Chapter 13
Loco
I sat on the bike longer than I should have.
Engine off. Helmet hanging from the handlebar.
The heat of the day still clung to the pavement, radiating up through the soles of my boots, through the bones that had started to ache more often than I liked to admit.
Fifty-two years old and still making stupid decisions in parking lots like a man half my age.
Her rental sat three spaces down—mid-size sedan, silver, nothing remarkable about it except that it meant she was here. In my town. In my air. Breathing the same humidity that wrapped around your lungs and reminded you where you were every damn second.
Nita. Juanita Banks. The strongest woman I had ever known.
Remarkable, the way she held everything down for everyone.
And brave, she didn’t back down. I didn’t know of any other person, man or woman, from outside the outlaw life that had the balls to walk into a biker compound and demand answers.
Yet, she did. And I would be damned if that didn’t settle deep in my balls. She had a fire I couldn’t deny.
Seeing her again had cracked something open inside me.
Something I had boarded up and welded shut a long time ago.
I told myself it was dead. I was dead inside.
Life was easier that way. Cleaner. But the second my eyes found her, standing there with that spine-straight posture in my space and those eyes that always saw too much, it had kicked. Hard.
I told myself to go home.
I told myself I was tired. That I didn’t need this. That whatever war was stirring in my chest had already taken enough from me over the years. Friends. Blood. Pieces of my soul I could never get back.
I told myself she would be gone tomorrow. Back to her life in DC and I would be back to mine. Another memory of time in each other’s presence but not linking together.
That one almost worked.
I leaned forward, forearms resting on my thighs, hands dangling loose between my knees. The bike ticked softly as it cooled, metal contracting, settling. Same way I had spent years settling—shrinking myself into something quieter. Safer.
Not taking a chance on something right in front of me.
I had watched her life from a distance. News articles. Career updates that filtered through people who knew people. I never reached out. Never crossed that line. Told myself it was to protect her.
Besides I once tried to build a life with her sister. Even if that felt like a completely different life, it happened. Regardless I was a different man back then and that man died a long fucking time ago. Maybe that version of me wasn’t even real to begin with.
Now though, finding the Saint’s I knew the man I was and the man I would never be again. And the man she came and challenged tonight didn’t want to let this feeling whatever it was leave so soon.
But sitting there, staring at her car, I finally admitted the truth.
It had been to protect me.
Because if I let her back in—even a little—there was no pretending after that. No lying to myself about what she meant to me. What still mattered inside me for her.
She came here for me. Not for closure. Not for nostalgia or a casual visit.
For answers. For confrontation.
Because the woman Juanita was, she didn’t let me slide. She was the challenge I needed. She had the strength to call me on my bullshit, even the deadly, illegal level shit. She had that spine of steel every outlaw needed to hold him down.
And she was leaving tomorrow.
The war inside me surged again. Loneliness clawed at the ribs I had armored over a decade ago. I survived combat zones, riots, funerals with folded flags. I survived the kind of quiet that followed all of it.
But this? This felt like standing in front of a live wire, knowing exactly what it could do to you, and stepping closer anyway.
I climbed off my bike.
I didn’t think anymore. Thinking was how men like me talked themselves out of the only things that ever made them feel alive. My body moved on its own, a magnet unable to deny the pull.
I didn’t need to ask which room. Dippy had already done his thing earlier—five minutes, a grin, and a muttered “you owe me”—and I’d had the information before I could stop myself from accepting it. I told myself it was just in case. Told myself I wouldn’t use it.
I was a fucking liar.
The hallway smelled like industrial cleaner and old carpet. The kind of place that saw a lot of travelers passing through and none of them leaving much behind. Dreadnought didn’t have some fancy chain hotel.
My boots were too loud on the tile at first, so I slowed, forced myself into that quiet, controlled gait that had been drilled into me over years of training and worse years of real life. Once out of the elevator I was back on the old worn carpet again, muting my steps.
Her door came into view.
I stopped there longer than I had by the bike.
This was the line. The last one. Knock and everything changed—or walk away and keep the lie intact.
I raised my hand before I could talk myself out of it.
Knocked once.
Firm. Decisive.
Footsteps on the other side. A pause. The faint slide of fabric. Then the door opened.
And it damn near took the air out of my lungs.
She wasn’t dressed for war. No armor. No sharp edges. Just real.
A robe tied loosely at her waist, a nightie underneath, the lace age at her cleavage peeking out.
A bonnet pulled down to cover and protect her hair.
Glasses perched on her nose. Bare face, soft and familiar and somehow even more beautiful than the version of her that walked into rooms and commanded them.
Shock flared across her features. Her mouth parted like she might say my name.
I didn’t let her. I came this far, I wasn’t holding back.
I stepped into the room, my hand coming up to the back of her neck, fingers threading into the fabric of her robe there, pulling her to me with a force that surprised us both. The door swung shut behind me, the sound dull and final.
My mouth crashed into hers.
Not careful. Not polite.
Necessary.
She gasped against me, that sound cutting straight through my chest, and then she was there—hands gripping my cut, her body pressing back, no hesitation once the first heartbeat passed.
I backed her up without breaking the kiss until her shoulders hit the wall. My body followed, pinning her there, the solid weight of me reminding us both this was real. That I was real. That she was too.
I didn’t speak. Words would have ruined it.
My hand slid from her neck to her jaw, thumb brushing her lower lip before I kissed her again, slower this time. Deeper. Like I was trying to learn the shape of her mouth, the way she fit against me.
Years collapsed in on themselves.
There was no anger in this moment. No accusations. No explanations. Just the truth we had both been pretending didn’t exist. The connection we both denied.
Her fingers curled into my shirt like she was afraid I would disappear if she let go.
I moved my mouth to her cheek, her jaw, down the column of her throat.
Her skin was warm. Alive. I inhaled her like I had been starved of oxygen.
Maybe I had been. Everything about this moment gave me life like I had never had before.
My hand came back to her neck—not tight. Never that. Just enough to feel her pulse under my fingertips. Fast. Strong.
Proof.
I pressed my forehead to her shoulder, breath heavy, my mouth brushing her skin as I whispered the only thing that mattered.
“You’re alive,” I murmured, voice rough. “You’re safe. You’re here with me.”
The words weren’t about tonight. They were about every year I had spent wondering, worrying.
About every version of her I had carried in my head when the nights got too quiet and the ghosts got too loud.
Did she sleep okay? Was she worried someone else would pop up and steal life out from under her again?
Her breath hitched. I felt it against my chest. Felt her fingers slide into my hair, holding me there like she understood exactly what that meant.
I kissed her again—her neck, her collarbone, the place where her shoulder met her throat—slow, deliberate, like a man reminding himself what it felt like to touch something sacred.
I stayed there, holding her pulse under my fingers, grounding myself in the simple truth of it.
Alive.
Safe.
Present.
And for this one night, in this small room that smelled like soap and borrowed time, connected again.
No words were spoken as I felt the passion build between us. She arched into me, my cock ached to be free of my jeans. She made the move.
The one I had waited for.
She reached out to my belt buckle releasing it.
That was my undoing. Pushing the robe off her shoulders, it fell to the floor in a puddle at our feet.
I cupped her breasts through the silk fabric of her nightie as she arches into my grasp.
I ran my thumb over her taut nipples as she moaned into my kiss.
Her hand slid down into my jeans, stroking me.
I slid my right hand up the back of her thick thigh before giving her ass a squeeze, finding she wore thong panties.
My erection was painfully hard as she tugged at my jeans pushing them down over my ass.
Leaning down, I scooped her up, wrapping her legs around my waist. My fingers moved, pushing the sting of the thong aside and sliding between her wet pussy lips.
Instincts took over as she began to grind against my digits building her want as I plunged two fingers in her.
I was losing hold of the little control I had left wanting nothing more than my cock buried inside her slick cunt.
“Dante,” she whispered.
It was my undoing. Having her moisture on my fingers, my cock so close, I lined her up and slid in. My own groan of satisfaction couldn’t be contained. I paused memorizing the feel of her pussy pulsing around my cock. I dropped my head to her shoulder, my tongue flicking out on her neck.
She shimmied her hips wanting me to move. That was all it took. I began sliding in and out of her slowly at first before want, need, desire all consumed me and I found myself thrusting hard and fast. Nita meeting me each time with her own climax just on the edge.
Sliding my hand between us, moving my thumb to press on her clit it was all it took before her pussy tightened around me, she cried out my name as she came and she came hard.
It wasn’t long before I had my final thrust, my cum shooting inside her and our bodies pulsing in rhythm together.
Alive together.