7. Chapter 7
Grim
Three hours after McKenna puts six rounds into a paper target, Hound finds the taller man from the bus station.
The blood left inside the abandoned sedan gave him a starting point. A stolen truck caught on a pharmacy camera gave Lock the rest. By the time Hound reaches him, the bastard is too weak from the injuries I gave him to run far.
The Sinners keep an interrogation room at the back of the clubhouse, away from the rooms used by anyone we intend to welcome.
The man sits handcuffed to a chair inside it. One eye is swollen from our fight at the station, and a dirty bandage covers the damage beneath his shirt.
He is the one who wrapped his hand around McKenna’s bruised wrist and tried to force her into the sedan.
Remembering it makes my injured shoulder ache for another kind of violence.
Torch and Lock watch from near the door while Striker circles the chair. He describes the abandoned quarry north of town, the flooded lower pit, and how long the cold takes to erase a man’s fingerprints.
Striker has always understood that a man’s imagination knows exactly where to place the blade.
I step close enough that the bastard has to tilt his head back.
“Who hired Rivers?” I ask.
“I don’t know.”
Striker’s fist crashes into his ribs.
The chair strains against its bolts. The man folds as far as the restraints allow, coughing through the pain.
“Try again,” Striker says.
“I swear I don’t know. Rivers is the only one with the buyer’s identity.”
“What were you supposed to do with McKenna?”
“Bring her to the Vegas hotel and hold her there. Another vehicle was coming for her after dark.”
“Who was driving it?”
“I don’t know. Rivers keeps the buyer separate from the crews.”
Alan created the listing. Rivers brokered the sale. An unknown man paid for McKenna and requested me specifically.
Every path circles her without revealing who placed her in the middle.
Lock’s phone vibrates. He reads the message and looks at me.
“Ghost came through.”
The Damned Saints have spent years tearing apart trafficking routes. I asked Ghost to compare Rivers’s contract portal with auction systems the Saints seized during previous operations.
Lock hands me the phone.
Ghost found a dormant buyer key used only once. He recovered part of the encrypted certificate attached to it.
The visible fragment contains a single letter.
S.
“Could be a surname, company, or location,” Torch says.
“Get the complete certificate.”
“Ghost and I are already working on it.”
I look at the man in the chair. “We better find what we need.”
“The boss knows enough to collect the rest of his fee,” he answers quickly. “He keeps the records on an encrypted drive in the motel safe. The hardware key stays with it.”
That gives us a target.
I leave Striker to finish the questioning and find McKenna in my office.
She sits behind my desk with Torch’s case notes open in front of her. A medical textbook rests beside them, and a cup of coffee has gone cold near her elbow.
She looks up. “Did he talk?”
“Rivers keeps the buyer’s identity on an encrypted drive inside the motel safe.”
Her gaze sharpens. “When do we move?”
“Tonight.”
“Good.”
She closes the file, but her attention remains on me.
“You said the buyer requested you specifically.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’ve never told me anything about who you were before the military.”
The observation finds the locked door inside me.
“There isn’t anything worth telling.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have.”
Hurt moves across her face. I would rather take another bullet than see it, but the name I buried has no place in this club or in her life. The past I left behind cannot touch what we are becoming.
“You know things about me I have never told anyone,” I say. “That doesn’t mean every grave inside me is ready to be opened.”
Her expression softens. “Then tell me the grave is there. Don’t pretend the ground is empty.”
The line lands with more force than anger.
I move around the desk and stop in front of her.
“The grave is there.”
She closes the textbook. “Thank you.”
“That’s enough?”
“For today.”
She offers trust without demanding payment. I should have learned by now that this woman can undo me most completely when she asks for the least.
I take her hand and draw her out of the chair. She backs against the desk, and I settle between her thighs.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
“Showing you what I’m ready to give.”
My mouth closes over hers.
The kiss turns hungry almost at once. McKenna pulls me closer, and the soft heat of her presses against my cock through our clothes.
She breaks the kiss first. “Lock the door.”
“Already did.”
“You planned this?”
“I’ve planned it against every wall and flat surface in this clubhouse.”
Desire darkens her eyes. “That sounds like a lot of unfinished work.”
“Angel, you have no idea.”
She pushes my cut from my shoulders. I hang it over the chair before returning to her.
Her fingers reach for my jeans.
I catch her hand. “What do you want?”
“To touch you without you stopping me this time.”
The memory of her palm around my cock at the cabin sends heat through my body.
“Then finish what you started.”
She lowers my zipper and reaches inside my briefs. Her hand closes around my shaft, tentative for the first stroke before confidence takes over. I brace my uninjured hand on the desk as she frees my cock and studies it.
“Show me,” she says.
I cover her hand with mine and guide her from base to tip. Her grip tightens on the upward stroke. She circles her thumb over the head, spreading the precum gathering there.
A groan leaves me.
Her eyes lift to my face. “You like that.”
“You already know I do.”
She slides from the desk and kneels.
Every thought inside my head stops.
“McKenna.”
“I want to.”
She holds my gaze as her tongue touches the underside of my cock and travels toward the swollen head. Pleasure tears through me. Her lips close around the tip, warm and wet, and I have to lock my knees.
“Don’t take more than you want,” I tell her.
She draws another inch into her mouth, one hand circling the base she cannot fit. Her tongue moves with every pull, learning what makes my stomach tighten.
I gather her hair in my fist and hold it away from her face without guiding her head. The sight of my cock sliding between her lips makes every territorial instinct inside me roar.
“Look at me, Angel.”
Her eyes rise while her mouth continues working my shaft.
“You’ve spent your whole life being told what to do. You control this.”
She draws back, her breath unsteady. “Then let me make you lose control.”
The challenge tears through my restraint.
I bring her to her feet and kiss her while my hands find the hem of her sweater. She raises her arms, and I pull it over her head before releasing the front clasp of her bra.
Her breasts fill my palms. Her nipples harden beneath my fingers as I bend to take one into my mouth.
She grips the edge of the desk. “Harder.”
I answer with my teeth, careful enough to make her shiver and firm enough to pull a moan from her.
Her hands open my jeans farther. She presses against my cock, and the friction nearly destroys what remains of my control.
I lift my head. “Sit on the desk.”
She holds my gaze as she settles on the edge.
I open her jeans and draw them down with her panties. Her legs part for me.
My fingers find her pussy already slick.
“This wet from sucking my cock?”
Her breath catches. “Yes.”
“Say it without hiding.”
“Putting my mouth on you made me wet.”
I push two fingers inside her. Her head falls back as her body closes around them.
“Good girl.”
She clenches harder.
I stroke deep, curling against the place that makes her thighs tremble while my thumb circles her clit.
“I want you inside me,” she says.
“Where?”
Color rises beneath her freckles, but she does not look away.
“I want your cock in my pussy.”
Pride and lust hit together.
I withdraw my fingers and spread her thighs wider. The head of my cock presses against her entrance.
“Tell me who you are.”
Her eyes shine. “Your Angel.”
I drive into her.
Her wet pussy opens around me, tight enough to drag a curse from my throat. She cries out and grips the edge of the desk as I fill her to the hilt.
“Too much?”
“Exactly enough.”
I withdraw and thrust again.
The desk braces her beneath me as I take her with the urgency we denied ourselves at the cabin. Her breasts move with each stroke, her mouth open and her gaze fixed on mine.
“More,” she pleads.
I give it to her.
Her legs tighten around my hips, drawing me deeper. Papers slide to the floor as I brace my uninjured arm beside her and drive into her harder.
“I’m yours,” I tell her.
Her pussy clenches around my cock.
“Mine?” she asks.
“As long as you want me.”
“Then you’re mine.”
The words strike deeper than pleasure.
I spread her thighs and thrust into her while my thumb finds her clit.
Her cries fill the office. She grips my shoulders and meets every stroke as the wet sound of our bodies grows louder.
“Come for me, Angel. Let me feel what choosing me does to you.”
Her orgasm takes her suddenly. Her pussy clamps around my cock in hard pulses, and her back arches above the desk.
I keep thrusting through every contraction until the sight and feel of her shatter my control.
I bury myself deep and come inside her with her name torn from my throat.
For several seconds, the only sound in the office is our breathing.
I remain inside her while the last tremors pass, my forehead resting against hers.
“I understand why the desk made your list,” she whispers.
“I’ll never replace this desk.”
Her laugh wraps around the dangerous hope inside me.
I pull away carefully and retrieve a warm cloth from the washroom adjoining my office. She watches me clean her before I help her dress.
When I fasten her bra, I kiss each shoulder before pulling her sweater into place.
“You take care of me after,” she says.
“Before, during, and after.”
“That sounds suspiciously permanent.”
I meet her gaze. “Nothing about you feels temporary.”
Someone knocks twice.
Striker’s voice comes through the door. “Motel team is ready, Prez.”
McKenna’s expression hardens with purpose.
I settle my cut across my shoulders and open the door.
Tonight, we take Rivers’s records, drag the truth out of her brother, and find the name of the man who bought her.
Then I make sure no piece of paper ever owns part of her life again.