Chapter 5
FIVE
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I heard them talking on a Wednesday.
I was behind the bar, restocking the fridges, crouched down with the door open so they couldn't see me.
Duke and Rook, at the pool table, voices low but not low enough.
Rook was the one talking, his tone clipped, controlled, the way he sounded when something had gone wrong and he was already three steps into figuring out how.
"Third time," he said. "The Jackals knew about the Billings pickup before we'd even confirmed the route. That's not a guess. That's not surveillance. Someone is handing them our schedules."
Duke said something I couldn't make out. Then Rook, quieter, but I caught the tail end.
"...narrowing it down. Angel wants it locked by the weekend."
The fridge hummed and the ice in the well cracked.
I stayed crouched behind the bar with my hands wrapped around a bottle of beer and my stomach turning over, slow, sick, the way it had been turning for weeks now except tonight it was worse because narrowing it down meant they were close.
They were close, and I was right here, six feet away, restocking their bar with their bourbon, wearing the trust they'd given me like a coat I'd stolen.
I finished the restock. Stood up. Smiled at Hank when he asked for another round.
I poured him his bourbon, wiped the bar, and laughed at something a trucker said.
The performance was flawless. It had to be, because the alternative was crumbling right here in front of everyone, and I couldn't afford to crumble. Not yet.
The meetings with Colt were getting worse.
The last one, two nights ago, he'd grabbed my jaw.
Held my face while he talked, his fingers pressing into the hinge of my bone, his thumb on my chin, forcing me to look at him while he told me what he needed next.
Specific routes. Times. Which brothers were riding and which were staying at the compound.
Information I'd have to actively dig for, not just overhear.
When I'd told him I couldn't get that without raising suspicion, he'd squeezed harder.
Left bruises along my jawline that I'd covered with makeup the next morning, blending, layering, checking in the mirror until the marks disappeared under foundation.
I was running out of places to hide the evidence of him.
Running out of excuses for the long sleeves, and the makeup.
And through all of it, there was Hawk.
Hawk, who looked at me every night across that bar with warmth and want and a trust so total it felt like standing in sunlight.
Hawk, whose hands on my body were the only thing that made me feel clean.
Hawk, who'd started leaving his door unlocked at night because he knew I'd come, knew I'd slip through the lodge in the dark and climb into his bed, and every time he pulled me against him and pressed his mouth to my hair I wanted to scream the truth into his chest and let whatever came next come.
I couldn't. Every time the words gathered in my throat I remembered the video that had been taken.
In my mind I saw it sent to my parents. Saw the look on Hawk's face when he watched footage of me with another man, moaning, exposed, every intimate second of it preserved in pixels.
I thought about what would happen if it got put online.
The shame was a living thing inside me, curled up behind my ribs, and Colt fed it every time we met.
But Rook's voice was in my head now. Narrowing it down. And I knew, with a certainty that sat in my stomach like a stone, that this was ending. One way or another, this was ending and the only question was whether I confessed or got caught.
I closed the bar that night. Locked up. Walked through the back corridor into the lodge, up the stairs, past the closed doors, to Hawk's room. The compound was quiet. Late, past midnight, a silence that settled into old buildings like a held breath.
His door was unlocked. I pushed it open.
He was sitting on the edge of the bed, jeans on, shirtless, his phone in his hand. He looked up when I came in and His eyes moved over my face, reading me the way he always did, fast, thorough, missing nothing. Whatever he saw made him put the phone down.
"Hey," he said.
I didn't answer. I crossed the room and I kissed him.
He knew immediately that something was different.
His hands came up to my waist, careful, questioning, the way he pulled back half an inch to look at my face.
I didn't let him. I kissed him harder, my hands on his jaw, my body pressing into his, and I poured everything I had into it because this might be the last time.
This might be the last time he ever let me touch him and I needed him to feel what I couldn't say. I wanted to remember what this had been, when eventually he found out what I had been doing, and that I’d been betraying his club.
He responded. He always responded, because whatever this man felt for me, he felt it with his whole body. His hands tightened on my waist and he pulled me onto his lap, my knees on either side of his hips, and the kiss went from desperate to devastating.
I pulled my shirt over my head. No bra. I hadn't bothered.
His eyes dropped to my breasts and the look on his face, the raw hunger, the way his hands came up to cup them, his thumbs brushing over my nipples, made me gasp and grind down against him.
I could feel him hardening beneath me, through the denim, and I rolled my hips against him until he groaned into my mouth.
"Bree." My name, rough, a question in it.
"Don't talk," I said. "Just touch me. Please."
His jaw flexed. Then his mouth was on my throat, my collarbone, closing over my nipple, and I arched into him with a sound that came from somewhere so deep it frightened me.
His hands gripped my hips, pulling me tighter against him, the friction of denim against the thin fabric of my underwear sending sparks up my spine.
I was already wet, already aching, my body so attuned to his now that the proximity alone was enough to make me desperate.
I reached between us, worked his belt open, shoved his jeans down far enough.
He was hard, thick, and when I wrapped my hand around him he hissed through his teeth and his hips jerked up.
I stroked him slow, watching his face, watching the control fracture behind his eyes, watching this big, quiet, dangerous man come apart under my hands.
"Fuck," he breathed. "Bree, I need to be inside you."
I pushed my underwear to the side and sank down onto him.
We both stopped breathing. The stretch of him, the fullness, the way my body opened around him.
Every inch of him. Too much, but also everything, and it was the only thing in the world that mattered.
I stayed there for a second, my forehead against his, our breath mingling, feeling his hands grip my hips hard as if to anchor me into place.
Then I moved.
I rode him slow at first, deep rolls of my hips that made his breath catch and his fingers dig into my flesh.
His eyes were locked on mine, dark, intense, watching me take what I needed from him.
The intimacy of it was overwhelming. Face to face, chest to chest, his hands guiding my rhythm but not controlling it.
I set the pace and he let me, and the power of that, of this man giving me the reins, made something in my chest crack wide open.
The pace shifted. I couldn't keep it slow, couldn't keep it controlled, because the urgency was building, the desperation, the knowledge that this was my goodbye rising through my body and turning into speed, into friction, into the obscene sound of him sliding in and out of me while I rode him with everything I had.
"That's it," he murmured against my throat. "Take what you need. I've got you."
The words undid me. I grabbed his shoulders, drove down harder, faster, chasing the pressure building between my legs.
He reached between us, found my clit with his thumb, and the first stroke of it made me cry out so loud it echoed off the walls.
He worked me relentlessly while I rode him, his thumb circling, pressing, his mouth on my neck, my jaw, whispering filthy, beautiful things against my skin that I could barely hear over my own heartbeat.
"Come for me, Bree. Let me feel it. Want to feel you come on my cock."
I shattered. It ripped through me, violent, total, my whole body clenching around him, my nails buried in his shoulders, a sound tearing out of me that wasn't a word, wasn't a name, was just raw, animal release.
He followed me seconds later, his arms locking around my waist, his face buried in my neck, a rough, guttural groan vibrating against my skin as he came inside me.
We stayed like that. Tangled together, breathing hard, his arms around me, my face against his shoulder. I could feel his heartbeat hammering under my palm. Could feel him still inside me, softening, the intimacy of it almost unbearable.
He leaned back, pulling me with him, until we were lying on the bed, my body tucked against his, his arm heavy around my waist. The room was dark, just the moonlight through the window, and the silence was warm for the first time in weeks.
His thumb traced a line along my hip, lazy, absent, the touch of a man who was completely at peace.
"Angel's called a lockdown," he said. Quiet.
Casual. The way you share things with someone you trust completely.
"We know there's a leak. Rook's close to figuring out where it's coming from.
Might be a few late nights for me. So if I'm not around as much.
.." He pressed his lips to my shoulder. "It's not you.
It's just club business. I'll still be here for you. "
The words fell into my chest and detonated.
I lay there. His arm around me, his breath warm against the back of my neck, his heartbeat steady against my spine.
The weight of his trust pressed down, solid, total.
The trust of a man who had let me inside every wall he'd ever built.
I could feel the warmth of him, the safety, the thing I'd been searching for my whole life without knowing it.
And the lie was there. Sitting between us in the dark, taking up more space than either of our bodies, poisoning everything it touched.
Rook's close to figuring out where it's coming from.
It was me. It had always been me. The mole he was hunting, the leak he'd been tasked to find, the threat to the brotherhood he'd dedicated his life to.
Me. In his bed, in his arms, in his heart.
The knife in his back, buried to the hilt, and he was lying there stroking my hip and telling me he'd be here for me.
The tape didn't matter anymore. The shame, the humiliation, Colt's hands on my face and his threats and his phone full of footage.
None of it mattered. Nothing mattered except that I was lying next to the man I loved and I was the thing that was hurting him and I had to stop.
Right now. Tonight. No matter what it cost me.
I rolled over. Faced him. He was looking at me in the dark with those steady eyes and the warmth in them nearly killed me.
"I need to tell you something," I said. My voice shook. The tears barely held. "And you're going to hate me."
His expression shifted. Not suspicion, not yet. Concern. The slight tightening of his brow, the way his hand stilled on my hip.
"Bree."
"The leak," I said. "It's me."
Silence.
"I'm the one feeding the Jackals information. I've been doing it since I started at the bar."
I told him all of it. The words came out in a flood, unstoppable, every rotten detail I'd been hoarding for months pouring out of me like poison from a wound.
Tyler, the party, the video filmed without my knowledge or my consent.
Colt, Tyler's friend, a Jackals prospect who'd recognised me and seen an opportunity.
The two of them conspiring, Tyler handing over the footage willingly, both of them climbing the Jackals ladder on the back of my humiliation.
Colt showing up at my door with the video on his phone and an ultimatum.
Get a job at Angel's Rest. Feed him information. Or the tape goes everywhere.
I told him about Lena. How I'd used her to get in, how I'd steered the conversation, how I'd planted the idea and let her bridge me into his world.
I told him about the meetings, the car parks, the information I'd passed.
I told him about the bruises, the ones I'd hidden under sleeves and makeup, Colt's hands on my arm, my jaw, the way he squeezed harder every time I pushed back.
I watched his face the whole time.
The warmth drained out of his eyes. Slowly, the way colour bleeds from the sky at sunset.
What replaced it was something I'd never seen in him before.
Something cold. Something hollow. Something that looked like a door closing from the inside, quietly, deliberately, the lock turning with a sound only he could hear.
He didn't shout. He didn't hit anything. He didn't swear, shake me or raise his voice.
He went quiet. The worst kind of quiet. The kind that comes from a man who is holding an explosion inside his chest with both hands and won't let it detonate because if he does he doesn't know what he'll destroy.
He sat up. Swung his legs off the bed. Pulled on his jeans, his shirt, his boots. Every movement slow, deliberate, mechanical, the movements of a man who has left his body and is operating on muscle memory because whatever is happening inside him is too big to process.
He stood. Walked to the door. Put his hand on the handle.
He didn't look back, not once.
The door closed behind him. Quiet. The click of the latch, soft, final, the loudest sound I'd ever heard.
I lay there. In his bed. The sheets still warm where his body had been. The room still smelled of him, of us, of sex and sweat and everything we'd just given each other. I could still feel him inside me, the ghost of him, the ache of his absence already filling the space where his warmth had been.
I pulled the sheet up to my chin. Pressed my face into his pillow.
I'd just done the bravest thing I'd ever done. The most destructive and the only right thing I'd done in months.
And it was going to cost me everything.