my face automatically and sign back. Work stuff. Need to go to the clubhouse.
She studies me for a second too long. Lena notices more than most adults.
But eventually she nods sleepily and starts gathering her things.
Paxton wakes halfway through the process, confused and visibly unhappy Lena’s leaving already. Nora signs explanations calmly while helping him change clothes, though she never once looks directly at me while she does it.
That hurts more than yelling would’ve.
The kitchen downstairs feels painfully careful once everybody’s awake. Nora packs snacks for Paxton automatically, because routines matter to her when everything else doesn’t.
Lena keeps glancing between us, sensing something’s wrong.
Paxton eventually notices too. He taps Nora’s arm gently before signing Are you upset?
Nora’s face nearly cracks right there.
But she smiles anyway, I am okay. Adults just have stressful mornings.
He studies her seriously. Then signs: Okay.
Eventually there’s nothing left to delay.
Lena hugs Nora tightly before giving Paxton one. Paxton clings to her longer than usual looking confused enough that my chest physically aches watching it.
Nora signs goodbye to Lena calmly. I pause beside her near the doorway like I want to say something. Apologize maybe. Fight harder. I don’t even know.
In the end I just say quietly, “Call if you need anything.”
Nora nods once. That’s it. No kiss. No softness. Nothing left of last night except the bruised silence filling the house.
I walk out last.
At the SUV, I glance back once and catch Nora finally looking directly at me.
Her eyes are red-rimmed from exhaustion and emotion she’s trying hard not to show. My shirt still hangs off one shoulder from sleeping in it. The sight twists something ugly low in my chest.
Because she already looks halfway gone emotionally, and I know exactly what it means to lose her. And for the first time since finding her again, I think she might actually leave me.