Chapter 4
SABER
Four days. Four fucking days she’s been in my clubhouse, and I haven’t slept at my ranch once.
I tell myself it’s tactical. The Crimson Warriors have her name, her face, and a dead brother to avenge. Somebody needs to be here. Somebody needs to be close.
Doesn’t have to be me. Duke is here every night. Razor has got prospects on rotation at the front gate. There’s no shortage of men who can stand between her and whatever Nitro sends next.
But I’m the one in the room next to hers. I’m the one who hears her lock turn every night before she goes to bed. I’m the one lying in the dark, staring at the ceiling, listening for it.
Click. Locked. Safe.
Fuck. I need to get my head right.
Club presidents don’t lose their heads over women.
My grandfather was a patched member of the national club before he started the Ash Valley Hellborn Kings charter. My father took the gavel after him. When my father died, the members voted me in at twenty-four.
That was six years ago.
The MC is my only family now. No siblings. No mother. Just the club.
That’s why I need to put my brothers first. They’re all I have.
A president who is distracted gets his brothers killed.
I’m at the bar drinking coffee. Razor is across from me, cleaning his Glock with a rag, pieces spread across the bar top.
“Nitro’s quiet,” Razor says. “Too quiet.”
“He’s regrouping. Edge is dead, and we’ve got Bull.”
“And what about Bull?” Razor doesn’t look up from the Glock. “After days in the back room, he’s not talking.”
“He’ll talk.” I take a sip of coffee. “Or he won’t. We’ll use him as a bargaining chip when Nitro finally has a plan on how he wants to retaliate.”
“Or he’s already got a plan, and we’re sitting here with our dicks in our hands.”
“Then stop cleaning your fucking gun, and go find out,” I growl.
Razor slides the barrel back into place. Locks it. “I’ve got two guys watching the north road. Joker is running plates on anyone unfamiliar in town. But we need to talk about her.”
Every muscle in my body tightens. “No, we don’t.”
He puts both hands flat on the bar. “She can’t stay in that room forever. What’s your plan for her?”
I drain the coffee. Set the mug down hard enough that the guys flinch from across the room.
“She’s under my protection. That’s all anyone needs to know.”
Razor picks up his gun and walks away. He doesn’t push it. He doesn’t have the right to.
But he is right. I do need a plan for what to do with her.
I spend the rest of the morning in my office reviewing the inventory for the gun shipment arriving on Thursday. Route logistics. Reviewing payroll for the bar, the strip club, and the mechanic shop. Legitimate work that keeps my hands busy and my head off the woman two floors above me.
It lasts about an hour.
I come out for more coffee around noon and stop dead at the kitchen doorway.
Shelby is at the counter with her back to me.
She’s wearing the t-shirt I gave her the first night, and it hangs past her thighs.
My dick hardens thinking that she might not be wearing anything underneath.
But when she shifts, I catch a glimpse of a pair of jean shorts from the bag of clothes I had one of the Old Ladies go pick out for her.
Her hair is down, brown and messy, curling against the collar of my shirt.
My shirt.
She’s making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Again. Even though I bought her groceries.
And she’s pressed against the counter like she’s trying to disappear into it—shoulders curled forward, elbows tucked, and taking up as little space as a human body can occupy.
Two of the sweetbutts are in the kitchen, too.
One of them whispers to the other, and they both look at Shelby and then at me.
I know what they’re thinking. They’ve been spreading their legs for whoever wants them for a while, and this girl walks in off the street and gets a private room and the Prez’s attention.
I stare at them until they shut the fuck up and find somewhere else to be. They’re not wrong about the attention. But they’ll never understand the difference between a woman you fuck and a woman who ruins you.
Shelby doesn’t turn around. She spreads the peanut butter with careful, quiet strokes, and she doesn’t make a sound. She’s moving like she doesn’t want to be noticed.
I’ve seen her do this a few times now. The way she presses herself into the walls when my brothers walk past in the hallway. The way she eats standing up. The way she carries her bag on her shoulder everywhere she goes, like she might need to run at any second.
Somebody taught her this. Somebody spent years training her to fold herself down and shut herself up and vanish so she wouldn’t be a target.
Not somebody. Kyle. The piece of shit in the khakis who pissed himself in the diner.
I want to find him. I want to drag him out of whatever soft suburban life he crawled back to and put his face through the fucking drywall.
And then I want to ask him how it worked. How he took a woman with fire in her and broke her down until standing in a kitchen making a sandwich was an act of fucking courage.
But he’s gone. So there’s no wall and no skull, and the only thing left is her, pressing herself flat against my counter, like she’s apologizing for being hungry.
I walk in. She hears my boots and her shoulders go tight. I stand three feet away, giving her room.
“Have you eaten today?”
She nods but doesn’t look at me.
“Anything besides a sandwich?”
A pause. Then she shakes her head.
I open the fridge. Pull out eggs, butter, and hot sauce. I don’t ask what she wants. I cook.
Four eggs, scrambled, on a plate. Buttered toast. I set it on the counter next to her sandwich.
She stares at the plate.
“It’s food,” I say. “Not a contract. Eat the goddamn eggs.”
Those green eyes come up. She’s searching my face for the catch, the invisible string attached to a plate of eggs. Because every good thing a man ever gave her came with a leash.
“Why are you doing this?” she asks.
“Because you’ve eaten peanut butter for four days, and I’m tired of watching you pretend that’s a meal.”
Something crosses her face. Not gratitude. I don’t want her fucking gratitude. Something closer to confusion. Like she’s forgotten what it looks like when a man gives without taking.
She picks up a fork and takes a bite. Her eyes close, and the sound she makes is quiet and involuntary and goes straight to my cock.
I turn around and pour more coffee I don’t need.
Fuck. She’s making sounds like that, and I’m supposed to keep my hands to myself.
I will.
I’ll keep my goddamn hands to myself if it kills me because she didn’t choose to be here. She’s here because a dead man in a parking lot made sure she couldn’t be anywhere else. And that look in her eyes is not lust. That’s relief.
She’s never had a man treat her right, and now she thinks the first one who does must be the best man in the world.
I’m not the best anything. I run guns for a living. I’ve put men underground who made the mistake of crossing me, and if she ever saw what happens in that back room, she’d lock her door and never open it for me again.
But she ate the eggs.
She’s sitting on the counter now, legs dangling, bare feet swinging, finishing the toast and looking at me over the plate like I handed her the whole fucking sky.
It’s eggs and a slice of bread.
And she’s looking at me like that.
Eleven o’clock. Her door.
I knock twice.
The lock clicks. The door opens. She’s in the pajamas I brought her, and her hair is damp from the shower. The room smells like the soap I put on her dresser four days ago.
My soap. She’s covered in me, and she doesn’t even know it, and I’m standing in this hallway with my hands at my sides because if I lift them, they’re going to pull her close to me.
“Need anything?” Two words. Same ones I say every night. Like I’m some kind of gentleman. Like I’m not standing here with a hard-on and a head full of every filthy thing I’d do to her if she invited me in.
She leans against the doorframe. Tips her chin up to meet my eyes, and the height difference puts her mouth about six inches below mine.
She smiles. “The eggs were good. You didn’t have to do that.”
“I know.”
She bites the inside of her cheek. Her eyes drop to my throat, my chest, and the tattoos that disappear under my collar. The look is fast, but I catch it. I catch everything she does.
“Saber.”
I wait for her to continue.
“I don’t know the rules here.” She takes a deep breath. “I don’t know what I’m allowed to do or where I’m allowed to go. I need to know, because I can’t live inside a box again. Even a nice one.”
My fists tighten at my side. Nice box. She’s comparing my protection to his cage, and the worst part is she’s not wrong. I locked her in a building, put guards on the doors, and told a room full of men she was mine before I ever asked her if she wanted to be.
“You’re allowed to go to the kitchen, bar, and common room. You want fresh air, find me or Duke, and one of us will walk with you. Not because I’m keeping you inside. Because I’m keeping you alive.”
She processes that. I can see the fight between the woman who wants to trust me and the woman who’s been trained not to trust anyone.
“And if I want to leave? For good?”
“Then I put you in a car with cash and a phone. We’ll keep an eye on you.” I hold her eyes. “You’re not a prisoner, Shelby. But you’re safer here.”
She nods. Pulls her bottom lip between her teeth and releases it, and I track the motion.
She’s so fucking hot.
“Goodnight, Saber.”
“Goodnight.”
She closes the door. The lock clicks.
I press my palm flat against the wood and stand there in the dark hallway longer than any man should.
I’m fucked.
I’m completely, irreversibly fucked.