Tank

"Where you been lately, Tank?" Cross asks as I walk into his office where he summoned me via one of the prospects like I'm some fucking newbie.

"How's everything going with the Sheriff job?" he adds, probably sensing my annoyance at the summons from the hard look I’m giving him. "We should get that handled sooner rather than later."

I sit on the leather sofa, which is so damn cold I feel the coolness through my jeans. Winter might be over, but summer hasn't started yet either. I don’t remember a May this cold since I moved to California. I’m always cold lately. Except when I'm with Kim. That shit is the height of summer. Has been each and every time I see her, which has been every day for the past two weeks. And I'm counting down the hours until I see her next. The count is at five right now. She's taking her brother and her mom shopping this afternoon, or else I'd already be with her.

"I have five of our best guys feeling out the situation," I say after I judge the pause has gone on long enough, and my point that I find this questioning annoying has been made. "So far, the reports all agree that it'll be a hard fucking job unless we do it at home, while he sleeps. That's the only time he doesn't have a bodyguard breathing down his neck. But you know as well as I do how messy domestic jobs like that can get. We'd probably have to whack the wife too, make it look like a burglary and hope for the best. But we're trying to keep a low profile, are we not?"

"I don't like killing bystanders any more than you do," Cross says and gets up from his seat to pour a drink. He holds the bottle of scotch at me, and I nod for him to pour me one too. "But this needs to get done. The War Dogs already have a man lined up to run and win the election for sheriff."

He brings me the glass and I take it, drink most of it right away.

"Hope they thought this one through better than they planned the attack on the sheriff-to-be."

Cross shrugs and takes his glass to the window to drink it as he stares out over the garden. Kim would like our garden. I think it would calm her. She's pretty high strung all the time, always worried about something. It's either over her mom, her brother, or the thing that happened in Africa, which any idiot can understand she could do nothing about. I'm glad she didn't try. She'd be dead if she had.

She only lets go when she comes. Then she becomes the fire she really is. But I can’t ever bring her here. She's so firmly planted in the real world and she's a journalist on top of it. No way she'd accept what I really do, or who I really am. But I can always rent a house in town, continue this charade of being just a biker wannabe mechanic for a good while longer.

"I'll take care of it soon, don't worry," I say, setting my empty glass on the coffee table. "But Rook just got word that the Spawns' VP is making his way to Vancouver with his family. We're all set to intercept them in Seattle in a couple of days. His plan was to hide from us in big cities, where we couldn't find him as easily. The plan wasn't good enough. And once that's done, I'll turn my full attention to the Sheriff."

Rook and Ice just got back from killing off the Spawn's Sargent at Arms and their Treasurer in Mexico, along with the three enforcers they had for protection. I'm glad I wasn't with them. Rook says it was bloody business again. Bad enough to make a grown man puke, was how he put it. I imagine that the VP's death will be even more elaborate.

But I have to be there for that one, and Ice is supposed to be there for every one of them that he wishes to attend. Cross' orders. Not that I begrudge the man his revenge. I just wish he'd strangle his top ten worst jailers, instead of cutting them up.

"I trust you, Tank, you know that," Cross says.

"Why do I feel a "but" coming?" I interject into his pause.

"No "but"," Cross says. "I still trust you absolutely. You just haven't been yourself lately, and I'd like to know why."

"It's nothing for you to worry about," I say. "I met a girl, that's all. This gorgeous redhead with hair like flame and the body of a goddess. And the best part is, she likes me too."

He narrows his eyes at me, but I see him trying not to roll them.

"You and your redheads," he mutters with barely concealed annoyance.

"No, this one is normal, no murderous tendencies in evidence," I assure him.

"Yeah, you sure? The last one almost burned this whole place down," he says, swiping his arm to encompass the room and the rest of the house, I guess.

"As you keep reminding me. But that was six years ago." I say more harshly than I intended.

He does have a point though. I have been burned by redheads in the past, figuratively and literally. The last redhead I dated, Rosalyn, set fire to my bed with me in it before she left me. She could've burned the whole Sanctuary down. I did cheat on her, so there was some cause for her to go off the deep end, but I also never promised her I'd be faithful, so there's that. I stayed away from the red haired devils for awhile after her.

But Kim is so very different than any redhead I've ever met. She's different than any woman I've ever met. She's the only woman I was ever willing to jump through extra hoops for, just to keep it going, and the only one I've ever not been able to not see, or at least speak to, everyday. For all her sharpness, she's the softest woman I've ever been with. She calms me. And I wish I hadn't told her all those lies, so that keeping her would be easier now.

"Yeah, I'm sure about her," I say and stand up. "Was there something else?"

Cross shakes his head. "Just keep your mind on the job. There's not much left to do. And afterwards, we'll have nothing but smooth riding."

"Yeah, that's a dream," I say.

It's as close to admitting that I'd prefer to go it his way after all this is done—leave the killing part of our operations behind us for good and focus just on the weapons trafficking—as I'm willing to go right now. I was against it from the second he first suggested it, but I'm starting to see it his way. Death takes its due. And I think me and the Grim Reaper are even now. But I'll only tell Cross that once I'm sure. Though I think he already knows, because he knows me way too well.

I walk out of his office without saying anything more. I have time to go look at some houses now. Kim's been asking me where I live more and more lately, and I think she's about to start demanding I show her. One more lie will make that easier to handle. But for the long run, I'm afraid that passing off a newly rented house as my home might be one lie too many.

* * *

Kim

"So, I was thinking we could spend this weekend at my house," Tank says while getting dressed to leave. It's not even dawn yet, and I was annoyed at him that he keeps leaving me like this before he said it, but that's gone now.

"Not that I don't like this cozy little hole of yours," he adds with a grin, since I'm just sitting there at the edge of the bed staring at him.

There's a double meaning in his words, there usually is, and it makes me wish he’d stay even more acutely.

I get up and walk to him, wrap my arms around his waist, enjoying the roughness of his jeans on my bare thighs, the coarse fabric of his sweater against my naked belly and breasts. I can feel his warmth beneath all that, can imagine the softness of his skin that covers his muscles, which are harder than steel, more durable than stone. I wish he were naked still.

I grind my stomach against his cock, feel it stir as I kiss him, the jolt of desire passing through my pussy overshadowing all else, making no other possibility, but me tearing all his clothes off possible.

"Haven't you had enough?" he asks with a chuckle as I slide my hands up under his sweater, because I need to feel his skin against my palms.

I know what he means. He kept me awake all night with his kisses, his caresses, his cock, because he said he was leaving early in the morning and wouldn't be able to visit for a couple of days. That made me sad, but his passion for me, that same passion I have for him, burned it away quickly.

"Never," I breathe and kiss him again. He responds more viciously than before, his tongue invading my mouth as his hands grope and squeeze all my softest parts—my ass, my breasts, my belly, my neck.

There's no stopping now. For either of us. And he makes no move to prevent it as I unbuckle his belt, undo the button and pull down the zipper of his jeans. He lifts me by my ass and turns with me in his arms, pressing my back to the wall before I can even free his cock.

But my long, deft fingers make short work of it once the coarsely painted, cool wall is pressing against my back, and my feet are once again firmly planted on the floor.

"You're a freak in bed, you know that?" he asks hoarsely, lifting one of my legs up so high I have to come up on my toes with the other. I just grin at him in reply.

"But it's a good thing I love giving you exactly what you want," he adds and thrusts his cock into me. The angle's just right, and the sensation that courses through me is so close to an orgasm my whole body turns rigid in anticipation of the explosion I know must come.

But I'm not coming yet, and his hard, fast, deep thrusts keep me right at the tantalizing edge of all that bliss, so close, yet so far away. Pretty soon I'm moaning so hard I'm nearly screaming. The building eruption of pleasure takes first my sight, then my hearing, and finally my ability to breathe, my ability to feel anything but his massive cock pumping into me with all the rage of a lion and all the sweetness of a thousand soft kisses. By the time I do come, I feel nothing at all anymore, except the searing, sparkling pleasure that no one but he can give me.

I still can't breathe right when I'm once again standing on my own two feet, my legs shaking, my vision blurry and my heart pounding.

"And now I really have to go," he says, and I know he's smiling, even though I can't see his face. I can hear it in his voice. "I wish I didn't have to. You are by far the only person I want to spend today with. And tomorrow. And the day after."

He punctuates those statements with a hard kiss on my lips. My cheek. My forehead. And ends it by giving my ass a good squeeze with both hands before taking a step back.

"Me too," I mumble, since it's the first two words that come to mind, and I have to tell him I feel the same way before he leaves. He already said it better than I ever could.

"Alright, then wait for me," he says and chuckles. "And I'll be back as soon as I can."

I know it's a promise, so I don't argue anymore, just tell him that I will wait. Then I watch him leave. First as he makes his way down the stairs, and later as he walks across the driveway. And I realize I've never once watched a man walk away from me with such yearning, such a deep wish to see him again very soon.