“I have to keep you”—I rub her belly—“and the little ones safe and I can’t do that by being around you. Too dangerous for you to get caught in the crossfire,” I tell her, the seriousness of the situation hitting her deep.
For the moment, she’s listening, but she’s gonna start firing questions at me, it’s only natural, and I’ll have to be honest with my answers, no matter how hard they are. “You’ve had enough violence, kidnapping, pain, and mind-fuck for one person and I need to be able to work with Boxer, Joel, Lincoln, Ghost, and Mathias to find this bastard and end it. We will kill him. He won’t be going to jail. He will pay for what he did to Adam, and he will pay violently. I won't hide who I am from you. I am the enforcer for the Soulless Bastards MC, and I kill people who deserve it. I will kill this motherfucker. I will show no mercy," I tell her with conviction.
I have to keep this shadow of a nightmare’s attention off her.
I don’t want to leave my woman. I want to be by her side watching her belly swell with the twins and treating her like my queen. The protective side of me doesn’t want to leave her alone for a damn second, let alone for an unknown time. I wanted to spend now getting to know her, getting her to love me, showing her how much she means to me, but instead I’m leaving her to keep her safe with Tucker.
“Hazard and Tucker are going to escort you to San Diego, where Slade has a house. Both men will keep you safe until Slade and Phoenix can get there to increase the numbers. You and the little nuggets will be under their guard until this is all over.” I see the panic hit her eyes. She’s never lived outside of Connard. Ghost’s home and The Pen don’t count. But she doesn’t verbally tell me her fears.
I have to keep talking and get this all out because this luxurious bird’s gotta get in the air, where I know she’ll be safe—much safer than here on the ground.
“Boxer, Doc Evelyn, Miss Catherine, Lily, Mathias, Joel, Lincoln, and I are going to go back to Connard. It’s a small town; we should be able to notice a newcomer more easily there. Boxer and Miss C know the people. He won’t blend in as easily.
"I want to send Lily to the Soulless Bastards' compound, but she refuses to go. I'll be talking to her on the flight about it again. Hazard will have gotten my brothers at the club up to speed by now on what's gone down and where we're going, and I can trust my brothers to keep her safe, but I can't force her to go. Miss C won't budge from her home, and Doc Evelyn is going to be back in New Orleans attending her job. She’ll be sending her father to be staying close by in Ocean Beach should you need a doctor.” Jesus, just the thought of not being near her, should she need medical attention spears me in the chest with a fear that threatens to keep Whisper selfishly at my side.
“As we speak Boxer is organizing a female agent with similar looks to be your doppelganger. We have to convince Filip we’re all in Connard. This is a sport to him, a game. We’re gonna flush out Filip while you’re safe in San Diego with the female agent as extra bait. We think he’ll make a move if he thinks you’re with me. He’s not going to know you’ll be eighteen-hundred miles from Connard tucked away in San Diego and it’s a big city to hide in.”
Finally, she speaks. “Edge, you sound so sure he’s after you. Why?”
Fuck-shit! She’d forgotten about the note.
“No secrets, no lies,” I’m reminded of by my woman.
Fuck-shit!
"The note I mentioned earlier states he only wants Mathias and me for the debt on Cezar's life to be paid in full, but I can't chance you getting caught in the crossfire."
“Can I read the note?” She's calm—too calm. She’s testing me to see how much I’ll reveal to her.
No secrets.
I lean to the side to get access to my phone and pull it out my pocket. I bring the note up on the small screen.
She takes the phone from me. She shows no emotion, but for the small tightening of her jaw, like she’s clenching her teeth and then she swipes. I'm not quick enough, and the strangled noise mixed with the look of horror on her face tells me what she saw before I can snatch the phone away from her.
FUCK-SHIT!
She takes a big swallow like she's trying to keep her stomach contents from rising. That image is enough to make anybody, physically ill. I look about for the sick bags Doc was gonna have on hand for her. I can't see the fucking things. I make a mental note to find them before I leave.
Whisper holds herself together well. A sad part of her conditioning under William and Cezar’s rein. I give her the time she needs to compose herself before she looks up at me, her eyes glistening.
“The package,” she murmurs sadly. “Oh, Edge, I’m so sorry for your friend and for you having to see that. If that note is to be believed, then you and Mathias are the targets, just like Adam was and I'm supposed to be okay with being put in a safe place while he hunts you both down and possibly wants to do that to you?”
“You’re gonna have to be okay with being tucked away, because there’s no other option and I think you know it?” Everything she wants to say is written in plain English with her body language. The way her hand tightens over mine, her expressive eyes, the way her brow creases and her back tenses. She knows she can’t risk the babies, but she stays silent.
I won’t risk all three of them.
“You gotta trust I can look after myself and I'll trust Hazard and company to keep you safe. Mathias managed to rise to the position of sentinel all by himself, and he knows how to keep himself alive. We're gonna talk strategy on the flight back to New Orleans, and we're gonna make it impossible for him to get the job done. He fucked-up by gloating and giving us time to be prepared."
Motherfuckers who brag ultimately fuck up along the way.
"But Filip wants you both dead, and he wants to make a statement as he did with Adam's death," she states the obvious with a little hitch in her voice of fear at the end she can't hide. I don't doubt he wants to cut our heads off. What he wants and gets are two different things.
"Yep! He's gunning for us, but it ain't gonna happen. Whisper, I need you to try and not worry, or you'll stress you and the babies out, and I can't have that distracting me. I need you to be healthy for your pregnancy and at the moment you aren't even hitting your weight goal. You gotta try and do that for me; it will keep me sane knowing I can concentrate on him."
“I’ll do my best,” she says, giving my hand a gentle squeeze. So fucking sweet. I want to smother her with my heart.
“We think he may be connected to the recent death of the concierge at the hotel where Mathias and Lily have been staying, but we are unsure of the connection there. There’s a lot we are still trying to piece together, but we do have a ring description, rough height, boot size, and he's got tattoos that peek out the top of the collar of his shirt. Unless you can add anything to that, it’s all we got to assist us in finding this bastard.”
“I’ll try,” Is all she says before she shuts her eyes and concentrates. Her eyelids twitch as she opens up one of her boxes and delves into the bad memories, a frown appearing on her forehead when she finds what she’s looking for.
Her eyes pop open.
"When I had to… um… cane Mathias, Filip had to undo Mathias' belt buckle when he was facing the wall and peel his suit pants and underwear away. While he was maneuvering his body around Mathias' to fiddle with the belt buckle, he did something to Mathias to hurt him, and his neck was stretched at an angle. I noticed at the time what looked like a small skull tattoo at the base of his neck, but there was also like a dragon tail peeking above his collar. My guess is he has a big dragon tattooed on his back. It's the only distinguishing things I can remember. I didn't often see Filip. Mathias, I saw a lot more of." She sure did by the sound of it.
“You did good, babe. Do you think you could draw it for Hazard and he’ll snap a pic and send it to us?”
“Yes, I think my right hand will be okay to attempt one.” She looks around as though to find paper and a pencil.
“Not now, babe. I want you to rest. When your flight lands, if you can get Hazard to find you some paper and a pencil, you can try to draw what you think you saw and where on his neck. My immediate concern is for you to be out of Alaska and that can wait until then.”
“Okay.”
"Filip thinks he's narrating this story, and he knows the ending, but he's wrong," I tell her totally believing my words. Ain't two ways about it; we got to Cezar, and he fucking well knows it.
“I know you’ll find Filip and kill him,” she says with strength and confidence I will get the job done at the same time acknowledging she’ll do as she’s told and stay safe until this is all over.
I wipe the moisture from her eyes with my thumb. I've got too much to look forward to in my future for it to backfire on my brother and me.
Not. Happening.
We're rewriting this Hell's bastard's story, and it's gonna have a dead villain and a happily-ever-after.
"I would like to know you're all right. You need to let me know every day. I'll want to hear your voice. I have to have that or I'm going to stress." I can see it written all over her face that she'll be stressed if I don't clock in and that's the last thing she needs to be feeling.
"I can do that. I'll need to know you're safe too," I tell her. "But I won't be able to visit you. It will be too dangerous. I want all his attention on where I’m at until we can draw Filip out. He's not walking around without a disguise. It could take months to find him. He could draw this out deliberately for his amusement.
Don't know how we're gonna flush the Hell's bastard out, yet, but we'll do it. He pretty much outed himself with that package he sent me, and that means he's got a massive ego because he ain't stupid. But a massive ego leads to stupid.
That motherfucker couldn’t just walk away and blend into the landscape, never to be found alive. He had to come back with some ridiculous notion of being the one wronged. What. The. Fuck?
“Hey…where have you gone?” She touches my face.
“I’m here.” I lean down and kiss her.
“Not for much longer,” she says quietly and then starts to wiggle about until she’s straddling me with my arms loosely caging her in. Then she’s shrugging her winter coat off. "You worry about killing Filip, and I'll be fine. Phoenix is my gal-pal now so we will get along fine. Don't worry about us; this will be a vacation compared to everything I've been through. I want you to know I don't want to be separated, but I also don't want to be a burden to you and Boxer when you're trying to catch this guy."
“Never a burden.” I wriggle her hips drawing her closer until she can feel the distraction in my jeans. “Fuck, babe, I want to lay you down on this bed and make love to you.” I’m so hard for her and I know she’ll be wet for me.
"My heart and my body want you too. But I need to ask something. An emotion called jealousy is rearing its ugly head, and I need you to be honest with me. I don't like how it makes me feel."
“Ask away.”
“What about Cyn and her child? I know now isn’t the time to ask, but this jealousy emotion is something I don’t like feeling.” I like how she says what’s on her mind. She needs an explanation, but she’s not making a big deal about what is bothering her.
"Whisper, that was the version of me who didn't have this"—he waves his hand between us—"I fucked without emotional attachment. It's how I lived. Cyn is a great girl. I saved her from an abusive relationship, and I wanted to make sure she had enough money to look after her kid. She was an arrangement that kept her from whoring herself out to dangerous men. I called her when I needed her, but I didn't love her. Drill and I shared her on occasion. I won't lie about that. I won't lie that I enjoyed it, but that was me in another time and another place. I now have you, and you've changed me without even trying. I've broken the arrangement off with Cyn; she knew the time would come when it would happen, and she was good with it. She's not possessive or clingy; she won't bother us. It was an arrangement that worked for everybody involved. She has eyes for Drill; he's just not seeing it yet. Drill will give her the same financial backing and arrangement I gave her. She will pay for it in sexual favors, but it won't be a hardship for her. I see the way she looks at him. Drill's bisexual; a one woman, one man relationship is not what he craves. They will find another partner to hook up with. I don't doubt that."
“Do you need to be with more than two people?” she asks me warily.
“Do I look like I need a third wheel when we fuck?”
"No," she replies a blush creeping over her face. She needs clarity because this is a whole new experience for her. I'm her first. She has nobody to compare me to, which means I should be the one fucking worried. I've fucked a lot of women, and she's only had me.
“Babe, I won’t fuck this up. I know how lucky a man I am.” Ain’t that the truth?
“When Filip’s dead we can talk about all the complicated and uncomplicate it. Whatever it takes, I’m willing to do to have you with me, because this is a forever I’m talking about. I’m all in.” I want the kind of happiness Whisper can give me.
I want it bad.
She gets a glint in her eye and then she's swiveling her hips about, and I can't contain the low, slow groan that escapes me.
I love it when she gets wild.
“Kiss me,” she says passionately. She needs the connection before we are driven apart and I’m happy to oblige because it’s gonna be a long time between kisses and being inside her.
I put everything I have into that kiss. My fingers are threaded through her hair as we grind and our lips dance. Our tongues frantic because we won’t be able to be this connected, in a long time. The friction is going to have me coming in my pants if we don’t stop, but I can’t seem to care if Boxer sees me with a wet patch on my jeans, but I don’t want Whisper to be embarrassed that he knew what we’d been doing.
“Edge—”
“I know, babe,” I murmur.
“I’m going to miss you—”
“So much.” I try to pull myself away from her, but I’m failing. She needs to get in the sky.
Whisper jumps at the sound of two knocks. It better not be Tucker!
I peel my lips off hers slowly, not ready to break the connection and look over her shoulder. Hazard’s finally arrived. He’s standing in the doorway. He's no longer got the ugly Christmas sweater on. His hair's tied back, and he's wearing a serious look on his face. He's got things I need to know, and he's not happy about them.
“We need to get moving. Boxer wants Whisper to have this phone.” He throws it onto the bed covers beside us, acting like we weren’t just grinding away. Program your number in it, and I'll give her the codes she’ll need to know.” He plays a rhythm out on the wall with his fingers and then walks down the other end of the plane.
My cock is hard underneath her, but there’s nothing to be done for it. I pick the phone up and press the buttons until I’ve secured my number in her contacts and added a ringtone.
“What are you doing?” she hears the song when I test it.
“Giving you a ringtone for when I call,” I tell her with a grin. “Sara Smile by Hall and Oates.” I snap a selfie of the two of us. Her face is flushed, her lips swollen and she’s fucking beautiful. I send that pic to her phone.
“Let’s get you buckled into one of those leather chairs out there and then I’m gonna have to leave.” I slide her off me onto the bed and walk over to one of her bags and unzip it. I pull out Jenny, her ragdoll.
“Whisper, I want you to carry Jenny with you everywhere you go.” And then I lift up the dress and press hard on the back of the doll’s left leg and press some buttons on my phone. “I just put the tracker on we put inside her. Everybody guarding you will be able to tell where you are if you keep her with you. Put her in your handbag, and make sure she’s with you at all times. We put the tracker inside her when I brought her with me to rescue you. It was just a little-added precaution if something went wrong. We’ll be tracking your phone too. I’m covering all bases if your phone gets broken or lost—anything. I might not be beside you, but I want to know where you are at all times and I'll be getting updates from Hazard and Slade every day, and I'll be tracking their phones too. Boxer won't be taking any chances either. We can all look for this motherfucker knowing you are being tracked."
“Okay,” she says softly.
"Better get you buckled into one of those fancy leather chairs for takeoff. Oh … and just so you know; Hazard will be under instruction to buy you anything you need. He will have access to cash, and you buy what you want." I see the awkwardness start to set in. She doesn't know how to let somebody care for her financially. I get she's proud of standing on her own two feet.
“Edge… I’ve got money.”
“Babe, you can’t access your account in case it leaves a trail.” Realization dawns in her eyes cemented by an ‘O’ formed on her lips.
"You won't be housebound. Think of this as a holiday to enjoy this time with Phoenix. The fucker can't and won't know where you are. Do some girlie shopping if you're up to it. This won't be a prison sentence. The fucker is after Mathias and me.
“Hazard will want you disguised in a wig and big sunnies plonked on your pretty face whenever you go outside. Always wear them. You blend into San Diego, and you blend in with Phoenix and her friends. You're just one of the girls. Slade will be briefing Phoenix and Boxer, and I will talk to them once we land. I want you to do this for yourself and me. I want you to relax, not worry about us and have a holiday. You deserve it." She's just watching me with those big browns of hers as she tries to think of a way she doesn't have to use my money.
"I'll pay you back what I spend." Okay, we will go with that theory, but not gonna happen.
“Okay babe, if that makes you feel better.” Got no time to argue that it’s not gonna end up that way. I want to spoil her and Hazard can play that little argument out with her when she’s safely out of here.
I want to stall for more time with her, but she needs to get out of here. The plane's engine has started, and Hazard is now in view giving me the wind-up signal. "I guess it's time to say good-bye." Her big browns are deep pools I want to fall into and stay a while longer.
“Then you better kiss me, like you’re going to miss me,” she says with as much bravado as she can muster.
“There’s that sweet and wild,” I murmur before taking her into my arms and devouring her with my tongue.
God, I want to stay here with her.