31
Luna
Do you trust me or not?
The rhythmic zip-zip of my new, knee-high Louboutin boots echoes in the silence of the truck. I’ve been fiddling with the zipper for hours, the small metal tab going up and down like a thousand-dollar nervous tic. It’s the only thing keeping me tethered to reality. That, and those words gnawing at me like an itch I can’t scratch.
Saint didn’t need to destroy my shoe to teach me about priorities. Turns out, being trapped with an avenging killer beats being sold off as a sex slave—or harvested for organs. Especially when that killer looks at you the way Cade looked at me.
Because that’s what it all comes down to. The look in his eyes when he asked if I trusted him. It wasn’t the cold indifference I’m used to, or the calculated violence I’ve come to accept.
It was hurt.
And that terrifies me more than any threat he could ever make. Because I’m not supposed to be able to wound a man like Cade Quinn.
The road keeps climbing higher, green and golden hills unfolding outside my window like a postcard—but it might as well be static on a dead TV screen. My mind is too full to appreciate the view.
Cade’s voice breaks through the fog in my head. “It’s . . . beautiful up here,” He says gruffly. “Want to stop, stretch your legs?”
I catch his reflection in my window—the raw intensity in his eyes—and I know he deliberately chose this route to show me the scenery.
I resist the fist squeezing my heart and shrug. “Sure.”
The truck’s tires crunch onto the gravel shoulder. I circle around to the guardrail, catching sight of Saint’s massive head hanging out of his shelter in the truck bed, ears pricked toward the view.
My hands grip the cool metal rail, and I stare unseeingly at the ravine a hundred feet below. After a moment, Cade’s presence settles beside me, close enough to feel like a weight pressing on my skin.
“Are you okay?” His voice is soft, but there’s an edge to it—like he’s daring me to tell him the truth.
A bitter laugh escapes me as I wrap my arms around myself, an armor against his concern. “Now you ask if I’m okay?”
His lips twitch into a half-smile. “I know this morning was . . . intense.”
“Intense?” I scoff, turning to face him fully. “Intense! Tell me something, Cade, are you feeling guilty about those men you killed? Is that what this little roadside therapy session is going to be about?”
His gaze holds zero remorse. “Hell no. For you, baby, I’d kill anything.”
His words wrap around me, igniting a warmth deep in my belly. I shouldn’t be turned on by him casually confessing he’d kill for me, yet I can’t fight the dark pull.
I grit my teeth, grasping for sanity. “What about all the others? Do you ever feel guilty?”
Cade’s hand moves to his shirt, and I already know what’s coming. The rosary emerges like a secret confession, the silvery-gray beads catching the California sunlight.
“Would you freak out if I said no?”
I stare wide-eyed at Cade, realization hitting me. It’s not about power. Maybe not even revenge. This . . . this is something else. This is his religion. His worship.
A laugh bubbles up my throat, hysteria wrapped in acceptance. “Freaking out about you is starting to get old, Cade.”
For a moment, we stand in silence. Then Cade’s arm bands around my waist and he drags me to him. I’m tired of fighting this, tired of putting up walls that crumble with a single look. And I’m sick of wanting this to make sense.
I go willingly, melting into his chest, the thud of his heart against my ear grounding me in ways I didn’t know I needed.
“So,” he says, his voice quieter now, more intimate. “Wanna talk about it?”
I pull back just far enough to meet his gaze. “Wow, Cade. Have you been practicing your manners? That came out almost . . . perfect.”
His grin is all white teeth and wicked charm, catching me off guard with it’s sheer beauty
“Talk to me, Luciana.” It’s gentle, but there’s no mistaking the command. Even when he’s being nice, he’s still Cade.
I h esitate, my hand brushing against the rosary still hanging between us. “No, Cade. You go first. You’re the big mystery here.”
He shrugs. “Alright. What do you want to know?”
I hook a finger under the beads, lifting it gently. It’s much heavier than I would have expected. “Are you Catholic?”
His smile fades. “No. My mother was. Her rosary was the last thing she gave me.”
My heart hammers in my chest and I reach for the rune hanging on my own neck. “Your mother gave you this?” I nod at the rosary.
“No.” A hollow laugh. “Hers broke the first time I used it.”
A chill goes through me. “To strangle someone?”
He nods. “Regular rosaries snap pretty easily. This one’s unbreakable.”
I should step away. Instead, I slide my arms around his waist and press closer. “Tell me about your mother.”
Cade remains silent for the longest time, then his arm tightens around me. “Matilda was a good woman. A deacon’s daughter. Only fault was her atrocious taste in men.”
“Bikers?”
He smirks. “Not ordinary patchholders, baby. Club presidents. Thomas Quinn—her first husband—well, the bastard often liked to rearrange her face.”
I can’t hold in my gasp of horror, but Cade rubs soothing circles around my back as if to reassure me that it’s okay.
“Then came Jackson Pype.” Cade spits the name like poison. “Now, he was a decent enough husband. Until he couldn’t cover his gambling debts and traded his wife and his stepson to the Cartel to settle them.”
“ He what? Wait a second!” I rear back, pushing out of his arms, my voice shaking with indignation. “He sold his own wife and his stepson . . . You!”
“Well, what was the fucker to do?” Cade laughs bitterly. “He had debts.”
“Cade! I’m being serious here!”
“Hey, hey.” He catches the tears at the corner of my eyes with his thumbs, then cups my jaw in both hands, so I can’t look away from his hard stare. “This is the part where I’ll ask you not to cry.”
“Why the hell not? I can’t believe what happened to you—”
“Because seeing you cry makes me want to kill something.” He shrugs. “Besides, most families are messed up.”
“Mine isn’t—”
His single raised eyebrow has me smiling through tears.
“Okay fine, we’re fucked up, too. But yours takes the cake.” My fingers find the scarred bands of skin around his wrists, hidden under ink but telling their story through touch. “Is that where you got these? In captivity?”
“Yeah.” Something dark crosses his face. “A month in, when the buyer was stalling, my mother made her play. She offered herself to the guards. All twelve of them. Created enough of a distraction for me to take off and find help.”
My heart is pounding too loud— like it’s trying to drown out the sound of his voice, and I can’t help the tears now. “And did you manage to get help for her?”
Cade wipes my tears away. “By the time I made it back across the Mexican border and got home, both my scumbag fathers had somehow gotten themselves killed. And I couldn’t get a single biker in either of the clubs to risk their neck to save Matilda.”
Oh God. I know where this is heading, but I ask anyway. “So what happened?”
As if he can’t bear to watch me cry, his hands grip my shoulders, turning me to face the ravine. Then he pulls me back against his chest, his words coming rough against my neck. “I had to leave her there to rot.”
My lids fall closed, and I sob quietly. I want to turn around, to hold him, to somehow take away his pain, his guilt, but his grip holds me firm. “Cade, you were only thirteen.”
“If I was old enough to drink, ride, and fuck like the rest of the men, I was old enough to die trying.” His voice is harsh against my skin. “I just couldn’t do it alone.”
The darkness in his words hits me hard and suddenly it all makes sense. A mother trading herself to save her child—one who was never allowed to be a child.
“Baby,” I whisper reaching for his hands around my waist, grateful when he grips my hand in return. “It wasn’t your fault.”
The moment stretches, me sobbing like my heart is breaking, and Cade letting me. Before him, I can’t remember the last time someone held me while I cried. I’d forgotten how good it feels to let go, to not be alone in the pain.
His thumb draws soothing circles over my hand. “I went back to Mexico a few years later. Matilda was long gone by then.” Something raw edges into his tone. “I spent the next few months hunting down every last member of that Cartel, only to find there were thousands more just like them.”
“And so the crusade began,” I whisper.
He pauses, his grip tightening around me like he needs an anchor.
“I went on total rampage for years, almost got myself killed a dozen times. Then Phoenix returned from the army and took over the club.”
My fingers drift to the ink on his forearms, tracing the ancient scripts and symbols I’d never understood.
“Phoenix saw what I’d become and tried to straighten me out. When that failed, he begged me to enlist. Said I might as well kill for Uncle Sam.”
I crane my neck to see his face. “You’re ex-military?”
His expression gives nothing away. “Did the standard four years, then I quit.”
“Why did you leave?
“Because my taste was more . . . nuanced. Phoenix understood eventually and set me up with a friend of his.”
Cade’s hand slips from my waist. I hear a soft rustle behind me, then his palm appears in front of me. Sunlight glints off gold, and my breath catches. A badge.
I gasp, my fingers curling around the warm metal as if it might vanish. Spinning to face him, my brain scrambles to connect the badge in my hand to the man standing in front of me. “You’re . . . an FBI agent? But how? You’re . . . you’re . . .”
I can’t finish. Don’t need to.
A killer. A psychopath. The words hang between us, unspoken but understood.
Cade’s smirk returns, but there’s no humor in it. “FBI Organized Crime. I work in human trafficking rings as an undercover agent under the alias Rocky Savage. But, I don’t make arrests.”
“What do you mean?”
“My job is on the field. I investigate targets, and when the time is right, make them disappear.”
I gasp. “You kill for the government. I didn’t know that was even possible.”
“Oh, it is. Off the books. Saves messy, expensive trials and keeps the prisons less crowded and monsters off the streets.”
I c an’t help laughing at the irony. “Holy fucking shit, you’re undercover alright.”
I shake my head, trying to process it again. Cade Quinn is an undocumented undercover FBI agent, but that’s just a cover for who he really is—a vengeful killer. Phoenix must be a genius for hooking his adopted son up with the dark side of the Bureau.
When the silence stretches between us, Cade hooks a finger into my waistband and drags me closer. “You were about to say something earlier. Call me something.”
My heart lurches as it hits me. Cade wants me to see him exactly as he is. Not the badge, not the job. Just him.
I reach out, tracing his brow, then down the side of his face to the hard angle of his jaw. “You’re a psychopath, Special Agent Quinn,” I murmur.
“You already knew that.” His voice drops to a whisper. “The question is, why haven’t you run?”
And here comes the hard part. I must be twisted too, if I’m still standing here, wrapped around him, fully aware of what he’s capable of.
I shrug, offering a wry smile. “I figure the world is full of monsters and psychos and scary things. If I had to pick one . . . I’d pick you.”
Cade cocks an eyebrow. “Careful, now. You’re making me blush.”
His hands slide down my back, then lower until he’s cupping my ass, then he pulls me flush against him. His hard length presses into my lower belly, setting off a chain reaction of flutters.
“Oh wow,” I breathe. “That’s you blushing?”
He grins. “That’s me blushing, baby.”
I giggle, but my laughter dies as his lips brush just below my earlobe. “And what if I told you, that in a world full of aggrav atingly fearless, jay-walking prey . . . I’d fucking choose you?”
I’m trembling now, but not from fear. Some magnetic force pulls me closer as I trace the scar along his jawline—where someone tried and failed to slit his throat. My fingers drift to the purplish bruise my teeth left last night.
The sight of my mark on him triggers something primal inside me. Suddenly hungry for him, I rise on tiptoe at the same time Cade’s mouth descends onto mine in a hard kiss. His hand tangles in my hair, gripping me firmly as he spins us around then presses me against the truck.
I moan as he slants his lips over mine, his tongue sliding deep, tasting, claiming. My fingers curl into his hair, matching his desperation for more.
Cade breaks away to trail hot kisses down my neck, teeth grazing skin, and my body arches into him.
“Are you with me, Luciana?”
He’s asking for me, all of me.
“I, uh. I guess?” The words barely make it past my lips with all the knocking my heart is doing against my ribcage.
He pulls back to study my face. Whatever he sees makes him smirk, and then his mouth claims mine again, his tongue boldly exploring every crevice of my mouth until I ache to feel him doing the same between my legs.
His rough palm slides up my back under my top, leaving fire in its wake, before dipping into my jeans and panties to cup my bare ass. He slides lower until he finds my slick heat and I moan into his mouth, widening my stance in a silent plea.
“I need to taste you, baby. Right now, before I go insane,” Cade murmurs against my mouth .
My fucking thoughts exactly. “God, I’d kill for a skirt right now,” I whine, regretting my knee-high boots and tight jeans as he nibbles down my neck.
Cade chuckles darkly. “Oh, it’s no trouble at all.” His hand moves to unbutton my jeans.
Before I realize his intent, he opens the truck’s back door, and in one fluid motion, he lifts me onto my back on the seat. My jeans and panties are pushed halfway down my legs, and the next thing I know, Cade is on his knees on the asphalt, bending me in half like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
Everything is exposed to him. Everything. And Cade takes his sweet time, dragging this moment out like it’s his favorite game while I weep for him. My face burns as his thumbs spread me open and he then just . . . stares.
“So fucking beautiful . . .” he whispers.
“Cade, fucking eat me already—Oh fuck!”
The words die in my throat as his tongue finds me, hot and devastating. That first stroke sends my back arching off the seat, my hands scrambling to sink into his hair, but I can’t reach him around my bent legs.
I’m utterly at his mercy.
His tongue is relentless—rapid, maddening flicks over my clit, followed by long, slow strokes dragging from the tight ring of my ass right up to my clit. I’m splayed open, my thighs pressed against my breasts. It’s filthy. It’s obscene. And it’s so damn good.
When he sucks my clit into his mouth, my hips buck violently, a broken cry ripping from my throat. But Cade only pins me down and spreads me even wider, holding me exactly where he wants me.
“You taste like sin, Luciana,” he growls against me, his voice wrecked. “And I’m fucking starving.”
The words destroy me. And then he moans—low, decadent, vibrating against my core—and my eyes snap open, only to be served with the sheer hunger and bliss on his face.
God, he loves this. The thought sends me spiraling, and I can no longer watch; my head falls back as I surrender, unable to stop the cries spilling from my lips—those that make me sound like I exist solely to be ruined by his tongue.
And then he plunges two thick fingers inside me.
“Oh, fuck . . . Cade, I’m going to . . .”
“Look at me,” he commands.
Our gazes lock, and the connection between us snaps into place. His fingers curl right into that maddening spot inside me, while his tongue works over my clit. It’s too much. I shatter, a choked scream breaking free as my orgasm crashes over me, drenching him and pulling me under.
“Oh, my God . . . Cade.” I gasp, trying to catch my breath.
But he’s not done.
He stands to his feet and then drags me to the very edge of the seat. He lifts my ass, holding my legs up against his torso with a forearm while his other reaches for his bulging fly. I hear the sound of his zipper.
Fuck, yes.
And then, nothing.
Cade goes very still.
“Cade?” I crane my neck to look up at him, but all I can see is his chest.
“I’ll be god-fucking-damned . . .” he whispers. He lets go of my legs, and my ass hit the seat with a bounce.
The abrupt change leaves me dazed, my mind still foggy from the orgasm. And then Cade is pulling me out of the truck and tugging up my panties and jeans with an urgency that makes my stomach knot.
“ What’s wrong?” I ask, but Cade’s attention is already fixed on something in the distance.
I follow his gaze to three motorcycles approaching, dark figures against the horizon. Given how deserted this road is, something feels off. Or maybe I’m just reading the tension rolling off Cade as they get nearer.
“They’re just riders . . .” I place a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
They slow down as they pass, heads turned toward us, watching us through their visors.
“Fuuuck,” Cade growls and the sound makes dread settle in my gut.
“They’re gone, Cade.”
Cade’s eyes narrow as he watches them disappear. “Not for long. Your friends will be back soon,” he snaps.
“What do you mean my friends?”
He captures my mouth in a swift brutal kiss. When he pulls back, his eyes are pure ice. “Ever been spanked for being naughty?”
I blink. “What? No . . .”
“Good. You’ve got it coming if I survive this. Lay on the floor of the truck. On your belly.”
“What?”
“ Now! “ he barks, just as I see the motorcyclists in the distance, circling back, this time with guns drawn.
Oh, shit. I dive onto the floor of the truck, my pulse thundering in my ears.
We’re going to die.
Cade’s voice cuts through my panic like a knife. “Saint, go stay with Luciana.”
The massive dog leaps out of the back and circles around to where I’m lying. Saint’s eyes are sharp and focused as he starts to climb into the back seat.
“St. Michael?” Cade barks.
Saint pauses, glancing back at Cade.
“Lock it down.”
My heart lurches at those words. I know what they mean now.
Anxiety shoots through me like lightning. Cade intends to face those men alone while his battle-trained dog what? Plays bodyguard to me?
Before I can protest, Saint makes his move. He settles his weight over me, and I’m shocked into silence as he pins me down. His huge body blankets mine completely, but he holds himself carefully—like he knows exactly how much pressure to use. Not crushing me, just . . . shielding me. Using himself as living armor.
I hear Cade mutter curses under his breath, and though I can’t make out all of it, I swear I hear “fucking brat.” My heart races even faster, and I stay as still as possible, knowing better than to snap back a retort right now.
But seriously, what the hell have I done to make every murderous prick in the country want me dead?