Chapter 6
six
. . .
Kiera
The trouble starts on a Tuesday. I’m in the kitchen making coffee—actual coffee, in a pot, because some habits die hard—when Tank walks in with his phone pressed to his ear and his expression gone flat.
He sees me and stops talking. Lowers the phone.
Says something into the receiver I can’t hear, then hangs up and looks at me like I’m a bomb that’s about to go off.
“Where’s Arrow?” he asks.
“Shower.” I pour two mugs, hands steady despite the chill crawling up my spine. Something’s wrong. I can feel it in the air—that heavy, charged silence that means bad news. “What happened?”
Tank doesn’t answer. Just turns and walks out, and two minutes later I hear Arrow’s voice from the bedroom, low and deadly, followed by the sound of the shower cutting off and boots hitting the floor.
He comes out dressed in full club gear—cut, boots, that look in his eyes that turns my blood cold.
He’s already reaching for his keys, already moving toward the door, and when he sees me standing there with two steaming mugs he stops.
Just for a second. His expression does something complicated—hardness, then softening, then hardness again, like he’s remembering something painful.
“Stay inside,” he says. His voice is flat. Final. “Don’t answer the door for anyone but me or Tank. Understood?”
“What’s happening?” My voice comes out smaller than I want it to.
“Those drunks from the alley.” His jaw tightens. “They weren’t random. They’re tied to a crew out of Riverton. Rivals. And they’ve figured out who you are.”
The chill becomes ice. “Figured out…what does that mean?”
“It means they’re looking for leverage.” He steps into my space, cups my face with one hand, and his thumb brushes my cheek with a tenderness that contradicts everything else about him in this moment. “It means nothing. I’m handling it. Stay inside.”
He kisses me. Hard. Brief. Then he’s gone, the door slamming behind him, and the clubhouse goes quiet in a way that feels wrong—too still, too empty, like the building itself is holding its breath.
I wait. Hours. The coffee goes cold. I sit on the edge of the bed and stare at the wall and try not to think about what “handling it” means when it comes from a man who breaks jaws with one swing.
The sky darkens. The compound stays quiet.
No engines. No voices. Just the occasional creak of the old building settling, and each one makes me jump.
He comes back after midnight. I hear the gate first—the heavy clank of metal, then engines, plural, rumbling into the compound. Footsteps on the porch. The front door opening and closing. More footsteps, heavy and purposeful, coming down the hall.
Our door flies open.
Arrow stands in the frame, and I barely recognize him.
His cut is spattered with something dark that might be mud but probably isn’t.
His knuckles are raw, swollen, fresh blood crusted in the splits.
His eyes are black—completely black, pupils blown wide with something that looks like violence and adrenaline and a hunger so raw it makes my stomach drop.
He sees me. Sitting on the bed in one of his t-shirts, knees drawn to my chest, and something in his expression cracks.
“Kiera.” My name comes out rough. Broken.
He crosses the room in two strides, his hands finding my face, tipping it up, and his mouth crashes down on mine.
Not gentle. Desperate. Hungry. His tongue forces between my lips and I taste blood—his blood—and copper and whiskey and something wild that belongs only to him.
He strips me. Fast. Rough. The t-shirt torn over my head, my panties ripped down my legs, and then his hands are on my ass, lifting me, and I’m pressed against the bedroom door with my legs wrapped around his waist and his cock—hard, thick, already pushing at my entrance—and he doesn’t wait.
Doesn’t prepare me. Just sinks into me with one brutal thrust that has me crying out against his mouth.
“Fuck,” he growls, his hips already pistoning, driving into me with a force that rattles the door on its hinges. “This cunt. This sweet, tight cunt is mine. Nobody touches it. Nobody looks at it. Anyone who breathes near you dies. You understand me?”
I can’t answer. Can’t think. His cock is splitting me open, filling me completely, each thrust grinding against something deep inside that sends shocks of pleasure radiating through my core.
He’s never been like this—never this rough, this possessive, this feral—and my body responds like it was made for it, clenching around him, dripping for him, taking every inch with a hunger that matches his own.
“They thought they could use you,” he snarls against my throat, biting, marking. “Thought they could get to me through you. They’re wrong. They’re dead wrong. I’ll burn their whole fucking world down before I let anyone near you.”
His hand slides between us, thumb finding my clit, circling hard, and the dual sensation—his cock pounding deep, his thumb on my clit—builds too fast, too intense, and I come with a scream that he swallows with his mouth.
My pussy pulses around him, milking his cock, and he groans, his hips stuttering, and then he’s coming—hot, thick pulses flooding me, filling me, his forehead pressed to mine as he empties himself inside me with a sound that’s half groan, half prayer.
We slide down the door together. A heap of tangled limbs and sweat and come, his big body curled around mine, his face buried in my hair.
His breathing is ragged. Mine is worse. The adrenaline is still coursing through him—I can feel it in the tremble of his muscles, the way his heart hammers against my chest.
And then, in the quiet, the fear comes back. Cold. Rational. Unavoidable.
“You dragged me into a war,” I whisper. The words feel like glass in my throat. “I never asked for this, Arrow. I never wanted guns and rival crews and men getting hurt because of me.”
He goes still. Every muscle in his body locks, and when he pulls back to look at me his expression is wrecked—raw, open, terrified in a way I’ve never seen on his face.
“I know.” His voice is rough. Honest. “I’m fucking terrified, Kiera. Terrified that keeping you means watching this—” his hand cups my cheek, thumb brushing the corner of my eye, “—this sweetness get swallowed by my world. By the dirt and the violence and the blood that never fucking washes off.”
The admission hangs between us. Heavy. Devastating. And something in me breaks—not in the way he expects, not in fear or rejection, but in a clarity so sharp it cuts.
“I can’t do this,” I say. The words come out steady. Final. “I can’t live like this. Waiting for you to come home covered in blood. Wondering if today’s the day someone decides I’m worth more to them dead than alive.”
I push to my feet. My legs are shaking. I’m naked, come dripping down my thighs, and I don’t care. I reach for the door—his t-shirt on the floor, my panties somewhere under the bed, but I’ll walk out of here in nothing if I have to. My hand finds the doorknob.
He lets me turn it. Lets me pull the door open an inch. Lets me take that first step toward leaving him, and the silence behind me is the worst sound I’ve ever heard—the sound of a man watching something precious walk away and too proud or too broken to stop it.
Then his hand closes around my wrist. Gentle. Careful. Like he’s afraid I’ll shatter.
“Kiera.”
I turn. And Arrow—six-foot-three, two-fifty, the president of a motorcycle club that runs guns and breaks bones without blinking—is on his knees. His big hands find my hips, his forehead presses to my stomach, and his voice comes out wrecked, raw, stripped of every defense he’s ever built.
“Please.” One word. Broken. Begging. “Please don’t go. I’ll fix this. I’ll keep you safe. I’ll be better—softer—whatever you need. Just don’t walk out that door. Please, little dove. Please.”
The man on his knees isn’t the biker king. Isn’t the monster. He’s just a man—terrified, desperate, offering the only thing he has left, which is the truth.
I look down at the top of his head. At the patches on his cut. At the blood on his knuckles and the tenderness in his hands as they hold my hips, and something in my chest cracks open, warm and irreversible.
I sink to my knees in front of him. Our faces level. My hands find his cheeks, rough with stubble, and I kiss him—soft, slow, nothing like the door fuck, nothing like the violence—and when I pull back his eyes are wet.
“Don’t change,” I whisper. “Not for me. The soft parts—keep those. But don’t you dare try to be something you’re not. I fell for the monster, Arrow. Not the man he pretends to be.”
Something breaks in his expression—relief, wonder, a kind of ragged joy—and he gathers me against his chest so tight I can’t breathe, his face buried in my hair, and he doesn’t let go for a long, long time.