4. Riot
RIOT
The light in Anna’s front room went out at eleven fourteen. I should’ve ridden home. Instead, after a neighbor looked through his curtains, I moved my bike farther down the block and watched a gray sedan crawl past twice.
Anna’s front door opened and she crossed the lawn wearing jeans, boots and an old Gravewater rally sweatshirt that belonged to Crow.
“You’re really bad at following instructions,” I said.
“You’re parked outside my house after I told you to go. Let’s not discuss respect.”
I got off the bike. “Same gray sedan passed twice.”
“Then follow that instead of me. Leave me the fuck alone Riot, I told you.”
“It’s gone,” I replied, completely ignoring her last words.
She stopped beside the curb. “Why are you doing this?”
“Stone has people watching you.”
“That explains why Stone does it. I asked about you.”
I could’ve given her the same list again, every reason half true and none of them the answer she wanted.
“You’re making reckless choices,” I said.
“I went to two clubhouses and a public bar. That’s reckless in your world because women are apparently safest when they sit quietly while men decide which lies they can handle.”
“You drove through a fortified gate and accused an outlaw president of taking Crow.”
“I asked you first.”
“You called me a liar first.”
“You’re impossible.”
“Then go inside.”
Anna turned toward the house, took three steps and faced me again. “No. You wanted me to know you were here or you’d have parked where I couldn’t see the bike. So tell me what you want.”
“I want you to stop treating every warning like an attempt to control you.”
“I want you to stop pretending control isn’t exactly what you want.” She came back across the grass. “You followed me from your compound, interfered at the Rail House, shadowed me to Gravewater, trailed me home and have spent hours outside. You don’t get to call that casual concern.”
“Never called it casual.”
“Then call it something.”
I had plenty of names for it. Anger, habit, the fact I couldn’t bear to picture Anna bleeding because I’d gone home. None of them were the answer she wanted.
“You want to have the old fight?” I asked. “Fine. Let’s have it once, without Stone standing behind your shoulder.”
Her face hardened. “Inside. I’m not giving the neighborhood a show.”
I followed her through the door. The house looked almost the same as I remembered.
Low couch facing a brick fireplace, narrow kitchen with a counter separating it from the living room, the bookcase I’d sworn would never fit still against the office wall.
My eyes found the differences anyway, including a new rug, a new lock and no boots of mine beside hers.
Anna stayed near the kitchen counter. “Eighteen months ago, Crow had a neutral meeting west of the river. I told you the day and the route he expected to take because we were in bed and I was annoyed he’d canceled lunch with me.”
“I remember.”
“His escort was ambushed. One of Crow’s men took two rounds and nearly died. Stone showed me a message saying Wraiths knew Crow was moving and a photograph of you with one of the men who planned the hit.”
“A man I met about different business three weeks before.”
“Which you refused to explain.”
“Because it involved this club, not yours.”
“I wasn’t asking as Gravewater. I was asking as the woman who loved you.”
“You were asking me to prove myself by exposing my brothers.” I crossed the room. “There’s no version of me that does that, Anna. You knew it when we started. You knew it every night you asked me to stay.”
“I thought loving me meant you trusted me.”
“I did trust you. I let you see things about me nobody else got. That didn’t give you a seat in Wraith church.”
She flinched as if I’d made what we shared small. “You could’ve given me something. Just one detail that showed you weren’t where Stone said.”
“I told you I wasn’t responsible.”
“Crow was hurt because someone knew where he was.”
“And you decided it had to be me.” The room was warm, but cold lived beneath my skin.
“I didn’t expect you to choose me over your brother.
I understand that kind of loyalty better than you think.
I expected the woman who knew me naked, angry, half asleep and bloody to know I’d never use her voice to put Crow in a kill zone. ”
Anna’s gaze dropped for a second. “The evidence fit.”
“Because Stone built it to fit.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know I didn’t do it.”
“And I know what I saw.”
“That was always the problem. You trusted what Stone put in front of you more than the man you claimed to love.”
She came toward me. “Don’t you dare act like walking away didn’t tear me apart.”
“You were the one who walked.”
“You let me.”
“What was I supposed to do, lock the door until you believed me?”
“Fight for me.”
“I fucking did. I told you the truth until there was nothing left to say.”
I’d spent the week after she left taking every enforcement job Mace would give me.
I broke up a shipment theft, collected from a dealer who had confused patience with weakness and rode the county line until my hands went numb from cold.
None of it stopped me seeing Anna stand in her bedroom with tears on her face and disbelief in her voice.
Going back to drag her into another conversation wouldn’t have been fighting for love.
It would’ve been demanding that she surrender because I couldn’t survive her answer.
“You wanted me to chase until the choice stopped being yours,” I said. “I loved you too much to do that, even when I hated what you chose.”
Anna’s anger faltered. “You make it sound noble.”
“It wasn’t. I was furious, drunk more than I should’ve and I was impossible to live with for months. Ask Havoc. He considered leaving me drunk on a state road at one point.”
Her mouth almost let out a smile. The small break in the fight was more dangerous than shouting because it remembered how we used to find humor in the worst moments.
Anna shoved both hands against my chest, and I gave her the step. “Get out.”
I headed for the door. Her hand caught my cut between the shoulders. “Damn you.”
I turned. “You sure?”
“No.”
Then she kissed me.
The first taste of her in eighteen months hit hard enough to empty my head. She grabbed my face with both hands and took my mouth like the argument had found another language. I gave her one second to change her mind, then caught her waist and reversed us when she only kissed me harder.
Her back met the wall without force, my palm braced beside her head to take my weight.
“I want you, and I hate you for it.” She said breathlessly as she kissed me.
“Good. We finally agree.”
I kissed her hard. Anna opened for me, one leg fitting between mine as if eighteen months hadn’t happened. I knew the exact place below her ear that made her nails bite into my neck. She knew how to roll her hips against me until my cock strained painfully behind my zipper.
Old familiarity made patience impossible.
I pulled the sweatshirt over her head. A black tank clung beneath it, and the sight of her bare arms hit with memories of mornings she’d worn my shirts and nights she’d worn nothing.
Anna opened my jeans while I pushed hers down over her hips.
She stepped out of one boot, left the other caught in denim and laughed once when I nearly lost my balance getting the fabric free.
The laugh stopped both of us. For one dangerous beat we were the couple who could make a bad motel room feel private and a territorial line feel imaginary. Then Anna grabbed my shirt and pulled me back to her.
“Don’t make this soft,” she said.
“Wasn’t planning to.”
I lifted her onto the kitchen counter. She spread her knees and pulled me between them. Her underwear was damp when I slid my hand inside and pushed two fingers into her. Her head tipped back against the cabinet.
She caught my wrist and pressed me harder against her. I curled my fingers, finding the angle her body hadn’t forgotten, and satisfaction went through me when her breath broke.
“Still know you,” I said.
“Only this part.”
The answer cut. I pulled my hand away, tore her underwear down and put my mouth on hers before either of us could turn it into another fight. Anna freed my cock and wrapped her hand around me. Her grip was firm, familiar and intended to destroy control.
I pushed inside her. The first tight stretch dragged a curse from both of us. I stopped when I was halfway, not from doubt but because Anna’s eyes closed and her body needed the second. She wrapped both legs around my hips and pulled.
I drove the rest of the way in.
Her cry struck the cabinets. I held her hips and stayed deep, every muscle locked against the urge to fuck her without restraint. Anna opened her eyes and rolled her body, taking me deeper.
“Move.”
I did. Fast, hard strokes that shoved the counter against the wall.
She met every one, heels digging into the backs of my thighs, fingers twisted in my shirt.
There was nothing tentative between us. I knew how she liked the angle changed and lifted one of her knees.
Anna knew the sound I made when she tightened deliberately around me and did it twice.
“You’re still a bastard,” she said against my mouth.
Her hand went between us. I caught it, not to stop her, and guided the rhythm over her clit while I drove into her.
Anna’s mouth opened against my throat. The counter edge pressed into my thighs, the refrigerator hummed behind us and somewhere outside a car went past, ordinary sounds beyond a room where all the anger we’d carried became physical.
“Harder,” she demanded.
I gave it to her. The counter knocked once, twice against the wall. Anna clenched around me, a sharp pulse that warned me she was close. I kept the same depth and pace instead of chasing my own release.
“Take it,” I said. “You wanted me. Take all of it.”
Her nails cut through my shirt. The orgasm caught her with a broken sound, body pulling tight around me as I held her on the edge of the counter.
I lasted three more thrusts before the pressure dragged me under.
I buried myself deep and came with my face against her neck, teeth set against words I had no intention of giving her.
For several seconds we stayed locked together, breathing like the room had lost air.
Then Anna released her legs and I pulled out. When I turned back, she’d tugged down her tank and was reaching for her jeans.
“This was a mistake,” she said.
The line landed where I’d expected, and it still hurt. “It was.”
“It doesn’t fix anything.”
“Never said it did.”
I fixed my jeans and picked up my shirt from the floor. Staying meant touching her without anger to hide behind, and I wasn’t ready for that, so I left before I changed my mind.
Anna got the jeans up and folded both arms over herself. “You should go.”
I put on my cut. “Lock the door. If that gray sedan comes back, call me.”
She gave me a look. “You’re still going to watch the street?”
I didn’t answer.
I opened the door. Leaving her on the other side took more control than anything we’d done against the counter.
I rode two blocks, parked where her porch was hidden from me and watched the only road into the neighborhood.