TESSA
The cloud folder waits behind the password box while Tank stands on the other side of the bed, close enough to reach the laptop but making no move toward it.
The room still feels full of him. His shirt against my skin, his mouth on mine, the hard heat of his thigh between my legs before he tore himself away.
The door remains locked, but I keep seeing the moment he stopped because that lock gave him power over me and he wasn’t going to use it that way.
“Once I open this, you have everything Harlan wants. I’m trusting the man who dragged me here not to hand it over.”
“You have my word.”
It shouldn’t matter. He’s a criminal biker keeping me here because another criminal paid his club. I enter the password with slightly shaking hands.
The previews load row by row. Daniel Morrow stands in the stripped Rivermark ballroom with a leather folder beneath one arm while Harlan faces him mid-argument.
In the next frame, Harlan reaches beneath his jacket.
Then the gun appears, his arm rises and the muzzle flashes.
Morrow folds at the knees. The sequence ends with Harlan looking toward the gallery while one of his men points directly at me.
There is no blur and no doubt. Harlan’s face, the gun, the shot, the timestamp and location are all there.
Tank’s expression empties. “What does Harlan know about the upload?”
“Nothing, just that I had a camera and he probably realizes I saw the whole thing.” I take the camera from my bag. “The full-resolution files are on here too.”
He takes the memory card and tries very hard not to touch me as he does it. Somehow, the care makes me more aware of him than contact would.
His phone rings, Harlan’s name filling the screen. Tank meets my eyes, answers and taps the speaker icon so I can hear everything. “Talk.”
“Kane told me you have her and the camera. Do you have the password?” Harlan asks.
Tank’s gaze remains on the murder sequence. “I have the photographs.”
Silence stretches down the line. “Photographs?” he replies, convincing no one of his surprise.
“You told Kane she and Morrow stole financial records. These photographs here show you shooting him.”
Harlan recovers quickly. “They show the end of an argument you know nothing about. Morrow was stealing from me. He threatened my life, and I defended myself.”
Tank looks at the frame before the gun appears. Morrow’s hands are visible, one gripping the folder and the other empty. “He wasn’t armed. The sequence starts before you draw.”
“I didn’t hire Kingdom Come to judge my business. I hired you to recover and hold the woman who took it.”
“She wasn’t working with Morrow, and her demand for money was fabricated by you.”
Harlan’s voice hardens. “King, your old president understood how this worked. He took the money, finished the job and didn’t go digging through whatever a client wanted buried.”
“King is dead.”
“And Kane’s turning the club weak. I was told you hadn’t changed with him, that you were still one of King’s men.” Tank says nothing, but Harlan takes the silence for agreement. “Wipe the card, the laptop and every cloud copy. Then kill her and dispose of the body somewhere it won’t wash up.”
Hearing my death reduced to a final instruction is different from imagining it. Tank looks at me, and something in his expression shifts. Not softer or safer, but more dangerous than anything I’ve seen from him.
“The agreement was a hold,” he says.
“The agreement changed. She’s a confirmed witness now. Handle it, Tank, unless Kane has cut your balls off with the rest of the club.”
Tank ends the call, crosses to the door and turns the lock. Music and low voices spill into the room as he opens it wide, then returns my camera and memory card before stepping away from both.
“You’re not my captive anymore.”
I stare at the open doorway. “That’s it? You believed him less than ten minutes ago.”
“I was wrong. He lied to us.”
He calls Kane, tells him the truth in two clipped sentences, then waits while I gather my things. He doesn’t direct me into the hallway. I walk out under my own power, and the distinction matters even if it erases nothing.
Kane meets us in the common room with Judge and Cash. He studies the photographs without making me repeat the story, while Cash explains that Harlan’s men tore apart my motel room after Tank left, my car is still at the Rivermark and two men searched my apartment in Springfield an hour ago.
“They were clearly looking for something, and I think it was this laptop and camera,” Cash says.
Kane closes the laptop. “Harlan sold us a lie and counted on this club taking her and not asking questions. We put you behind a locked door because of it. His deal is dead, the advance goes back, and nobody in Kingdom Come will hand you or your evidence over.”
“Does that include your enforcer?”
Tank doesn’t flinch, and Kane answers immediately. “It includes every man wearing this cut. You’re under club protection for as long as you need it. We don’t hand over the innocent to be killed. That’s not what we are about now.”
“And if I leave?”
“The gate opens. Cash can put you in a vehicle, but Harlan knows your address, your car and the motel. Until we locate his men, staying here is the safest move whether you like it or not.”
For the first time since Tank entered the motel, the gate is available to me. I can demand it and risk Harlan’s reach, or stay behind the walls of the club that took me because they’re now the only protection Harlan hasn’t already reached.
“I’ll stay tonight because it’s safer, not because any of this is forgiven.”
Kane accepts that. Cash will secure copies, but I keep the original card in my camera bag. Tank walks me back down the hallway until we reach his door, where his palm settles briefly at the small of my back. The contact is light enough that I could step away, but I don’t.
Inside, Tank leaves the door open and moves aside so I can see the hallway. I set down my bag and face him. “Opening that door doesn’t undo you taking me. You carried me out of that motel while I fought you and treated Harlan’s story as if it mattered more than mine.”
“I know. Kane gave the order, but I’m the one who put you on my bike and brought you through those gates. That’s mine.”
The simple ownership knocks some of the anger sideways. I’d prepared to tear apart excuses, and he doesn’t offer any. “You don’t get to call the whole thing protection now.”
“I won’t.”
“Then what happens?”
Tank stops one step away from me. “Harlan never gets near you. That’s what happens.”
The promise is blunt, and I believe it. My gaze drops to his mouth as the earlier kiss surges back. My fists in his cut, his hand at my neck, his thigh between mine.
Now the door is open and freedom only sharpens what I want.
“You stopped before because I couldn’t leave,” I say. I glance toward the hallway. “And now?”
“Now you can.”
The answer runs through me like a lit match. I could walk into the clubhouse, and Tank wouldn’t stop me. Instead, I cross the room, curl both fists into his cut and yank him down.
My mouth hits his hard. Tank doesn’t touch me for one suspended heartbeat, letting me set the pace—my anger, my hunger—before one thick arm bands around my waist, hauls me against him, and he kicks the door shut behind him.
The first grind of his body knocks the breath from me. He kisses with brutal focus, no careful testing, his mouth taking mine open and deep while one hand spreads across my back. I bite his lower lip, and the low, dangerous sound he makes sends heat straight between my legs.
“There,” I whisper. “That’s the man you keep pretending not to be.”
Tank walks me backward until the wall meets my shoulders. He braces one forearm beside my head rather than pinning me with his weight, but there’s no mistaking the power surrounding me. His thigh pushes between mine, exactly where it did before, and I grind down without shame.
“You’ve been thinking about that,” he says, jaw tight.
“I’ve been thinking about a lot of things I shouldn’t.”
“So have I.”
I strip off his cut and shirt. Tattoos spill across shoulders and muscle, broken by a puckered scar above his hip. When I trace it, he traps my hand against his skin and tells me it came from a knife.
“Did you kill him?”
“Yes.”
The word should chill me, but he doesn’t dress it up or soften himself. This is Tank. A man who has hurt people and will again, and a man who opened the door the second he knew I was innocent.
I rake my nails down his chest. “Good thing I still don’t think you’re the worst man in this story.”
Something fierce breaks across his face.
His mouth claims mine again while his hands move over me, one in my hair and the other gripping my hip hard enough to leave the shape of him there.
He drags my borrowed shirt upward, rough knuckles scraping my sides, and the contrast between that measured movement and the hunger in his eyes makes my nipples tighten before he sees them.
I tear the shirt over my head. Tank’s breath catches at the sight of my plain black bra. He looks at me as if I’ve handed him something he never expected to want.
“Don’t stare at me like that.”
“Can’t help it.”
The blunt answer hits hard. I unfasten my bra, and his restraint lasts one breath.
Tank cups both breasts, thumbs dragging over my nipples before his mouth closes around one.
Pleasure pulls through me so sharply my fingers bite into his shoulders.
He sucks harder, then catches the sensitive peak between his teeth.
Not enough to hurt, but enough to make my thighs tighten around his.
When his name leaves me, he raises his head with his eyes nearly black. “Make that sound again and I’m putting you on the bed.”
“You say that like I’m supposed to stop.”
I pull his mouth back to mine. He lifts me before the kiss finishes, my legs locking around his waist while the thick length of him presses exactly where I need it. I grind against him and order him to the bed.