Cavan

I had withdrawn eight hundred dollars from my bank account. It had drained me dry, because I didn’t live on much, but it would get me by. The motel clerk had taken cash, and now I went into town and bought food at the local grocery store so we wouldn’t be seen in any of the local diners.

When I was finished I went into a hole-in-the-wall corner store and bought a burner phone, again for cash. No names, no addresses, no credit cards. I configured it, and now I had a number that no one could trace.

Which meant I could call my brother.

Devon Wilder, the billionaire.

I didn’t have his number, but I knew I could get it. The best way to find it was probably to look up Max Reilly, the friend Devon and I had grown up with in L.A. Max wasn’t a billionaire, he was just a guy—which probably meant his info was searchable somewhere on the internet.

I actually sat in my car in the baking late-morning Arizona heat and felt cold sweat on the back of my neck at the thought. Ten years. It had been ten years since I’d seen either Devon or Max. I had left them both behind without looking back, and I had reasons for it. Reasons that, a decade later, I still didn’t want to explore.

Man the fuck up, Wilder.

If McMurphy and the Black Dog found out about Devon’s money, he might be in danger. Devon was tough, but he couldn’t defend himself against a threat he didn’t know was coming. I had to warn him.

But I still didn’t want him to know where I was. Hence the burner phone. I just needed to get him a message, and then I was done.

I scrubbed a hand over my face. I was so tired my vision was blurring. I couldn’t handle this shit right now. I needed a shower, sleep. I needed to get back to the motel and make sure Dani was all right. I had the phone now; I’d deal with the rest of it later.

So I drove back, the burner phone sitting in the passenger seat, staring accusingly at me with its blank screen. Shut up, I told it silently. Devon isn’t going to die in the next few hours. McMurphy will come for me first.

I pulled up to the motel, which was silent under the relentless sun. I left the groceries in the car, because I hadn’t bought anything that would spoil. Nearly stumbling with exhaustion, I opened the door and stepped into the room.

She’d pulled the blinds down, so it took a minute to adjust to the dimness. An overhead fan spun slowly, its sound the only one in the room. On the bed was Dani.

She was wearing a towel wrapped around her, and nothing else. She was on top of the bedspread, and she had rolled over to her side, her top knee drawn up. Her long black hair was sprawled over the pillow. She was dead asleep.

I stared down at her for a long minute. I felt stupid, like someone had hit me over the head. Her face was beautiful in repose, her closed lashes long and dark. Every inch of her amazed me: her delicate shoulders, her slender arms, her long legs. I stared unashamedly at the shadow along her upper thigh, where it disappeared beneath the towel. The soft skin that vanished in shadow between her legs.

There was a dark bruise on the outside of her thigh, just below her hip. Crescent shaped—a heel mark.

He’d kicked her. McMurphy had kicked her.

She didn’t wake.

I reached to the back of my neck and pulled my t-shirt off over my head, dropping it to the floor as I walked to the bathroom. Then I stripped and got under the shower for a long time.

I couldn’t think. He’d kicked her—fucking kicked her. I knew McMurphy; I knew how he treated his women. I knew he liked to show them who was the alpha dog. McMurphy liked everyone, man and woman alike, to know he was the alpha dog. It was how he lived. I knew that.

And still, I was so angry I could barely see.

I pressed my hands to the tile, leaning on my arms. I was angry, and my dick was also hard—that was how fucked up I was. I was saving this woman’s life, helping her run from an animal because she’d begged me to, and I was as hard as a fucking rock just looking at her. I wanted to wake her up, slide that towel up, put her on all fours, and fuck her until I couldn’t think anymore.

I closed my eyes. I wasn’t particularly hard up; the Black Dog, like most MCs, attracted a lot of women. And something about motorcycles made women lose their inhibitions. If I wanted it, it was always relatively simple to fuck a woman against the back wall of the club house during a party, or get a blow job in a back room. The brothers never cared, and frankly, neither did the women. To them, I was a good-looking lay, but I wasn’t a brother with a brother’s status, which meant they didn’t want repeats. I was never bothered by clinging women wanting to be my old lady.

When I was nineteen, it had seemed like a good deal to have access to random, anonymous fucks. A decade later, I was twenty-nine fucking years old, and there wasn’t much excitement to it—so little I didn’t bother much, if I ever had. The last few times I’d done it had made me feel ill.

I put my hand on my cock and gave it a slow, experimental stroke, from base to tip, my eyes still closed, the image of Dani behind my eyelids. My nerves woke up under the hot steam, into my lower back and up, and down into my balls. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt anything like it. I didn’t even need to come, it felt so good.

I did it one more time, hissing quietly through my teeth as pleasure woke up in every part of me, almost painful, like frostbitten skin warming up. I ran my thumb over the tip of my cock, and then I let it go again. Finished my shower. Dried off. Drank a glass of water. Brushed my teeth.

I put a towel around my waist and tiptoed out of the bathroom. Dani hadn’t moved; if I didn’t see the regular rhythm of her breathing, I’d wonder if she was all right. Her back was to me, so in silence I pulled clean clothes from my bag and put them on, dressing fully in jeans, t-shirt, and socks. Despite what an unworthy fuckup I was, I didn’t want there to be any misunderstanding. I was not getting into bed naked with her.

She’d nearly panicked when I suggested we separate; she seemed to want some kind of comfort. So I lay on the bed, on top of the covers, behind her back. It was a tight fit, with my shoulder off the edge of the bed, so I rolled on my side, still not touching her. The last thing I remembered was the smell of her soap, and the gentle curve of her neck and shoulder, and then I was gone.

* * *

When I woke, she was whispering my name.

I opened my eyes to see her dark brown gaze looking into mine. She had rolled over to her other side, facing me. The sun around the edges of the blinds was blazing; I had no idea what time it was.

“Cavan,” Dani said again.

I blinked at her. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” she said. “You came back.”

That made me frown. “You keep thinking I’m going to take off on you.”

She watched me and said nothing. That was answer enough.

She didn’t trust me yet. That was fair. I wouldn’t trust me, either. “I’m not leaving you, Dani,” I said. “I’ve come this far. I’m in. I’m not going anywhere until you’re safe.”

“Until we’re both safe,” she corrected me.

Sure, if that made her feel better. “You won’t have to go back,” I told her. Not while I’m alive, at least. “I promise you that much.”

It seemed to be the right thing to say. Dani blinked, her gaze going a little unfocused on my face. “I never said thank you,” she said.

Fucking hell. Her voice had gone soft and throaty, and that look—no woman had ever looked at me like that. Softness and hero worship and a wild case of pure, roaring lust. She wasn’t trying to hide it, didn’t care if I saw. If I wanted her to, this woman would practically eat me alive. I wondered how many times I could hold out against her, how many times I could turn her down.

I shouldn’t do it. Dani had been through some serious shit. She was still going through it, and would be for a while. Yet my blood roared to life again and my cock was very fucking hard.

Still, I’m not a complete fucking asshole, so I only said, “You’re welcome.”

She smiled. It was perfectly feminine, that smile, open and unfathomable at the same time. Maybe she was some kind of victim, Dani was, but in that moment she didn’t look it. “Cavan,” she said.

“Baby,” I told her, “I want to. Believe me. But you’ll hate me if we do what you’re thinking about, and that isn’t going to work for either of us.”

In response she leaned forward, lifted herself on an elbow, and put her lips to my neck. Just that touch, her mouth on my skin, soft and perfect, moving up the side of my neck toward my ear. “Thank you,” she whispered.

I did it gently, but I did it. I rolled over, pressing her onto her back on the bed, pinning myself over her. She gave in so easily. I notched my hips between hers and she opened her thighs, pressing against me. We fit together like two puzzle pieces, even though I wore jeans and she wore a towel. I moved my hips and rubbed against her slowly, watching her eyes go hazy.

“This?” I asked, my voice hoarse. “Is this how you want to thank me?”

Her reply had no hesitation. “I want to do anything you want.”

Those words hit my bloodstream and went straight to my cock. I pushed into her again, feeling her push back, feeling the way it squeezed me tight in my jeans. I dropped my head to the crook of her neck, smelling the clean smell of her silky hair. “I don’t want gratitude,” I said.

She was riding me now, her hips pressing up into mine, her legs open as she made a slow rocking motion. She reached up and ran her hands up the back of my neck, into my hair. “Good,” she said in that sex-drenched voice of hers. “Because I already thanked you.”

We were locked like that, twisted together, half fucking and half struggling, when her cell phone rang.

We both went still. Her body tensed beneath me and her hips stopped moving. I could hear her breathing. The phone shrilled on the night table, buzzing against the wood and beeping.

We both knew who that was. And suddenly, I was angry. Fucking furious. That McMurphy had had this woman and treated her like dirt. That she still had something good and whole inside her—I was seeing it right now—that he was trying to kill. That he wanted nothing more than to take what was still there and ruin it.

Without moving off Dani, I reached for the nightstand and grabbed the phone, sharp as a cobra strike. The caller ID said MCMURPHY. I thumbed the answer icon and said, “What the fuck do you want?”

“Wilder.” McMurphy’s voice was blazing. “So it is you who took off with her. I thought so when we couldn’t find you this morning. You’re a fucking dead man.”

“Yeah, it’s me,” I told him. “She left with me, McMurphy. She’s gone. Get the fuck over it.”

“You’re both dead,” he shouted. A string of invective followed, including the words that cunt and kill that bitch and cheap slut in a cheap hotel room and rip your guts out, you cheating fuck. I watched Dani’s face go pale beneath me. We were so close she could hear every word.

“McMurphy,” I said. “Shut up. Just shut up. She left you. Get it? It’s done. Go fuck yourself.” My eyes still on Dani, I hung up and threw the phone across the room, listening to it hit the wall. Then I did what we both wanted. I leaned down and kissed her.

It was an urgent kiss, harsh. She moaned in the back of her throat and bit my lip as I opened her mouth and tasted her, our tongues tangling. I kissed her so fucking hard I could have drawn blood, and she liked it so much she bucked beneath me, grinding against me, looking for release. I pushed her back down into the mattress and dragged my hand up her thigh and beneath the towel, paying close attention to her reaction. She moaned again and opened her legs wider, inviting me, so I touched her.

She was wet. So fucking wet. I slid my fingers over her, tracing, rubbing, exploring her sensitive spots. She broke the kiss and breathed hard, her hands gripping the back of my neck.

“Cavan,” she begged after a minute.

“Ssh,” I told her, rubbing gently. “Relax, baby. Let me help you out.”

She arched back into the pillows as I swirled circles over her clit with the tips of my fingers. “Like that,” she said in a strangled voice. “Oh—fuck. Like that.”

It was the hottest thing I’d ever seen, her telling me what to do. “Impatient,” I said, my fingers leaving her clit—she groaned in frustration—and moving down, pressing into her. I could smell clean sweat and woman and sex. I wanted to fuck her, and yet at the moment that wasn’t right. At the moment I wanted to touch her, to learn her. My life had been a long, lonely, meaningless stretch, and never once had I touched a woman like it was the most important thing in the world, like our lives would end if I didn’t get this right, make her come. So I took my time to make it right.

I slid two fingers into her, rubbing until I could tell she was getting there, and then my thumb found her clit again, the pad touching it lightly, moving in that circle she liked so much. Dani reacted by crying out as I said soothing things in her ear. She was completely uninhibited, giving me everything, and in those moments I took it. I took it because it was the most important thing I’d ever been given.

“Perfect,” I told her softly as she climbed higher and higher. “You’re fucking perfect right now, Dani. Just let go and let it come. You feel it? You feel good? I can make it so good for you, baby. Just this, right here, my fingers in your pussy. It’s perfect. Let it come.”

And when she did, when she went over the edge, she said my name. And I felt like maybe my life wasn’t so lonely after all.