2. Cash
CASH
The sheriff comes through the gates looking like he’d rather burn the compound to the ground than ask Kingdom Come for anything.
I can’t blame the sheriff. King bought people’s silence, buried trouble and made every case against us collapse; a few months of Kane’s leadership don’t erase thirty years of trouble.
He parks beside the clubhouse, his hand resting on his holstered weapon as he walks.
Judge stands beside Kane, Tank near the garage, and the others give him room without pretending he’s welcome.
Lilly-Rose stands beside me with red marks around her wrist. I keep seeing Doran’s hand there and remembering the instant I let the SUV go because leaving her alone was never an option.
I’ve watched her for months: coffee before the bank opens, hair loose on Fridays, her gaze finding me through the bank windows.
I stayed away because getting too close to the sheriff’s daughter would cause more trouble than it was worth.
But seeing two men touch her burned through that distance.
The sheriff’s gaze lands on the bruise. His face changes, the father breaking through the lawman, and he reaches for her. “Let me see.”
“It’s just sore, Dad, not broken.” Lilly-Rose gives him her wrist anyway. “Cash checked it.”
“Start at the beginning,” he says.
She tells him Doran used Corbin’s name to try and convince her to come with him, grabbed her and tried to force her into the SUV. “You’re certain it’s him?” the sheriff asks.
“I’ve seen him drinking with Wade. He knew when I left work and where I parked.”
The sheriff’s anger turns calculating. “Corbin has access to duty schedules and every case I reopened after King died. I’ve been rebuilding the case with investigators outside my department. Kane, your father paid a lot of people to look the other way, and I intend to clean house.”
Kane’s voice is flat. “I’m aware of the past and of my father’s actions. But do you think your chief deputy ordered the grab?”
“Wade Corbin spent years making sure every investigation touching this club went nowhere. When King died, the useful leaks and payments stopped. He must know I’m close.”
Kane put me in charge of the club’s money after he took the gavel. I haven’t found Corbin’s name, but King rarely paid for a bought badge without keeping insurance. I just haven’t found it yet.
Lilly-Rose absorbs it without flinching. “So he takes me and makes you stop investigating.”
“That’s what it looks like.” The sheriff’s jaw tightens. “I should’ve seen it sooner. I just didn’t think he was capable of this.”
Kane steps forward, not offering comfort or excuses. “My father taught Corbin that his badge had a price. If that’s why those men reached for your daughter, Kingdom Come carries part of the debt.”
“Your father carried it.” The sheriff’s eyes harden. “But don’t use this to clean up the club’s name. You might not be your father, but you can’t hide what this club is.”
“Wasn’t planning to. We’re still the men you’ve been trying to put away, and protecting Lilly-Rose doesn’t put us on the same side.”
Honest opposition suits both men better than false friendship. I look at the sheriff. “Okay. Tell us what you need.”
The sheriff wants to take her home. I see it before he speaks, but he looks at the closed gates, the brothers spread across the yard and the garage full of bikes, tools and weapons. This is the one place in Ransom Corbin can’t enter quietly or control through a radio call.
“My house is known, and I don’t know which deputies he has access to or how much of the department he’s compromised,” the sheriff says.
“I need time to bring the outside team in and lock him out of anything connected to the investigation or to Lilly-Rose. Until then, she stays here if that is acceptable to you.”
Lilly-Rose turns toward him. “You could ask me.”
His mouth tightens. “Fine, Lilly. Will you stay here?”
She glances at me. The look lasts only a second, but the sheriff catches it. “Okay, for tonight. Until we know more.”
Kane answers before her father can add conditions. “She gets a guest room and freedom inside the gates. Cash stays close.”
“I’ll stay near her,” I confirm.
The sheriff’s attention settles fully on me. He has known my name for years, knows the collections, the negotiations and enough of my history to understand I’m not the safe brother to assign to his daughter. There isn’t a safe one, and that’s the conflict he’s dealing with right now.
“Keep her alive,” he says to me. “And keep your fucking hands off my daughter.”
My gaze moves to Lilly-Rose before I can be bothered pretending otherwise. Color rises beneath her skin, starting at the open collar of her blouse and climbing toward her cheeks. “I can promise the first.”
“Cash,” Kane says, a warning in my name, but I look back at the sheriff.
“I’m not lying to the sheriff.”
Judge coughs into his fist, badly disguising what might be a laugh. The sheriff doesn’t find me amusing. He steps close enough that the badge on his chest nearly touches my cut. “She is not one of the women who hang around this clubhouse.”
“I know exactly who she is.”
“Good. That should make the second instruction easier.”
Lilly-Rose closes her eyes briefly. “Can both of you stop discussing my sex life in a yard full of armed men?”
The sheriff turns to her. “You don’t have a sex life with him.” He points to me as he says it.
“Then this conversation is even more unnecessary.” She looks at Kane. “Where am I sleeping?”
Kane points toward the side hall inside the clubhouse. “Cash will show you.”
I take her bag before the sheriff can object.
Lilly-Rose follows me across the common room while Kane leads her father toward the back meeting room where we hold church.
Low conversation resumes around us, quieter than before, every brother in the place aware there’s a sheriff under our roof and his daughter walking through the clubhouse with me.
The room looks the way it always does: scarred bar, old leather couches, pool table, the club emblem covering one wall and photographs of dead brothers watching everything.
Nobody has polished the place or hidden what we are for Lilly-Rose’s benefit.
She glances back toward church. “How long will they be?”
“Your father enjoys arguing with Kane, so it could be a while.”
Her mouth twitches despite the evening, and the small movement goes straight through me. I lead her down the side hall past the rooms used by brothers who live on the compound. Mine is near the end. The guest room sits two doors away, plain but clean, with a bed, dresser and attached bathroom.
I put her purse on the dresser. “There are clean towels in the bathroom. I’ll find you something to eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You should eat anyway.”
Her eyes narrow. “Was that a suggestion?”
“Mostly.”
That earns another faint twitch at the corner of her mouth.
She leans against the dresser and studies me with the same careful attention she thinks I’ve never noticed.
Her blouse is still pulled slightly crooked from the struggle, exposing the fine line of one bra strap.
I could fix it with two fingers, but I fight the temptation to touch her.
“Why have you barely spoken to me before today?” she asks.
I let the silence sit while a bike starts outside. Lilly-Rose waits, chin lifted, as though she hasn’t asked the question I’ve spent months avoiding.
“You were trouble.”
Her eyebrows rise. “I’m a bank loan officer who owns matching storage containers. I don’t see how.”
“I didn’t say you caused trouble. I said you were trouble.”
“For you?”
I look at her bruised wrist, then her mouth. “You already know the answer to that.”
“No, I don’t. You never gave me anything except the occasional nod across the street.”
“Because I knew anything else was a bad idea.”
“You figured that out without even speaking to me?”
“I know you watch me.” Her cheeks warm, but she holds my gaze.
“You noticed me.”
Her breath catches as I move closer, slowly enough that she has every chance to step aside. She stays against the dresser, her hands curling around the edge behind her.
“And my chest,” I continue. “Sometimes the tattoos. Mostly when you think I’m busy looking somewhere else.”
“That is an impressive amount of arrogance.”
“It’d be arrogance if I were wrong.” I stop close enough to feel the heat of her body. “You keep looking at me like you’re wondering.”
“Wondering what?”
I lower my head until my mouth is near her ear. “What happens when the bad man your father warned you about stops being polite.”
A tremor moves through her. Her eyes are clear and fixed on mine when I straighten. “You don’t know what I want.”
“Then tell me to move.”
She parts her lips, but no words come. I give her one more second.
Instead of telling me to leave, she grips the front of my cut and pulls me down.
The first touch of her mouth strips away every month of restraint built through stolen glances.
I catch the back of her neck and kiss her the way she has been asking me to without ever speaking.
The kiss is deep, hard and certain enough to make the dresser knock against the wall behind her.
She opens for me with a sound that goes straight to my cock, and I take her mouth until neither of us is pretending this is curiosity anymore.
Her fingers tighten in my cut. I slide one hand around her waist and pull her against me, feeling every soft line beneath the thin blouse and skirt.
She fits close, breasts pressed to my chest, one thigh shifting between mine as if her body has already decided how much closer it wants.
I kiss the corner of her mouth, her jaw and the pulse racing beneath her ear.
She turns her head to give me access, and the sheriff’s good girl daughter makes a breathless sound when my teeth scrape her skin.
The sound nearly ends the last of my control.
“Cash.”
Hearing my name in her voice hits harder than seeing Doran’s marks, and in an entirely different way.
I cup her ass through the skirt and lift just enough to seat her on the edge of the dresser.
Her knees part around my hips, and I step between them, pressing hard against the heat I can feel even through our clothes.
She arches into me. I take her mouth again, slower for half a second before hunger wins.
Her hands leave my cut and slide beneath it, over my ribs and the fitted T-shirt underneath, learning the body she’s watched from across streets and through bank windows.
I let her because I want those careful hands everywhere.
Then my thumb brushes the bruise on her wrist. The image of Doran dragging her toward that SUV cuts through the heat.
I stop with my forehead against hers, breathing hard enough to feel her answering breath against my mouth.
“Don’t,” she says. “Don’t stop now.”
I close my hand around the edge of the dresser instead of her. “Not tonight.”
Her eyes flash. “Because my father told you not to?”
“Your father doesn’t decide who I touch.” I ease back far enough to see her properly. Her lips are swollen, her blouse open one button lower than it was in the yard and desire still shaking through her body. “I can still see those men putting their hands on you. I’m not mixing that with this.”
The anger in her face shifts, though the heat doesn’t. “You think I don’t know the difference?”
“I think you do. I also think you’ve had enough taken from you tonight.”
She studies me for a long moment. “That sounded almost decent.”
“Don’t tell anybody. I’ve got a reputation to keep up.”
A reluctant smile touches her mouth, then disappears when I step away. I want to put it back there with mine, but I force myself toward the hall.
“My room is two doors down. If you need anything, come get me.”
“What if what I need is for you to finish that?”
My whole body tightens. “Then you should get some sleep before I forget every good reason I have for leaving.”
I walk out while I still can. Behind me, the room stays quiet, but I can feel her watching until I turn the corner. The sheriff’s second instruction was impossible before he ever drove through our gates. Now it’s the only one I can think about breaking.