41. Hawk
41
HAWK
T hree drinks in, I stopped bothering with a cup and just took the bottle from behind the bar. I put it to my lips and swallowed mouthful after mouthful, needing the burn of the alcohol just so I could breathe.
“This is messed up,” War said quietly from the stool beside me. “We should take her back to my place.”
I shook my head, choking on the urge to do exactly what War said. “You think I don’t want that? You think I don’t want to go pick her up right now and get her the hell out of here? Trust me. It’s all I can fucking think about. But she’s made it very clear that’s not what she wants.”
Fang let out a frustrated groan. “She’s wasted.”
I strangled the neck of my bourbon bottle. “Lucky her. I wish I could say the same.”
Except the liquor I was downing like water had absolutely no effect in the face of Kara dancing on the motherfucking coffee table with Kiki and Amber, while half the Louisiana chapter cheered and threw money at them like they were strippers.
Amber and Kiki picked up the money, pocketing every bill, but Kara was lost to the music and the alcohol Riot had been plying her with, seemingly unaware of anything else. She swung her hips from side to side, her hands raised in the air, moving to the beat of the music.
She was so damn beautiful it hurt.
But all I could see was the hate and anger in her eyes every time I came near her. And the crippling knowledge that I deserved it.
“We should have told her about Hayden a long time ago,” I admitted. “Or at least, I should have. I screwed up.”
War sighed heavily. “Maybe, but it’s my fault too. I told you not to tell her. You thought you were keeping her safe.”
“Did I?” I laughed bitterly. “Or was I just really sure she would pick him over me and too selfish to let that happen?”
I knew the answer. I swore and raked my fingers through my hair. “I deserve this. I fucking deserve to sit here and watch every other man in this room think about getting her naked.” I didn’t even know she could move like that. So seductively. So perfect my balls ached with need. I was supposed to be in her cabin right now, holding her, touching her, feeling her soft tits in my hands and her warm pussy around my cock.
I was supposed to be caressing her. Kissing her. Making fucking love to her.
I wasn’t supposed to be sitting here watching every other man in the room think the same.
I’d seen some shit in my time as a VP. I’d been in fights. Broken bones. Had knife wounds that had needed more stitches than I could count. Been shot in the leg.
None of it had hurt as much as the look in her eyes when she’d told me that she knew.
I’d lost her before she was ever really even mine.
I shoved to my feet. “I can’t fucking stand here watching Riot mentally undress her. I’m going to pull my gun and shoot the prick if I have to look at it any longer.”
“Don’t do that,” Fang warned quietly. “There’s a lot more of them than there are of us. I know it’s killing you, but just play nice.”
Riot reached out and ran his fingers up Kara’s leg, and a red haze dropped down over my eyes. I reached for my gun.
“Jesus fuck,” War muttered. “Bliss is having a baby any damn day now, and I do not have the time or patience for this bullshit. Riot!”
The Louisiana prez lifted his head.
War jerked a thumb toward the small conference room off to the side. “Church. Now. Bring your VP and one other member. Everyone else waits out here.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a direct order.
Riot might have had superiority over me, his rank of prez making his status higher than mine. But War was the prez of the original Slayers’ club. So even amongst presidents, he was top dog, and the entire room knew it.
They didn’t like it.
But they knew it.
Riot stood and said something to Kara that produced a pink blush on her cheeks.
I wanted to fucking scream.
At least in church, Riot couldn’t gawk at her. Pervy old prick. He was twice her age. He probably had kids older than her.
My fingers twitched over my gun again, desperate to use it.
Fang clamped a heavy hand down on my shoulder. “You have any idea how much trouble you’d cause War by doing whatever it is you’re thinking of doing? He can’t be here dealing with this shit when his woman is about to have a baby. You’re VP. Not a pussy-whipped prospect. Get your shit together.”
I glared at him. “Like you can talk. Rebel has you wrapped around her little finger. Always has.”
His eyes darkened. “Just the way I like it. But I’m not the goddamn VP. And Kara has made it pretty clear she’s not your woman, even if you want her to be. So do your job, walk your ass into church, and leave that girl alone. She ain’t yours.”
He was right. If I’d had any chance of calling her mine, I’d killed it dead when I’d lied to her.
It didn’t mean I could just turn off everything I felt though. I couldn’t just walk away. I glanced over at Ratchet and Aloha. “Watch her,” I demanded, pointing at Kara.
They both nodded.
“Breathe,” Fang said quietly in my ear as he marched me into church. “You’ve got a job to do in here, and it ain’t to shoot fucking Riot in the head. Kara’s having a good time with Amber and Kiki. Aloha is watching her. Your only job right now is to put your personal shit aside and have War’s back. You owe him that much.”
He was right. I’d barely been around lately. I’d been missing phone calls. I still hadn’t done anything about meeting with the new police chief. I was just letting all of that fall on War whose head was miles away, at his home where his family awaited their newest arrival.
Fang was right.
It pissed me off because the man never made a comment unless it was to hit so close to home it scarred.
I stopped dragging my feet and pulled my shit together, standing up tall and shaking Fang off before we walked through the doorway. Fang kicked it closed behind him.
War sat at the head of the table, leaning back in his chair, arms folded across his chest. I took the seat to his right, Fang sitting on my other side. Riot sat opposite me, smirking, while his VP, Torque, and his sergeant-at-arms, Acid, sat to his left.
We’d all met before. Many a time. There was no need for introductions.
Just explanations.
War cleared his throat and raised an eyebrow in Riot’s direction. “How you been, brother?”
“Same old shit, different day.” Riot grinned and rocked on the back two legs of his chair. “Riding. Working. Partying. Fucking.”
War nodded. “And you got sick of doing that in Louisiana so you thought you’d come on over here for a change of scenery, or…” He waited expectantly.
Riot shrugged nonchalantly, sitting his seat back down on all four legs and pulling out a packet of tobacco from his pocket. “Or.”
War waited, but I could feel the irritation rolling off him in waves. He was trying to keep his calm and controlled exterior when I knew him well enough to know that he was mentally thinking about reaching for his gun as much as I was.
Fang’s warning to step up and do my job rang in my ears. “What War is too fucking nice to say, is why the hell are you here without so much as a word of warning and with your entire crew? How long are you planning on staying?”
Riot glanced up at me from tapping out his tobacco. “War wants to know that? Or you want to know how long I’m going to be hanging around, pouring drinks for your girl?”
War shot me a sharp look that clearly said, Don’t you fucking dare react. He’s a prez.
Riot’s guys wore identical expressions, the tension in the room so thick you could have cut it with a knife.
Preferably one I could later stick right through Riot’s kidney.
Riot laughed suddenly, like the entire thing was hilarious. “Relax! Relax! I’m not here to take your girl, Hawk. If you say she’s yours, then I’ll back the fuck off.”
“She’s mine.”
He held his hands up. “Done. Forget I ever saw her.”
I leaned across the table, making a show of putting my gun down in the middle of it. “Don’t expect me to thank you. Just tell us why you’re here.”
“Got some pickups to do.”
War narrowed his eyes. “And you needed your entire club for that?”
Riot chuckled. “Fine. Got a lot of pickups to do. Needed the extra bikes to guard the vans on the way home. Got some clients desperately waiting on…stock.”
“What kind of stock are you getting from our territory? Drugs? Guns? Anyone in Saint View or Providence and the surrounding areas is our turf. Not yours. You want something, you need to come through us,” War practically growled.
It was the way the clubs had always run. You couldn’t just walk into another club’s territory and start making deals like you had every right. That was the biggest disrespect to War, and hackles rose on the back of my neck.
Fuck this guy. I’d never had a problem with him until now. But tonight we definitely had a problem. A big one.
Riot rolled his cigarette and then lit it, blowing a small ring of smoke into the air when he was done. “Cool your jets, hothead. We wouldn’t dream of stepping on your toes. We came here for product you guys aren’t interested in.”
“Want to tell us what that might be?” Fang asked, his quiet presence as menacing as he was tall.
Riot took a long drag on his smoke and blew it out before he bothered answering. “Women.”
The tenuous hold on my patience snapped. I threw myself across the table, fingers clenched into fists, the first one connecting solidly against his cheekbone.
Chaos erupted around me, War and Fang and Riot’s two guys all pulling guns and pointing them at each other.
Pain exploded through my knuckles, an instant throbbing taking up residence in my fingers.
The momentum of my punch had forced Riot to turn his head, and he straightened it now to glare at me, his expression twisted with a scowl. “I’m going to give you that one for free because I did you dirty, hitting on your girl. Next one won’t be. Jesus fuck. You love her or some bullshit?”
I shook my hand out and settled back in my seat, leaving the others to their guns. “Ain’t none of your business. But don’t walk into my club talking about taking our women.”
Riot snorted. “Didn’t you see how many we already had out there? We don’t need your fucking club women. We got plenty of our own. And hey, I like the ones we have. I didn’t want to go giving them away when we were approached about making a deal. You guys have made it real clear over the years that you don’t do deals for women, so we came out here to talk to the contact ourselves.”
“Let me fucking guess,” Fang said darkly. “Luca Guerra?”
Riot raised an eyebrow. “Yes, actually. I thought you guys didn’t want nothing to do with that game?”
“We don’t,” War practically growled. “Slayers don’t traffic women.”
“ Saint View Slayers don’t,” Riot argued. “You might be sitting in the head honcho seat, War, but you ain’t my prez.”
War wasn’t happy. Frost rolled off him, and his fingers gripped the table so hard his knuckles were white.
Riot didn’t give an inch, facing off with him. “If we aren’t welcome here, we’ll leave. I didn’t come here to ask your permission. It was just an easy drop-off point to collect the women. We’re doing it whether you like it or not. The Jesus folk asked us to get them more women for their men, and they’re willing to pay for them, so that’s what we’re here to do. We all got bills to pay, War. We aren’t all you, shacked up in a multimillion-dollar mansion with your pansy-ass boyfriend.”
War stood, never one to take any mention of his family lightly. He towered over Riot. “I’m going to give you exactly thirty seconds to get the fuck out of here before I make you wish you hadn’t said that.”
But something Riot had said didn’t sit well with me. It took me a second to place it, but when I did, my blood ran cold.
Fang seemed to be thinking along the same lines. “Kara’s people are from out Riot’s way.”
I shot him a look and then transferred it to Riot. “Who are they? Your Jesus people?”
Riot broke his stare-off with War, though he kept one hand resting lightly on his gun. “What? I don’t know. Live on some homestead in Texas. Guy’s name is Josiah or something, I dunno. Thunder did most of the back-and-forth with him.”
Fear seized my heart.
I didn’t believe in coincidences. It was stupid to downplay what was right there in your face.
These men knew Josiah.
And they were here for women.
I shoved to my feet and stormed for the door.
Behind me I was vaguely aware of Riot asking where I was going.
I yanked open the door only to be blasted in the face by music and talking and yelling and laughter. The room was twice as full as when I’d left, more people than I’d ever seen in the damn room, probably because it had started raining and there wasn’t much in the way of shelter .
Kara was no longer on the coffee table with Kiki and Amber.
Amber was on her knees, sucking off one of Riot’s guys. Kiki next to her, bouncing up and down on some asshole’s cock while a third guy groped her tits.
All around me, just like our parties often did, the clubhouse had turned into a “nothing was off-limits” gang bang.
We’d all done it. We’d all had women in this room, everyone getting off on fucking in public.
But today the sight just left me cold.
“Kara!” I said sharply, scanning the room for her, heart pumping with the fear I was going to find her in a similar position as Kiki or Amber or one of the other women wandering around in various states of undress and fornication.
My gaze landed on Aloha, Queenie grinding over his lap in a display that shocked me since they weren’t normally ones for public shows. “Aloha,” I ground out, trying not to look.
His eyes opened, and I realized how drunk he was. His gaze was unfocused, and he laughed. “Hawk. Can’t talk.” He snorted. “Hey. That rhymes.”
I glanced at Queenie, exasperated and awkward as fuck that I was trying to talk to her while she was impaled on her old man’s dick.
I didn’t want to see that. It was like watching my parents fuck. “Jesus, you two. Can you knock it off?”
She gasped, out of breath from her efforts, but then glared at me. “Hey. Don’t come up in here, giving me your shitty attitude about me getting mine. We’ve had Hayley Jade in our room for so long so you can get yours. We gotta take what we can.”
I made a face when Aloha dragged her top up, exposing her tits. Both of them laughed hysterically at my expense.
Oh, this was too much. They were both drunk off their asses, and Queenie was going to die of embarrassment if she remembered this in the morning. I sincerely hoped I didn’t.
But I needed her to focus. “Where did Kara go?”
Queenie shrugged and then pointed to the door. “Oh, wait. She said she didn’t feel well and was going to her cabin.”
I gawked at them. “And you just let her?”
She paused in her rocking over Aloha’s lap, steeling me with a look of disapproval that I’d dared to sass her. “I let her go to her room, yes. Because you devastated that girl tonight, Hawk. She needed a goddamn minute. Just like I do now. So go out there and find her and make whatever the hell you did better and leave me to my orgasm.”
I’d never run out of the clubhouse so fast.
Down the path. Up the stairs, shoving open the door that was never locked.
Why the fuck hadn’t I gotten her a lock? “Kara!”
There was nobody in the living room. The kitchen. I slammed my way into the bathroom only to find it empty, and then into her bedroom.
Her clothes were all cleared out.
There wasn’t anything left.
Not even a note.
She was gone.