13. Stone
Her weight settles into my lap and my brain blanks out for half a second. Not because I understand what just happened—because I don’t.
All I register is heat, pressure, the sudden awareness of her everywhere at once—soft where I’m used to hard edges, warm where this room usually feels cold and controlled. My body reacts before my head can catch up, instinct flaring sharp and unhelpful, blood rushing to places that have absolutely no business waking up in the middle of a meeting like this. I can feel myself growing harder beneath her, and the worst part is how natural it feels, like my body decided she belonged there long before I had a vote.
Then it hits. Where we are. Who’s watching. What this looks like.
This is not the time. This is not the place.
And whatever she thinks she’s asking for right now, I should shut it down immediately. I should move her off me, put space between us, remember I’m supposed to be the one in control here. Instead my hand flexes against her hip, thumb catching on the curve of her waist like it’s memorizing the shape through her clothes.
The room goes quiet in that way that only men who know power do. Bruiser stills to my left. Riot’s gaze sharpens across the table. The Romanians clock it a breath later, interest flickering behind their eyes, the kind that weighs and measures and files things away for later.
Lex leans in, close enough that her hair brushes my jaw, her mouth just off my ear. I can smell her under the smoke and leather—something clean, faintly sweet—and it scrambles my thoughts all over again.
“I need you,” she whispers. “Right now.”
My hand comes up automatically, firm at her lower back. Not pulling her closer. Not letting her go either. Every nerve in my body votes for the first option.
Christ.
“Meeting adjourned,” I say flatly. “Give me ten.”
No one argues.
Lex slides off my lap smoothly, cheeks flushed but eyes steady. I catch her wrist before she can step away.
“Come with me,” I murmur, low enough that only she hears it.
She nods, and I don’t look back at the table as I lead her down the hallway. I don’t slow until we’re through a side door and into a quiet office, the music from the bar reduced to a distant thrum.
The door shuts.
I turn on her, control tight as wire.
“What the hell was that?” I ask, my voice low and tight, every word leashed. “You don’t do that in the middle of a sit-down.”
She doesn’t flinch.
“I needed you alone.”
The way she says it — calm and deliberate — makes something cold settle in my chest.
“Why?” I ask.
She tells me everything.
The language. The switch. The ease of it. How they talked like this was already settled. How they’re using our name — not planning to, not asking — already using it. Acquiring weapons under it. Preparing to move them through our territory. And then, like it was nothing, the expansion. Drugs. Girls.
That part hits like a punch.
Human trafficking is a line you don’t blur. You don’t negotiate it. You don’t excuse it. Ever.
By the time she’s done, the office feels like it’s shrinking. I drag a hand down my face, keeping the violence caged behind my ribs.
“They already moved,” I say. Not a question.
She nods. “Yes.”
A beat. Just enough for doubt to surface.
“You’re sure?” I ask, eyes locked on hers. “You didn’t mishear. Didn’t fill in gaps.”
Her mouth tilts, faint but unmistakable. “Stone,” she says gently, “I speak Romanian. Fluently. They weren’t exactly subtle.”
The corner of her smile sharpens. “If anything, they were arrogant.”
The doubt vanishes. I trust her—and I hate what that trust costs. A muscle jumps in my jaw. They’re planning to wear our colors like a shroud, to let us take the fall when the feds move in.
“They’re wearing our name,” I continue, anger threading tight and lethal now. “Buying under it. Planning to ship under it. And if it burns—”
“They expect it to burn you, not them.” she says quietly.
“You wanted to warn me,” I say at last.
“Yes.”
I hold her gaze, something dark and resolute locking into place.
“Then you just made yourself part of this,” I say it as a cold, hard fact.
My gaze drops to her mouth. The memory of her weight in my lap hits me again, harder than the news of the betrayal. She didn’t hesitate. She knew exactly where she belonged.
I step into her space, crowding her until she has nowhere to go. “You could’ve put yourself in danger,” I say, low and tight.
Her chin lifts, eyes steady. “You would’ve handled it.”
Something sharp twists in my chest — anger and something else, tangled too close to separate.
“That’s not the point,” I say. “You don’t put yourself in the line of fire to get my attention.”
“I needed you to listen.”
“I would’ve,” I snap quietly, then rein it back in. “You don’t get hurt in the process.”
The space between us feels charged, coiled. Protective instinct hums under my skin, hot and relentless.
“I don’t like the idea of anyone touching you,” I add, voice dropping further. “Or watching you. Or thinking they can.”
I stop myself inches away from her. Not because I don’t want to touch her. But because right now, wanting her feels too close to needing to shield her from the entire world.
After a moment, she exhales, tension loosening just enough to breathe. “So,” she says, trying for light and missing by a mile, “maybe we need a system.”
My jaw tightens. “A system.”
“A code,” she says. “So next time I need you alone, I don’t have to—” her mouth curves, slow and dangerous, “use your lap as a message board.”
The image hits hard. The way she didn’t hesitate. The way she fit there like she’d practiced. My body reacting before my brain even filed a complaint.
Heat rolls through me, low and possessive.
“Although… it did work,” she adds, quieter now. Testing. Toying with the line and knowing it.
That’s enough.
I step in, crowding her space, one hand braced against the wall beside her head. The other lands on her waist, fingers digging in just enough to remind her exactly where she’d been sitting minutes ago—and exactly how much I’d noticed.
Her breath stutters.
“Don’t joke about that,” I say, voice low, rough. “Not when you don’t understand what you’re doing to me.”
One of her brows lifts. “I think I understand just fine.”
Christ. She’s got a mouth on her.
Her eyes darken— not scared, not even close. More like she’s poking a sleeping animal just to see how close she can get to the teeth.
“I needed you,” she says simply.
“Well you got me,” I snap back. “You put a target on yourself.”
For a second I expect defiance. An argument. Instead her expression softens, steady and sure.
“I trust you.”
That lands harder than anything else she’s said tonight.
“You don’t do something like that unless you’re sure,” I say, voice low. “Unless you know exactly who’s going to catch you.”
Her breath stutters. Just once.
“I did,” she says quietly.
My hand tightens on her waist, my thumb pressing into the soft skin above her hip. I need the friction. I need the reminder that she’s real and right here, and that she just walked into a firing squad because she believed I’d be the one to catch the bullets.
“That’s the problem,” I murmur. “Because once you did…”
My gaze drops to her mouth, then lifts back to her eyes, slow and deliberate.
“…you made yourself mine to handle.”
I don’t just want her. I feel a sudden, violent need to shield her from the very rot she just described. The fact that she chose me to stand between her and that darkness almost undoes me.
She doesn’t pull away and that’s what almost undoes me.
“This conversation isn’t finished,” I say, steady by sheer will. “But if you ever pull something like that again…”
I let the sentence trail off, my gaze dropping to her mouth again before I can stop it. She notices and something flickers across her face that makes my pulse kick harder.
I lean in, just enough that she has to feel it coming, and brush a slow kiss at the corner of her lips—close, deliberate, not quite what either of us wants. A promise instead of permission.
“…make damn sure it’s just us,” I murmur.
Her breath catches. She swallows and nods once.
My thumb skims her chin before I step back, putting space between us that feels thin as glass. “I’ll handle this,” I add quietly, holding her eyes so she understands exactly what I mean. “But we’re so not done.”
I open the door for her, every instinct screaming to haul her back, to remind her exactly who she chose.
This stopped being a problem to solve the moment she chose me. Now it’s something I want. And that’s far more dangerous.